Maintenance Backlog and Low-Priority Fixes

Table of Contents

• 1. Purpose
• 3. Warning Cleanup Categories
• 5. Prioritization Policy
• 6. Sandbox Policy

This page tracks non-blocking technical debt items (warnings cleanup, refactors, and quality-of-life fixes) that are safe to address incrementally.

1. Purpose

Use this page for:

• compiler warning cleanup queues,
• low-priority style/consistency fixes,
• non-urgent tooling/docs polish tasks.

Do not use this page for urgent correctness/security issues.

3. source_data

Primary warning tracker location:

• logs/doxygen.warnings (generated by make build-docs)

For compiler/runtime warning campaigns, track status directly in this page.

3. Warning Cleanup Categories

Current warning clusters include:

• pointer/type mismatches,
• potentially uninitialized variables,
• format-string and buffer safety issues,
• unused code/variables,
• logical/style inconsistencies,
• PETSc deprecations.

These categories should be fixed in small, reviewable batches.

1. Standard Extension Workflow

1. Pick one warning category and one module area (for example, src/io.c).
2. Fix warnings without behavior changes.
3. Rebuild and confirm warning deltas.
4. Update this page with resolved/remaining counts.
5. Commit as maintenance-only patch.

5. Prioritization Policy

• Correctness-affecting warnings (uninitialized, format overflows, type mismatches) first.
• Pure style/unused warnings later.
• Keep each patch narrowly scoped to reduce regression risk.

6. Sandbox Policy

• sandbox/ is retained as optional developer scratch space.
• Treat everything in sandbox as non-production unless promoted.
• Stable outcomes should be moved into config/, examples/, scripts/, or docs/.