add note about lib/open3.t#22 failure on Win2K

[perl5.git] / README.posix-bc

This is a first ported perl for the POSIX subsystem in BS2000 VERSION
'V121', OSD V3.1, POSIX Shell V03.1A55.  It may work on other
versions, but that's the one we've tested it on.

You may need the following GNU programs in order to install perl:

gzip:

We used version 1.2.4, which could be installed out of the box with
one failure during 'make check'.

bison:

The yacc coming with BS2000 POSIX didn't work for us.  So we had to
use bison.  We had to make a few changes to perl in order to use the
pure (reentrant) parser of bison.  We used version 1.25, but we had to
add a few changes due to EBCDIC.


UNPACKING:
==========

To extract an ASCII tar archive on BS2000 POSIX you need an ASCII
filesystem (we used the mountpoint /usr/local/ascii for this).  Now
you extract the archive in the ASCII filesystem without I/O-conversion:

cd /usr/local/ascii
export IO_CONVERSION=NO
gunzip < /usr/local/src/perl.tar.gz | pax -r

You may ignore the error message for the first element of the archive
(this doesn't look like a tar archive / skipping to next file...),
it's only the directory which will be made anyway.

After extracting the archive you copy the whole directory tree to your
EBCDIC filesystem.  This time you use I/O-conversion:

cd /usr/local/src
IO_CONVERSION=YES
cp -r /usr/local/ascii/perl5.005_02 ./


COMPILING:
==========

There is a "hints" file for posix-bc that specifies the correct values
for most things.  The major problem is (of course) the EBCDIC character
set.

Configure did everything except the perl parser.

Because of our problems with the native yacc we used GNU bison to
generate a pure (=reentrant) parser for perly.y.  So our yacc is
really the following script:

-----8<-----/usr/local/bin/yacc-----8<-----
#! /usr/bin/sh

# Bison as a reentrant yacc:

# save parameters:
params=""
while [[ $# -gt 1 ]]; do
    params="$params $1"
    shift
done

# add flag %pure_parser:

tmpfile=/tmp/bison.$$.y
echo %pure_parser > $tmpfile
cat $1 >> $tmpfile

# call bison:

echo "/usr/local/bin/bison --yacc $params $1\t\t\t(Pure Parser)"
/usr/local/bin/bison --yacc $params $tmpfile

# cleanup:

rm -f $tmpfile
-----8<----------8<-----

We still use the normal yacc for a2p.y though!!!  We made a softlink
called byacc to distinguish between the two versions:

ln -s /usr/bin/yacc /usr/local/bin/byacc
 
We build perl using both GNU make and the native make.


TESTING:
========

We still got a few errors during 'make test'.  Most of them are the
result of using bison.  Bison prints 'parser error' instead of 'syntax
error', so we may ignore them.  One error in the test op/regexp (and
op/regexp_noamp) seems a bit critical, the result was an 'Out of
memory' (core dump with op/regexp_noamp).  The following list shows
our errors, your results may differ:

op/misc.............FAILED tests 45-46
op/pack.............FAILED tests 58-60
op/regexp...........FAILED tests 405-492      (core dump)
op/regexp_noamp.....FAILED tests 405-492      (core dump)
pragma/overload.....FAILED tests 152-153, 170-171
pragma/subs.........FAILED tests 1-2
pragma/warning......FAILED tests 121, 127, 130, 142
lib/cgi-html........dubious, FAILED tests 1-17 (ALL)
lib/complex.........FAILED tests 264, 484
lib/dumper..........FAILED tests MANY
Failed 7/190 test scripts, 96.32% okay. 234/6549 subtests failed, 96.43% okay.


INSTALLING:
===========

We have no nroff on BS2000 POSIX (yet), so we ignored any errors while
installing the documentation.


USING PERL:
===========

BS2000 POSIX doesn't support the shebang notation
('#!/usr/local/bin/perl'), so you have to use the following lines
instead:

: # use perl
    eval 'exec /usr/local/bin/perl -S $0 ${1+"$@"}'
        if $running_under_some_shell;