Bug#719806: lintian: Change in binutils produce E: library-not-linked-against-libc for C++ compiled with -Wl, --as-needed

[Maximiliano Curia <maxy@debian.org>]

Package: lintian
Version: 2.5.15
Severity: important

Hi,

After the binutils 2.23.52.20130612-1 entered the archive lots of C++ programs
that don't explicitly use the libc produce:
E: library-not-linked-against-libc
messages. This issue was first reported to binutils in #712081, but the
upstream developers claim its working as intended (when only weak symbols are
used there is no strict dependency).

I'm no expert in this area, but I think that either the lintian error is
wrong or the issue needs a more deep discussion/approach.

It's likely that the lintian test needs to be improved to take into account
weak symbols, but this might be not trivial.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: jessie/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.11.0-rc4-custom (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages lintian depends on:
ii  binutils                       2.23.52.20130727-1
ii  bzip2                          1.0.6-4
ii  diffstat                       1.55-3
ii  file                           1:5.14-2
ii  gettext                        0.18.3-1
ii  hardening-includes             2.3
ii  intltool-debian                0.35.0+20060710.1
ii  libapt-pkg-perl                0.1.29
ii  libarchive-zip-perl            1.30-7
ii  libclass-accessor-perl         0.34-1
ii  libclone-perl                  0.34-1
ii  libdpkg-perl                   1.17.1
ii  libemail-valid-perl            0.190-1
ii  libfile-basedir-perl           0.03-1
ii  libipc-run-perl                0.92-1
ii  liblist-moreutils-perl         0.33-1+b1
ii  libparse-debianchangelog-perl  1.2.0-1
ii  libtext-levenshtein-perl       0.06~01-2
ii  libtimedate-perl               1.2000-1
ii  liburi-perl                    1.60-1
ii  man-db                         2.6.5-2
ii  patchutils                     0.3.2-2
ii  perl [libdigest-sha-perl]      5.14.2-21
ii  t1utils                        1.37-2

Versions of packages lintian recommends:
ii  libautodie-perl                 2.20-1
ii  libperlio-gzip-perl             0.18-1+b2
ii  perl-modules [libautodie-perl]  5.14.2-21

Versions of packages lintian suggests:
pn  binutils-multiarch     <none>
ii  dpkg-dev               1.17.1
ii  libhtml-parser-perl    3.71-1
ii  libtext-template-perl  1.45-2
ii  xz-utils               5.1.1alpha+20120614-2

-- no debconf information