Build fails: error: result of comparison of constant 18446744073709551615 with expression of type 'size_t'

[yurivict]

It fails on the i386 architecture:
http://beefy5.nyi.freebsd.org/data/120i386-default/523384/logs/abyss-2.2.3.log

[jwcodee]

Hmm, we have CI for 32-bit systems so I'm not sure why that is happening but I'll look into it

[jwcodee]

What is "c++" you are using? is that an alias for g++

[stale]

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[yurivict]

c++ is clang8

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs.

[yurivict]

@jowong4 So what's the resolution of this?

[sjackman]

clang compiler on i386 architecture is not a supported target of ABySS. A PR to fix the issue is welcome if you are able to find a fix.

[jwcodee]

@sjackman I had considered blanket substituting all size_t to uint64_t so that this never happens anymore but I recall you said the solution is non-ideal.

[sjackman]

No, it's not ideal. The C++ standard library uses size_t as the type of variables that represent a count or index into an array, such as vector.size. http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/vector/vector/size/

It's best in my opinion to stick with that convention. The alternative is a lot of casting from size_t to uint64_t and back when interacting with the standard library.

When a value represents not an index into an array, but is instead a counter (like a count of the number of observed k-mers), and that counter is likely to exceed a billion, then it's better to use a uint64_t.