jk2addict has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'd think this was a simple one, but I can't seem to fix it; or I'm silly. One or the other.

I recently setup FreeBSD 5.-STABLE on my laptop w/ perl 5.8.6 so I could do tests and submit test reports to CPAN Testers. I'm already doing the same under 5.6.1/5.8.4 under win32.

My main problem is that the osver in the perl -V output is worthless in terms of the reports themselves. On XP, it's simply 4.0, when it really should be "XP Pro" or at least "5.1". I understand this problem because I didn't compile these win32 perls themselves; they're compiled by ActiveState.

On FreeBSD however, I've compiled that perl via the ports system; yet it's osver is simply "freebsd". 

Summary of my perl5 (revision 5 version 8 subversion 6) configuration:
  Platform:
    osname=freebsd, osvers=freebsd, archname=i386-freebsd-64int
    uname='freebsd 5.3-stable freebsd 5.3-stable #3: tue feb 1 08:21:2
+2 est 2005 claco[at]np5660:usrobjusrsrcsyslaptop i386 '

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I've seen plenty of CPAN Tester reports that have "FreeBSD 5-STABLE" and the like. I'd like to get my osvers fixed so the test reports are a little more useful to readers. Here's an example of what I would consider a good and bad osvers string. The second entry is just freebsd, while the third entry is FreeBSD 4.8-STABLE

With that said, I've tried changing the osvers in my Config.pm, but it didn't seem to make a difference. Is there some magic I'm missing somewhere?

20050207 Janitored by Corion: Replaced PRE by CODE tags

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Wrong osvers in perl -V
by Errto (Vicar) on Feb 07, 2005 at 15:50 UTC
    I'm not too familiar with the Perl build process, but the first thing that occurs to me is to ask: what does "uname -rv" return on your system?
[reply]
      I don't have the lappy with me at the moment. I'll have to check that this evening.
[reply]
      uname -rv: 
      5.3-STABLE FreeBSD 5.3-STABLE #3: Tue Feb  1 08:21:22 EST 2005     cla
+co@np5660:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/LAPTOP

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Re: Wrong osvers in perl -V
by jacques (Priest) on Feb 07, 2005 at 16:48 UTC
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