-Notes on Perl on the Hurd
-Last Updated: Fri, 12 Feb 1999 21:11:14 +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.
-* Known Problems
+=head1 NAME
-There are several problems with Perl on the Hurd. Most of them are
-related to bugs in the OS, some might be actual bugs in Perl.
+README.hurd - Perl version 5 on Hurd
-The database code has problems that make Perl crash. When running the
-test-suite one of the tests will crash. Note that on the Hurd when a
-program crashes, the crash server suspends the program. Continuing
-the program will cause it to exit.
+=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
+official, stable release has not yet been made. The old `gnu-0.2'
+binary distribution will most certainly have additional problems.
+
+=head2 Known Problems with Perl on Hurd
+
+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. It seems that it is currently not possible to do this
-right when you do not have a supported network device. Therefore all
-tests that use INET sockets fail on my system, suggesting that the
-`localhost' address may not be defined.
-
-Here are the statistics for Perl 5.005_03 on my system:
-
-Failed Test Status Wstat Total Fail Failed List of failed
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-lib/anydbm.t 12 3 25.00% 1, 4, 9
-lib/db-btree.t 0 11 ?? ?? % ??
-lib/db-hash.t 255 65280 62 42 67.74% 15, 22-62
-lib/db-recno.t 2 512 78 61 78.21% 17, 19-78
-lib/io_pipe.t 10 ?? % ??
-lib/io_sock.t 46 11776 5 5 100.00% 1-5
-lib/io_udp.t 46 11776 3 3 100.00% 1-3
-lib/socket.t 6 6 100.00% 1-6
-op/stat.t 58 1 1.72% 4
-op/time.t 5 1 20.00% 2
-5 tests skipped, plus 14 subtests skipped.
-Failed 10/188 test scripts, 94.68% okay. 121/6467 subtests failed, 98.13% okay.
+information.
+
+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
+
+ 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 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