On 12/11/23 07:55, David A. Wheeler wrote:
Will the latest version of autoconf work by default when the compiler has these options enabled?: -Werror=implicit-int -Werror=implicit-function-declaration
Although it'll be helpful for Autoconf to work by default with those two options, it's not essential because it's bad advice for builders to *configure* with all the options suggested in "Compiler Options Hardening Guide for C and C++"[1]. The advice should merely be to *build* with those options.
This is because the recommended options include controversial ones like -Wconversion that can be harmful in C code. The only way to pacify -Wconversion is to complicate the code by inserting casts that can lower code safety and quality. Even Gnulib, which goes far beyond [1] in recommending warning options, disables -Wconversion.
For controversial options like -Wconversion we shouldn't expect 'configure' scripts to pacify compilers in all cases. And since we shouldn't expect that, we shouldn't recommend builders to use all the options in [1] when configuring.
[1]: https://best.openssf.org/Compiler-Hardening-Guides/Compiler-Options-Hardening-Guide-for-C-and-C++
