releases of Perl are shepherded by a ``pumpking'', a porter
responsible for gathering patches, deciding on a patch-by-patch
feature-by-feature basis what will and will not go into the release.
-For instance, Gurusamy Sarathy is the pumpking for the 5.6 release of
-Perl.
+For instance, Gurusamy Sarathy was the pumpking for the 5.6 release of
+Perl, and Jarkko Hietaniemi is the pumpking for the 5.8 release, and
+Hugo van der Sanden will be the pumpking for the 5.10 release.
In addition, various people are pumpkings for different things. For
instance, Andy Dougherty and Jarkko Hietaniemi share the I<Configure>
-pumpkin, and Tom Christiansen is the documentation pumpking.
+pumpkin.
Larry sees Perl development along the lines of the US government:
there's the Legislature (the porters), the Executive branch (the
unlikely that nonportable additions to the Perl language will be
accepted.
+=item Is the implementation tested?
+
+Patches which change behaviour (fixing bugs or introducing new features)
+must include regression tests to verify that everything works as expected.
+Without tests provided by the original author, how can anyone else changing
+perl in the future be sure that they haven't unwittingly broken the behaviour
+the patch implements? And without tests, how can the patch's author be
+confident that his/her hard work put into the patch won't be accidentally
+thrown away by someone in the future?
+
=item Is there enough documentation?
Patches without documentation are probably ill-thought out or
incomplete. Nothing can be added without documentation, so submitting
a patch for the appropriate manpages as well as the source code is
-always a good idea. If appropriate, patches should add to the test
-suite as well.
+always a good idea.
=item Is there another way to do it?
It's then up to you to apply these patches, using something like
- # last=`ls -rt1 *.gz | tail -1`
+ # last=`ls -t *.gz | sed q`
# rsync -avz rsync://ftp.linux.activestate.com/perl-current-diffs/ .
# find . -name '*.gz' -newer $last -exec gzcat {} \; >blead.patch
# cd ../perl-current
perl's bugtron to find more information about discussions and
ramblings on posted bugs.
-=back
-
If you want to get the best of both worlds, rsync both the source
tree for convenience, reliability and ease and rsync the patches
for reference.
+=back
+
+
+=head2 Perlbug remote interface
+
+=over 4
+
+There are three (3) remote administrative interfaces for modifying bug status, category, etc. In all cases an admin must be first registered with the Perlbug database by sending an email request to richard@perl.org or bugmongers@perl.org.
+
+The main requirement is the willingness to classify, (with the emphasis on closing where possible :), outstanding bugs. Further explanation can be garnered from the web at http://bugs.perl.org/, or by asking on the admin mailing list at: bugmongers@perl.org
+
+For more info on the web see
+
+ http://bugs.perl.org/perlbug.cgi?req=spec
+
+
+B<The interfaces:>
+
+
+=item 1 http://bugs.perl.org
+
+Login via the web, (remove B<admin/> if only browsing), where interested Cc's, tests, patches and change-ids, etc. may be assigned.
+
+ http://bugs.perl.org/admin/index.html
+
+
+=item 2 bugdb@perl.org
+
+Where the subject line is used for commands:
+
+ To: bugdb@perl.org
+ Subject: -a close bugid1 bugid2 aix install
+
+ To: bugdb@perl.org
+ Subject: -h
+
+
+=item 3 commands_and_bugdids@bugs.perl.org
+
+Where the address itself is the source for the commands:
+
+ To: close_bugid1_bugid2_aix@bugs.perl.org
+
+ To: help@bugs.perl.org
+
+
+=item notes, patches, tests
+
+For patches and tests, the message body is assigned to the appropriate bug/s and forwarded to p5p for their attention.
+
+ To: test_<bugid1>_aix_close@bugs.perl.org
+ Subject: this is a test for the (now closed) aix bug
+
+ Test is the body of the mail
+
+=back
+
=head2 Submitting patches
Always submit patches to I<perl5-porters@perl.org>. If you're
to L<perlguts/Background and PERL_IMPLICIT_CONTEXT> for information on
the C<[pad]THX_?> macros.
-
=head2 Poking at Perl
To really poke around with Perl, you'll probably want to build Perl for
Unicode strings.
t/op/pack.t has a sensible ok() function, but if it didn't we could
-write one easily.
+use the one from t/test.pl.
- my $test = 1;
- sub ok {
- my($ok, $name) = @_;
-
- # You have to do it this way or VMS will get confused.
- print $ok ? "ok $test - $name\n" : "not ok $test - $name\n";
-
- printf "# Failed test at line %d\n", (caller)[2] unless $ok;
-
- $test++;
- return $ok;
- }
+ require './test.pl';
+ plan( tests => 159 );
so instead of this:
print 'not ' unless "1.20.300.4000" eq sprintf "%vd", pack("U*",1,20,300,4000);
print "ok $test\n"; $test++;
-we can write the (somewhat) more sensible:
+we can write the more sensible (see L<Test::More> for a full
+explanation of is() and other testing functions).
