[OE-core] [RFC][PATCH] Resolve an issue when using pipes to process data

[Richard Purdie]

On Tue, 2016-02-09 at 09:41 -0600, Mark Hatle wrote:
> I'm sending this as an RFC.  I know the patch works, but I think it
> highlights
> a potentially larger issue in the system.
> 
> If we're processing data using shell pipes, the return code of a
> failed
> process may end up being lost -- avoiding the regular error capture
> when
> bitbake runs a task.
> 
> In this particular case, while working to fix a bug in pseudo we made
> an
> error condition fatal (triggered an abort()), but buildhistory kept
> on
> processing ignoring any issues had occurred.
> 
> Breaking up the processing into steps, things that 'could fail', and
> later
> processing steps that shouldn't fail will give us more of an
> opportunity to
> identify failures in the future and deal with them in a quicker
> manner,
> then having to investigate log files for messages.
> 
> I'm suspecting we should run a janitor exercise against oe-core
> looking for
> similar situations where we might be piping the data and potentially
> losing
> return codes in the process.

We do also have a problem with this specific patch since it causes
setscene failures for certain "restore from sstate" secnarios where
pseudo-native might not be available yet it could try and execute it.

Currently it silently fails, which is obviously bad, but breaking the
builds completely is worse.

I've not looked into the details yet but I can't take the patch as is.

Cheers,

Richard