Notes on Perl on the Hurd
-Last Updated: Sat, 6 Mar 1999 16:07:59 +0100
+Last Updated: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 22:50:30 +0200
Written by: Mark Kettenis <kettenis@gnu.org>
If you want to use Perl on the Hurd, I recommend using the Debian
* Known Problems
-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
-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.
+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 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.