bug#20082: new warning from ar on rawhide systems

[Pavel Raiskup]

[+cc Ralf]

On Friday 27 of March 2015 21:43:14 Pavel Raiskup wrote:
> On Friday 27 of March 2015 10:51:36 Eric Blake wrote:
> > Hmm. How hard is it to change ARFLAGS to 'cr' instead of the default of
> > 'cru', so that projects that want to silence the warning now can do so
> > without waiting on automake to catch up?  (Remember, the warning is live
> > on rawhide systems now, and even if we release a new automake with a
> > patch to change the default, there are TONS of packages built with older
> > automake that will still warn until such time as autoreconf is run on
> > those packages to update them to the newer automake)
> 
> Agreed here, while trying to look at possible patch, I found that libtool
> historically does not respect automake's ARFLAGS, it has its own AR_FLAGS:
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libtool/2008-05/msg00050.html
> So fixing automake does not help for libtool-enabled projects, and, in some
> situations users could need AR_FLAGS=X ARFLAGS=X, but yes - still easy to
> define on per-project basis.
> 
> FTR, Libtool uses AR_FLAGS from ~2000 (commit 8300de4c54e6f04f0d), automake
> ARFLAGS from ~2003 (commit a71b3490639831ca).
> 
> This is probably different issue, but sync is needed..  having two variables
> doing the same is pain.   What about make libtool respect the ARFLAGS also
> even though it is younger variable?  Just because ARFLAGS looks more
> consistently with other *FLAGS.  The proposal would be to make ARFLAGS and
> AR_FLAGS synonyms (possibly marking AR_FLAGS obsoleted).  Could we do the
> same for automake?

Sorry for the delay.  I tried to look at it, but I accidentally found the
old topic: https://www.mail-archive.com/address@hidden/msg01198.html
.. where Ralf describes that we should be careful of merging ARFLAGS and
AR_FLAGS variables - but I don't understand it correctly, tbh:

On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 14:00:21 -0700  Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> Ah, so the chance of reconciliation with Automake's ARFLAGS just got a
> wee bit better.  Except that Automake uses
>   $(AR) $(ARFLAGS) LIBRARY OBJECTS...
> 
> and Libtool would like to not have a space after ${ARFLAGS}, if it wants
> to support the w32 LIB program.

Because within actual Libtool, if there is $AR_FLAGS used there is always
something like  '$AR<space>$AR_FLAGS<space>...'.  It means the space _is_
already there.

Why would user want to use 'make "ARFLAGS=cru "' (I mean calling something
like 'ar "cru " ...'), Ralf?  Or anybody?

I tried to prepare the patch, but thats probably wrong.  It would be nice
if somebody could comment,

Thanks, Pavel

0001-libool.m4-incorporate-ARFLAGS-variable.patch
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