Re: [PATCH] fix GCC 8 compile error

[Christian Schoenebeck]

On Samstag, 18. September 2021 18:45:37 CEST Paul Eggert wrote:
> On 9/18/21 9:26 AM, Christian Schoenebeck wrote:
> > apparently this compile error will retain in
> > the next release tarball.
> 
> It shouldn't do that. Have you tried building a tarball with 'make dist'
> and built from that with 'configure; make'? If that fails to build on
> your older platform, please report a problem; otherwise let's not worry
> about this.

Confirmed, if I take the 'make dist' indirection then it does build 
successfully with gcc flags intended by you.

> In release tarballs, the problems you're describing should occur only if
> you configure with developer flags like './configure
> --enable-gcc-warnings'. These flags don't always work on every platform,

I did not enable any additional flags. I just ran './configure' on the git 
version of tar without any flag or variable, leading to straight build errors.

> but that's OK as they are intended for developers not builders.

Well, I wonder if that intended group includes external developers/
contributors. If it does, then I can just recommend to handle such compiler 
issues more gracefully and accepting compromises involved. It is really very 
odd to pull a major project from git and being confronted with a bunch of 
compiler errors on a standard distro and getting patches nack-ed that would 
provide workarounds.

I mean if you find it okay to ignore certain compiler versions's warnings/
errors, be it, but then just handle that e.g. by configure, preprocessor or 
any other automatic solution.

Best regards,
Christian Schoenebeck