[Scons-dev] LaTeX changes to env['PATH'] can break builds

[Gary Oberbrunner]

On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 3:44 PM, William Deegan <bill at baddogconsulting.com>wrote:


> Gary,

>

>

> On Jan 6, 2013, at 9:30 AM, Gary Oberbrunner <garyo at oberbrunner.com>

> wrote:

>

> Someone at my work recently discovered that updating SCons to 2.2.0 breaks

> his build.  The reason is it now puts /usr/local/bin in the PATH

>  (env['PATH']) before /usr/bin (or sth similar).  He has a bad version of a

> utility in /usr/local/bin, which now gets used instead of the right one.  I

> was worried that this might happen.  He bisected to find the change that

> did it, and I've included his analysis below.

>

>

> I"m looking at that change set, and it's picking up paths from

> /etc/paths.d, which seems reasonable for a mac.

> It's not hardcoded /usr/local/bin.

> So likely the issue is that your colleague has a broken tool installed in

> a location which system config files say tools should be found in.

>


Hmm, I see your point.  I'll look into it.  It looks like it always
appends, and as you say it uses /etc/paths.d. Although I notice it doesn't
set delete_existing=0 in AppendENVPath, so any paths in /etc/paths.d will
be moved to the end of the path -- if that's not deliberate, I'd vote to
change that.  So if the incoming path has /usr/local/bin first, and it's
also in /etc/paths.d, this logic won't move it to the end.

There are several things we can do:

> 1. do nothing, that's just how it is now.

> 2. make the LaTeX stuff use absolute paths rather than relying on

> env['PATH']

> 3. Somehow set PATH only for that tool, without mucking with the standard

> PATH.

>

> I don't like #2, it's ugly.  #1 is easiest, but since our goal is to make

> reproducible builds, modifying the path globally is not ideal.  That leaves

> us with #3.  I don't have any ideas off the top of my head for how to

> handle that; does anyone?

>

>

> I'd say in your colleague's case, best to have him uninstall the broken

> tool.

>


Yeah, he's already done that (or equivalent).  So it's not a hi priority
issue, just was surprising that updating SCons broke it.



> Which leads me to toolchain revamp.  I'm going to write up a message about

> this shortly; I think it should be one of our highest priority projects for

> 2013 (along with several others), and I'm willing to take it on.

>

>

> So are you then thinking, toolchain and python 3.x? Or at least 2.7 with

> effort to get it to run on 3.x?

> (Probably best discussed in another thread)

>


Indeed.  I think we have a few projects we should try for in 2013.  Let me
try to put my thoughts together soon.

-- 
Gary
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