Re: macOS Monterey vs pkg_install (+ patch review)

[Jonathan Perkin <jperkin%joyent.com@localhost>]

* On 2021-11-01 at 20:03 GMT, Jonathan Perkin wrote:

> For anyone using my binary package sets, and anyone using their own 
> pkgsrc installs on macOS Monterey, note that there is an issue when 
> upgrading pkg_install where it will intermittently fail and result in 
> a broken installation.
>
> I would strongly recommend avoiding upgrading to this OS, at least if 
> pkgsrc is important to you, until we can figure out what the latest 
> Apple breakage du jour is (looks highly likely to be VM related 
> again).

I've now applied a patch to my macOS builds to work around this vfork() 
issue, and updated pkg_install packages are now available.

Unfortunately this is a chicken-and-egg scenario, and until pkg_install 
is upgraded you may hit the bug.  The recommended upgrade path is:

  $ pkgin -d upgrade
  $ pkg_add -U /var/db/pkgin/cache/pkg_install-20211021.tgz

If this part fails you'll need to reinstall pkg_install by hand:

  $ cd $(mktemp -d)
  $ tar zxf /var/db/pkgin/cache/pkg_install-20211021.tgz
  $ tar zxf pkg_install-20211021.tmp.tgz
  $ ./sbin/pkg_add -U /var/db/pkgin/cache/pkg_install-20211021.tgz

Once pkg_install is upgraded, you can finally issue:

  $ pkgin upgrade

Obviously if you hit any issues whatsoever please let me know ASAP.

The patch I've applied to my macOS branch is here:

  https://github.com/joyent/pkgsrc/commit/9935bf7215ccee55b1ef3dbfa8415732f53146df

which has a couple of updates compared to the original one I posted, and 
makes it a little easier to switch other platforms over to posix_spawn() 
should we want to do that (I already tested it on SmartOS successfully).

Please review and I'll get this in soon.

Thanks,

--
Jonathan Perkin  -  Joyent, Inc.  -  www.joyent.com