Debian Bug report logs - #798804
make: Please add U flag in the default ARFLAGS

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Celelibi <celelibi@gmail.com>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: make: Please add U flag in the default ARFLAGS

Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2015 04:37:36 +0200

Package: make
Version: 4.0-8.2
Severity: minor

Dear maintainer,

It looks like the ar program in the binutils package in debian is now
configured with --enable-deterministic-archives, which is fine (I
guess). However, when dealing with archive members, make needs the
timestamp of the file in order to decide to update it or not. With the
current deterministic behavior of ar, the timestamp is always 0.

The following implicit rule will thus always re-add the member to the
archive as it is considered outdated.

(%): %
#  recipe to execute (built-in):
	$(AR) $(ARFLAGS) $@ $<

An undue update of a file in an archive may have a cascading effect in
both directions. The targets that depend on the archive will have to be
updated; and the archive members (if determined to be intermediate
files) will have to be rebuilt. Thus making a major part of the project
to be rebuilt for no reason.


Steps to reproduce:
1) Create a file foo.c.
int main(void) {
	return 0;
}

2) Create a Makefile.
target: archive.a(foo.o)
	echo doing something

3) Run make twice.
$ make
cc    -c -o foo.o foo.c
ar rv archive.a foo.o
ar: creating archive.a
a - foo.o
echo doing something
doing something
rm foo.o

$ make
cc    -c -o foo.o foo.c
ar rv archive.a foo.o
r - foo.o
echo doing something
doing something
rm foo.o

4) Check that the timestamp of foo.o in archive.a is 0.
$ ar tv archive.a
rw-r--r-- 0/0    848 Jan  1 01:00 1970 foo.o



I think the answer "fix your Makefile" is not appropriate for at least
two reasons:
- Make always rely on the timestamps of the file members, so taking the
  risk of not having them devoid completely the point of having implicit
  rules. And not having valid timestamps can only produce buggy cases
  like the one shown above.
- You cannot always fix the Makefiles because it's not always yours, and
  your Makefiles rely on an archive produced by a Makefile you don't
  have control over.

A workaround may be to add ARFLAGS=rvU as argument or environment
variable to make. This may work in some cases, but it's still a bit
hackish to fix from the outside a broken Makefile when a sensful default
value would fix it once for all.


Best regards,
Celelibi

-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.10.11 (SMP w/2 CPU cores; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)

Versions of packages make depends on:
ii  libc6  2.19-19

make recommends no packages.

Versions of packages make suggests:
pn  make-doc  <none>

-- no debconf information

Message #10 received at 798804@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Celelibi <celelibi@gmail.com>

To: 798804@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: make: Please add U flag in the default ARFLAGS

Date: Tue, 15 Sep 2015 05:26:26 +0200

This may actually be more a bug for ar (binutils package) which
introduced a behavior that is not backward compatible and forces the
use of the option U that seems quite new and not portable.

Bug #798913 is the bug for binutils / ar.

I don't know what should happen to both of those. But at least one of
them should be fixed. The current state of those both in Debian is
inconsistent.


Celelibi

Message #17 received at 798804-close@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org>

To: 798804-close@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Bug#798804: fixed in make-dfsg 4.1-1

Date: Sun, 17 Jan 2016 09:34:32 +0000

Source: make-dfsg
Source-Version: 4.1-1

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
make-dfsg, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive.

A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 798804@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> (supplier of updated make-dfsg package)

(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org)


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

Format: 1.8
Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2016 22:37:08 -0800
Source: make-dfsg
Binary: make make-guile
Architecture: source amd64
Version: 4.1-1
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: low
Maintainer: Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org>
Changed-By: Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org>
Description:
 make       - utility for directing compilation
 make-guile - utility for directing compilation with guile support
Closes: 761301 762017 763147 766383 798804
Changes:
 make-dfsg (4.1-1) unstable; urgency=low
 .
   * New upstream release
   * Updated Standards version to 3.9.6. No changes needed.
   * Updated the VCS-Git field of the control file to use HTTPS transport
   * Updated the copyright file to DEP-5 format.
   * Reverted to source format 1.0 , and use dgit
   * Bug fix: "Typos in manpage", thanks to Josh Triplett
    (Closes: #763147).
   * Bug fix: "[make] make version 4.1 available", thanks to LeJacq, Jean
     Pierre (Closes: #766383).
   * Demote make to priority optional, along with gcc and such. And bump
     make-guile to extra.
   * Bug fix: "Neither make nor make-guile should be standard", thanks to
     Josh Triplett (Closes: #761301).
   * Bug fix: "make instead of make-guile should be standard", thanks to
     Joey Hess (Closes: #762017).
   * Make make and make-guile be Multi-Arch: Allowed packages, since it
     might not be feasible to make make architecture agnostic.
   * Bug fix: "Please add U flag in the default ARFLAGS", thanks to
     Celelibi. I tend to agree, this was a backwards incompatible
     change. Make needs the timestamps to knpow when to update archie
     members, so nuking the timestamps changes behaviour, and remake things
     that need not be remade. This fails the principle of least surprise. I
     added a default -U to the flags make passes to arl (Closes: #798804).
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 ac3614ad83bb02e7f59ab66991220db3d849a0ac 209190 make-guile-dbgsym_4.1-1_amd64.deb
 309648a4a6ad8031bffc201c224e201b24dbee0e 297502 make-guile_4.1-1_amd64.deb
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Files:
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 553a382b5943ad16f767061d7f81d91e 1350231 devel optional make-dfsg_4.1.orig.tar.gz
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 ebfc388c39bd87ac161f991b57a62981 297502 devel extra make-guile_4.1-1_amd64.deb
 97057054adb0cce0c3ae2c4d041c85d0 296366 devel optional make_4.1-1_amd64.deb

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