Re: [Quilt-dev] workaround "received broken pipe signal" bash bug (was [patch 2/8])

[Jean Delvare]

Hi Gary,

[Gary V. Vaughan]
> > This seems to work for me:
> > cat /dev/zero | true
>
> I don't see a pipe error when I do this.

Does any of these work better?

cat /dev/zero | sleep 1
cat {very large file of your choice} | true

> However, I think it hurts quilt to see a spurious error message or
> two part way through some of the commands it is running... it's only
> because I recognised the error that I didn't give up on quilt as
> being low quality when it started doing this for me.

I fully agree. The 4 month old post of mine I pointed you to earlier was
one of the first ones I sent to this list, for a reason. I too did
investigate the issue and found that it wasn't exactly quilt's fault,
but this is still a problem. I was kind of disappointed that nobody
answered my post back then, and am glad that we have the opportunity to
discuss this important problem right now.

> I think there are two good approaches to saving face with users
> here:
>
>   1. Workaround the known bash bug in applications built on bash.

I think it was demonstrated that this wasn't easily feasable.

>   2. Have configure choke and give explicit instructions on where
>      to get and how to compile and install a fresh bash that doesn't
>      exhibit the bug.

Yes, I really would like this to be done, but it seems to be difficult to
find an even vaguely reliable test. If we can find one, that's the way
to go.

> Anything else is just passing the buck IMHO.

At the very least (that is, if we can't automate the detection) this
should be documented in big letters.

> And we can help the distributions do that by having the quilt build
> tell them what is wrong with bash and how to fix it.

+1.

> Maybe.  Eventually.  But it will be literally *years* before any
> significant proportion of bash users are running that hypothetical
> build.  We should really try to work around the bug *now*.

Just because it promises to take long is no excuse not to do it :)

Thanks,
--
Jean Delvare