- ok( "1.20.300.4000" eq sprintf "%vd", pack("U*",1,20,300,4000),
+ is( "1.20.300.4000", sprintf "%vd", pack("U*",1,20,300,4000),
"U* produces unicode" );
Now we'll test that we got that space-at-the-beginning business right:
- ok( "1.20.300.4000" eq sprintf "%vd", pack(" U*",1,20,300,4000),
+ is( "1.20.300.4000", sprintf "%vd", pack(" U*",1,20,300,4000),
" with spaces at the beginning" );
And finally we'll test that we don't make Unicode strings if C<U> is B<not>
the first active format:
- ok( v1.20.300.4000 ne sprintf "%vd", pack("C0U*",1,20,300,4000),
+ isnt( v1.20.300.4000, sprintf "%vd", pack("C0U*",1,20,300,4000),
"U* not first isn't unicode" );
-Mustn't forget to change the number of tests which appears at the top, or
-else the automated tester will get confused:
+Mustn't forget to change the number of tests which appears at the top,
+or else the automated tester will get confused. This will either look
+like this:
+
+ print "1..156\n";
- -print "1..156\n";
- +print "1..159\n";
+or this:
+
+ plan( tests => 156 );
We now compile up Perl, and run it through the test suite. Our new
tests pass, hooray!
to explore all boundary conditions that your new function is expected
to handle. If your new function is used only by one module (e.g. toke),
then it should probably be named S_your_function (for static); on the
-other hand, if you expect it to accessable from other functions in
+other hand, if you expect it to accessible from other functions in
Perl, you should name it Perl_your_function. See L<perlguts/Internal Functions>
for more details.
Test on as many platforms as you can find. Test as many perl
Configure options as you can (e.g. MULTIPLICITY). If you have
profiling or memory tools, see L<EXTERNAL TOOLS FOR DEBUGGING PERL>
-below for how to use them to futher test your code. Remember that
+below for how to use them to further test your code. Remember that
most of the people on P5P are doing this on their own time and
don't have the time to debug your code.
=item F<t/cmd/>
These test the basic control structures, C<if/else>, C<while>,
-subroutines, etc...
+subroutines, etc.
=item F<t/comp/>
"ok/not ok" run through Test::Harness, but there are a few special
considerations.
-For most libraries and extensions, you'll want to use the Test::More
-library rather than rolling your own test functions. If a module test
-doesn't use Test::More, consider rewriting it so it does. For the
-rest it's best to use a simple C<print "ok $test_num\n"> style to avoid
-broken core functionality from causing the whole test to collapse.
+There are three ways to write a test in the core. Test::More,
+t/test.pl and ad hoc C<print $test ? "ok 42\n" : "not ok 42\n">. The
+decision of which to use depends on what part of the test suite you're
+working on. This is a measure to prevent a high-level failure (such
+as Config.pm breaking) from causing basic functionality tests to fail.
+
+=over 4
+
+=item t/base t/comp
+
+Since we don't know if require works, or even subroutines, use ad hoc
+tests for these two. Step carefully to avoid using the feature being
+tested.
+
+=item t/cmd t/run t/io t/op
+
+Now that basic require() and subroutines are tested, you can use the
+t/test.pl library which emulates the important features of Test::More
+while using a minimum of core features.
+
+You can also conditionally use certain libraries like Config, but be
+sure to skip the test gracefully if it's not there.
+
+=item t/lib ext lib
+
+Now that the core of Perl is tested, Test::More can be used. You can
+also use the full suite of core modules in the tests.
+
+=back
When you say "make test" Perl uses the F<t/TEST> program to run the
test suite. All tests are run from the F<t/> directory, B<not> the
setenv PURIFYOPTIONS "-chain-length=25"
+In Bourne-type shells:
+
+ PURIFY_OPTIONS="..."
+ export PURIFY_OPTIONS
+
+or if you have the "env" utility:
+
+ env PURIFY_OPTIONS="..." ../pureperl ...
+
=head2 Purify on NT
Purify on Windows NT instruments the Perl binary 'perl.exe'
For further information, see your system's manual pages for pixie and prof.
+=head2 Miscellaneous tricks
+
+=over 4
+
+=item *
+
+Those debugging perl with the DDD frontend over gdb may find the
+following useful:
+
+You can extend the data conversion shortcuts menu, so for example you
+can display an SV's IV value with one click, without doing any typing.
+To do that simply edit ~/.ddd/init file and add after:
+
+ ! Display shortcuts.
+ Ddd*gdbDisplayShortcuts: \
+ /t () // Convert to Bin\n\
+ /d () // Convert to Dec\n\
+ /x () // Convert to Hex\n\
+ /o () // Convert to Oct(\n\
+
+the following two lines:
+
+ ((XPV*) (())->sv_any )->xpv_pv // 2pvx\n\
+ ((XPVIV*) (())->sv_any )->xiv_iv // 2ivx
+
+so now you can do ivx and pvx lookups or you can plug there the
+sv_peek "conversion":
+
+ Perl_sv_peek(my_perl, (SV*)()) // sv_peek
+
+(The my_perl is for threaded builds.)
+Just remember that every line, but the last one, should end with \n\
+
+Alternatively edit the init file interactively via:
+3rd mouse button -> New Display -> Edit Menu
+
+Note: you can define up to 20 conversion shortcuts in the gdb
+section.
+
+=back
+
=head2 CONCLUSION
We've had a brief look around the Perl source, an overview of the stages