Re: VMS and Unix pathnames

On Aug 24, 2009, at 5:12 AM, Nicholas Clark wrote:

> Currently the core uses File::Spec inside the test running script, t/ 
> TEST,
> that VMS uses. If I understand perlvms.pod correctly, perl on VMS can
> understand Unix-like pathnames directly.
>
> I'd like to remove File::Spec from t/TEST, as it's something complex  
> run too
> early in testing. Would the appended change work on VMS?

Yes.  The embedded patch was mangled, but I've tried out the t/TEST  
attached in a later message in this thread with a fairly recent blead  
and got:

Failed 8 tests out of 1613, 99.50% okay.
         ../ext/IO/t/io_tell.t
         ../ext/Time-HiRes/t/HiRes.t
         ../lib/Module/Build/t/debug.t
         ../lib/base/t/fields-5.6.0.t
         ../lib/base/t/fields-5.8.0.t
         io/errno.t
         op/ref.t
         pod/diag.t


The ones that didn't fail before the patch were:

         ../ext/IO/t/io_tell.t
         ../lib/base/t/fields-5.6.0.t
         ../lib/base/t/fields-5.8.0.t

The first one actually succeeded and the other two were skipped before  
the patch (probably something to do with locating a file called  
'Makefile').  The ones that were skipped before but fail now have code  
that looks like:

if( $] >= 5.009 ) {
     print "1..0 # skip pseudo-hashes removed in 5.9.0\n";
     exit;
}

so it is truly bizarre that these are now run under a perl that thinks  
it is:

$ perl -v

This is perl, v5.11.0 (GitLive-blead-1923-g45ec913*) built for  
VMS_IA64-ithread
...
$ perl -e "print $]"
5.011000


And it's even a bit strange that these tests are still in the  
repository for something that's reporting itself as 5.11.x, i.e., why  
drag around tests that have been skipped since before 5.10.0?

But the bottom line is, get the t/TEST change into blead -- it doesn't  
significantly change the number of minor mysteries that need  
investigating and fixing.




________________________________________
Craig A. Berry
mailto:[email protected]

"... getting out of a sonnet is much more
  difficult than getting in."
                  Brad Leithauser