Re: Solaris 8: runaway processes in check

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Jim Meyering wrote on Sat, May 27, 2006 at 04:10:20PM CEST:

> Please identify the test that is causing trouble.
> Here's how to start:
> 
>   cd tests/misc
>   make check TESTS=sort
> 
> If that test is the one causing the trouble,
> then there's something very strange going on.

Well.  It's the sort test.  But above doesn't expose the issue.
I'm using the native make, instead of GNU make, guess I shouldn't
have (didn't know at the time I started the test).  I can reproduce
it with
  env TESTS='nl sort nl' make -e check

but not with
  env TESTS='sort' make -e check

Why?  In the former case, `sort' is a plain word to `make', i.e.,
surrounded by white space, thus it gets the VPATH prefix.  You can
see this when interrupting the test:
| FAIL: ../../../coreutils-5.96/tests/misc/sort

Another way to provoke the runaway is to
  env TESTS='../../../coreutils-5.96/tests/misc/sort' make -e check

but it doesn't happen with GNU make.  

I haven't sorted out where the difference causes this problem.
But it happens on Solaris 9 as well.

Cheers,
Ralf