Suppressing GCC warnings on a per directory basis - gcc

I'm dealing with a C/C++ codebase that includes some 3-rd party sources which produce large amounts of GCC warnings, which I'd like to hide. The 3-rd party code can't be modified or compiled into a library (due to shortcomings of the build system). The project is being compiled with -Werror.
How do I ask GCC to ignore all warnings in a part of the codebase (contained in a subdirectory), or at least make these warnings non-fatal?
I'm aware of the flag -isystem, but it doesn't work for me because:
It doesn't suppress warnings in the source files, only in headers.
It forces C linkage, so it can't be used with C++ headers.
GCC version is 4.7 or 4.8, build is make powered.

GCC can't help with this, directly. The correct fix would be to tweak your build system (recursive make, perhaps).
However, you could write a little wrapper script that scans the parameters, and strips -Werror if it finds the right pattern.
E.g.
#!/bin/bash
newargs=()
werror=true
for arg; do
case "$arg" in
*directory-name-i-care-about* )
newargs=("${newargs[#]}" "$arg")
werror=false
;;
-Werror )
;;
* )
newargs=("${newargs[#]}" "$arg")
;;
esac
done
if $werror; then
newargs=("${newargs[#]}" "-Werror")
fi
exec gcc "${newargs[#]}"
Then, run your build with CC=my-wrapper-script.sh, and you're done. You could call the script gcc and place it earlier on the path than the real gcc, but be careful to select the correct "gcc" at the end of the script.
(I've not actually tested that script, so it might be buggy.)

Related

configure - check for availability of Perl headers (solved)

