configurations. Both efforts welcome volunteers. In order to get
involved in smoke testing of the perl itself visit
L<http://search.cpan.org/dist/Test-Smoke>. In order to start smoke
-testing CPAN modules visit L<http://search.cpan.org/dist/CPAN-YACSmoke/>
-or L<http://search.cpan.org/dist/POE-Component-CPAN-YACSmoke/> or
+testing CPAN modules visit L<http://search.cpan.org/dist/CPANPLUS-YACSmoke/>
+or L<http://search.cpan.org/dist/minismokebox/> or
L<http://search.cpan.org/dist/CPAN-Reporter/>.
It's a good idea to read and lurk for a while before chipping in.
=item Configure
-The configure process is the way we make Perl portable across the
+The Configure process is the way we make Perl portable across the
myriad of operating systems it supports. Responsibility for the
-configure, build and installation process, as well as the overall
-portability of the core code rests with the configure pumpkin - others
-help out with individual operating systems.
+Configure, build and installation process, as well as the overall
+portability of the core code rests with the Configure pumpkin -
+others help out with individual operating systems.
+
+The three files that fall under his/her resposibility are Configure,
+config_h.SH, and Porting/Glossary (and a whole bunch of small related
+files that are less important here). The Configure pumpkin decides how
+patches to these are dealt with. Currently, the Configure pumpkin will
+accept patches in most common formats, even directly to these files.
+Other committers are allowed to commit to these files under the strict
+condition that they will inform the Configure pumpkin, either on IRC
+(if he/she happens to be around) or through (personal) e-mail.
The files involved are the operating system directories, (F<win32/>,
F<os2/>, F<vms/> and so on) the shell scripts which generate F<config.h>
and F<Makefile>, as well as the metaconfig files which generate
F<Configure>. (metaconfig isn't included in the core distribution.)
+See http://perl5.git.perl.org/metaconfig.git/blob/HEAD:/README for a
+description of the full process involved.
+
=item Interpreter
And of course, there's the core of the Perl interpreter itself. Let's
C<pack "U3C8", @stuff>) then the resulting string should be treated as
UTF-8 encoded.
+If you are working with a git clone of the Perl repository, you will want to
+create a branch for your changes. This will make creating a proper patch much
+simpler. See the L<perlrepository> for details on how to do this.
+
How do we prepare to fix this up? First we locate the code in question -
the C<pack> happens at runtime, so it's going to be in one of the F<pp>
files. Sure enough, C<pp_pack> is in F<pp.c>. Since we're going to be
pattern with C<C0> (or anything else) to force Perl not to UTF-8 encode your
string, and then follow this with a C<U*> somewhere in your pattern.
-All done. Now let's create the patch. F<Porting/patching.pod> tells us
-that if we're making major changes, we should copy the entire directory
-to somewhere safe before we begin fiddling, and then do
-
- diff -ruN old new > patch
-
-However, we know which files we've changed, and we can simply do this:
-
- diff -u pp.c~ pp.c > patch
- diff -u t/op/pack.t~ t/op/pack.t >> patch
- diff -u pod/perlfunc.pod~ pod/perlfunc.pod >> patch
-
-We end up with a patch looking a little like this:
-
- --- pp.c~ Fri Jun 02 04:34:10 2000
- +++ pp.c Fri Jun 16 11:37:25 2000
- @@ -4375,6 +4375,7 @@
- register I32 items;
- STRLEN fromlen;
- register char *pat = SvPVx(*++MARK, fromlen);
- + char *patcopy;
- register char *patend = pat + fromlen;
- register I32 len;
- I32 datumtype;
- @@ -4405,6 +4406,7 @@
- ...
-
-And finally, we submit it, with our rationale, to perl5-porters. Job
-done!
-
=head2 Patching a core module
This works just like patching anything else, with an extra
conventions used in the perl source files. See L<perlstyle> for
details. Although most of the guidelines discussed seem to focus on
Perl code, rather than c, they all apply (except when they don't ;).
-See also I<Porting/patching.pod> file in the Perl source distribution
-for lots of details about both formatting and submitting patches of
-your changes.
+Also see I<perlrepository> for lots of details about both formatting and
+submitting patches of your changes.
Lastly, TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST any code before posting to p5p.
Test on as many platforms as you can find. Test as many perl
Tests for perl's built in functions that don't fit into any of the
other directories.
-=item F<t/pod/>
-
-Tests for POD directives. There are still some tests for the Pod
-modules hanging around in here that need to be moved out into F<lib/>.
-
=item F<t/re/>
Tests for regex related functions or behaviour. (These used to live