Re: Using 'make dist' with a 32 UID

[Eric Blake]

On 01/05/2015 03:08 AM, Finucane, Stephen wrote:
> Autotools defaults to the 'v7' legacy tar format in GNU tar, through passing 
> of the '-o' parameter to GNU tar. Enabling this option results in errors for 
> users with 32 bit UIDs. For example, with the Open vSwitch package:

'make dist' is under the purview of automake, not autoconf.  You may get
a better response by involving the automake list.

> 
>     $ make dist
>     ...
>     tardir=openvswitch-2.3.90 && ${TAR-tar} chof - "$tardir" | GZIP=--best 
> gzip -c >openvswitch-2.3.90.tar.gz
>     tar: value 12345678 out of uid_t range 0..2097151
>     tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
>     make[1]: Leaving directory `/development/ovs'
>     ...
> 
> I managed to modify the Autoconf 'configure.ac' file to use the 'tar-ustar' 
> format, which allow longer file names and other niceties. Again, with the 
> Open vSwitch package:
> 
>     diff --git a/configure.ac b/configure.ac
>     index ebb8b02..6505189 100644
>     --- a/configure.ac
>     +++ b/configure.ac
>     @@ -19,7 +19,7 @@ AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIR([m4])
>      AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIR([build-aux])
>      AC_CONFIG_HEADERS([config.h])
>      AC_CONFIG_TESTDIR([tests])
>     -AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE
>     +AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([tar-ustar])

Are you proposing that we change the way autoconf is distributed?  That
won't affect any other packages (you'd have to make the same patch for
each affected package), and so far, your code shows that you had
problems in building an openvswitch tarball, not an autoconf tarball.
Again, changing automake to do this automatically for ALL packages (once
those packages are built with a new enough automake) rather than trying
to patch one configure.ac for every affected package, seems like it
would be the better course of action.

I'm still open to be convinced that autoconf needs to alter its own
configure.ac, but I don't have enough evidence yet that it would make a
difference.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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