[bug #68336] concurrent "make install" suffers from race involving tmac/tty-char.tmac

"G. Branden Robinson" <[email protected]> Mon, 11 May 2026 01:41:19 -0400 (EDT)
Newsgroups	gmane.comp.printing.groff.bugs
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
URL:
  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?68336>

                 Summary: concurrent "make install" suffers from race
involving tmac/tty-char.tmac
                   Group: GNU roff
               Submitter: gbranden
               Submitted: Mon 11 May 2026 05:41:09 AM UTC
                Category: General
                Severity: 3 - Normal
              Item Group: Build/Installation
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: gbranden
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Unlocked
         Planned Release: None


    _______________________________________________________

Follow-up Comments:


-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon 11 May 2026 05:41:09 AM UTC By: G. Branden Robinson <gbranden>
[https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-groff/2026-05/msg00099.html Santiago
Vila of the Debian Project reported an installation failure with _groff_
1.24.1].

> While building (the Debian package of) groff 1.24.1 in a Debian unstable
> chroot,
> I got this error:

> /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 ../../tmac/tty.tmac ../../tmac/tty-char.tmac 
> '/<<PKGBUILDDIR>>/debian/tmp/usr/share/groff/1.24.1/tmac'
> /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 ../../tmac/tty.tmac ../../tmac/tty-char.tmac 
> '/<<PKGBUILDDIR>>/debian/tmp/usr/share/groff/1.24.1/tmac'
> install: cannot create regular file 
> '/<<PKGBUILDDIR>>/debian/tmp/usr/share/groff/1.24.1/tmac/tty.tmac': File
> exists

> Seems like a race condition to me, where one "install -c" tries to
> work at the same time the other is *still* writing to the same file.

> I believe this is the origin of those two threads:

> - Target dist_grottytmac_DATA in src/devices/grotty/grotty.am lines 26-30 
> (unconditional)
> - Target dist_gxditviewtmac_DATA in src/devices/xditview/xditview.am lines 
> 63-67 (conditional)

> So I guess one of the two should be dropped.

He [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2026-05/msg00019.html followed
up].

> I was using a VM with 2 CPUs.

> If you are curious, I've now tried to build the package 50 times (on
> several machines with 2 CPUs) and it failed just once, so this failure
> is indeed a rare event.

> [ My aim is to ensure that the end user will be able to rebuild any
> package no matter what, as far as the machine has enough memory and
> disk space, so I use machines with 1 and 2 CPUs for my unofficial
> archive rebuilds. Too many people already test the build with more
> than that ].

[https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2026-05/msg00018.html I observed]:

> I'll look into this, but yes, if that's right then it's the latter that
> should go.  "tty-char.tmac" is not (g)xditview's business.  It's
> grotty(1)'s.

See if there's junk that we can strip from "src/devices/xditview/xditview.am".







    _______________________________________________________

Reply to this item at:

  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?68336>

_______________________________________________
Message sent via Savannah
https://savannah.gnu.org/
signature.asc (application/pgp-signature, 228 B)