[GNU Autoconf 2.71] testsuite: 254 255 ... catastrophic failure

[Dennis Clarke]

Not sure where to begin here. I have never, not ever, in many years seen
this level of failure from a trivial configure and then make. When I say
"trivial" here I really mean dirt trivial :

e# envv
CFLAGS=-g -O0 -m64
COLUMNS=120
CPPFLAGS=-D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE
CXXFLAGS=-g -O0 -m64
EDITOR=/usr/bin/vi
HISTORY=128
HISTSIZE=128
HOME=/root
HUSHLOGIN=FALSE
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8
LC_TIME=C
LINES=43
LOGNAME=root
MAIL=/var/mail/root
MANPATH=/usr/share/man
MOTD_SHOWN=pam
OLDPWD=/opt/bw/build
PAGER=/bin/more
PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin
PERL=/usr/bin/perl
PWD=/opt/bw/build/autoconf-2.71_linux_pentium_G4500.003
SHELL=/bin/bash
SHLVL=1
SRC=/mnt/pluto/dclarke/src
TERM=vt100
TMPDIR=/var/tmp/root
TZ=GMT0
USER=root
_=/usr/bin/env
VISUAL=/usr/bin/vi
XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/0
XDG_SESSION_CLASS=user
XDG_SESSION_ID=22
XDG_SESSION_TYPE=tty
XTERM_LOCALE=en_US.UTF-8
XTERM_SHELL=/usr/bin/bash
e#
e# hash -r
e#
e# pwd
/opt/bw/build/autoconf-2.71_linux_pentium_G4500.003
e# unalias -a
e#

e# ./configure --prefix=/opt/bw
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for a race-free mkdir -p... /bin/mkdir -p
checking for gawk... no
checking for mawk... mawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking whether make supports nested variables... yes
checking build system type... x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
checking host system type... x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
configure: autobuild project... GNU Autoconf
configure: autobuild revision... 2.71
configure: autobuild hostname... esther
configure: autobuild timestamp... 20231129T132956Z
checking for a shell whose -n mode is known to work... /bin/bash
checking for characters that cannot appear in file names... none
checking whether directories can have trailing spaces... yes
checking for expr... /usr/bin/expr
checking for GNU M4 that supports accurate traces... /usr/bin/m4
checking whether /usr/bin/m4 accepts --gnu... yes
checking how m4 supports trace files... --debugfile
checking for perl... /usr/bin/perl
checking whether /usr/bin/perl Fcntl::flock is implemented... yes
checking for emacs... no
checking for xemacs... no
checking for emacs... no
checking where .elc files should go... ${datadir}/emacs/site-lisp
checking for grep that handles long lines and -e... /bin/grep
checking for egrep... /bin/grep -E
checking for a sed that does not truncate output... /bin/sed
checking whether make is case sensitive... yes
checking that generated files are newer than configure... done
configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: creating tests/atlocal
config.status: creating Makefile
config.status: executing tests/atconfig commands
e#

Is that trivial enough? I should think so.

However there are piles and piles of testsuite failures.


## ------------- ##
## Test results. ##
## ------------- ##

ERROR: 555 tests were run,
129 failed (4 expected failures).
44 tests were skipped.

Every single failure is at some line number inside some file that ends
with the chars ".at" and that is just weird. Those are all M4 macro type
files right ?

At this time I have checked with two other people who have Debian sid as
well as Devuan Linux stable and they both see well over 120 failures
also. Using off the shelf tools from the usual repo places. Nothing
special here.

This is a small Devuan Linux x86_64 machine :

e# cat /etc/devuan_version
daedalus
e#

e# cat  /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Devuan GNU/Linux 5 (daedalus)"
NAME="Devuan GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="5"
VERSION="5 (daedalus)"
VERSION_CODENAME="daedalus"
ID=devuan
ID_LIKE=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.devuan.org/";
SUPPORT_URL="https://devuan.org/os/community";
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.devuan.org/";
e#

e# uname -a
Linux esther 6.1.63-genunix #1 SMP Sun Nov 26 00:43:35 GMT 2023 x86_64 
GNU/Linux
e#

So I am baffled where all these failures are coming from. I may see one
test fail or perhaps two. Not over a hundred. There is something really
horrific here but I do not know what. Any thoughts or input would be
great. My hope is that the machine is severely borked in some strange
way but all the tools here are from right out of the Debian/Devuan repo
and nothing strange there at all.  I can reboot and use the kernel from
the Devuan/Debian folks but I do not think the kernel has anything to
do with this mess.

Various other ( seriously smart ) people are seeing strange results :

root@devuan:~/autoconf-2.71/tests/testsuite.dir/254# diff -u 
./at_config_vars-state-env-expected ./at_config_vars-state-env.after
--- ./at_config_vars-state-env-expected 2023-11-29 09:14:04.189405540 -0500
+++ ./at_config_vars-state-env.after    2023-11-29 09:14:04.189405540 -0500
@@ -47,7 +47,7 @@
 PWD=/root/autoconf-2.71/tests/testsuite.dir/254
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 SHELLOPTS=braceexpand:hashall:interactive-comments:posix
-SHLVL=2
+SHLVL=3
 TAR_OPTIONS='--owner=0 --group=0 --numeric-owner'
 TERM=xterm-256color
 UID=0


I will attach a testsuite.log but I suspect there is something terribly
 wrong here ...


Dennis Clarke
RISC-V/SPARC/PPC/ARM/CISC
UNIX and Linux spoken

autoconf-2.71_testsuite.log.gz
Description: application/gzip