Or an alternative approach: only compile the subset of features you explicitly need.
Obviously there’s a ton of variance in how practical this is any place, but it’s less common than it should be.
Obviously there’s a ton of variance in how practical this is any place, but it’s less common than it should be.
Only really practical if "features" are "plugins".
Having lots of knobs you can tweak is great for randomized testing. The more the merrier.
Congrats you're back to square 1!
Yeah, but are those bugs security bugs? Memory safety bugs are a big focus because they're the most common kind of bugs that can be exploited in a meaningful way.
Disabling entire segments of code is unlikely to introduce new memory safety bugs. It's certainly likely to find race conditions, and those can sometimes lead to security bugs, but its not nearly as likely as with memory safety bugs.
If the software is unusable, it doesn't matter if it has security bugs too. Or, to rephrase, the safest software is software nobody uses.