Nondeterministic compilation. Sometimes fails, sometimes succeeds.

[mmiecz]

I am trying to compile some example program from Cursive on macOS 10.12.1 with
cargo 0.16.0-nightly (ddb5c32 2016-12-16) and I am having some problems.
I am using macos branch from Cursive project, and I've declared this in my Cargo.toml file like this:

[dependencies.cursive]
git = "https://github.com/gyscos/Cursive"
branch = "macos"

When I try to build with cargo build sometimes compilation is successful, and sometimes not. Here is my output:

MacBook-Air-Micha:terminal-tests mhl$ cargo clean
MacBook-Air-Micha:terminal-tests mhl$ cargo build
   Compiling unicode-segmentation v0.1.3
   Compiling cursive v0.3.5 (https://github.com/gyscos/Cursive?branch=macos#451d0522)
   Compiling odds v0.2.25
   Compiling libc v0.2.18
   Compiling unicode-width v0.1.3
   Compiling rustc-serialize v0.3.22
   Compiling ncurses v5.84.0
   Compiling toml v0.2.1
   Compiling terminal-tests v0.1.0 (file:///Users/mhl/Sources/terminal-tests)
error: linking with `cc` failed: exit code: 1
  |
  = note: "cc" "-m64" "-L" "/Users/mhl/.rustup/toolchains/nightly-x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/rustlib/x86_64-apple-darwin/lib" "/Users/mhl/Sources/terminal-tests/target/debug/deps/terminal_tests-d163a702128509ba.0.o" "-o" "/Users/mhl/Sources/terminal-tests/target/debug/deps/terminal_tests-d163a702128509ba" "-Wl,-dead_strip" "-nodefaultlibs" "-L" "/Users/mhl/Sources/terminal-tests/target/debug/deps" "-L" "/Users/mhl/.rustup/toolchains/nightly-x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/rustlib/x86_64-apple-darwin/lib" "/Users/mhl/Sources/terminal-tests/target/debug/deps/libcursive-589ffaec46642e7b.rlib" "/Users/mhl/Sources/terminal-tests/target/debug/deps/libunicode_segmentation-1400e9f38485b222.rlib" "/Users/mhl/Sources/terminal-tests/target/debug/deps/libncurses-64b8ed169553261c.rlib" "/Users/mhl/Sources/terminal-tests/target/debug/deps/libtoml-5130c1b472bb88f9.rlib" "/Users/mhl/Sources/terminal-tests/target/debug/deps/libunicode_width-a8b627b65c290dac.rlib" "/Users/mhl/Sources/terminal-tests/target/debug/deps/liblibc-73c6422e7b19c2f3.rlib" "/Users/mhl/Sources/terminal-tests/target/debug/deps/librustc_serialize-03b62901d97343ea.rlib" "/Users/mhl/Sources/terminal-tests/target/debug/deps/libodds-798c90752ba21e6f.rlib" "/Users/mhl/.rustup/toolchains/nightly-x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/rustlib/x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/libstd-713ad88203512705.rlib" "/Users/mhl/.rustup/toolchains/nightly-x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/rustlib/x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/libpanic_unwind-8db31eff4f3f5d1c.rlib" "/Users/mhl/.rustup/toolchains/nightly-x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/rustlib/x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/libunwind-9d903f075d9d1ed3.rlib" "/Users/mhl/.rustup/toolchains/nightly-x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/rustlib/x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/librand-15da1025aec585ac.rlib" "/Users/mhl/.rustup/toolchains/nightly-x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/rustlib/x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/libcollections-eba7f19f0aae5f37.rlib" "/Users/mhl/.rustup/toolchains/nightly-x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/rustlib/x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/liballoc-0fa051c7d0594505.rlib" "/Users/mhl/.rustup/toolchains/nightly-x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/rustlib/x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/liballoc_jemalloc-9dddbb08233542f3.rlib" "/Users/mhl/.rustup/toolchains/nightly-x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/rustlib/x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/liblibc-72ccf8e77ba91924.rlib" "/Users/mhl/.rustup/toolchains/nightly-x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/rustlib/x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/libstd_unicode-d3fcdc16d2a25b3a.rlib" "/Users/mhl/.rustup/toolchains/nightly-x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/rustlib/x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/libcore-407db9a296a50c43.rlib" "/Users/mhl/.rustup/toolchains/nightly-x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/rustlib/x86_64-apple-darwin/lib/libcompiler_builtins-dfc954c33c85abed.rlib" "-l" "ncursesw" "-l" "System" "-l" "pthread" "-l" "c" "-l" "m"
  = note: ld: library not found for -lncursesw
clang: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)


error: aborting due to previous error

error: Could not compile `terminal-tests`.

To learn more, run the command again with --verbose.
MacBook-Air-Micha:terminal-tests mhl$ cargo build
   Compiling ncurses v5.84.0
   Compiling cursive v0.3.5 (https://github.com/gyscos/Cursive?branch=macos#451d0522)
   Compiling terminal-tests v0.1.0 (file:///Users/mhl/Sources/terminal-tests)
    Finished debug [unoptimized + debuginfo] target(s) in 6.41 secs

I can type cargo build couple of times, and cursive v0.3.5 would be recompiled every time, sometimes failing like I've shown before, sometimes being successful.
When completion is reported as successful I am able to run resulting binary without any problems.

[alexcrichton]

I debugged this a bit and found it was related to the feature set of a crate changing. This I suspect is due to target-specific features being used which in turn makes me think that this is a dupe of #2524. I haven't seen the nondeterministic behavior here before, though, so that's good to know!

For now I'm going to close this in favor of #2524, but I'll give that issue another stab at fixing.