Hello automakers. This is basically just a reproposal of PR/547 from the old gnats database; I'm resubmitting it here because I'd really like to see it fixed, and having it reported in the new, more visible debbugs-based bug database might help in this respect.
-*-*-*- With automake >= 1.10, foreign *after* -Wall in AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE turns off portability warnings. $ cat >> configure.ac <<'END' AC_INIT([foo], [1.0]) AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([foreign -Wall]) AC_CONFIG_FILES([Makefile]) AC_PROG_CC END $ aclocal $ cat > Makefile.am <<'END' CFLAGS := $(wildcard *) bin_PROGRAMS = foo END $ automake -a # will warn as expected Makefile.am:1: `:='-style assignments are not portable Makefile.am:1: wildcard *: non-POSIX variable name Makefile.am:1: (probably a GNU make extension) Makefile.am:1: `CFLAGS' is a user variable, you should not override it; Makefile.am:1: use `AM_CFLAGS' instead. $ # now put `foreign' after `-Wall' $ sed -i 's/foreign -Wall/-Wall foreign/' configure.ac $ automake -a # gives no warnings! $ automake -a -Wall # but this does, luckily Makefile.am:1: `:='-style assignments are not portable Makefile.am:1: wildcard *: non-POSIX variable name Makefile.am:1: (probably a GNU make extension) Makefile.am:1: `CFLAGS' is a user variable, you should not override it; Makefile.am:1: use `AM_CFLAGS' instead. While the current behaviour is due to various historical and implementation reasons, IMHO it is counter-intuitive and somewhat "dangerous", since programmers enabling the `foreign' option might unwittingly be prevented from seeing portability warnings -- when they think to have enabled those warnings! Regards, Stefano
