URL: <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?68336>
Summary: concurrent "make install" suffers from race
involving tmac/tty-char.tmac
Group: GNU roff
Submitter: gbranden
Submitted: Mon 11 May 2026 05:41:09 AM UTC
Category: General
Severity: 3 - Normal
Item Group: Build/Installation
Status: None
Privacy: Public
Assigned to: gbranden
Open/Closed: Open
Discussion Lock: Unlocked
Planned Release: None
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Follow-up Comments:
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Date: Mon 11 May 2026 05:41:09 AM UTC By: G. Branden Robinson <gbranden>
[https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-groff/2026-05/msg00099.html Santiago
Vila of the Debian Project reported an installation failure with _groff_
1.24.1].
> While building (the Debian package of) groff 1.24.1 in a Debian unstable
> chroot,
> I got this error:
> /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 ../../tmac/tty.tmac ../../tmac/tty-char.tmac
> '/<<PKGBUILDDIR>>/debian/tmp/usr/share/groff/1.24.1/tmac'
> /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 ../../tmac/tty.tmac ../../tmac/tty-char.tmac
> '/<<PKGBUILDDIR>>/debian/tmp/usr/share/groff/1.24.1/tmac'
> install: cannot create regular file
> '/<<PKGBUILDDIR>>/debian/tmp/usr/share/groff/1.24.1/tmac/tty.tmac': File
> exists
> Seems like a race condition to me, where one "install -c" tries to
> work at the same time the other is *still* writing to the same file.
> I believe this is the origin of those two threads:
> - Target dist_grottytmac_DATA in src/devices/grotty/grotty.am lines 26-30
> (unconditional)
> - Target dist_gxditviewtmac_DATA in src/devices/xditview/xditview.am lines
> 63-67 (conditional)
> So I guess one of the two should be dropped.
He [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2026-05/msg00019.html followed
up].
> I was using a VM with 2 CPUs.
> If you are curious, I've now tried to build the package 50 times (on
> several machines with 2 CPUs) and it failed just once, so this failure
> is indeed a rare event.
> [ My aim is to ensure that the end user will be able to rebuild any
> package no matter what, as far as the machine has enough memory and
> disk space, so I use machines with 1 and 2 CPUs for my unofficial
> archive rebuilds. Too many people already test the build with more
> than that ].
[https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/groff/2026-05/msg00018.html I observed]:
> I'll look into this, but yes, if that's right then it's the latter that
> should go. "tty-char.tmac" is not (g)xditview's business. It's
> grotty(1)'s.
See if there's junk that we can strip from "src/devices/xditview/xditview.am".
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