buildbot: ./configure: line 27: /dev/null: Permission denied

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Oct 6, 2012, at 15:42, Joshua Root wrote:
> On 2012-10-7 07:35 , Joshua Root wrote:
>> On 2012-10-7 06:58 , Blair Zajac wrote:
>>> Looks like there's a problem with the build bots:
>>> 
>>> http://build.macports.org/builders/buildbase-snowleopard-x86_64/builds/544/steps/configure/logs/stdio
>> 
>> Apparently only the Snow Leopard one, actually.
> 
> It seems to have broken somewhere in or just before ports build 11369.

We've had the problem before of ports deleting /dev/null, with qt4-mac:

https://trac.macports.org/ticket/22701

And git-core:

https://trac.macports.org/ticket/33127

The problem occurs when a port compiles a test with "-o /dev/null", because although that will discard the output file, which is what's wanted, it will also *delete* the output file (i.e. delete /dev/null) if the test fails. Since we only saw this problem on Snow Leopard I guess only gcc does that, and clang doesn't.

Build 11369 was mosesdecoder, and I did find the "-o /dev/null" construct in the file jam-files/sanity.jam. I've just verified on my Snow Leopard test machine that building mosesdecoder as-is does delete /dev/null. Now I'll restart and patch the port to use "-o dummy" instead and I'll try again.