build with multiple submake jobs fails

[Lanclos]

Well, it doesn't so much fail, as it quietly screws up
many a binary. On a Solaris 9 machine with four
processors, I set:

MAKE="gmake -j4"

...and proceed to configure/build mailman. No errors.
Nothing creeps up until I try to use the binaries in
cgi-bin. Depending on the time of day, cosmic rays,
etc., several of the binaries will all end up being the
same file; for example, the "admin" wrapper will really
be another copy of the "create" wrapper. This seems to
happen with at least half of them, and the arrangement
is random each time I do it.

The solution was simple:

MAKE="gmake"

...reconfigure, rebuild, reinstall. Everything was
exactly as it should be. Somewhere in the relevant
makefile, -jN needs to be disabled.

[http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=825143&group_id=103&atid=100103]

[Barry Warsaw (barry)]

Mailman doesn't have enough C code to justify supporting
parallel makes IMO. Mailman doesn't do anything special
here, so if something like this does get set automatically,
it's probably because of the configure script. I don't
think there's anything for us to do (but if you come up with
a patch you think will help your cause, feel free to attach
it here).

[Lanclos (lanclos)]

Enabling parallel compilation is, I agree, not worthwhile
for mailman-- however, disabling parallel compilation is,
given that the errors produced by multiple active submake
jobs are completely silent to the person building the
software. It'd be nice if mailman would just shutdown the
jobserver mode completely given that it is unnecessary.

[Barry Warsaw (barry)]

If you want to develop a patch, I would definitely take a
look at it.