Re: rcs configure hang

[Paul Eggert]

On 10/21/20 7:36 AM, Thien-Thi Nguyen wrote:
> "Kelly Wang (kellythw)" <kellythw@cisco.com> 
> <https://lists.gnu.org/r/bug-rcs/2020-10/msg00018.html>
>     I download rcs 5.10.0, untarred and try to run ./configure.
>     However it is hang in 'checking whether getcwd handles long
>     file names properly...' for more than 30+ min and still hang.

> This is from ‘gl_FUNC_GETCWD_PATH_MAX’ in m4/getcwd-path-max.m4.
> IIUC, the test tries to create a filename up to, and then a bit
> longer than, PATH_MAX in length.  It does this in a ‘while (1)’
> loop, relying on ‘break’ to exit the loop.  Perhaps this is a C
> compiler problem?

I'd guess that it's due to thrashing, e.g., there's a huge PATH_MAX or something 
like that. At any rate, it's surely a Gnulib problem rather than an RCS problem 
so I'll cc. this to bug-gnulib.

Kelly, I created the attached tarball getcwd-test.tar.gz by running 
'./gnulib-tool --create-testdir --dir getcwd-test getcwd' in the Gnulib source 
directory. Please try:

tar xf getcwd-test.tar.gz
cd getcwd-test
./configure
make check

in the same filesystem where you tried and failed to build RCS. If it hangs in a 
similar way while running 'configure', it's a Gnulib problem. If it succeeds 
then something odd is going on and it may be either a Gnulib or RCS problem.

Assuming it hangs, leave it hanging but look at the working directory. You 
should see a file conftest.c that looks like the attached separate file. Let us 
know of any differences between your conftest.c and the attached one. Also, try 
the following commands:

gcc conftest.c
strace -o tr ./a.out

The strace should also hang so you may need to type control-C to exit it after a 
while. Look at the resulting 'tr' file and compare it to the attached compressed 
file tr.gz. Where does yours start acting differently? That will help us figure 
out the bug.

getcwd-test.tar.gz
Description: application/gzip

conftest.c
Description: Text Data

tr.gz
Description: application/gzip

signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature