What is the harm in ignoring warning in make?

Question

I want to ask if there is any harm in ignoring this kind of warning by using

make -i

instead of

make

after recieving this warning:

    utils.o: In function `ast_gethostbyname':
/home/mohessaid/asterisk-1.4.44/main/utils.c:224: warning: gethostbyname_r is obsolescent, use getnameinfo() instead.

Answer 1

Generally it's a good idea to run compilation with all warnings on, to easier be able to track down errors either in the build process or at runtime. This is extremely useful for developers, but it can also be useful for end users.

As an example, I had to compile a major piece of software, and only when I tried to use it it complained that SSL was not enabled. Looking back at the compilation output it printed a big warning saying that several optional dependencies were not configured, so their related functionality would not be enabled. After installing the necessary SSL development package make no longer printed the warning for that specific dependency and I could be sure that the functionality would work.

As for -i specifically, it says in the man page that is to "Ignore all errors in commands executed to remake files" (my emphasis). That does not sound like a good idea, and since make quits when it encounters an error it doesn't seem likely that you'll get a useful result out of the process, -i or no -i.