Re: [ft-devel] strict aliasing

[Werner LEMBERG]

> Compilers are beginning to embrace more aggressive optimization
> techniques.  One of these directions is that of strict aliasing.  We
> have experienced crashes on some ARM embedded devices in some code
> that was flagged with the “strict aliasing” warning.  We have been
> going through our code, changing casts to unions in appropriate
> ways, and have sidestepped the crashes.
> 
> However, Freetype is a bit of a problem, since it is open source.

Soo...  Do you get crashes in FreeType?

> Are you planning to make a pass over the Freetype code base to
> eradicate these strict aliases?

Well, yes, but I don't consider it urgent.  Main reason for (most of)
the warnings is FreeType's attempt to simulate C++ classes with plain
C.  As far as I know, we don't try to be overly clever besides
this :-)

My preferred solution would be to use something similar to the fix in
issue #27441, given that unions is not the right way to go for C++,
according to advice I've seen in the internet – and I want to preserve
the ability that a C++ compiler can compile FreeType.

  
http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/freetype/freetype2.git/commit/?id=82633a2440d48ed22a1f70062d8926c37f9dcf31

[Note that for some unknown reasons this link doesn't work for me;
maybe a Savannah bug – however, you can clone the FreeType repository
to view the related code.]

Do you want to help here?


    Werner