I'm developing an open source application where I'd like to include Perl conditionally (for different text processing purposes - that's just for information, not to be criticized as a concept :-). How would you normally check for availability of Perl headers using autoconf?
In my configure.ac I use the following for stuff that has pkg-config files:
PKG_CHECK_MODULES(GTK, gtk+-3.0, [AC_DEFINE([HAVE_GTK_3], 1, [Define to 1 if GTK+ 3 is present])])
PKG_CHECK_MODULES(SQLITE, sqlite3, [AC_DEFINE([HAVE_SQLITE], 1, [Define to 1 if SQLite is present])])
Unfortunately AFAIU Perl doesn't ship any .pc-s. In my Makefile.in to generate compiler flags I use their perl -MExtUtils::Embed -e ccopts -e ldopts instead of executing pkg-config.
Here rises the question - how would you do this in a prettier way?
I tried this:
AC_CHECK_HEADER([perl.h], AC_DEFINE(HAVE_PERL, 1, [Define to 1 if Perl headers are present]))
But it doesn't work unfortunately:
checking for perl.h... no
In my system (and probably much everywhere else) it's not in just /usr/include:
gforgx#shinjitsu nf $ locate perl.h | tail -n 1
/usr/lib64/perl5/CORE/perl.h
Is there at all a 'legal' way to extend search path for AC_CHECK_HEADER without using automake and AM_ macros?
So far I tried manipulating CPPFLAGS, and it's much better but still (probably due to other inclusions in perl.h):
configure: WARNING: perl.h: present but cannot be compiled
configure: WARNING: perl.h: check for missing prerequisite headers?
configure: WARNING: perl.h: see the Autoconf documentation
configure: WARNING: perl.h: section "Present But Cannot Be Compiled"
configure: WARNING: perl.h: proceeding with the compiler's result
configure: WARNING: ## ------------------------------------ ##
configure: WARNING: ## Report this to gforgx#protonmail.com ##
configure: WARNING: ## ------------------------------------ ##
checking for perl.h... no
Many thanks!
Update
Finally this works:
PERL_CPPFLAGS=`perl -MExtUtils::Embed -e ccopts`
PERL_LIBS=`perl -MExtUtils::Embed -e ldopts`
old_CPPFLAGS="$CPPFLAGS"
old_LIBS="$LIBS"
CPPFLAGS="$CPPFLAGS $PERL_CPPFLAGS"
LIBS="$LIBS $PERL_LIBS"
# TODO: figure out why first option doesn't work
#AC_CHECK_HEADER([perl.h], AC_DEFINE(HAVE_PERL, 1, [Define to 1 if Perl headers are present]))
AC_CHECK_FUNCS(perl_construct, AC_DEFINE(HAVE_PERL, 1, [Define to 1 if Perl headers are present]))
CPPFLAGS="$old_CPPFLAGS"
LIBS="$old_LIBS"
Not much of an autoconf expert, but I think: you can put plain shell snippets like
PERL_CFLAGS=`perl -MExtUtils::Embed -e ccopts`
PERL_LDFLAGS=`perl -MExtUtils::Embed -e ldopts`
into your configure.ac. Probably the right way to do it is to use AC_ARG_WITH to let the user specify those vars, and only get them from EU::E if the user hasn't overridden them. (likewise you can use one to have --with-perl override the HAS_PERL check entirely).
Then you can use AC_SUBST to make the values from configure-time available in the Makefile (so you don't need to call EU::E in Makefile.in).
And finally, the heart of the issue, I don't think there's a nice way to make AC_CHECK_HEADER aware that it needs some nonstandard flags, but you can do
old_CFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
CFLAGS="${PERL_CFLAGS}"
AC_CHECK_HEADER(...)
CFLAGS="${old_CFLAGS}"
to run AC_CHECK_HEADER with PERL_CFLAGS in effect.
Note that you need Perl's C header(s) only if you want to build a Perl extension or embed a Perl interpreter in your binary. The latter seems more likely to be what you have in mind, but in that case, do consider whether it would work as well or better to simply use an external Perl interpreter, launched programmatically by your application at need. Use of an external Perl interpreter would not involve the C header at all.
However, you seem already committed to binary integration with Perl. In that case, configure is the right place to test for the availability and location of Perl's development headers, and to determine the appropriate compilation and linker flags. Putting it there also gives you the ability to use Automake conditionals to help you configure for and manage both with-Perl and without-Perl builds, if you should want to do that.
To that end, even though Autoconf does not provide built in macros for Perl detection / configuration, the Autoconf Archive has a few of them. In particular, ax_perl_ext_flags self describes its behavior as ...
Fetches the linker flags and C compiler flags for compiling and linking programs that embed a Perl interpreter.
... which I take to be appropriate for your purposes. After adding that macro to your project, you might incorporate it into your configure.ac like so:
PERL_CFLAGS=
PERL_LDFLAGS=
AX_PERL_EXT_FLAGS([PERL_CFLAGS], [PERL_LDFLAGS])
# ...
AC_SUBST([PERL_CFLAGS])
AC_SUBST([PERL_LDFLAGS])
That macro uses a technique similar to what you describe doing in your Makefile.in, but in a rather more robust way.
As for checking on the header, once you have the appropriate C compiler flags for Perl, you put those into effect (just) for the scope of the header check. This is necessary because configure uses the compiler to test for the presence of the header, and if the compiler requires extra options (say an -I option) to find the header at compile time, then it will need the same at configuration time. Something like this, then:
CFLAGS_SAVE=$CFLAGS
# Prepend the Perl CFLAGS to any user-specified CFLAGS
CFLAGS="${PERL_CFLAGS} ${CFLAGS}"
# This will automatically define HAVE_PERL_H if the header is found:
AC_CHECK_HEADERS([perl.h])
# Restore the user-specified CFLAGS
CFLAGS=$CFLAGS_SAVE

how to check if binary is "runnable"

