This Week on perl5-porters (10-16 November 2003)

This Week on perl5-porters (10-16 November 2003)
  For some reason, (maybe the approach of mod_perl 2), one of the main
  topics this week was interpreter cloning and the problems it may cause.
  But the release of perl 5.6.2 is an event that is not to be neglected.
  Read on.

5.6.2
  The latest episode in our maintenance series is perl 5.6.2, which was
  released saturday. After the RC1 last week, some remaining bugs were
  shaken out, and some of them solved. The announcement on P5P is here :

      http://xrl.us/4pb

  Perl 5.6.3 will eventually be a more advanced release, including a load
  of bugfixes and module upgrades (while 5.6.2 is merely oriented toward
  fixing compilation issues.)

Cloning problems
  Bug #24463 reports that a DBI test is failing under perl 5.8.2-ithreads
  built with debugging capabilities (-DDEBUGGING). This is due to a
  regression in the cloning of interpreters, that was introduced to fix a
  segfault when using the "-D" switch to perl. The problem here is that
  the new interpreter that is being cloned hasn't yet perlio layers, and
  thus can't use print debug messages ; but trying to set the context back
  at the perlio layers of the pristine interpreter leads to this breakage.

      http://xrl.us/4pe

  Stas Bekman reported that Config::myconfig() is prone to fail with a
  fatal error under ithreads, with perl 5.8.[12], due to its internal use
  of a :unique variable (made readonly when a new thread is started).
  Elizabeth provides a fix. (It appears that mod_perl 2 is a great tool to
  find thread-related bugs.)

  Stas reported also another problem with Scalar::Util::weaken() :
  clones of weak scalars are messed up. This happens since perl 5.8.1.

  Following to another question by Stas about the CLONE method, Elizabeth
  introduced her module Thread::Bless.

      http://xrl.us/4pk

Empty subroutines
  Elizabeth Mattijsen notices that using an empty subroutine as a method
  may produce segfault in some specific cases with perl 5.8.2. Enache
  Adrian provides a fix.

      http://xrl.us/4pc

C++ bindings
  Chip Salzenberg reports as bug #24468 that the headers of perl 5.8.2,
  with threading turned on, can't be compiled from within C++ sources.
  This is a problem for C++ applications that embed perl. Jan Dubois
  suggests a fix, which Chip is going to try.

      http://xrl.us/4pd

In Brief
  Nicholas Clark notices that creating threads in BEGIN blocks is
  unsupported. He disapproves this constraint.

  Nicholas also found and fixed obscure bugs with hashes and UTF8 keys. He
  proposes to refactor some hash-handling code.

      http://xrl.us/4pp

  Alan Burlison notices that the MANIFEST.SKIP distributed with perl 5.8.2
  (as part of ExtUtils::Makemaker) is unfortunately broken. Rafael takes
  the blame.

      http://xrl.us/4pf

  Nick Ing-Simmons suggests to investigate using mapfiles on Linux for the
  compilation of perl. Alan Burlison nods.

      http://xrl.us/4pg

  A version of the IRIX compiler can't build perl 5.8.1 or 5.8.2 (bug
  #24471). Rafael suggests it's a bug in the C preprocessor.

New modules
  Andy Lester released Test::Harness 2.36. This version includes a
  command-line utility, "prove", that can run individual tests. Its
  inclusion into the core still causes a few unresolved problems.

      http://xrl.us/4ph

  Michael Schwern released ExtUtils::MakeMaker 6.21, "mostly to fix
  building modules that call dir_target() or completely rewrite
  top_targets()".

About this summary
  This summary was brought to you by Rafael Garcia-Suarez. Weekly
  summaries are available on <http://use.perl.org/> and via a mailing
  list, which subscription address is [email protected].
  Feedback (and patches) welcome.