portupgrade/ruby issue? (Stale lock file was found. Removed.)

[Lowell Gilbert]

Robert Huff <roberthuff at rcn.com> writes:

> Lowell Gilbert writes:
>>  >>  > After recent massive ports update (I think ruby was touch and
>>  >>  > probably portupgrade too) I started getting seemingly sporadic "Stale
>>  >>  > lock file was found. Removed." messages. What's interesting is that
>>  >>  > those messages are produced on stdout, not stderr.
>>  >>  
>>  >>  Got the same on five 7-Stable Machines.
>>  >
>>  > 	And on -Current from April.  So, not a function of the OS version.
>>  > 	Mine happens every time I run portupgrade/portversion, even
>>  > when prior runs completed successfully.
>>  > 	It seems harmless, but it would be Really Nice if it were
>>  > fixed.
>>  
>>  Not *completely* harmless; running separate portupgrade processes
>>  in parallel is pretty risky at the moment...
>
> 	When was it officually cleared to do that?  Last I knew it was
> "do at your own risk".

I don't think it was ever officially supported, but it was the purpose
behind adding the lock files in the first place.  I've never used it
heavily, although I did put it through a fairly heavy wringer when it
was under development.

For "real" use, I've found it convenient when building an upgrade to a
particularly large port (generally OpenOffice) while upgrading a large
number of other ports as well.  I don't worry about it being foolproof,
because my build server has nothing fundamentally valuable on it.  But
at the moment, the locking seems to be completely broken, which raises
it to a whole other level of risk that I can't be bothered to mess
with.  [Not that I generally care how long port builds take; that's
computer time, not human time.]

 - Lowell