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In a similar vein to this question I got a new Boost warning when building a PR branch on MacOS.

In file included from /usr/local/include/boost/test/test_tools.hpp:46:
/usr/local/include/boost/test/tools/old/impl.hpp:107:17: warning: comparison of integers of different signs: 'const unsigned int' and 'const int' [-Wsign-compare]
    return left == right;

Is this entirely harmless again? Maybe I should just be configuring with --enable-suppress-external-warnings and ignoring all Boost warnings? A signed integer shouldn't be compared to an unsigned integer though surely?

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Is this entirely harmless again?

Quite possibly; you'd need to review the Boost internal code to find out. But in any case, if there is an issue, it's in Boost that this needs to be fixed.

Maybe I should just be configuring with --enable-suppress-external-warnings and ignoring all Boost warnings?

Unless you feel like debugging Boost itself, yes.

A signed integer shouldn't be compared to an unsigned integer though surely?

There is nothing inherently wrong with it. It's an indication that the code could be written in a more obviously correct way likely, but it's perfectly reasonable to encounter this in bug-free code. For example when in the context this is executed, it's known that the signed integer is never negative.

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  • Bitcoin Core just uses Boost for the unit tests right? It doesn't use Boost libraries for anything else? So even if there was a bug in Boost you'd be (relatively) relaxed about it as its just a unit test dependency rather than a dependency for the actual codebase being tested? Will turn on suppress external warnings from now on.
    – Michael Folkson
    Jul 27, 2022 at 19:00
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    It uses Boost libraries for several things, but the Boost Test library (which is the one under consideration here) is only used by the Bitcoin Core test code, indeed.
    – Pieter Wuille
    Jul 27, 2022 at 19:03

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