Re: [gentoo-dev] Perl self-tests

[Dylan Carlson]

On Thu October 21 2004 08:45, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> On Thursday 21 October 2004 07:41 am, Dylan Carlson wrote:
> > Some users are reporting memory leaks during dev-lang/perl install,
> > where it eats up all of the memory.
>
> using a lot of memory != memory leak

I know that perl does memory leak self-tests, but I don't know if that is a 
normal part of 'make test' or not.  Perl's not my core expertise.  It's 
the bug reporters saying there's a memory leak, not me.  

> in reality, why are you asking gentoo-dev and not the perl people
> themselves ... they certainly can handle this question since it's been
> asked often enough

It seems they have been asked in bugzilla already.  Perhaps it would be 
good to re-state what the problem is:  dev-lang/perl is chewing up all 
available memory during forced self-tests upon install.

mcummings closed the bug as CANTFIX in Feb., so that's why I'm asking here.  
It still appears to be a problem.   In my opinion, this self-test behavior 
should be optional.  Right now, there's no choice, and there's no 
explanation why.

Self-tests are there for users when functional problems with the perl 
install occur after install.  Therefore one can re-install with the 
self-tests enabled to debug, but it shouldn't be forced.  Maybe there is a 
critical reason those tests need to be forced, but if so, that hasn't been 
explained.

So I see two ways to solve this:
 1. FEATURES=maketest.  If "maketest" isn't there, don't run the tests.
 2. Less desireable... Run the tests except if "nomaketest" is in FEATURES.

Cheers,
Dylan Carlson [absinthe@g.o]
Public Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x708E165F

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