diff --git a/HACKING b/HACKING
index 058aa8fd49..20a910168d 100644
--- a/HACKING
+++ b/HACKING
@@ -158,6 +158,10 @@ painful. These are:
  * you may assume that right shift of a signed integer duplicates
    the sign bit (ie it is an arithmetic shift, not a logical shift)
 
+In addition, QEMU assumes that the compiler does not use the latitude
+given in C99 and C11 to treat aspects of signed '<<' as undefined, as
+documented in the GNU Compiler Collection manual starting at version 4.0.
+
 7. Error handling and reporting
 
 7.1 Reporting errors to the human user
diff --git a/configure b/configure
index f57fcc689d..8d849191db 100755
--- a/configure
+++ b/configure
@@ -1452,7 +1452,7 @@ fi
 gcc_flags="-Wold-style-declaration -Wold-style-definition -Wtype-limits"
 gcc_flags="-Wformat-security -Wformat-y2k -Winit-self -Wignored-qualifiers $gcc_flags"
 gcc_flags="-Wmissing-include-dirs -Wempty-body -Wnested-externs $gcc_flags"
-gcc_flags="-Wendif-labels $gcc_flags"
+gcc_flags="-Wendif-labels -Wno-shift-negative-value $gcc_flags"
 gcc_flags="-Wno-initializer-overrides $gcc_flags"
 gcc_flags="-Wno-string-plus-int $gcc_flags"
 # Note that we do not add -Werror to gcc_flags here, because that would