[openssl-dev] [openssl.org #4664] Enhancement: better handling of CFLAGS and LDFLAGS

[Richard Levitte via RT]

On Mon Aug 29 12:27:59 2016, appro wrote:
> > With the current build system, user-defined CFLAGS are accepted as
> > any
> > unrecognized command line argument passed to Configure. This seems a
> > little dangerous to me since it means a simple typo could end up
> > getting passed to the C compiler.
>
> Is it more dangerous than interactive access? But on serious note I
> don't quite grasp the problem. How do you pass CFLAGS? Or rather how
> is
> it specific to OpenSSL? I mean you either set CFLAGS environment
> variable and call 'make -e' or call 'make CFLAGS=something', right?
> But
> this is the way *make* is. Or is suggestion that we should implement
> own
> internal .ext1.ext2 rules independent on CFLAGS?
>
> > As well, the current build system forcibly enables optimization (-O3)
> > or debug symbols (-g) depending on the build type (--release or
> > --debug).
>
> Could you elaborate on the problem? If you need release build with
> debug
> symbols you can simply add -g when configuring...
>
> > There does not appear to be any method for the user to pass
> > additional
> > LDFLAGS to the build system.
>
> You can pass them as arguments to ./Configure script. It recognizes
> -L,
> -l and -Wl,.
>
> > I would like to propose the following changes:
> >
> > 1. Read CFLAGS and LDFLAGS from the environment within the Configure
> > script.
> > 2. Allow the user to opt-out of the default release or debug cflags,
> > perhaps by adding a third build type (neither release nor debug).
> >
> > These changes would my job as a distro maintainer on Gentoo Linux
> > just
> > a little bit easier.
>
> Or maybe ("maybe" is reference to "I don't quite grasp" above) what we
> are talking about is Configure reading CFLAGS and LDFLAGS and *adding*
> them to generated Makefile. I mean we are not talking about passing
> them
> to 'make', but "freezing" them to their values at configure time.
> Could
> you clarify?

I assume, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that the request is to treat the
environment variables CFLAGS and LDFLAGS the same way we treat CC, i.e. as an
initial value to be used instead of what we get from the configuration target
information.

This should be quite easy to implement, and we can also continue to use
whatever additional Configure arguments as compiler or linker flags to be used
*in addition* to the initial value (that comes from the config target
information, or if we decide to implement it, CFLAGS)

Cheers,
Richard

--
Richard Levitte
levitte at openssl.org

-- 
Ticket here: http://rt.openssl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=4664
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