[Buildroot] [PATCH] toolchain: generate check-headers program under $(BUILD_DIR)

yann.morin at orange.com yann.morin at orange.com
Mon Sep 23 12:04:48 UTC 2019


Carlos, All,

On 2019-09-23 08:17 -0300, Carlos Santos spake thusly:
> On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 5:39 AM <yann.morin at orange.com> wrote:
> > On 2019-09-22 22:05 -0300, unixmania at gmail.com spake thusly:
> > > From: Carlos Santos <unixmania at gmail.com>
> > >
> > > Some installations mount /tmp with the 'noexec' option, which prevents
> > > running the program generated there to check the kernel headers.
> >
> > I'm rather surprised that check-headers is the nly thing broken in that
> > case... :-/
> >
> > Alternatively, we should probably use our own TMPDIR instead, which
> > would fix all such problems:
> >
> >     diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
> >     index 82c844620a..a006149898 100644
> >     --- a/Makefile
> >     +++ b/Makefile
> >     @@ -209,6 +209,11 @@ BASE_TARGET_DIR := $(BASE_DIR)/target
> >      HOST_DIR := $(BASE_DIR)/host
> >      GRAPHS_DIR := $(BASE_DIR)/graphs
> >
> >     +export TMPDIR = $(BUILD_DIR)/.br-temp-or-whatever
> >     +export TMP_DIR = $(TMPDIR)
> >     +export TEMP_DIR = $(TMPDIR)
> >     +# And so on...
> 
> That would create all temporary files under
> $(BUILD_DIR)/.br-temp-or-whatever, ruining the advantage of using a
> tmpfs mounted at /tmp, which is much faster because it's in RAM.

I don't know what distro mounts /tmp as a tmpfs by default. It is
certainly not the case on my Ubuntu, or on Debian when I last installed
one...

But yes, having all temp files in $(BUILD_DIR)/.br-temp-or-whatever
would be the expected behaviour.

What I'm afraid of, is that there are (a lot of) packages that do a
similar thing, and we would have to fix each of those individually.
Setting a global TMPDIR would fix it once and for all.

Also, I tend to see a lot of left-over temp files in /tmp, even after a
build is completed, because pacakges buildsystems often forget to
cleanup properly behind them, which would eventually fill /tmp on a
long-running machine like a build server. Having our own temp dir would
mean it actually gets cleaned when the build dir is removed.

And anyway, for short-lived temp files, the 'slowness' is probably a
false reason: the short-lived temp files will probably never actually
hit the HDD (or SSD), and will only ever live in the kernel cache. And
if they happen to be a bit longer-lived that they do hit torage, then
they'd also probably undergo a round of IO scheduling, which will most
probably postpone the actual write to long after the file is actually
closed.

But I would very like to have actual numbers to prove either way.

(Doing the whole build under tmpfs is another topic, and that would
probably provide an actual, measurable gain.)

There is a third alternative. Stash the following somewhere early in the
build process (e.g. in check-dependencies or some such):

    if ! is_mounted_with_exec "${TMPDIR:-/tmp}"; then
        printf '%s is mounted with noexec; this is not gonna fly.\n' "${TMPDIR:-/tmp}"
        exit 1
    fi

> > 1. A trap on EXIT is a bashism, while this script uses /bin/sh, which
> > is not guaranteed to be bash.
> 
> From the IEEE Std 1003.1, 2004 Edition
> (https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/trap.html):
> 
> "The condition can be EXIT, 0 (equivalent to EXIT), or a signal
> specified using a symbolic name, without the SIG prefix [...]"

Ah, right. It's ERR that is a bashism, my bad.

> > 2. Why do you want to use a trap on EXIT? If there is a motivation to do
> > so, it does not seem to be related to this change anyway, so should be
> > done in its own patch.
> 
> It's a cleaner solution.

How is it cleaner? I would even argue that it is no longer obvious that
some code is actually run at the end...

The only case where I think a trap is interesting, IMHO, is when we
want to catch errors. But as this script is not 'set -e', it will
always go through to the end, and thus all commands in the script will
be executed.

But for a simple script like that, I fail to see the added value of a
trap on EXIT...

And even though, we would want to have that in a separate patch, because
it is unrelated to what the patch is initially trying to fix.

Regards,
Yann E. MORIN.

-- 
                                        ____________
.-----------------.--------------------:       _    :------------------.
|  Yann E. MORIN  | Real-Time Embedded |    __/ )   | /"\ ASCII RIBBON |
| +33 534.541.179 | Software  Designer |  _/ - /'   | \ / CAMPAIGN     |
| +33 638.411.245 '--------------------: (_    `--, |  X  AGAINST      |
|      yann.morin (at) orange.com      |_="    ,--' | / \ HTML MAIL    |
'--------------------------------------:______/_____:------------------'


_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Ce message et ses pieces jointes peuvent contenir des informations confidentielles ou privilegiees et ne doivent donc
pas etre diffuses, exploites ou copies sans autorisation. Si vous avez recu ce message par erreur, veuillez le signaler
a l'expediteur et le detruire ainsi que les pieces jointes. Les messages electroniques etant susceptibles d'alteration,
Orange decline toute responsabilite si ce message a ete altere, deforme ou falsifie. Merci.

This message and its attachments may contain confidential or privileged information that may be protected by law;
they should not be distributed, used or copied without authorisation.
If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender and delete this message and its attachments.
As emails may be altered, Orange is not liable for messages that have been modified, changed or falsified.
Thank you.



More information about the buildroot mailing list