Re: Oops - BF:Mastodon just died

[Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>]

I wrote:
> I diffed yesterday's and today's make logs from skylark, and found
> nothing interesting except this:

> ***************
> *** 605,611 ****
>           Generating POSTGRES.DEF from directory Release\postgres^M
> !         Generated 5208 symbols^M
>           Linking...^M
> --- 605,611 ----
>           Generating POSTGRES.DEF from directory Release\postgres^M
> !         Generated 5205 symbols^M
>           Linking...^M
> ***************

Looking at this a bit closer, I realize that it's coming from
gendef.pl's dumpbin usage of recent infamy.  So there are a couple
of ideas that come to mind:

* Has the buildfarm script changed recently in a way that might change
the execution PATH and thereby suck in a different version of dumpbin?
(Or even a different version of Perl?)

* Is it conceivable that dumpbin's output format has changed in a way
that confuses the bit of Perl code that's parsing it?  One idea that
comes to mind is that it contains a timestamp that just got wider ---
I remember seeing some bugs like that when the value of Unix time_t
reached 1 billion and became 9 instead of 8 digits.

Neither of these sound very plausible, but it seems the next step for
investigation is to look closely at what's happening in gendef.pl.

			regards, tom lane