[Coding Guideline]: Ensure identical compilation settings between Debug and Release builds

[PLeVasseur]

Chapter

Program Structure and Compilation

Guideline Title

Ensure same compilation settings between Debug and Release

Category

Required

Status

Draft

Release Begin

1.0.0

Release End

latest

FLS Paragraph ID

todo

Decidability

Decidable

Scope

System

Tags

surprising-behavior

Amplification

This guideline makes no mandate over what the compilation settings should be, but rather is to ensure that surprising behavior does not occur for engineers whether Debug or Release build is used.

Exception(s)

todo

Rationale

todo

Non-Compliant Example - Prose

todo

Non-Compliant Example - Code

todo

Compliant Example - Prose

todo

Compliant Example - Code

todo

[felix91gr]

An important issue that was brought up is that: depending on the compilation settings to reason about code, can be a bit of a brittle foundation.

This is because if e.g. we depend on the Cargo settings to get certain behavior out of our code, local reasoning about the code stops being possible:

• What does a >> b mean?
• If one has to check a cargo.toml file somewhere in the filesystem, specially if there's multiple crates per project, possibly with different settings in this regard, then reasoning about this unassuming shifting operation stops being as simple.
• Full information about the behavior of said code stops being all in front of the programmer.
• And this might make human error more likely.
• As well as "surprising" changes in behavior over time due to changes in files that might seem unrelated to the affected code paths.

CC @pellico :)