Re: warning in AC_CHECK_DECL

[Jim Meyering]

Eric Blake <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Followup - with the earlier patch fixed, now AC_FUNC_STRERROR_R has a
>> warning, that was making the -Wall -Werror compilation think that
>> strerror_r returned int instead of char* on cygwin.
>>
>> 2006-02-16  Eric Blake  <address@hidden>
>>
>>      * lib/autoconf/functions.m4 (AC_FUNC_STRERROR_R): Avoid unused
>>      variable warning.
>
> With my proposed patch to AC_FUNC_STRERROR_R, gnulib's m4/strerror_r.m4 is
> now out of date.  Either we need to update the various gnulib macros
> borrowed from CVS autoconf to override bugs in autoconf 2.59, or we need
> to release autoconf 2.60.  What are the remaining issues in the way of
> releasing autoconf 2.60?

It'd be great to see autoconf-2.60 soon, but do bear in mind that
running configure with CFLAGS='-Wall -Werror' is extreme: using -Werror
makes the process very fragile.  I've found it useful to configure
with banal options, and then to compile with stricter ones like those,
but even then, I use -Werror only on recent glibc/Linux-based systems.
Sometimes, especially in autoconf code snippets, it's best not to
try to remove all compile warnings.

Of course, if your using -Werror exposes easy-to-fix warnings, e.g.,
about obviously unused variables, that's great and we should fix them.