http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=51806
Bug #: 51806 Summary: -flto ignores -Werror Classification: Unclassified Product: gcc Version: 4.6.2 Status: UNCONFIRMED Severity: minor Priority: P3 Component: lto AssignedTo: unassig...@gcc.gnu.org ReportedBy: deusexsophism...@gmail.com If a program triggers a warning that is only discovered during link time optimization (such as a potential use of an uninitialized variable that crosses compilation unit boundaries), the flag -Werror is ignored. [david@david-desktop gcc error]$ gcc -v Using built-in specs. COLLECT_GCC=gcc COLLECT_LTO_WRAPPER=/usr/libexec/gcc/x86_64-redhat-linux/4.6.2/lto-wrapper Target: x86_64-redhat-linux Configured with: ../configure --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man --infodir=/usr/share/info --with-bugurl=http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla --enable-bootstrap --enable-shared --enable-threads=posix --enable-checking=release --with-system-zlib --enable-__cxa_atexit --disable-libunwind-exceptions --enable-gnu-unique-object --enable-linker-build-id --enable-languages=c,c++,objc,obj-c++,java,fortran,ada,go,lto --enable-plugin --enable-java-awt=gtk --disable-dssi --with-java-home=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-gcj-1.5.0.0/jre --enable-libgcj-multifile --enable-java-maintainer-mode --with-ecj-jar=/usr/share/java/eclipse-ecj.jar --disable-libjava-multilib --with-ppl --with-cloog --with-tune=generic --with-arch_32=i686 --build=x86_64-redhat-linux Thread model: posix gcc version 4.6.2 20111027 (Red Hat 4.6.2-1) (GCC) ============================================== main.cpp ============================================== void f1 (int & x); int main () { int x; f1 (x); return 0; } ============================================== werror.cpp ============================================== void f1 (int & x) { volatile int y = x; } ============================================== [david@david-desktop gcc error]$ g++ main.cpp werror.cpp -Wuninitialized -Werror -O1 -flto In file included from :0:0: main.cpp: In function ‘main’: werror.cpp:2:19: warning: ‘x’ is used uninitialized in this function [-Wuninitialized] main.cpp:4:6: note: ‘x’ was declared here Compilation is seen as successful and a.out exists. The expected behavior is that the warning would be converted to an error by -Werror and stop the linking / compiling final stage. The effect of this is that automated build tools believe that the compiling was a success (and the warning may be buried deep in the middle of the output when compiling multiple programs), so the user may not know that there was a problem found despite having -Werror selected.