Re: obscure bug "extern void free (void *__ptr) __attribute__ ((__nothrow__ , __leaf__));"

[Chet Ramey]

On 1/21/21 5:07 PM, Mathias Steiger wrote:
> As such bugs are likely related to buffer issues, maybe even in underlying 
> APIs, and since they only surface after very lengthy mysterious sequences 
> of commands - often just on single specific system installations - I 
> wouldn't know how you can reproduce this in a test.
And that's the problem. While the behavior you're seeing may be related to
some `buffer issue', it's just as likely that there's some issue with how
autoconf-generated scripts manipulate file descriptors or that your script
interacts badly in some other way with what autoconf generates. But without
a way to reproduce it independently, there's no way to tell whether it's a
bug separate from autoconf.

> Maybe you have specific testing frameworks for this, that would reduce the 
> whole script to more basic components and which schematically remove or add 
> complexity until the nature of the bug becomes more apparent?
This is why I advised you to report it to bug-autoconf. They're more
familiar with the code generator and what problems might result from it.

> Of course in a giant script, all sorts of random things might happen. But 
> this is not one of them.
Maybe. Maybe not. You just don't have enough information to say.

--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/