Re: groff 1.24.1 neqn test failure on nixpkgs Darwin

"G. Branden Robinson" <[email protected]> Sun, 15 Mar 2026 05:21:56 -0500

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.printing.groff.general
Message-ID	<20260315102156.xsmz66x7njshxzep@illithid>

Hi Alexis,

Thank you for evaluating 1.24.1 so quickly!

At 2026-03-15T10:59:28+0100, Alexis (surryhill) wrote:
> happy to see the follow-up release 1.24.1 having been published.

I'm going grayer by the day... 😅

> Unfortunately the neqn-smoke-tests fails on nixpkgs Darwin due:
> src/preproc/eqn/tests/neqn-smoke-test.sh: /nix/var/nix/b/2v6bz5wkgf7i19n19xp9pz51aj/groff-1.24.1/neqn: line 59: exec: eqn: not found
> 
> I think this is due the isolated test environment in which the
> tests run where groff isn't fully installed yet and eqn
> not being in $PATH.
> Adding the following to src/preproc/eqn/neqn.sh addresses the issue,
> but might not be suitable as a proper fix:
> 
> export PATH=$PATH:$(dirname $0)
> 
> Possibly this can be solved in the package.nix for groff; I'm looking
> it.
> 
> I'd appreciate if folks more familiar with the testing on groff's side
> could evaluate whether this could also be an issue for other build or
> test environment and propose a solution from the groff side of things.

It sounds like a similar issue as that which bedevils running groff
itself from the build tree, and is why we have a "test-groff" script.

However I'm not keen on adding a "test-eqn" script.

eqn(1), fortunately, doesn't need as much environmental configuration as
groff(1) does.

You might try this:

cd /wherever/your/groff/build/dir/is
env GROFF_BIN_PATH=. /wherever/your/groff/source/dir/is/src/preproc/eqn/tests/neqn-smoke-test.sh

When I do that, I get a complaint about "eqnrc" not being found, but eqn
runs satisfactorily and the test passes.  Does that work for you?

If so, that in turn implies that we can solve this problem by enhancing
"neqn-smoke-test.sh" similarly.

When Ingo complains about wrappers upon wrappers introducing additional
points of failure, he's not wrong.

Regards,
Branden

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