[cfe-dev] Straw poll: -verify and fatal errors

[Andy Gibbs]

Hi all,

I am working on a series of patches to enhance and fix the -verify feature 
of clang, but one thing in particular has raised some questions which myself 
and Mr. Rose would appreciate some input on!

For those not familiar with the -verify feature, here is a very brief 
description taken from the clang internals web-page: "Instead of formatting 
and printing out the diagnostics, -verify just captures and remembers the 
diagnostics as they fly by. Then -verify compares the list of produced 
diagnostics to the list of expected ones. If they disagree, it prints out 
its own output."  It is a feature commonly used in writing test cases for 
clang, but also has the potential to be used for non-related projects.

The question at hand here relates to how -verify should handle fatal errors 
generated within test cases.  At the moment, -verify doesn't handle them at 
all: it cannot be used to check for the generation of fatal errors, nor does 
it provide any diagnostics back to the user.

So, which would people rather?

1. -verify should not be used to check for fatal errors but instead should 
halt the test case with a diagnostic direct to the user relating to the 
fatal error, similar to normal compiler operation

or

2. -verify should be capable of checking for the generation of fatal errors 
in the same way as it can for all other errors/warnings/etc.

Both routes are feasible and patches (or partial patches!) exist for both: 
the question is more which is the better route to take.  Better can mean 
either from a user's / test case writer's point of view, or from a technical 
point of view -- or both!

Thanks for any and all feedback!

Andy