tcl8.5.9 env-4.{3,4,5} FAILURE

[Gilles Espinasse]

On tcl8.5.9, there is 3 tests failures when LANG is set on the host that did not appear with 8.5.8. The reason is clearly in diff -u tcl8.5.{8,9}/tests/env.test Before 8.5.9, env.test did not keep LANG variable for some tests Errors happen on my build system and jhalfs.

A sed to remove LANG fix the tests

sed -i 's/    SECURITYSESSIONID LANG/    SECURITYSESSIONID/' tests/env.test

I removed only the second LANG occurence and use sed -i that 4.1.5 support. But that's only a workaround. If you test to compile a vanilia tcl8.5.9 directly on the host

tar xf tcl8.5.9-src.tar.bz2
cd tcl8.5.9/unix
./configure
make
TZ=UTC make test

there is no env-4.{3,4,5} failures even when LANG is set. So the real issue is somewhere in the build system. And it is not so important as this is a test issue and there is no changes in the produced code.

[bdubbs@…]

I'm tempted to close this as WONTFIX. The book specifies the environment to use when building and does not include LANG. The book should not make changes to accommodate this type of customization. On top of that, we explicitly recommend *not* running tests in Chapter 5 and tcl is only built in Chapter 5.

Other opinions?

[Gilles Espinasse]

Having LANG set is the default in debian 5.0. That's a fresh install as previous disk broke in august. I just add the lfs user as the book say. LANG is defined in /etc/default/locale and I should say I did not know exactly what read that file and what I need to change on that machine to not have LANG set for lfs user. I understand you may not want to start modifying the tests. Maybe rewrite:

The Tcl test suite may experience failures under certain host conditions that are not fully understood. 

into

The Tcl test suite may experience failures if LANG is set for lfs user, if machine is offline and maybe other cases.

[bdubbs@…]

LANG and all other environment variables are explicitly disabled in the lfs user's .bash_profile.

The book instructs you to become the lfs used with 'su - lfs' which will automatically run .bash_profile.