Heisenbug Bus Error in ./bootstrap.sh on OSX

[Stephen Thorne]

On OSX, if I run ./bootstrap.sh I get a bus error.
$ bash ./bootstrap.sh
:: This script will check your environment to make sure Goonmill is
:: ready to run, and do any one-time setup steps necessary.
::
:: Please check for any errors below, and fix them.
Bus error

If I apply this patch, which makes p() always print a string, the bus error disappears:
diff -r 4e391de34c06 bootstrap.sh
--- a/bootstrap.sh Fri Aug 17 10:42:42 2007 -0700
+++ b/bootstrap.sh Sun Aug 19 14:34:56 2007 +1000
@@ -35,6 +35,7 @@ function p()
 function p()
 # Run any python code and print its output or error to stdout.
 {
+ echo x
     python -c "$@" 2>&1
 }

$ ./bootstrap.sh
:: This script will check your environment to make sure Goonmill is
:: ready to run, and do any one-time setup steps necessary.
::
:: Please check for any errors below, and fix them.
** Install SQLAlchemy (x)
** Install zope.interface (x)
** Install Twisted 2.5 (x)
** Install Divmod Nevow (x)
** Install simpleparse (x Traceback (most recent call last): File "<string>", line 1, in <module> ImportError: No module named simpleparse)
** Install PyLucene (x Traceback (most recent call last): File "<string>", line 1, in <module> ImportError: No module named PyLucene)
** Python 2.5 is required for xml.etree (x)
** Errors occurred. Please fix the above errors, then re-run this script.

$ bash --version
GNU bash, version 2.05b.0(1)-release (powerpc-apple-darwin8.0)
Copyright (C) 2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

[Cory Dodt (corydodt)]

I need an OSX platform to test this. My current bash version is 3.2.13. Any gut feeling about cause?

[Stephen Thorne (jerub)]

I can provide a test host. Just ask on irc.

This seems to be a minimal testcase:

$ bash foo.sh
Bus error
$ cat foo.sh
#!/bin/bash

function p()
{
    true
}

true <<<$(p)

[Stephen Thorne (jerub)]

I've fixed this by removing the usage of the function p(). When p() would return no lines of output, the bus error would occur.