[Insight-developers] Some Q's about avoiding build failures

[Kent Williams]

After having broken a few continuous builds, I'm beginning to get the han=
g of=20
it, though I have a couple of questions.

1. I had one build on one GCC platform on the dashboard because I tried t=
o=20
call std::ofstream.write with an array of unsigned chars.  One GCC dashbo=
ard=20
build failed because std::ofstream.write has no version for unsigned char=
=20
arrays.

My question is, what sort of GCC compiler flags can force gcc 2.96 to be =
this=20
picky? I would sure rather catch this myself rather than do it in front o=
f=20
everybody.

I suspect in this case that the GCC machine that failed was running gcc 3=
=2Ex=20

2. I'm also paranoid about where to grab system-wide manifest constants. =
 In=20
particular, on Unix/Linux you can depend on MAXPATHLEN to be defined in
<sys/param.h>.  Is this universally the case?

Any other general tips from the hardened vets on avoiding these problems?