[Buildroot] [PATCH] support/testing/run-tests: unbreak on Debian testing/unstable

Peter Korsgaard
2026-03-01T13:46:24Z

Commit 3d2141bcee("support/testing/run-tests: specify multiprocessing
method") added a call to multiprocessing.set_start_method('fork') as a
workaround for python 3.14, which changed the default start method to
forkserver - Which is incompatible with the nose2 setup.

multiprocessing.set_start_method() is only supposed to be called a maximum
of 1 time per process and throws a RuntimeError if called more than that
(even with the same arguments):

>>> import multiprocessing
>>> multiprocessing.set_start_method('fork')
>>> multiprocessing.set_start_method('fork')
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<python-input-2>", line 1, in <module>
multiprocessing.set_start_method('fork')
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^
File "/usr/lib/python3.13/multiprocessing/context.py", line 247, in set_start_method
raise RuntimeError('context has already been set')

Debian included a similar patch in python3-nose2 0.51.1-2 (currently in
testing/unstable) which adds its own call to set_start_method():

https://salsa.debian.org/python-team/packages/nose2/-/blob/debian/0.15.1-2/debian/patches/0004-plugins-mp-set-context-to-fork-for-Python-3.14-mp-AP.patch?ref_type=tags

Which comes from:
https://github.com/nose-devs/nose2/pull/644

As discussed in the upstream PR, this is not a correct fix is wrong and
breaks various use cases. An issue has been opened to get this fixed in the
Debian packaging at:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1129350

But until that is done, rework the patch to:

- Only override set_start_method() if needed to limit impact
- Monkey patch set_start_method() so additional calls are ignored

To unbreak run-test on affected Debian systems and add some documentation to
make it clear why this is done.

Signed-off-by: Peter Korsgaard <peter@korsgaard.com>
---
support/testing/run-tests | 12 +++++++++++-
1 file changed, 11 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/support/testing/run-tests b/support/testing/run-tests
index 1c4d2b4a85..2bbe7b140f 100755
--- a/support/testing/run-tests
+++ b/support/testing/run-tests
@@ -142,5 +142,15 @@ def main():

if __name__ == "__main__":
- multiprocessing.set_start_method("fork")
+ # python 3.14 changed default start method from fork to
+ # fork-server, which is not compatible with the nose2 setup
+ if multiprocessing.get_start_method() != 'fork':
+ multiprocessing.set_start_method("fork")
+ # set_start_method throws a RuntimeError if called more than
+ # once.
+ # Debian python3-nose2 0.15.1-2 includes a patch adding
+ # another set_start_method() call, so monkey patch it out to
+ # get rid of this
+ multiprocessing.set_start_method = lambda *args: None
+
sys.exit(main())
--
2.47.3