script plugin, i386, Ubuntu and a crazy regression

[Steve Langasek]

Hi folks,

In Ubuntu 13.04, which ships with plymouth 0.8.8 and by default uses a theme
that uses the script plugin, we are seeing reports that text labels are not
displayed on x86 (32-bit).  Previous releases that used plymouth 0.8.4 did
not have this problem.

  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/plymouth/+bug/1187318

I've tracked this regression down to a single commit upstream,
3f8bd998dcc6d592ffd5d3aefad06f0bbf28a725, which adds a single line of
initialization code to the script plugin's math library:

 srand ((int) ply_get_timestamp ());

It is utterly bewildering that this line has a side effect of causing text
to not be displayed.

Worse, it's not the srand() call that triggers it... if I just call
ply_get_timestamp() and discard the result, the problem is still
reproducible.

If I create a static local function that does the same thing as
ply_get_timestamp(), and call that instead, the bug does not trigger.

Has anyone seen such such behavior on other distributions?  Anyone have any
insight into what mysterious side effects of ply_get_timestamp() - but only
when called as a library function - are breaking display of strings via
pango?

Thanks,
-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org
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