Comment 21 for bug 11413

Message-ID: <email address hidden>
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 14:54:05 +0000
From: Matthew Wilcox <email address hidden>
To: Jon Dowland <email address hidden>, <email address hidden>
Subject: Re: Bug#286975: apache: FTBFS - x86/testing (31mrule: command not found)

On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 02:24:21PM +0000, Jon Dowland wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 02, 2005 at 06:54:58AM +0100, Fabio Massimo Di Nitto wrote:
> > Jon, nobody has been able to reproduce this problem. Can you kindly test
> > again as we agreed?
>
> Worked out what it is, my GREP_OPTIONS environment variable contains the
> following
> GREP_OPTIONS="--colour=always"
>
> The build process is passed some colour escape characters and chokes.
> apache isn't the only program which suffers (from memory, 'at' too) and
> a great deal of software programs go haywire also.
>
> Not sure which program responsibility would lie with, but I'd guess that
> there should be no assumptions made as to user preferences for programs
> like grep, perhaps the environment variable should be ignored.

The trouble is that to fix this would require not just looking at the
manpage for grep to work out which variables to unset, but also the
manpages for every other tool that we use, looking at each variable the
user *might* set, and seeing if it could be harmful.

I don't think this is a reasonable thing for us to do.

> I note that --colour=auto makes grep selectively colour and I presume it
> only does it for interactive terminals: apache builds ok with this set.

Yes, --color=auto is a much more reasonable approach.

--
"Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon
the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those
conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse
to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince
himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep
he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception." -- Mark Twain