[R-sig-Fedora] -specs=/usr/lib/rpm/redhat/redhat-hardened-ld woes

[Roger Bivand]

In the rgdal package, configure.ac has had : ${LDFLAGS=`"${RBIN}" CMD 
config LDFLAGS`} at least since 2012, so picking up LDFLAGS known to the R 
version installed. Very recently, users installing rgdal from source with 
R installed from RPM are seeing problems, such as those reported in this 
thread: https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-geo/2020-June/028251.html

The diagnosis by Bennet Fauber, that

LDFLAGS='-specs=/usr/lib/rpm/redhat/redhat-hardened-ld'

is the problem, that LDFLAGS='-Wl,-z,relro -Wl,--as-needed -Wl,-z,now' 
works OK, and that the -specs= conflict with autoconf has not been 
resolved seems accurate to me (see also 
https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2018/03/21/compiler-and-linker-flags-gcc/, 
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1343892).

I realise that the R RPM needs to follow RH/F standards, but has something 
happened in the RPM ecosystem recently to poison the -spec/autoconf 
relationship?

Reprex:  install.packages("rgdal", repos="http://R-Forge.R-project.org") 
and  install.packages("rgdal", repos="http://R-Forge.R-project.org", 
configure.args="--disable-loadflags") on a system with R RPM, plus GDAL 
and PROJ (gdal-devel proj-devel proj-epsg proj-nad sqlite-devel I think).

Are there any known work-arounds that might apply to other packages using 
autoconf?

Roger

-- 
Roger Bivand
Department of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics,
Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway.
voice: +47 55 95 93 55; e-mail: Roger.Bivand using nhh.no
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2392-6140
https://scholar.google.no/citations?user=AWeghB0AAAAJ&hl=en