Skip test for changing TZ if running in a pseudo-fork (on Win32)

[p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git] / pod / perltodo.pod

diff --git a/pod/perltodo.pod b/pod/perltodo.pod
index 0a75e70..b01522a 100644 (file)
--- a/pod/perltodo.pod
+++ b/pod/perltodo.pod
@@ -94,6 +94,18 @@ is needed to improve the cross-linking.
 The addition of C<Pod::Simple> and its related modules may make this task
 easier to complete.
 
+=head2 Make ExtUtils::ParseXS use strict;
+
+F<lib/ExtUtils/ParseXS.pm> contains this line
+
+    # use strict;  # One of these days...
+
+Simply uncomment it, and fix all the resulting issues :-)
+
+The more practical approach, to break the task down into manageable chunks, is
+to work your way though the code from bottom to top, or if necessary adding
+extra C<{ ... }> blocks, and turning on strict within them.
+
 =head2 Parallel testing
 
 (This probably impacts much more than the core: also the Test::Harness
@@ -589,6 +601,27 @@ These tasks would need C knowledge, and roughly the level of knowledge of
 the perl API that comes from writing modules that use XS to interface to
 C.
 
+=head2 Remove the use of SVs as temporaries in dump.c
+
+F<dump.c> contains debugging routines to dump out the contains of perl data
+structures, such as C<SV>s, C<AV>s and C<HV>s. Currently, the dumping code
+B<uses> C<SV>s for its temporary buffers, which was a logical initial
+implementation choice, as they provide ready made memory handling.
+
+However, they also lead to a lot of confusion when it happens that what you're
+trying to debug is seen by the code in F<dump.c>, correctly or incorrectly, as
+a temporary scalar it can use for a temporary buffer. It's also not possible
+to dump scalars before the interpreter is properly set up, such as during
+ithreads cloning. It would be good to progressively replace the use of scalars
+as string accumulation buffers with something much simpler, directly allocated
+by C<malloc>. The F<dump.c> code is (or should be) only producing 7 bit
+US-ASCII, so output character sets are not an issue.
+
+Producing and proving an internal simple buffer allocation would make it easier
+to re-write the internals of the PerlIO subsystem to avoid using C<SV>s for
+B<its> buffers, use of which can cause problems similar to those of F<dump.c>,
+at similar times.
+
 =head2 safely supporting POSIX SA_SIGINFO
 
 Some years ago Jarkko supplied patches to provide support for the POSIX