Re: `make check` doesn't pass on MacOS Catalina

On Tue, Apr 20, 2021 at 9:06 AM Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net> wrote:
>
> On 4/20/21 11:02 AM, Tom Lane wrote:
> > Aleksander Alekseev <aleksander(at)timescale(dot)com> writes:
> >> While trying to build PostgreSQL from source (master branch, 95c3a195) on a
> >> MacBook I discovered that `make check` fails:
> > This is the usual symptom of not having disabled SIP :-(.
> >
> > If you don't want to do that, do "make install" before "make check".

> FYI the buildfarm client has a '--delay-check' option that does exactly
> this. It's useful on Alpine Linux as well as MacOS

I was trying to set up a buildfarm animal, and this exact problem lead
to a few hours of debugging and hair-pulling. Can the default
behaviour be changed in buildfarm client to perform `make check` only
after `make install`.

Current buildfarm client code looks something like:

make();
make_check() unless $delay_check;
... other steps ...
make_install();
... other steps-2...
make_check() if $delay_check;

There are no comments as to why one should choose to use --delay-check
($delay_check). This email, and the pointer to the paragraph buried in
the docs, shared by Tom, are the only two ways one can understand what
is causing this failure, and how to get around it.

Naive question: What's stopping us from rewriting the code as follows.
make();
make_install();
make_check();
... other steps ...
... other steps-2...
# or move make_check() call here

With a quick google search I could not find why --delay-check is
necessary on Apline linux, as well; can you please elaborate.

Best regards,
Gurjeet
http://Gurje.et