As mentioned in bug 84108 comment 2, GCC warns about variable declarations that specify both attribute aligned and packed, yet it requires both attributes to reduce the alignment of a struct member and doesn't indicate that a sole aligned attribute has no such effect (i.e., doesn't reduce the member's alignment).

The limitation/requirement of the aligned attribute is documented in the manual:

  When used on a struct, or struct member, the aligned attribute can only increase the alignment; in order to decrease it, the packed attribute must be specified as well.

but because it is subtle and inconsistent with how the attribute is treated for non-members, it's easy to miss.  See also bug 82914 for another example of confusion this has lead to.

Assuming it's too risky to make the attribute behave consistently for both members and non-members, GCC could help reduce the confusion (and bugs) by issuing a warning when the attribute is specified alone on a member and known to have no effect.

$ cat t.c && gcc -S -Wall -Wextra t.c
#define ASSERT(e) _Static_assert (e, #e)

struct {
  int a __attribute__ ((aligned (2)));   // attribute ignored, missing warning
} a;

ASSERT (_Alignof (a.a) == 2);            // assertion failure

struct {
  int b __attribute__ ((packed));
} b;

ASSERT (_Alignof (b.b) == 1);            // passes

struct {
  int c __attribute__ ((aligned (2), packed));
} c;

ASSERT (_Alignof (c.c) == 2);            // passes
t.c:1:19: error: static assertion failed: "_Alignof (a.a) == 2"
 #define ASSERT(e) _Static_assert (e, #e)
                   ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~
t.c:7:1: note: in expansion of macro ‘ASSERT’
 ASSERT (_Alignof (a.a) == 2);            // assertion failure
 ^~~~~~