In my CI-setup I'm compiling my C-code to a number of different architectures (x86_64-linux-gnu, i386-linux-gnu, aarch64-linux-gnu, arm-linux-gnueabihf, x86_64-apple-darwin, i386-apple-darwin, i686-w64-mingw32, x86_64-w64-mingw32,...).
I can add new architectures (at least for the *-linux-gnu) simply by "enabling them".
The same CI-configuration is used for a number of projects (with different developers), and strives to be practically "zero config" (as in: "drop this CI-configuration in your project and forget about it, the rest will be taken care of for you").
Some of the targets are being compiled natively, others are cross-compiled. some cross-compiled architectures are runnable on the build machines (e.g. i could run the i386-apple-darwin binaries on the x86_64-apple-darwin), others are incompatible (e.g. i cannot run aarch64-linux-gnu binaries on the x86_64-linux-gnu builder).
Everything works great so far.
However, I would also like to run unit-tests during the CI - but only if the unit-tests can actually be executed on the build machine.
I'm not interested at all in getting a lot of failed tests simply because I'm cross-building binaries.
To complicate things a bit, what I'm building are not self-contained executables, but plugins that are dlopen()ed (or whatever is the equivalent on the target platform) by a host application. The host application is typically slow to startup, so I'd like to avoid running it if it cannot use the plugins anyhow.
Building plugins also means that I cannot just try-run them.
I'm using the GNU toolchain (make, gcc), or at least something compatible (like clang)).
In my first attempt to check whether I am cross-compiling, I compare the target-architecture of the build process (as returned by ${CC} -dumpmachine) with the architecture of GNU make (GNU make will output the architecture triplet used to build make itself when invoked with the -v flag).
Something like the following works surprisingly well, at least for the *-linux-gnu targets:
if make --version | egrep ${TARGETARCH:-$(${CC:-cc} -dumpmachine) >/dev/null; then
echo "native compilation"
else
echo "cross compiling"
fi
However, it doesn't work at all on Windows/MinGW (when doing a native build, gcc targets x86_64-w64-mingw32 but make was built for x86_64-pc-msys; and worse when building 32bit binaries which are of course fully runnable) or macOS (gcc says x86_64-apple-darwin18.0.0, make says i386-apple-darwin11.3.0 (don't ask me why)).
It's becoming even more of an issue, as, while I am writing this and doing some checks I noticed that even on Linux I get differences like x86_64-pc-linux-gnu vs x86_64-linux-gnu; these differences haven't emerged on my CI-builders yet, but I'm sure that's only a matter of time).
So, I'm looking for a more robust solution to detect whether my build-host will be able to run the produced binaries, and skip unit-tests if it does not.
From what I understand of your requirements (I will remove this answer in the case I missed the point), you could proceed in three steps:
Instrument your build procedure so that it will produce the exact list of all (gcc 'dumpmachine', make 'built for') pairs you are using.
Keep in the list only the the pairs that would allow executing the program.
Determine from bash if you can execute the binary or not given the pair reflecting your system, using the information you collected:
#!/bin/bash
# Credits (some borrowed code):
# https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12317483/array-of-arrays-in-bash/35728122
# bash 4 could use associative arrays, but darwin probably only has bash3 (and zsh)
# pairs of gcc -dumpmachine
# ----- collected/formatted/filtered information begins -----
entries=(
'x86_64-w64-mingw32 x86_64-pc-msys'
'x86_64-pc-linux-gnu x86_64-linux-gnu'
'x86_64-apple-darwin18.0.0 i386-apple-darwin11.3.0'
)
# ----- collected/formatted/filtered information ends -----
is_executable()
{
local gcc
local make
local found=0
if [ $# -ne 2 ]
then
echo "is_executable() requires two parameters - terminating."
exit 1
fi
for page in "${entries[#]}"
do
read -r -a arr <<< "${page}"
gcc="${arr[0]}"
make="${arr[1]}"
if [ "$1" == "${gcc}" ] && [ "$2" == "${make}" ]
then
found=1
break;
fi
done
return ${found}
}
# main
MAKE_BUILT_FOR=$( make --version | sed -n 's/Built for //p')
GCC_DUMPMACHINE=$(gcc -dumpmachine)
# pass
is_executable ${MAKE_BUILT_FOR} ${GCC_DUMPMACHINE}
echo $?
# pass
is_executable x86_64-w64-mingw32 x86_64-pc-msys
echo $?
# fail
is_executable arm-linux-gnueabihf x86_64-pc-msys
echo $?
As an extra precautionary measure, you should probably verify that the gcc 'dumpmachine' and the make 'built for' you are using are in the list of gcc, make you are using, and log an error message and/or exit if this is not the case.
Perhaps include an extra unit-test that is directly runnable, just a "hello world" or return EXIT_SUCCESS;, and if it fails, skip all the other plugin tests of that architecture?
Fun fact: on Linux at least, a shared library (ELF shared object) can have an entry point and be executable. (That's how PIE executables are made; what used to be a silly compiler / linker trick is now the default.) IDK if it would be useful to bake a main into one of your existing plugin tests.

