guile-2.2 FTBFS on bionic on x86_64?

[Dan Kegel]

On bionic, guile-2.2 has a source package, but no x86_64 build yet. I need it on x86_64, so I tried it myself.
Unsurprisingly, it didn't work.

To repeat:

sudo lxc-create -n bionic -t download

to create a bionic build system, then in there, do

sudo apt install build-essential devscripts equivs
apt source guile-2.2
cd guile-2.2-2.2.2+2
sudo mk-build-deps -i
debuild -b -uc -us

That fails with
...
wrote `/home/ubuntu/buggy/guile-2.2-2.2.2+2/cache/guile/ccache/2.2-LE-8-3.A/home/ubuntu/buggy/guile-2.2-2.2.2+2/test-suite/standalone/test-out-of-memory.go'
GC Warning: Failed to expand heap by 134348800 bytes
GC Warning: Failed to expand heap by 134217728 bytes
GC Warning: Out of Memory! Heap size: 1 MiB. Returning NULL!
error creating finalization thread: Cannot allocate memory
GC Warning: Failed to expand heap by 1000132608 bytes
GC Warning: Failed to expand heap by 1000001536 bytes
GC Warning: Out of Memory! Heap size: 1 MiB. Returning NULL!
GC Warning: Failed to expand heap by 499712 bytes
GC Warning: Failed to expand heap by 65536 bytes
GC Warning: Out of Memory! Heap size: 1 MiB. Returning NULL!
GC Warning: Failed to expand heap by 499712 bytes
GC Warning: Failed to expand heap by 65536 bytes
GC Warning: Out of Memory! Heap size: 1 MiB. Returning NULL!
Warning: Unwind-only `out-of-memory' exception; skipping pre-unwind handler.
FAIL: test-out-of-memory
==================================
1 of 39 tests failed
Please report to <email address hidden>

Maybe guile expects libgc to be built with --enable-munmap, but
when I tried that, the test core dumped instead of failing.
(Adding that flag caused warnings about ABI changes, though, so who knows, maybe I screwed up.)

Alternately, maybe this package should simply disable that test for now, as
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-user/2017-11/msg00063.html indicates it's flaky.

[Dan Kegel (dank)]

Interestingly, building the backport in the guix ppa on xenial
also shows most of those GC warnings, but its output lacks the line

Warning: Unwind-only `out-of-memory' exception; skipping pre-unwind handler.

and is shown as passing the test.

Also, there may be some related discussion at
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2017-11/msg00016.html

[Dan Kegel (dank)]

Fun fact: the xenial backport from

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:vidme/guix
sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vidme-ubuntu-guix-xenial.list # enable source repo
sudo apt update
apt source guile-2.2
tar -czvf guile-2.2-2.2.2.tar.gz guile-2.2-2.2.2

builds fine on ubuntu 16.04 -- although the GC Warnings occur, they do not result in a failure --
but if built on ubuntu 17.10, fails to build.

Something changed between ubuntu 16.04 and ubuntu 17.10 that triggers or exposes this problem.

libgc version on Xenial: 1:7.4.2-7.3ubuntu0.1 and on Bionic: 1:7.4.2-8ubuntu1

I suppose next step is to try it on 16.10 and 17.04.

[Dan Kegel (dank)]

Built ok on 17.04, where libgc-dev is also 1:7.4.2-8ubuntu1

Is difference gcc?
17.04: 4:6.3.0-2ubuntu1 17.10: 4:7.2.0-1ubuntu1

Yes! On 17.10, I can build ok if I first do

  sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-6 6 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-6
  sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-7 7 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-7
  sudo update-alternatives --config gcc

and pick gcc-6 as the default.

Sooo... what's up with that?

[Dan Kegel (dank)]

Reproduced upstream, https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=29464

[Dan Kegel (dank)]

Oddly, I can't reproduce this today.

$ gcc --version
gcc (Ubuntu 7.2.0-18ubuntu2) 7.2.0

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gcc-7/7.2.0-18ubuntu2 landed on Dec 16 and has all
sorts of fixes that seem like they could have fixed some horrible low-level problem
that caused the failure.

Could somebody please bump the amd64 build and see if it succeeds now?

[Dan Kegel (dank)]

Nevermind, it failed on the next try.

[Dan Kegel (dank)]

Out of 51 tries, a little more than half fail:
     29 FAIL: test-out-of-memory
     22 PASS: test-out-of-memory

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

This build should work (give it a few hours):

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/guile-2.2/2.2.3+1-3