Re: [PATCH] testsuite quick fixes

On Sun, 4 Aug 2002, Richard Clamp wrote:

> On Sat, Aug 03, 2002 at 04:01:58PM -0400, Garth Sainio wrote:
> > On Sat, 3 Aug 2002, Richard Clamp wrote:
> > 
> > > More progress.  perl -e is still segfaulting, but that's just
> > > happening within the call to mktemp that the -e causes so I think
> > > that's an easy thing to fix.
> > 
> > If you pass the -fwritable-strings to gcc that seems to solve the
> 
> Excellent news.  I think I was kicking an inverse solution by using
> strdup to make a locally writable copy.  I didn't realise I could have
> the compiler do it for me, but now I do I much refer your solution
> since it's a much smaller change.

Without looking at the code in question, I suspect that the strdup() fix
is the right one.  Not everyone has gcc.

> This does raise a side issue, backporting some of the perl5 hints
> system would help with this in a "it's linux, so it must be gcc and
> -fwritable-strings" way.  I'll take a look at this tomorrow if people
> think this is worthwhile (or don't object too loudly).

If you take a modern metaconfig and just point it at perl1, it'll
automatically generate a modern Configure that will understand hints.
None of this would add to perl1 "bloat" -- just ease the Configure and
build process.  Some changes to perl1 source would be required to use the
"new" symbol names/conventions introduced to Configure over the past
decade or so, but it'd probably be worth it.

Alas, the metaconfig used to generate perl is maintained in the perforce
repository.  I'm currently checking those units out and revising some of
the instructions to hand back to Hugo for 5.9.0.  When that's done, I can
also make those units available if people would be interested.

For now, the latest units you can get from CPAN are probably the ones in
my CPAN directory. See Porting/pumpkin.pod in any recent perl5 for how to
obtain metaconfig units.

-- 
    Andy Dougherty		[email protected]
    Dept. of Physics
    Lafayette College, Easton PA 18042