[gentoo-dev] Perl self-tests

[Dylan Carlson]

Greetings,

Some users are reporting memory leaks during dev-lang/perl install, where 
it eats up all of the memory.  

Example: 
    http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34705
    http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=54835

Surely it seems to be a problem for some people.  FEATURES=maketest should 
cover this, but the perl maintainers have the ebuild written in a way that 
forces src_test even if "maketest" isn't enabled.  Ex.:

~~~snip~~~
        # i want people to have to take actions to disable tests, because
        # they reveal lots of important problems in clear ways.  if that
        # happens, you can revisit this, but portage .51 will call
        # src_test if FEATURES=maketest is enabled, and we'll call it here
        # if it isn't.

        if ! hasq maketest $FEATURES; then
                src_test
        fi
}

src_test() {
        use uclibc && export MAKEOPTS="${MAKEOPTS} -j1"
        emake -i test CCDLFLAGS= || die "test failed"
}
~~~snip~~~

I can understand that, perhaps, perl@g.o. want users to run tests to make 
sure it's sane before install.  However, I don't think it should be 
forced, especially since the testing part itself seems to be buggy -- a 
problem for people, even if it's not for devs.  That's separate and 
regardless of whether the tests pass or fail.  

So, my question is, why was the above bug was closed CANTFIX?  Telling 
people to hack the ebuild to avoid a buggy test routine is not a solution.

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

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