-Notes on Perl on the Hurd
-Last Updated: Sat, 6 Mar 1999 16:07:59 +0100
-Written by: Mark Kettenis <kettenis@gnu.org>
+If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you see.
+It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is specially
+designed to be readable as is.
+
+=head1 NAME
+
+README.hurd - Perl version 5 on Hurd
+
+=head1 DESCRIPTION
If you want to use Perl on the Hurd, I recommend using the Debian
-GNU/Hurd distribution (see http://www.debian.org), even if an
+GNU/Hurd distribution ( see http://www.debian.org/ ), even if an
official, stable release has not yet been made. The old `gnu-0.2'
binary distribution will most certainly have additional problems.
-* Known Problems
+=head2 Known Problems with Perl on Hurd
-The Perl testsuite may still report some errors on the Hurd. The
-`lib/anydbm.t' and `op/stat.t' tests will most certainly fail. The
-first fails because Berkeley DB 2 does not allow empty keys and the
-test tries to use them anyway. This is not really a Hurd bug. The
-same test fails on Linux with version 2.1 of the GNU C Library. The
-second failure is caused by a bug in the Hurd's filesystem servers,
-that we have not been able to fix yet. I don't think it is crucial.
+The Perl test suite may still report some errors on the Hurd. The
+`lib/anydbm' and `pragma/warnings' tests will almost certainly fail.
+Both failures are not really specific to the Hurd, as indicated by the
+test suite output.
The socket tests may fail if the network is not configured. You have
to make `/hurd/pfinet' the translator for `/servers/socket/2', giving
it the right arguments. Try `/hurd/pfinet --help' for more
information.
-Here are the statistics for Perl 5.005_03 on my system:
+Here are the statistics for Perl 5.005_62 on my system:
+
+ Failed Test Status Wstat Total Fail Failed List of failed
+ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
+ lib/anydbm.t 12 1 8.33% 12
+ pragma/warnings 333 1 0.30% 215
-Failed Test Status Wstat Total Fail Failed List of failed
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-lib/anydbm.t 12 1 8.33% 12
-op/stat.t 58 1 1.72% 4
-5 tests skipped, plus 14 subtests skipped.
-Failed 2/189 test scripts, 98.94% okay. 2/6669 subtests failed, 99.97% okay.
+ 8 tests and 24 subtests skipped.
+ Failed 2/229 test scripts, 99.13% okay. 2/10850 subtests failed, 99.98% okay.
There are quite a few systems out there that do worse!
However, since I am running a very recent Hurd snapshot, in which a lot of
-bugs that were exposed by the Perl testsuite have been fixed, you may
-encounter more failures. Likely candidates are: `lib/io_pipe.t',
-`lib/io_sock.t', `lib/io_udp.t' and `lib/time.t'.
+bugs that were exposed by the Perl test suite have been fixed, you may
+encounter more failures. Likely candidates are: `op/stat', `lib/io_pipe',
+`lib/io_sock', `lib/io_udp' and `lib/time'.
+
+In any way, if you're seeing failures beyond those mentioned in this
+document, please consider upgrading to the latest Hurd before reporting
+the failure as a bug.
+
+=head1 AUTHOR
+
+Mark Kettenis <kettenis@gnu.org>
+
+Last Updated: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 22:50:30 +0200