Re: ld compat linker warnings considered harmful

[David Holland <dholland-tech%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Tue, Aug 18, 2026 at 09:58:58AM +0200, Thomas Klausner wrote:
 > ld: /usr/lib/libm.so.0: warning: warning: reference to compatibility cabs()
 > 
 > The (known) problem is that this linker warning also triggers when it
 > shouldn't, when libraries are pulled in indirectly and the functions
 > not even used by the program that (indirectly) links against them.

Is there a description of the problem somewhere? Every one of these I
remember seeing in pkgsrc and getting around to actually investigating
(all years ago now, admittedly) turned out to be real.

 > The latest meson now defaults to fatal linker warnings, which causes
 > programs fail to build because of this.

In regard to Mouse's point, there's a reasonable argument that
unsuppressed warnings should be fatal, because otherwise they won't be
noticed and/or hide important warnings in a flood of drivel.

So I'm not convinced meson is doing the wrong thing. But having things
break obviously won't do.

-- 
David A. Holland
dholland%netbsd.org@localhost