Disable optimizations for a specific file with autotools

I'm working on setting up autotools for a large code base that was once just a bash script compile and later just hand written Makefiles.
We have a set of files that require that compiler optimizations be turned off. These files are already in their own subdirectory, so they will have their own Makefile.am.
What's the proper way to drop any existing compiler optimizations and force a -O0 flag on the compiler for these specific files?
I went with Brett Hale's comment to use subpackages. I was able to insert
: ${CFLAGS="-O0"}
before AC_PROG_CC, which sets the appropriate optimization. The other solutions do not work, since the -g -O2 was getting added very last. You can never get another -O variable after it.
You don't have to remove existing optimizations: the last value of -O on the compiler invocation will be used, so it's good enough to just add -O0 at the end.
This is not directly supported by automake, but there's a trick you can use defined in the documentation.
Otherwise if you know you'll only ever invoke your makefile with GNU make you can play other tricks that are GNU make specific; you may have to disable automake warnings about non-portable content.

How to force gcc to link like g++?

In this episode of "let's be stupid", we have the following problem: a C++ library has been wrapped with a layer of code that exports its functionality in a way that allows it to be called from C. This results in a separate library that must be linked (along with the original C++ library and some object files specific to the program) into a C program to produce the desired result.
The tricky part is that this is being done in the context of a rigid build system that was built in-house and consists of literally dozens of include makefiles. This system has a separate step for the linking of libraries and object files into the final executable but it insists on using gcc for this step instead of g++ because the program source files all have a .c extension, so the result is a profusion of undefined symbols. If the command line is manually pasted at a prompt and g++ is substituted for gcc, then everything works fine.
There is a well-known (to this build system) make variable that allows flags to be passed to the linking step, and it would be nice if there were some incantation that could be added to this variable that would force gcc to act like g++ (since both are just driver programs).
I have spent quality time with the gcc documentation searching for something that would do this but haven't found anything that looks right, does anybody have suggestions?
Considering such a terrible build system write a wrapper around gcc that exec's gcc or g++ dependent upon the arguments. Replace /usr/bin/gcc with this script, or modify your PATH to use this script in preference to the real binary.
#!/bin/sh
if [ "$1" == "wibble wobble" ]
then
exec /usr/bin/gcc-4.5 $*
else
exec /usr/bin/g++-4.5 $*
fi
The problem is that C linkage produces object files with C name mangling, and that C++ linkage produces object files with C++ name mangling.
Your best bet is to use
extern "C"
before declarations in your C++ builds, and no prefix on your C builds.
You can detect C++ using
#if __cplusplus
Many thanks to bmargulies for his comment on the original question. By comparing the output of running the link line with both gcc and g++ using the -v option and doing a bit of experimenting, I was able to determine that "-lstdc++" was the magic ingredient to add to my linking flags (in the appropriate order relative to other libraries) in order to avoid the problem of undefined symbols.
For those of you who wish to play "let's be stupid" at home, I should note that I have avoided any use of static initialization in the C++ code (as is generally wise), so I wasn't forced to compile the translation unit containing the main() function with g++ as indicated in item 32.1 of FAQ-Lite (http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/mixing-c-and-cpp.html).

