Re: [OE-core] [PATCH] sstate: Add fallback when hardlink fails

[Richard Purdie <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Wed, 2026-04-15 at 10:58 +0200, Michael Arndt via lists.openembedded.org wrote:
> Previously the sstate didn't work on file systems that don't support hardlinks.
> For example when using WebDAV to share the sstate. This change avoids the
> problem by adding a fallback in case the hardlink fails.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Michael Arndt <michael@rndt.dev>
> ---
>  meta/classes-global/sstate.bbclass | 12 ++++++++++--
>  1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

The change makes it unconditionally overwrite the file in the case of
any failure. This totally breaks the point of the existing code :(.

The challenge is that the sstate directory is shared, so two builds can
write to the same file at the same time. Our policy is "first wins" and
anything later is just skipped. The code also needs to make sure that
if the sstate file is written, the paired signature matches.

I appreciate the issue you're trying to solve but this isn't the right
fix. Generic try/except cases are almost always a red flag in general.

Cheers,

Richard