Hi,
I'd like to report an issue with the revision-install target in subversion's
top-level Makefile.in, which is related to the macOS crash discussed in
MacPorts ticket #59712.
https://trac.macports.org/ticket/59712
Problem
-------
When cross-compiling subversion for an x86-64 target on an x86-64 build host
(as done in Yocto/OpenEmbedded), with both 64-bit and 32-bit (multilib)
builds
enabled, the revision-install target generates inconsistent content in
svn-revision.txt, causing an RPM file conflict during image assembly.
The target logic is:
(subversion/svnversion/svnversion $(top_srcdir) 2> /dev/null || \
svnversion $(top_srcdir) 2> /dev/null || \
echo "unknown"; \
) > $(DESTDIR)$(includedir)/subversion-1/svn-revision.txt
64-bit build:
The cross-compiled svnversion binary has the same architecture as the
build
host (x86-64). The libtool wrapper script sets LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the
build
directory's .libs, and the host has libapr1 installed. As a result,
svnversion executes successfully and outputs "Unversioned directory"
(since
the source is a release tarball with no SVN metadata).
32-bit (lib32) build:
The cross-compiled svnversion is a 32-bit ELF binary. It cannot find the
32-bit libapr1 on the host, so it fails. The host does not have the
svnversion tool installed either, so the fallback produces "unknown".
The two packages (subversion-dev and lib32-subversion-dev) both install
/usr/include/subversion-1/svn-revision.txt with different content, causing
an RPM transaction conflict:
file /usr/include/subversion-1/svn-revision.txt conflicts between
attempted installs of lib32-subversion-dev and subversion-dev
Root Cause
----------
The revision-install target attempts to run the just-built svnversion binary
during make install. This is unreliable across platforms:
- On macOS, the binary has RPATH pointing to the install location, so it
crashes if local-install has not completed yet (parallel make), as
reported
in MacPorts #59712.
- On Linux x86-64 cross-compile with multilib, the 64-bit binary happens to
run successfully while the 32-bit one does not, producing inconsistent
results.
Proposed Fix
------------
Since the source is always a release tarball with no SVN metadata, the
correct
and only meaningful value is "unknown". The svnversion invocations serve no
purpose in this context and should be removed:
revision-install:
test -d $(DESTDIR)$(includedir)/subversion-1 || \
$(MKDIR) $(DESTDIR)$(includedir)/subversion-1
echo "unknown" >
$(DESTDIR)$(includedir)/subversion-1/svn-revision.txt
This is consistent with the "long-term solution" suggested in MacPorts
#59712:
remove the unreliable stanza or add proper dependencies between
revision-install and local-install.
Environment
-----------
Build host: Ubuntu 24.04, x86-64
Target: qemux86-64 (x86-64 with 32-bit multilib)
Subversion: 1.14.5
Build system: Yocto/OpenEmbedded
Thanks,
Haixiao
