Last time I overhauled the autoconf stuff, I assumed that removing AC_PROG_CC_C89 would raise our minimum required version to 2.70: f2d9aea

I think we would need to have a closer look and check if 2.70 only deprecated AC_PROG_CC_C89, or if it changed AC_PROG_CC to check for versions and therefore deprecated AC_PROG_CC_C89. I think the latter was my understanding back then. If that's true, we could also do a version check if we want to get rid of the warning.

edit: Or is the only thing AC_PROG_CC_C89 does is exclude pre-ANSI compilers? Then we may as well just drop it...

Hm so this is from the commit that made removed the macro: autotools-mirror/autoconf@27eb3ae#diff-0c067bec9d061f1ebfce4c4d145fece50221a1d23e9adb62a4b6b2b11c8de1fcL7340-L7342

This macro is rarely needed.  It should be used only if your application
requires C89 and will not work in later C versions.  Typical applications
should use @code{AC_PROG_CC} instead.

(The commit is from 2012 but AFAIU still this was only included in 2.70 as there was no release for a few years. (The tag listing on the commit weird there. "v2.69e v2.69d v2.69c v2.69b" are beta versions and I think "v2.62a" is just a mistake...)

So now I understand: We currently call this to force C89 mode. It will add -ansi. I think one reason why we do this is to make sure our code is pure C89. But we would of course consider it a bug if we need C89 in the sense that C99 or C11 would break our code. But it may still be conservative to always add -ansi to make sure what we're testing is closer to what users will run. Unfortunately, autoconf does not seem to support this use case (or made it obsolete at least)

Having said this, I'm not entirely sure what we should do:

• comply with autoconf's thinking and drop AC_PROG_CC89 and thereby -ansi (and add separate -ansi compilation test to CI)
• drop AC_PROG_CC89 and add -ansi manually
• leave it as it is and accept the warning (until autoconf decides the remove the macro in another 20 years)

think we would need to have a closer look and check if 2.70 only deprecated AC_PROG_CC_C89, or if it changed AC_PROG_CC to check for versions and therefore deprecated AC_PROG_CC_C89.

To be clear, I checked the 2.60 (!) documentation and the behavior of AC_PROG_CC automatically calling AC_PROG_CC_C89 was already there. I don't know about adding -ansi, but version compatibility is no reason to not do this.

https://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/autoconf-2.60/html_node/C-Compiler.html#AC_005fPROG_005fCC

— Macro: AC_PROG_CC_C89
…
This macro is called automatically by AC_PROG_CC.

I checked the make V=1 output with and without this change. At least with autoconf 2.70 (I did not check with any other version), it's exactly the same.

There's no -ansi in either case but -std=c89 is passed, which should be sufficient.

libtool: compile:  gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I./src -I./include -I./src -O2 -std=c89 -pedantic -Wno-long-long -Wnested-externs -Wshadow -Wstrict-prototypes -Wundef -Wno-overlength-strings -Wall -Wno-unused-function -Wextra -Wcast-align -Wcast-align=strict -fvisibility=hidden -g -O2 -MT src/libsecp256k1_la-secp256k1.lo -MD -MP -MF src/.deps/libsecp256k1_la-secp256k1.Tpo -c src/secp256k1.c  -fPIC -DPIC -o src/.libs/libsecp256k1_la-secp256k1.o

It's already being added manually:

SECP_TRY_APPEND_CFLAGS([-std=c89 -pedantic -Wno-long-long -Wnested-externs -Wshadow -Wstrict-prototypes -Wundef], $1)

To be clear, I checked the 2.60 (!) documentation and the behavior of AC_PROG_CC automatically calling AC_PROG_CC_C89 was already there. I don't know about adding -ansi, but version compatibility is no reason to not do this.

Indeed, you're right. The commit I mentioned was just making it obsolete...

It's already being added manually:

You're right again.

Ok, I'm convinced.

utACK e0db3f8