trouble building universal binary with autotools

I have a project that I'm building on OS X using autotools. I'd like to build a universal binary, but putting multiple -arch options in OBJCFLAGS conflicts with gcc's -M (which automake uses for dependency tracking). I can see a couple workarounds, but none seems straightforward.
Is there a way to force preprocessing to be separate from compilation (so -M is given to CPP, while -arch is handed to OBJC)?
I can see that automake supports options for disabling dependency tracking, and enabling it when it can't be done as a side-effect. Is there a way to force the use of the older style of tracking even when the side-effect based tracking is available?
I don't have any experience with lipo. Is there a good way to tie it into the autotools work flow?
This Apple Technical Note looks promising, but it's something I haven't done. I would think you'd only need to do a universal build when preparing a release, so perhaps you can do without dependency tracking?
There's a few solutions here; and likely one that has evaded me.
The easiest and fastest is to add --disable-dependency-tracking to your run of ./configure.
This will tell it not to generate dependencies at all. The dependency phase is what's killing you because the -M dependency options are being used during code generation; which can't be done if there are multiple architectures being targetted.
So this is 'fine' if you are doing a clean build on someone else's package; or you don't mind doing a 'make clean' before each build. If you are hacking at the source, especially header files, this is no good as make probably won't know what to rebuild and will leave you with stale binaries.
Better, but more dangerous is to do something like:
CC=clang CXX=clang++ ./configure
This will make the compiler clang instead of gcc. You have clang if you have a recent Xcode. Configure will realize that clang meets the compilation requirements, but will also decide that it isn't safe for auto-dependency generation. Instead of disabling auto dependency gen, it will do old-style 2 pass generation.
One caveat: This may or may not work as I described depending on how you set your architecture flags. If you have flags you want to pass to all compiler invocations (i.e.: -I for include paths), you should set CPPFLAGS. For code generation, set CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS for C and C++, (and I suppose COBJFLAGS for ObjC). Typically you would add $CPPFLAGS to those. I typically whip up a shell script something like:
#!/bin/bash
export CC=clang
export CXX=clang
export CPPFLAGS="-isysroot /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.5.sdk -mmacosx-version-min=10.5 -fvisibility=hidden"
export CFLAGS="-arch i386 -arch x86_64 -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -momit-leaf-frame-pointer -ffast-math $CPPFLAGS"
export CXXFLAGS=$CFLAGS
./configure
You probably don't want these exact flags, but it should get you the idea.
lipo. You've been down this road it sounds like. I've found the best way is as follows:
a. Make top level directories like .X86_64 and .i386. Note the '.' in front. If you target a build into the source directories it usually needs to start with a dot to avoid screwing up 'make clean' later.
b. Run ./configure with something like: --prefix=`pwd`/.i386` and however you set the architecture (in this case to i386).
c. Do the make, and make install, and assuming it all went well make clean and make sure the stuff is still in .i386 Repeat for each architecture. The make clean at the end of each phase is pretty important as the reconfig may change what gets cleaned and you really want to make sure you don't pollute an architecture with old architecture files.
d. Assuming you have all your builds the way you want, I usually make a shell script that looks and feels something like this to run at the end that will lipo things up for you.
# move the working builds for posterity and debugging
mv .i386 ./Build/i386
mv .x86_64 ./Build/x86_64
for path in ./Build/i386/lib/*
do
file=${path##*/}
# only convert 'real' files
if [ -f "$file" -a ! -L "$file" ]; then
partner="./Build/x86_64/Lib/$file"
if [ -f $partner -a ! -L $partner ]; then
target="./Build/Lib/$file"
lipo -create "$file" "$partner" -output "$target" || { echo "Lipo failed to get phat"; exit 5; }
echo Universal Binary Created: $target
else
echo Skipping: $file, no valid architecture pairing at: $partner
fi
else
# this is a pretty common case, openssl creates symlinks
# echo Skipping: $file, NOT a regular file
true
fi
done
What I have NOT figured out is the magic that would let me use gcc, and old school 2-pass dep gen. Frankly I care less and less each day as I become more and more impressed with clang/llvm.
Good luck!

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