'make dist' creates empty tarball on macOS

[apjanke]

From current master, on macOS 10.14.3:

$ make dist        
mkdir -p "tmp"
Creating package version 0.7.0 release ...
rm -f -r "tmp/doctest-0.7.0"
git archive --format=tar --prefix="tmp/doctest-0.7.0/" HEAD | tar -x
rm -f "tmp/doctest-0.7.0/README.matlab.md" \
	      "tmp/doctest-0.7.0/.gitignore" \
	      "tmp/doctest-0.7.0/.travis.yml" \
	      "tmp/doctest-0.7.0/.mailmap"
rm -f -r "tmp/doctest-0.7.0/util"
chmod -R a+rX,u+w,go-w "tmp/doctest-0.7.0"
tar: Option --mtime=2019-03-23 12:31:42 -0300 is not supported
Usage:
  List:    tar -tf <archive-filename>
  Extract: tar -xf <archive-filename>
  Create:  tar -cf <archive-filename> [filenames...]
  Help:    tar --help
$ echo $?      
0

Looks like it's expecting GNU tar and not compatible with BSD tar? And this failure isn't propagating up to a failure of the make dist call itself?

$ sw_vers      
ProductName:	Mac OS X
ProductVersion:	10.14.3
BuildVersion:	18D109
$ which tar  
/usr/bin/tar
$ tar --version   
bsdtar 2.8.3 - libarchive 2.8.3

[catch22]

This bug was hidden by another bug (#189). @oheim rewrote the Makefile some years ago, likely only having GNU tar in mind. Here is a workaround until this gets resolved:

brew install gnu-tar
PATH="/usr/local/opt/gnu-tar/libexec/gnubin:$PATH" make dist

Not sure about the error propagation issue.

[cbm755]

IIRC, he was not concerned with portability because the Maintainer's Makefile was only to be used by developers.

That isn't to say we can't change it, just that there may be other places in the Makefile that use GNU extensions.

In some sense, the error propagation seems more serious.

[catch22]

I'm using macOS for development (but have been using the gnubin workaround).

[cbm755]

I should have said "... and developers on macOS would be able to figure out workarounds."

Assigning to you b/c I don't know anything about macOS.

[mtmiller]

Yeah, agree that the bigger issue seems to be the error being suppressed. If macOS users can do make dist TAR=gtar for it to work, then the main issue would be ensuring that make sees the error if it fails.

[apjanke]

If macOS users can do make dist TAR=gtar for it to work

This makes it a little harder to automate testing. What if we wanted to write a script that cloned and did make dist for all Octave Forge repos, to make sure they're building? Do we assume that GNU tar is required for all Forge packages, and pass TAR=gtar for everything when building on macOS?

Here's a patch that will both enable the TAR=gtar workaround and automatically pick up GNU tar on BSD systems where it is installed as gtar. #218

In some sense, the error propagation seems more serious.

I agree.

I believe the error suppression is due to the use of the pipeline, which only returns the exit status of the last command in the pipeline.

[octave-doctest] $ echo foo | false | true
[octave-doctest] $ echo $?
0

I think you'll need to check $PIPESTATUS to get the error to propagate. Or replace the pipeline with a multi-step operation that uses temporary files.

[cbm755]

Would it be enough to pull the gzip bit off of the pipeline? Its the last element so... so would tar then fail?

Then we could have a separate gzip target that gzips's the result.

Just thinking out loud, most of this is beyond my meager Makefile abilities.

[apjanke]

Would it be enough to pull the gzip bit off of the pipeline? Its the last element so... so would tar then fail?

Yes.