[Pkg-electronics-devel] Bug#1103543: Collision of return codes by GHDL backend switching script

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

[Paebbels 2026-04-18]
> Why don't you use alternatives to switch between variants?
> Wasn't it created exactly for that usecase?
> 
> Is there really an overwhelming usecase of constantly switching GHDL
> backende and even operating multiple backends in parallel (for regular
> users), which justifies such a performance penalty?

Note, I am just a drive by debian developer interested in GHDL, so do
not take my comments as gospel.  I thus can not explain what the
author of the wrapper script thought at the time, but I can look at
the git history of the script (git log -- debian/ghdl.wrapper):

commit f43ae0f8a56c012a7da57fc8c7408f58de7c26e1
Author: Nicolas Boulenguez <nicolas at debian.org>
Date:   Wed Dec 14 13:48:00 2022 +0100

    Install the usr/bin/ghdl wrapper with dh_install directly

commit d42537bf8a64365a874446e8772fd74bf094c90f
Author: Andreas Bombe <aeb at debian.org>
Date:   Wed Jul 24 18:10:20 2024 +0900

    Revert back to debian/3.0.0+dfsg2-1
    
    Restore a clean state as reverting individual commits in the series
    creates massive conflicts that would take too long to resolve.

commit 201a83a5188db826793604066f7b3461128b3899
Author: Nicolas Boulenguez <nicolas at debian.org>
Date:   Wed Dec 14 13:48:00 2022 +0100

    Install the usr/bin/ghdl wrapper with dh_install directly

commit e8833d4e1ef4688eda68322d889e6acf3d244712
Author: Jonathan McDowell <noodles at earth.li>
Date:   Mon Apr 6 11:30:06 2020 +0100

    Update wrapper for newer releases. Thanks to Pavel Pisa (Closes: #930890)

commit 895f335df5736ea1714b576f1811831cfd045116
Author: Andreas Bombe <aeb at debian.org>
Date:   Sat Aug 4 00:56:39 2018 +0800

    Change error message in ghdl wrapper
    
    Make the error message in case no ghdl executable is found less
    ambiguous and confusing.

commit 6d3a3dfe2af4d94162f0c921611b16832b8fdde2
Author: Andreas Bombe <aeb at debian.org>
Date:   Sun Jan 14 20:53:34 2018 +0100

    New Debianization of ghdl

The referred <URL: https://bugs.debian.org/930890 > is a confusing
read, but apparently the wrapper script interact with the build in
interesting ways too.  The commits do not explain why the alternative
system was not used, or if it was considered.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this, but suspect the decisions
were made by people no longer active with ghdl, and thus no-one around
can answer your questions.  I do not know ghdl enough to know how
often it make sense to be able for a user to change backend.  Using
the alternative system would place the decision in the hands of those
with root access, while using the environment variable allow each
non-root user to decide for themselves which backend to use.  I guess
that might make sense i an multiuser setup.  Apparently the script has
been around for eight years now.

As the concrete issue reported in this issue seem to be the 'exit 2'
part of the script, and you seem to know something about exit codes
from ghdl, can you perhaps propose a better exit code to use in this
wrapper script?

-- 
Happy hacking
Petter Reinholdtsen