Re: Can't compile gettext 0.18.1.1 due to format string issues in libcroco and libgrep

[Bruno Haible]

Hello,

> I can't compile gettext 0.18.1.1 due to format string issues in libcroco and 
> libgrep:
> 
> libtool: compile:  gcc -std=gnu99 -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -DEXEEXT=\"\" -DEXEEXT=\"\" 
> -DEXEEXT=\"\" -I. -I.. -I../intl -I../intl -I.. -I.. -DDEPENDS_ON_LIBICONV=1 
> -DDEPENDS_ON_LIBINTL=1 -I../intl -I///usr/include/libxml2 -I./libcroco -g3 
> -pipe -O0 -Wall -Wextra -Wno-missing-field-initializers -Wno-unused-parameter 
> -Wold-style-definition -Wmissing-declarations -Wredundant-decls -Wshadow 
> -Wwrite-strings -Winline -Wformat -Wformat-nonliteral -Wformat-security 
> -Werror=format-security -Wfatal-errors -Winit-self -Wmissing-include-dirs 
> -Wundef -Waggregate-return -Wmissing-format-attribute -Wnested-externs -c 
> libcroco/cr-statement.c  -fPIC -DPIC -o 
> libcroco/.libs/libcroco_rpl_la-cr-statement.o
> ...
> compilation terminated due to -Wfatal-errors.

Just remove the options -Werror=format-security -Wfatal-errors from the
CFLAGS or CPPFLAGS when you configure gettext. Then the compilation will go
through nicely.

> The attached patches helped me to compile, but I don't know whether they are
> semantically correct. 

I will not apply gettext-formatstring.patch because libcroco is from GNOME
and I want to minimize the deviation of gettext's libcroco copy from the
official one. But you're welcome to help fixing the numerous warnings in
libcroco with the upstream maintainers in the GNOME project.

I will not apply gettext-formatstring-libgrep-fgrep.patch and
gettext-formatstring-libgrep-regex.patch because the format strings in
question are fetched from message catalogs via the gettext() function,
and the 'msgfmt' program already has a protection against undesired
format directives which would not correspond to arguments.

Bruno