Re: AC_CHECK_FUNCS and gcc with -Werror

[Russ Allbery]

Steffen Dettmer <address@hidden> writes:

> so the users that do not fix warnings during normal compilation
> do not `forget' to run make warnings and then fix all the errors?

> I would guess the users that forget to fix warnings are the same
> that forget to run `make warning' :)

Well, you also have the same problem with developers who don't remember to
run the test suite.  :)  The best solution, in my experience, is to have a
separate build host that periodically attempts to build the current trunk,
using make warnings, and then runs the test suite and complains if it
fails.

> Isn't there a generic way? Configure has some `checking whether
> we are using the gcc compiler', right?
> So why not adding some `checking whether we are using the MS
> compiler'?
>  (we have some if test $CC=CL.EXE check, but better would to run
>  it and check the output text / version number to find out what
>  it is, also to support options that have been renamed across the
>  versions / years)

You can, and that would be more flexible, but it would also require
researching and maintaining warning flags for whatever compilers you want
to support.  I haven't found that to be a particularly useful way to spend
time, but then I'm mostly working on open source software where building
with vendor compilers isn't that common.  If you specifically want to
support a particular vendor compiler, it may be worthwhile to do something
more complex to select warning flags for that compiler as well.

-- 
Russ Allbery (address@hidden)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>