[PPL-devel] Bug#517659: ppl - FTBFS: Missuse of buildd resources

[Roberto Bagnara]

Bastian Blank wrote:
> Package: ppl
> Version: 0.10-4
> Severity: serious
> 
> The build of ppl needs 7 CPU-hours on a fast machine, including a long
> documentation run.

This is probably due to `make check', which is something you can disable
if you are prepared to accept the risk of miscompilation of the library
(something that has just happened on Debian/Alpha).

You should take into account that we use the PPL to validate
mission-critical software.  Consequently, our `make check' is very
thorough.  For PPL 0.11 we will probably add a `make quick-check'
feature, but we will certainly not use it ourselves (because we know
no single test in `make check' is truly superfluous).

Concerning the documentation, we use Doxygen to build the library's
documentation.  I don't know which subset of the available manuals
the Debian package builds.  In the past it was building also the
developer's reference manual, something we advised against.  Moreover,
the instantiation-independent documentation is shipped with the
library and there is no need to rebuild it.

Anyway, if it really takes 7 hours perhaps there is some other problem
or I would not call the machine "a fast machine".  Configuring the PPL
with --enable-interfaces"c c++" (which is what I believe Debian does)
`make check' takes less than 3 hours on our main server (`make -j 8 check'
takes less than 34 minutes).

> Also I saw at least 4 runs of the same test set.

You probably saw 4 completely different tests with the same name running.
The PPL provides several template classes, whose behavior is completely
different depending on the template specialization considered: the
`make check' procedure tests with a subset of instantiations that allows
to establish some confidence that the library has not been miscompiled.
In other words, what you saw where 4 runs of different test sets,
each set using the same source files, but compiled with different
-DMACRO=DEFN options.

>> Automatic build of ppl_0.10-4 on lxdebian.bfinv.de by sbuild/s390 98
> [...]
>> Build needed 06:58:18, 1434876k disk space

I see.  Please let us know whether/how we can help.
All the best,

    Roberto

-- 
Prof. Roberto Bagnara
Computer Science Group
Department of Mathematics, University of Parma, Italy
http://www.cs.unipr.it/~bagnara/
mailto:bagnara at cs.unipr.it