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+=========================================================================
+A proposal to build numpy without warning with a big set of warning flags
+=========================================================================
+
+:Author: David Cournapeau
+:Contact: david@ar.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp
+:Date: 2008-09-04
+
+Executive summary
+=================
+
+When building numpy and scipy, we are limited to a quite restricted set of
+warning compilers, thus missing a large class of potential bugs which could be
+detected with stronger warning flags. The goal of this NEP is present the
+various methods used to clean the code and implement some policy to make numpy
+buildable with a  bigger set of warning flags, while keeping the build warnings
+free.
+
+Warning flags
+=============
+
+Each compiler detects a diffferent set of potential errors. The baseline will
+be gcc -Wall -W -Wextra. Ideally, a complete set would be nice:
+
+-W -Wall -Wextra -Wstrict-prototypes -Wmissing-prototypes -Waggregate-return
+-Wcast-align -Wcast-qual -Wnested-externs -Wshadow -Wbad-function-cast
+-Wwrite-strings "
+
+Intel compiler, VS with /W3 /Wall, Sun compilers have extra warnings too.
+
+Kind of warnings
+================
+
+C Python extension code tends to naturally generate a lot of spurious warnings.
+The goal is to have some facilities to tag some typical C-Python code so that
+the compilers do not generate warnings in those cases; the tag process has to
+be clean, readable, and be robust. In particular, it should not make the code
+more obscure or worse, break working code.
+
+unused parameter
+----------------
+
+This one appears often: any python-callable C function takes two arguments,
+of which the first is not used for functions (only for methods). One way to
+solve it is to tag the function argument with a macro NPY_UNUSED. This macro
+uses compiler specific code to tag the variable, and mangle it such as it is
+not possible to use it accidentally once it is tagged.
+
+The code to apply compiler specific option could be:
+
+#if defined(__GNUC__)
+	#define __COMP_NPY_UNUSED __attribute__ ((__unused__))
+# elif defined(__ICC)
+	#define __COMP_NPY_UNUSED __attribute__ ((__unused__))
+#else
+	#define __COMP_NPY_UNUSED
+#endif
+
+The variable mangling would be:
+
+#define NPY_UNUSED(x) (__NPY_UNUSED_TAGGED ## x) __COMP_NPY_UNUSED
+
+When applied to a variable, one would get:
+
+int foo(int * NPY_UNUSED(dummy))
+
+expanded to
+
+int foo(int * __NPY_UNUSED_TAGGEDdummy __COMP_NPY_UNUSED)
+
+Thus avoiding any accidental use of the variable. The mangling is pure C, and
+thuse portable. The per-variable warning disabling is compiler specific.
+
+signed/unsigned comparison
+--------------------------
+
+More tricky: not always clear what to do
+
+half-initialized structures
+---------------------------
+
+Just put the elements with NULL in it.