autoheader exit 1 after only warnings

Karl Berry <[email protected]> Mon, 21 Jul 2025 10:07:38 -0600
Newsgroups gmane.comp.sysutils.autoconf.bugs
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Running autoreconf -Wnone on the attached (quite old) configure.ac
gets this output, and nothing else:

autoreconf: error: /usr/local/gnu/bin/autoheader failed with exit status: 1

That is, there are no diagnostics. Such a silent failure seems like a
bug to me.

Looking at the code, it is apparently because of the 
  exit 1
    if keys %symbol;
at the end of the script (and the -Wnone). If I comment those lines out
(as below), autoheader succeeds, with no apparent ill effects.

As running without -Wnone shows, this configure script certainly has
many "missing template"s, starting with:
autoheader: warning: missing template: FREE_CAST_IS_CHAR_STAR

That's fine, the warnings are correct. But I suggest that either these
should be errors for autoheader to exit 1, or that autoheader should
exit 0 if you want them to stay warnings (to my mind, preferable). Isn't
the difference between warnings and errors precisely whether the program
still exits successfully or not? --thanks, karl.

--- ORIG/autoheader	2023-12-25 17:40:24.000000000 -0800
+++ autoheader	2025-07-20 15:11:32.278250459 -0700
@@ -313,4 +313,4 @@
     }
-  exit 1
-    if keys %symbol;
+#  exit 1
+#    if keys %symbol;
 }
configure.ac (application/octet-stream, 3.9 KB) - not displayed