sthen@ finally figured out most of the problem.
Turns out python is stupid enough to store path+timestamp in its compiled
*.pyc files to know when to recompile.
Our package system doesn't look to closely at timestamps... so this explains
how *.pyc files sometimes get rebuilt, and then throw errors during pkg_delete.
The following patch is a work-around for the issue. It removes the possibility
to tie python files (recognize identical files and not re-extract them), thus
preserving the timestamps more (and making python packages more painful to
extract).
Note that this is actually a large problem. There is work being done on
speeding up updates, and if we have to store/restore timestamps along with
other stuff, this has a cost (more code and bigger packages) ! so it would
be WAYS better if python did stop doing that, which probably requires working
with upstream to make them aware of the issue.
In the meantime, people experiencing python-package deleting issues should
use the following patch. It's a large sledge-hammer, but it should make
the problem disappear, and it will probably be committed soon...
Index: OpenBSD/PkgAdd.pm
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/openbsd/cvs/src/usr.sbin/pkg_add/OpenBSD/PkgAdd.pm,v
retrieving revision 1.34
diff -u -p -r1.34 PkgAdd.pm
--- OpenBSD/PkgAdd.pm 28 Apr 2012 12:00:10 -0000 1.34
+++ OpenBSD/PkgAdd.pm 2 Nov 2012 12:12:56 -0000
@@ -84,6 +84,8 @@ sub tie_files
{
my ($self, $sha, $state) = @_;
return if $self->{link} or $self->{symlink} or $self->{nochecksum};
+ # XXX python doesn't like this, overreliance on timestamps
+ return if $self->{name} =~ m/\.py$/;
if (defined $sha->{$self->{d}->key}) {
my $tied = $sha->{$self->{d}->key};
# don't tie if there's a problem with the file
