RE: Where do I report this bug?

On Fri, 04 Jun 2010, Curtis Jewell wrote:
> 
> Here's the deal: The perl interpreter's build process is not copying the
> pod2* files over, apparently. They're not in perl/lib/.packlist.
> 
> If Pod::Text did not need updated, (which installs updated versions of
> the pod2* scripts, then creates pod2*.bat files from them) then we have
> the conditions for this bug.  Strawberry Perl's build process checks for
> any "dual-life" distributions that need updated, so 5.10.x versions of
> Strawberry Perl won't have this bug, but 5.12.x versions will.
> 
> "cpan> force install Pod::Text" should fix the problem for you.

The fact that ExtUtils::MakeMaker currently installs *both* F<pod2man>
and F<pod2man.bat> is an implementation detail that should not be
replied on for the future.  Ideally it should be fixed to only install
the .bat file, the same way installperl
 
> Three things need done in the future.
> 
> 1) WORKAROUND: Strawberry should force the installation of the podlators
> dist.
> 2) Part A: p5p (the people that maintain the perl source itself) or the
> podlators maintainer (will have to ask which one of these two applies)
> needs told that this is happening so they can fix this in perl itself.
> 3) Part B: Pod::Perldoc needs updated to look for pod2*.bat.

I think 3) is the correct solution.  Ideally this should be abstracted into
some kind of module.  In ActivePerl we have ActiveState::Path module that
among other things contains find_prog() which will search the PATH for
an executable, and which knows about trying different extensions on Windows.

  http://docs.activestate.com/activeperl/5.12/lib/ActiveState/Path.html

I'm sure we could release it to CPAN, but would need to find a different
name for it.  It doesn't fit into File::Spec because that one should only
work at the string level and not actually access the file system (although
it looks this rule has already been broken with the case insensitive
filesystem patches).

Cheers,
-Jan