Re: [cdt-dev] Syntax and Semantic errors being on by default

[Jeffrey Overbey <jeffreyoverbey@xxxxxxx>]

> I would like to hear your opinions on whether
> or not the errors should be kept enabled by default.

Based on my experience teaching Eclipse/PTP tutorials, I think it
would be very helpful to have these turned off by default.

In our tutorials, the participants (mostly scientists new to Eclipse
who have a working but incomplete knowledge of C/C++) have found it
very confusing that there are "errors" reported in working code,
especially because they find them in the Problems view alongside
actual compilation errors.  Many of them assume that CDT knows more
than they do; an indexer misconfiguration will cause certain errors to
be reported, but they'll gladly change perfectly functioning code to
appease it since they assume the tool "knows" something that they
don't.  For example, it's hard to explain that a supposedly missing
semicolon may not be a genuine syntax error but rather a problem with
the macro environment configured in the project properties...
especially if they can insert a superfluous semicolon and the problem
will go away.

The indexer problem is exacerbated for people using synchronized
remote C/C++ projects (a feature in PTP which allows a C/C++ project
to be stored and indexed locally while being compiled, run, and
debugged on a remote machine).  In such projects, the code often
references header files only available on the remote machine, and so
the default indexer settings are almost guaranteed to be wrong.

That said, I realize that developers in scientific computing aren't
the main target of CDT, so your primary audience may react
differently...

Jeff