23870 - inconsistent uses of CFLAGS / CXXFLAGS / LDFLAGS

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: Build Config, defect, P3)

Description

[OOO until Apr 20; Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

The fix to 20254 has exposed some odd inconsistencies and breakage in the build
system. This is actually a general UNIX/autoconf issue, not just Sun/Solaris.

The symptoms: using Sun Workshop 5, running configure with CXX="CC"
CFLAGS="-compat=4" generates Makefiles that won't build.  What's happening is
that "-compat=4" causes binaries with a different vtable layout to be generated,
so "-compat=4" needs to known to the linker as well.

There is a workaround: use CXX="CC -compat=4".

The problem is that the top-level configure.in stuffs $(CFLAGS) into $(LDFLAGS),
which is I think incorrect behavior.  Sometimes LDFLAGS is used on C link lines,
and sometimes on CXX link lines.  To see the more standard way to deal with
this, see the LINK.c and LINK.cc definitions in the output of "gmake -p".  They
explicitly include CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS in the respective link lines, rather than
assuming that LDFLAGS will have appropriate flags set already.

As such, I would propose

a) removing the $CFLAGS from the LDFLAGS definition at around line 3014 in the
top-level configure.in

b) causing the definitions to set MKSHLIB and MKCSHLIB to explicitly include
CXXFLAGS and CFLAGS respectively (and presumably change

c) deprecate using LINK, and move towards using LINK.cc and LINK.c

Additionally, some lower-level Makefile.in's are depending on the existing
behavior.  One example is webshell/tests/viewer/Makefile.in: the definitions for
$(PROGRAM)_gtk and friends are an example.  Though in that particular case, it's
unclear to me why the link lines are explicitly specified there at all: the
auxiliary libraries could presumably be stuffed into $(EXTRA_LIBS) and the rules
inherited.

Comment 1

[cls]

Attachment: Add CFLAGS & CXXFLAGS to certain MKSHLIB & MKCSHLIB defines

Comment 2

[cls]

The patch has been checked in.

Comment 3

[cls]

I do not believe there's any way to generalize the targets for the toolkit
specific viewers in webshell/tests/viewer short of using automake.  CXXFLAGS
were added to each of those targets.  Marking fix.