to L<perlguts/Background and PERL_IMPLICIT_CONTEXT> for information on
the C<[pad]THX_?> macros.
+=head2 The .i Targets
+
+You can expand the macros in a F<foo.c> file by saying
+
+ make foo.i
+
+which will expand the macros using cpp. Don't be scared by the results.
+
=head2 Poking at Perl
To really poke around with Perl, you'll probably want to build Perl for
=item print
Execute the given C code and print its results. B<WARNING>: Perl makes
-heavy use of macros, and F<gdb> is not aware of macros. You'll have to
-substitute them yourself. So, for instance, you can't say
+heavy use of macros, and F<gdb> does not necessarily support macros
+(see later L</"gdb macro support">). You'll have to substitute them
+yourself, or to invoke cpp on the source code files
+(see L</"The .i Targets">)
+So, for instance, you can't say
print SvPV_nolen(sv)
You may find it helpful to have a "macro dictionary", which you can
produce by saying C<cpp -dM perl.c | sort>. Even then, F<cpp> won't
-recursively apply the macros for you.
+recursively apply those macros for you.
+
+=head2 gdb macro support
+
+Recent versions of F<gdb> have fairly good macro support, but
+in order to use it you'll need to compile perl with macro definitions
+included in the debugging information. Using F<gcc> version 3.1, this
+means configuring with C<-Doptimize=-g3>. Other compilers might use a
+different switch (if they support debugging macros at all).
=back
Testing features of how perl actually runs, including exit codes and
handling of PERL* environment variables.
+=item F<t/uni/>
+
+Tests for the core support of Unicode.
+
+=item F<t/win32/>
+
+Windows-specific tests.
+
+=item F<t/x2p>
+
+A test suite for the s2p converter.
+
=back
The core uses the same testing style as the rest of Perl, a simple
=item test.torture torturetest
Run all the usual tests and some extra tests. As of Perl 5.8.0 the
-only extra tests are Abigail's JAPHs, t/japh/abigail.t.
+only extra tests are Abigail's JAPHs, F<t/japh/abigail.t>.
You can also run the torture test with F<t/harness> by giving
C<-torture> argument to F<t/harness>.
Run all the tests with -Mutf8. Not all tests will succeed.
+=item test_harness
+
+Run the test suite with the F<t/harness> controlling program, instead of
+F<t/TEST>. F<t/harness> is more sophisticated, and uses the
+L<Test::Harness> module, thus using this test target supposes that perl
+mostly works. The main advantage for our purposes is that it prints a
+detailed summary of failed tests at the end. Also, unlike F<t/TEST>, it
+doesn't redirect stderr to stdout.
+
+=back
+
+=head2 Running tests by hand
+
+You can run part of the test suite by hand by using one the following
+commands from the F<t/> directory :
+
+ ./perl -I../lib TEST list-of-.t-files
+
+or
+
+ ./perl -I../lib harness list-of-.t-files
+
+(if you don't specify test scripts, the whole test suite will be run.)
+
+You can run an individual test by a command similar to
+
+ ./perl -I../lib patho/to/foo.t
+
+except that the harnesses set up some environment variables that may
+affect the execution of the test :
+
+=over 4
+
+=item PERL_CORE=1
+
+indicates that we're running this test part of the perl core test suite.
+This is useful for modules that have a dual life on CPAN.
+
+=item PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL=2
+
+is set to 2 if it isn't set already (see L</PERL_DESTRUCT_LEVEL>)
+
+=item PERL
+
+(used only by F<t/TEST>) if set, overrides the path to the perl executable
+that should be used to run the tests (the default being F<./perl>).
+
+=item PERL_SKIP_TTY_TEST
+
+if set, tells to skip the tests that need a terminal. It's actually set
+automatically by the Makefile, but can also be forced artificially by
+running 'make test_notty'.
+
=back
=head1 EXTERNAL TOOLS FOR DEBUGGING PERL
projects / p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git / blobdiff