Fail during configure if unable to find ar

Fail during configure time if the configure script can't locate the
"ar" program, instead of producing a delayed failure during build time
by running the "false" command.  Some Solaris releases have ar in
/usr/ccs/bin, which is not in the default path for some users.

(cherry picked from commit 2c990e6418cd7cee7ca178a3175b07ed6a01ffae)

ticket: 7540 (new)
version_fixed: 1.10.4
status: resolved
Suppress maybe-uninitialized warning in x-deltat.y

Recent versions of gcc can generate a maybe-uninitialized warning from
bison output instead of a regular uninitialized warning.  Suppress
both.  Fix from nalin@redhat.com.

(cherry picked from commit d4f98cdd40559620531622c9c6d988f6aa850bd0)

ticket: 7541 (new)
version_fixed: 1.10.4
status: resolved
Avoid side effects in assert expressions

asserts may be compiled out with -DNDEBUG, so it's wrong to use an
assert expression with an important side effect.

(We also have scores of side-effecting asserts in test programs, but
those are less important and can be dealt with separately.)

(cherry picked from commit 221cd4a23691601a14500bc00146c265b50bdc94)

ticket: 7542 (new)
version_fixed: 1.10.4
status: resolved
Suppress some gcc uninitialized variable warnings

gcc 4.6.2 reportedly finds some spurious maybe-uninitialized warnings.
Suppress them.  Patch from Eray Aslan with some adjustment.

(cherry picked from commit cc2f16af06800bf9882c1589d3d6e9b8f19b6d6f)

ticket: 7543 (new)
version_fixed: 1.10.4
status: resolved