---
id: "bug-1719"
status: "fixed"
status_updated: "2026-09-24"
status_note: ""
component: "build"
severity: "unknown"
timestamp: "2026-08-26T17:14:00Z"
last_seen: "2026-09-19T09:00:00Z"
occurrences: 1
files: ["src/tools/xce-build.sh"]
tags: ["xce-build.sh", "incremental", "build-dir-clobber", "scheduler", "controller", "xce-test-rc-file", "task-3.3"]
related: []
legacy: true
---

# bug-1719: resource-value-verification skill's deployment failed: 'controller binary missing' immediately…

## Description
resource-value-verification skill's deployment failed: 'controller binary missing' immediately after a scheduler-only xce-build.sh run that had just succeeded

## Environment
_Not recorded (migrated from buglog.json)._

## Reproduction
_Not recorded (migrated from buglog.json)._

## Root cause
During xce-test-rc-file task 3.3 (compatibility verification, no product-code change), ran `nix develop ./src --command bash src/tools/xce-build.sh scheduler` (no --incremental) to fill a gap where xce.build/scheduler/xce_scheduler had never been linked. xce-build.sh's documented default behavior (see its own top-of-file comment) does a full `rm -rf "$BUILD_DIR"` + fresh `meson setup` on every invocation unless --incremental is passed, then `meson compile` only rebuilds the ONE requested component -- so the plain `scheduler` invocation silently wiped xce.build/controller/xce_controller and xce.build/controller/xce_test (built moments earlier by task 3.1/3.2's controller build, containing the rc-file feature under test) even though I never touched controller source. A prior attempt in the same session had additionally passed an explicit build_dir arg (`src/xce.build`) which -- combined with xce-build.sh's own internal cd into src/ -- produced a bogus nested `src/src/xce.build` directory instead of reusing the real one (harmless, fully gitignored via meson's own auto-generated per-builddir `.gitignore: *`, but wasted a build cycle and caused brief confusion investigating why `git status`/`git check-ignore` showed nothing for it).

## Fix
Rebuilt controller incrementally (`xce-build.sh controller asan xce.build --incremental`) to restore xce_controller/xce_test alongside the already-built scheduler, without wiping it back out. Confirmed both controller_unit_test (1213 Tests 0 Failures -- even bug-1561's usually-flaky 2 tests passed clean this run) and the scheduler suite (53/54, only the pre-existing tracked bug-1560 symlink-escape failure) came back healthy. General lesson for any task that needs a SECOND component built into an ALREADY-built xce.build dir: always pass --incremental, and never pass an explicit build_dir positional unless it already matches xce-build.sh's own default relative-path resolution (omit the 3rd arg and let it default to 'xce.build' resolved from src/tools/xce-build.sh's own cwd, don't hand it a repo-root-relative 'src/xce.build' path).

## Verification
_Not recorded (migrated from buglog.json)._

## References
_Not recorded (migrated from buglog.json)._