Hi,
i can't replicate this
This is a long answer, so please bear with me. Bizarrely, I couldn't either, at first. I ran the same .tex file 100 times, and got the same result. Not good for my self-confidence. I then ran the test 20 times on a subset of 500 files over night. The tests are run from a Makefile. Ten of the tests runs run with six parallel jobs (make -j6), the other ten run strictly sequentially (make -j1). All the tests are run once by each invocation of make. There are a total of 20 sequential invocations of make. This garantees that the same .tex file is not processed more than once at any given time. loop 10 times Run make -j6 with a new --result directory make makes each target Run make -j1 with a new --result directory make makes each target Finally I compare consequtive runs. Now I have som statistics gathered from the logfile directories. Runs are numbered 11 to 20. j1/diffs/11-12: 66 / 85 / 487 j1/diffs/12-13: 2 / 28 / 487 j1/diffs/13-14: 2 / 29 / 487 j1/diffs/14-15: 1 / 25 / 487 j1/diffs/15-16: 42 / 66 / 487 j1/diffs/16-17: 104 / 123 / 487 j1/diffs/17-18: 109 / 129 / 487 j1/diffs/18-19: 112 / 129 / 487 j6/diffs/11-12: 122 / 139 / 486 j6/diffs/12-13: 68 / 87 / 486 j6/diffs/13-14: 4 / 29 / 486 j6/diffs/14-15: 4 / 28 / 486 j6/diffs/15-16: 41 / 66 / 486 j6/diffs/16-17: 100 / 122 / 486 j6/diffs/17-18: 63 / 86 / 486 j6/diffs/18-19: 2 / 29 / 486 j6/diffs/19-20: 43 / 66 / 487 Th first line shows that there are - 66 diff files containing the string "<006600" - 85 non-empty diff files - 487 diff files in total From line 4 we see that it is possible to run 487 tests to completion, and only get a single error. (There are 13 files that consistently do not generate any output) This may explain why you could not replicate the error. Try running the same file lots of times. The different number of diff files (486 vs 487) is because of epdf/merge-002.pdf, which depends on epdf/merge-001.pdf, which is sometimes there, sometimes not, depending on make order. Running make -j6 is not a problem, something that I suspected after my initial failure to replicate the error.
(you can send me a test off-list)
Do you want some of my log files, or the Makefiles I use to run the tests? (The complete set of log files are way beyond my 1 Mbit upload speed.) Cheers /Lars