Bug#1077815: form: ftbfs with GCC-14 on armhf

[Miriam España Acebal]

Source: form
Version: 4.3.0+git20230104+ds-1build2
Severity: serious
Tags: ftbfs patch upstream
Justification: fails to build from source (but built successfully in the past)
X-Debbugs-Cc: miriam.espana at canonical.com

Dear Maintainer,


   While building form with the new gcc-14 with the form package synced
   from Debian, we noticed it was failing: you can find the buildlog
   here [1]. Relevant part of the log is:

   [3~gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I..   -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -D_TIME_BITS=64 -Wdate-time -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=3 -Wall -Wextra -Wno-misleading-indentation -Wno-stringop-overflow -O3 -fomit-frame-pointer -g -O2 -Werror=implicit-function-declaration -ffile-prefix-map=/<<PKGBUILDDIR>>=. -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -fno-stack-clash-protection -fdebug-prefix-map=/<<PKGBUILDDIR>>=/usr/src/form-4.3.1+git20240409+ds-2build1 -c -o form-compcomm.o `test -f 'compcomm.c' || echo './'`compcomm.c
compcomm.c:125:33: error: initialization of ‘int *’ from incompatible pointer type ‘WORD *’ {aka ‘short int *’} [-Wincompatible-pointer-types]
  125 |         ,{"fewerstats",         &(AC.ShortStatsMax),    10,             0}
      |                                 ^
compcomm.c:125:33: note: (near initialization for ‘onoffoptions[24].var’)
compcomm.c:126:29: error: initialization of ‘int *’ from incompatible pointer type ‘WORD *’ {aka ‘short int *’} [-Wincompatible-pointer-types]
  126 |         ,{"fewerstatistics",&(AC.ShortStatsMax),        10,             0}
      |                             ^
compcomm.c:126:29: note: (near initialization for ‘onoffoptions[25].var’)
compcomm.c:131:29: error: initialization of ‘int *’ from incompatible pointer type ‘WORD *’ {aka ‘short int *’} [-Wincompatible-pointer-types]
  131 |         ,{"indentspace",    &(AO.IndentSpace),INDENTSPACE,0}
      |                             ^
compcomm.c:131:29: note: (near initialization for ‘onoffoptions[30].var’)
compcomm.c:137:29: error: initialization of ‘int *’ from incompatible pointer type ‘WORD *’ {aka ‘short int *’} [-Wincompatible-pointer-types]
  137 |         ,{"innertest",      &(AC.InnerTest),  1,  0}
      |                             ^
compcomm.c:137:29: note: (near initialization for ‘onoffoptions[36].var’)

We fixed it in Ubuntu following the recommendations in [2], 
I'm attaching here the patch (also forwarded to Upstream) for your consideration hoping it helps.

Thanks,

Miriam

[1] https://launchpadlibrarian.net/741624061/buildlog_ubuntu-oracular-armhf.form_4.3.1+git20240409+ds-2build1_BUILDING.txt.gz   
[2] https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-14/porting_to.html#warnings-as-errors