Sunday, January 8, 2012

Leap second, again

News: There will be another leap second on 23:59:60UTC 31-JUN-2012.

Nevertheless, I quitted supporting leap second on the time zone file at home last year on December 2011, which had been introduced for more than 12 years. Reason: I gain very little while I lose quite a lot by setting the system time based on TAI.

I think POSIX should have defined the timezone functions to handle leap seconds properly, by setting the TAI-based monotonically-increasing value to the local clock, and by correcting the difference between UTC and TAI with the timezone file. But POSIX doesn't. So TAI-based local time is not interchangeable. Most applications assume the value of time_t represents UTC without the leap seconds, which is not the case when the local clock is set based on TAI.

I suspect that many sysadmins are not really aware of the leap seconds, unfortunately, including those provide NTP services. I've experienced one of the upper-stratum NTP servers of my ISP did not synchronize on 1-JAN-2009, when the last leap second was added.

Very few language systems can explicitly handle leap seconds either. For example, I had to post a patch for Erlang for handling TAI. (Fixed on Erlang/OTP R13A and later.)

So you should be very careful on the de-synchronization of your machine's local clocks on June 30th or July 1st this year on 2012.

Useful links:

(Correction 8-JAN-2012: gmtime() was ambiguous. Corrected to time_t.)

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Preparing FreeBSD Port of Erlang/OTP

Updating an Erlang/OTP Port (files under the Ports tree) for FreeBSD is not a complicated task, with the latest pieces of the Port files. You can find out the latest pieces at the FreeBSD CVSweb page for Erlang Port.

You need to do the following things:

Updating the source file names

The following parts of the main Makefile must be modified to specify the related source file names (in a unified diff-like format):

    -PORTVERSION=   r14b04
    +PORTVERSION=   r15b

    -DISTNAME=      otp_src_R14B04
    +DISTNAME=      otp_src_R15B

    -ERLANG_MAN=    otp_doc_man_R14B04.tar.gz
    +ERLANG_MAN=    otp_doc_man_R15B.tar.gz

    -ERLANG_DOCS=   otp_doc_html_R14B04.tar.gz
    +ERLANG_DOCS=   otp_doc_html_R15B.tar.gz

Preparing the library list

Makefile.lib must be supplied to provide all the version numbers of the OTP library modules.

To extract the version number, use the following shell command:

    (cd work/otp_src_VERSION; \
     find . -name vsn.mk -print | xargs grep VSN) \
     > OTP-vsnlist.txt

The content of OTP-vsnlist.txt will be something like this:

    ./erts/vsn.mk:VSN = 5.9
    ./erts/vsn.mk:SYSTEM_VSN = R15B
    ./lib/appmon/vsn.mk:APPMON_VSN = 2.1.14
    ./lib/asn1/vsn.mk:ASN1_VSN = 1.6.19
    ./lib/common_test/vsn.mk:COMMON_TEST_VSN = 1.6
    ./lib/compiler/vsn.mk:COMPILER_VSN = 4.8
    ./lib/cosEvent/vsn.mk:COSEVENT_VSN = 2.1.12
    ./lib/cosEventDomain/vsn.mk:COSEVENTDOMAIN_VSN = 1.1.12
    ./lib/cosFileTransfer/vsn.mk:COSFILETRANSFER_VSN = 1.1.13
    ./lib/cosNotification/vsn.mk:COSNOTIFICATION_VSN = 1.1.18
    [...]
    ./lib/wx/vsn.mk:WX_VSN = 0.99.1
    ./lib/xmerl/vsn.mk:XMERL_VSN = 1.3

You have to manually edit the Makefile.lib with the content of OTP-vsnlist.txt. The format of Makefile.lib is (beware that the last line has no backslash):

    ERTS_VSN=       5.9
    TOOLS_VSN=      2.6.6.6
    OTP_LIBS=       appmon-2.1.14 \
                    asn1-1.6.19 \
                    common_test-1.6 \
                    compiler-4.8 \
                    cosEvent-2.1.12 \
                    cosEventDomain-1.1.12 \
                    cosFileTransfer-1.1.13 \
                    cosNotification-1.1.18 \
                    [...]
                    wx-0.99.1 \
                    xmerl-1.3

The contents of Makefile.lib is a set of Makefile variables, so all the module names must be listed with the backslash character. (Note: ERTS_VSN is no longer needed, but I will include it here just FYI.)

Preparing the man file list

Makefile.man must be supplied to provide all the version numbers of the OTP library modules.

To extract the man filenames, use the following shell command:

    tar ztf /usr/ports/distfiles/erlang/otp_doc_man_VERSION.tar.gz | \
    sort | awk '{FS="/"; print $3;}' > OTP-manlist.txt

You have to manually edit the Makefile.man with the content of OTP-manlist.txt. For OTP R15B, Makefile.man only needs man sections 1, 3, 4, and 6, so man section 7 must not be included.

The content of OTP-manlist.txt will be something like this:

COPYRIGHT
PR.template
README

man1/
man1/ct_run.1
man1/diameter_compile.1
man1/epmd.1
man1/erl.1
man1/erl_call.1
man1/erlc.1
[...]
man7/SNMP-VIEW-BASED-ACM-MIB.7
man7/SNMPv2-MIB.7
man7/SNMPv2-TM.7
man7/STANDARD-MIB.7
man7/TRANSPORT-ADDRESS-MIB.7

You have to manually edit the Makefile.man with the content of OTP-manlist.txt. The format of Makefile.man is (beware that the last line of each section has no backslash):

    MAN1=   ct_run.1 \
            diameter_compile.1 \
            epmd.1 \
            erl.1 \
            erl_call.1 \
            erlc.1 \
            erlsrv.1 \
            escript.1 \
            run_erl.1 \
            snmpc.1 \
            [...]
            start_webtool.1 \
            werl.1

    MAN3=   CosEventChannelAdmin.3 \
            CosEventChannelAdmin_ConsumerAdmin.3 \
            [...]
            zlib.3 \
            zlib_stub.3

    MAN4=   app.4 \
            appup.4 \
            [...]
            relup.4 \
            script.4

    MAN6=   common_test.6 \
            crypto.6 \
            [...]
            stdlib.6 \
            test_server.6

The contents of Makefile.man is a set of Makefile variables, so all the man file names must be listed with the backslash character.

Removing/editing/adding patches

FreeBSD-specific patch files are provided under the Port directory files. You need to remove the obsolete patches first, by make patch. You should edit the existing ones and add the new ones as well.

The naming convention of the patch file is:

    patch-lib_et_src_et__gs__contents__viewer.erl

for

    lib/et/src/et_gs_contents_viewer.erl

(Conversion of / -> _ and _ -> __ is needed.)

Updating the checksum file

make makesum is the convenient way to update the distinfo checksum data.

Preparing the package list

New binary files are occasionally added in the OTP distributions. The pkg-plist file must be updated as well.

Test building

The building process will be like this (note the umask 022):

    # I use zsh, but use whatever you want
    # as root
    sudo zsh
    umask 022
    make fetch
    exit
    # as your own account
    umask 022
    make
    # as root
    sudo zsh
    umask 022
    make deinstall && make reinstall
    exit

(Note added 5-MAR-2012: I've posted a send-pr (ports/163711) to FreeBSD issue tracker system on 30-DEC-2011. I've made an Evernote page for the port tar.gz archive.)

References