Re: [RFC + SIMPLE PATCHES] {maint} foreign mode and -Wportability

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello Stefano,

* Stefano Lattarini wrote on Mon, Oct 04, 2010 at 06:06:30PM CEST:
> Currently, automake *force* the disabling of `-Wportability' when
> in "foreign" mode.  What is the rationale for this?

Please search the archives.

The git log takes me to Release-1-9-236-g0ea21f8, which takes me to
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake-patches/2006-03/msg00001.html

The point is that users complained a lot about seeing warnings to add
AM_PROG_CC_C_O when they never cared about that odd 15-year old
compiler, or about MSVC support.  Let's not go back there.

I agree that it is wrong to let '-Wportability foreign' not produce
portability warnings (esp. since the option parsing order between
command-line, options in configure.ac, and options in Makefile.am
makes overriding hard), but I think the right fix for that would be
to remember whether we defaulted the '-Wportability' setting or
whether it came from an explicit setting.

Thanks,
Ralf