[swift-evolution] [Pitch] #warning

[Charlie Monroe]

> As to #warning, Swift’s use of warnings are significant different than the use in C.  In C compilers, many of the warnings produced *should* be errors, but can’t be because that effects language conformance and could break a large body of code. 

The example I've mentioned with #error, doesn't necessarily lead to an error, but can just issue a #warning("Untested OS, proceed carefully.") - it IMHO doesn't necessarily be fatal.

My issue with this being handled by Xcode (and generally with any feature discussed here that someone suggests it should be handled by Xcode) is that Xcode is the least customizable IDE I've ever seen and from what I've talked to some Xcode developers via bugreport.apple.com, they are not very keen on adding any customization features. But sadly I haven't found a better IDE.

Yes, I admit, I have abused #warning in the past (ObjC/C) to make sure I don't forget to implement something before shipping the product (usually during refactoring, so that I don't forget to come back and finish refactoring something). And with Swift, I have made TODO comments and of course, I've forgotten about a few places. It makes you search for TODO or FIXME all the time. The jump bar is way too hidden and not visible, a developer can't be expected to open each file and go through the jump bar for each file...

So a solution for this would be for Xcode to provide an option to issue warnings for TODOs and FIXMEs - and we're back to warnings.

Charlie