Packaging question about -Wformat-security on Rawhide

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 02/04/2014 05:31 AM, Dan Mashal wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 8:16 PM, Michael Catanzaro <mcatanzaro at gnome.org> wrote:
>> On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 19:42 -0700, Orion Poplawski wrote:
>>> I'm not sure why the default -Wall is being
>>> dropped from that line (it is on other tests).
>>
>> It's explicitly dropped on configure.ac:1265
>>
>>          dnl We enable -Wall later.
>>          dnl If it's set after the warning CFLAGS in the compiler invocation, it
>> counteracts the -Wno... flags.
>>          dnl This leads to warnings we don't want.
>>          CFLAGS=`echo $CFLAGS |$sedpath 's/-Wall//'`
>>
>> Second-guessing the user's choice of compiler warnings is certainly
>> "unconventional."
>>
>> Anyway, this from the build log looks bad too; hope it's the same issue:
>>
>> checking EXTERN.h usability... no
>> checking EXTERN.h presence... yes
>> configure: WARNING: EXTERN.h: present but cannot be compiled
>> configure: WARNING: EXTERN.h:     check for missing prerequisite
>> headers?
>> configure: WARNING: EXTERN.h: see the Autoconf documentation
>> configure: WARNING: EXTERN.h:     section "Present But Cannot Be
>> Compiled"
>> configure: WARNING: EXTERN.h: proceeding with the compiler's result
>> configure: WARNING:     ## ------------------------------ ##
>> configure: WARNING:     ## Report this to devel at pidgin.im ##
>> configure: WARNING:     ## ------------------------------ ##
>> checking for EXTERN.h... no

I haven't checked this particular case, but these kind of log messages 
usually mean the configure script fails to compile a header file, 
because some symbols are missing inside of the header file.

This usually means another header file is not being included during the 
autoconf-check.

Typical reasons would be a missing AC_CHECK_HEADERS in configure or a 
coding-bug inside of the header triggering the compiler warnings.

Check out the autoconf list's archive. There are plenty of reports on 
similar issues.

Ralf