Building with gcc8 fails

[eli-schwartz]

Scanning dependencies of target forensic1394
[ 16%] Building C object CMakeFiles/forensic1394.dir/src/common.c.o
[ 33%] Building C object CMakeFiles/forensic1394.dir/src/linux/juju.c.o
In function ‘alloc_dev.isra.1’,
    inlined from ‘platform_update_device_list’ at /build/libforensic1394/src/libforensic1394-0.2/src/linux/juju.c:275:41:
/build/libforensic1394/src/libforensic1394-0.2/src/linux/juju.c:367:5: error: ‘strncpy’ specified bound 64 equals destination size [-Werror=stringop-truncation]
     strncpy(dev->pdev->path, devpath, sizeof(dev->pdev->path));
     ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
cc1: all warnings being treated as errors
make[2]: *** [CMakeFiles/forensic1394.dir/build.make:76: CMakeFiles/forensic1394.dir/src/linux/juju.c.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/Makefile2:68: CMakeFiles/forensic1394.dir/all] Error 2
make: *** [Makefile:152: all] Error 2

This happens for two reasons:

• The code has not been touched in 8 years, and since then gcc 8 added new compiler warnings.
• The CMakeLists.txt enables -Werror, with the comment "The more warnings the better" (which is incorrect, -Werror does not add new warnings. It just prevents people from compiling stable releases anyway).

-Werror should not be used in release tarballs. Accepted practice is to enable -Werror via environment CFLAGS, for people who develop software to add those environment CFLAGS, and to enable those environment CFLAGS in e.g. Travis CI configurations.

Using -Werror in the release code is especially bad for codebases which are not actively maintained since they eventually become impossible to build, not because the code itself is fundamentally flawed, but because compilers have added "best practices" warnings years later.

Also, this warning should probably be fixed. :)

[FreddieWitherden]

Both of these issues should now be fixed in the current master branch.

Note that compared with 0.2 the master branch has a custom CSR ROM parser. Although I believe it to be relatively bug-free, and tested it extensively back in 2011, it nevertheless could do with more testing.

[fabaff]

Can you release create a new release with the changes?

The package for Fedora doesn0t build anymore.

Thanks

[FreddieWitherden]

Would you be in a position to provide a second confirmation that the current git head builds and works as expected?