Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately I don't understand what (or perhaps how) to smoke perl, or how that would solve the problem? Doesn't that require that I build perl? Which is what I am having a problem with.

I tried to follow the first link in your update and got a page that says:

Aren't you supposed to be somewhere else?
[download]

To which I replied "Probably, but where?" but I didn't get an answer:)

The second link appears to be a patch for the build process. Should I apply this to my copy of the sources? Does that mean that everyone attempting this should do the same?

Sorry PodMaster. I realise that this is likely to come across as though I am having a go at you. I'm not. I'm just a little frustrated by the whole process.

I guess my point here is that I would willingly "smoke perl" if it would help (me or others), if I knew what that meant? And if I knew were I could find the instructions to get started. Maybe its just me that has a problem with finding this stuff, but there are still a whole host of things to do with getting involved in the development process that I see talked about, but the knowledge required to get involved seems to be imparted by osmosis.

As an example:There is/was a bugathon recently that I would have gladly taken part in, but the only information I could find (via a link in perlnews if memory serves), told me nothing about how to take part unless I could arrange to be at a place that I couldn't get to.

This seems fairly typical of my experiences. Everyone agrees that there is a lot that needs to be done and that if more people got involved, things could be improved, but every time I have tried, I get met by a blank wall devoid of guidance as to how to get started.

I've been following the p5p news groups for a while now as a passive observer. I would like to get involved, but the whole things seems to run on the basis of if you have a previous reputation there, then what you say may receive some level of import. Otherwise forget it, there is no way to contribute because anything you might suggest is dismissed. The only way 'in' seems to be to spend a year or two developing patches to things that you know will never be accepted and fighting flame wars against the vested interests until your name is known enough for someone 'in power' to decide to take you seriously. I may have a lot of time on my hands at the moment, but life is short. Too short to waste it pursuing this type of process.

LOL. Grr. LOL. You can always ask here. Test::Smoke (I believe i've mentioned it before).
• smoke perl
  • http://qa.perl.org/
    • The "smokers" does smoke tests of the bleading edge Perl on various platforms to help the developers spot new bugs as fast as possibly.

      Get involved by subscribing to the daily-build list by sending mail to daily-build-subscribe@perl.org (Web archive and nntp server). After subscribing you would probably like to get the Smoke toolkit, see the README for information on that.

That readme's a little dated, alls you need is Test::Smoke. If you smoke perl, you can detect when things go wrong immediately ;)

As for the linked patches, yup, apply those -- but ultimatly they still fail. Too bad nobody's consistently smoking on borland (dang, my "c" key is broke, alt+99 grrr, and e is dying, GRRR;)

MJD says "you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo!"

I run a Win32 PPM repository for perl 5.6.x and 5.8.x -- I take requests (README).

** The third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.

Okay PodMaster thanks for your help. I tried the patches and arrived at the same place. I *think* I have worked out

1. How to build a version of 5.8.1 with BCC5.5 that works. No large file support or PerlIO.
2. I'm part way through tracking down the appropriate borland api's to enable large file support.

I haven't begun looking into the PerlIO stuff yet but I will.

If I succeed, I will post the results here *if* anyone else indicated that they are interested.

<rant>

Ah! Email lists, email servers, email wrappers.

No good to me, I won't use them/those/that.

Why do the same people that bitch about spam, contribute to the network degradation by insisting on sending everything to everyone? Why can't the information simply be placed in a central place and when I'm ready to look at it, I go look at it in that central place.

When I want to contribute, I send an email to that central place and it gets added to the list of information and the next time other people look, they see it.

Bah! I give up.

</rant>

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks.
"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." -Richard Buckminster Fuller