Re: "make check" changes have caused buildfarm deterioration.

On Tue, Jul 21, 2015 at 6:17 AM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> Andrew Dunstan <andrew.dunstan@pgexperts.com> writes:
>> Somewhere along the way some changes to the way we do "make check" have
>> caused a significant deterioration in the buildfarm's logging. Compare
>> these two from animal crake, which happens to be my test instance:
>> <http://www.pgbuildfarm.org/cgi-bin/show_stage_log.pl?nm=crake&dt=2015-07-20%2013%3A09%3A02&stg=check>
>> and
>> <http://www.pgbuildfarm.org/cgi-bin/show_stage_log.pl?nm=crake&dt=2015-07-20%2017%3A23%3A08&stg=check>
>
> Yeah, I've been bitching about the poor logging for awhile, but I had
> not realized that it's still working as-expected in the back branches.
>
> Comparing different branches, it looks like "somewhere along the way"
> means "between 9.4 and 9.5".  I suspect that commit dcae5faccab64776, or
> perhaps the followon dbf2ec1a1c053379, is to blame.

Regarding install.log, the use of stdout/stderr instead of a log file
has been changed in dbf2ec1a after that:
http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/553FE7FC.2040707@gmx.net
Since 9.5 as the location of the temporary installation is global, we
could basically revert some parts of dcae5fac if that helps so as
install.log is saved in $ROOT/tmp_install/log/install.log... But I am
not sure what we win with that, and the argument to remove install.log
is that now the temporary installation is a make target. Both ways
have advantages and disadvantages.

Regarding initdb.log and postmaster.log, this is definitely a bug.
Those have been moved by dcae5fa from log/ to tmp_check/log/,
tmp_check/ getting removed at the end of pg_regress if there are no
failures counted. Both files will be saved in log/ at the location
pg_regress is called using outputdir whose default is ".". This way
behavior is similar to ~9.4. Attached is a patch to fix this for 9.5
and master.
Regards,
--
Michael