[Buildd-tools-devel] Re: Bug#398517: latex-cjk-chinese-arphic: build times out

[Danai SAE-HAN ( 韓達耐 )]

Hi Lucas, Frank and Co.!

From: Frank Küster <frank at kuesterei.ch>

> Lucas Nussbaum <lucas at lucas-nussbaum.net> wrote:
> 
> > sbuild checks for output to stdout. It means that during 90min, there
> > was no output to stdout.

Pretty normal: just like Frank said, it takes an *awful* lot of time
to compile these Type1 fonts from TTF with Fontforge (check a CPU
monitor or "top").
When you run debian/rules, it states clearly that you have to be very
patient to build the four packages.
I don't think an ncurses progress bar would make much sense, albeit
quite funky and cool. ;)


> >> 	# Create Unicode encoded subfonts `$(uninamestem)00' .. `$(uninamestem)ff'.
> >> 	# This will take more than an hour.  Make yourself a cup of tea.
> >> 	@echo fontforge -script subfonts.pe $(typeface).ttf $(uninamestem) $(sfddir)/Unicode.sfd
> >> 	@( cd $(builddir) && fontforge -script subfonts.pe $(typeface).ttf $(uninamestem) $(sfddir)/Unicode.sfd > log 2>&1 || ($(ERR)) )
> >> 	@echo
> >> 
> >> and similar, all write their stdout to log.  And I'd say there's one
> >> message every couple of minutes usually.  So if this didn't happen,
> >> maybe this is more than a normal or wishlist bug...
> >
> > Maybe, then, they shouldn't output to the logfile. This would allow to
> > see progress and please sbuild, too.
> 
> It would give very long boring logfiles.  Well, around 100 lines and 100
> blank lines for every "make yourself a cup of tea, and I don't know how
> many for the following calls.  Anyway, maybe that's the way to go.
> 
> Personally, I was never sure that we should discard this.  Danai, what
> do you think?  

Well, without the redirection it takes *even more* time to compile it:
at some stages it produces so much output that, on graphical systems
at least, it would ask too much of the X terminal you're using and
slow things down even more.  And one more thing to note: your complete
scrollback history in your terminal or console will have completely
disappeared, unless your cache is incredibly high.

I also thought of just providing the fonts without compiling, but this
goes against the Debian spirit of providing as much upstream material
as possible.  Besides, ad hoc compilation has the advantage of
absolute transparency: you know where the files came from.

Perhaps as a compromise, I could add some more lines to debian/rules
that output an extra warning to stdout?  Or, if you deem that it
should output everything to stdout as well, then I will add another
redirection.

What do you all think?


> I wouldn't make an upload just for this, but once we make a new upload,
> anyway, we can just drop the redirections and the $ERR handling.

I agree that it's an issue that doesn't require an immediate update.


> >> >> touch build-stamp.gkai
> >> >> dh_testdir
> >> >> touch build-stamp
> >> >> Build killed with signal TERM after 90 minutes of inactivity
> >> >> Build killed with signal KILL after 5 minutes of inactivity
> >> >> Build killed with signal KILL after 5 minutes of inactivity
> >> >> Build killed with signal KILL after 5 minutes of inactivity
> >> 
> >> This looks as if a couple of processes timed out, where killed but the
> >> build proceeded?  Can you provide a full log?
> >
> > Yes, see
> > http://http://ox.blop.info/bazaar/buildlogs/20061114/latex-cjk-chinese-arphic_1.15_etch32.buildlog
> 
> I'm still unsure whether this means that means the process was killed
> right after touching build-stamp, which would indicate a bug - or
> whether it just means that it was killed four times, much before it
> failed? 

Strange indeed.  bkai needs a lot more time to compile than gkai
because there are many more Traditional Chinese characters to compile.
But it fails after gkai instead.  Hmmm.  And it doesn't exit after
compilation but after creating the font definition .fd files and
touching build-stamp, which happen in a blink of an eye.

So there must be something wrong with the timing mechanism of sbuild.
Perhaps the fault lies in Sbuild/Log.pm, which has a "time entry"?

IMHO, I think this last part is rather an sbuild bug.


Best regards



Danai SAE-HAN
韓達耐

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