Hi,

> Has anyone here attempted to build the `lang/perl5' (Perl 5.6.1) package
> from the 1.6 release on thier VAX?  I've just run through the first
> attempt on my MicroVAX 3100 and its errored out in the install phase
> while generating the perl man pages.  I'm working on regenerating the
> error.

I can make a generic binary package from the bulk package machine (it just
got a new hard drive and a new home, so it will be building full time
soon), but I don't know if your already started build will actually take
longer than my disklabelling, newfsing, populating, and building.

> I'd also noticed earlier in the build process that perl had complaining
> with a warning about `make test' not having been run.  I'd presumed
> this was a choice made by the person who assembled the perl5 package.
> Curious, I went into the working directory of my failed build and
> manually ran `make test'.  I found the following tests to have failed:
>
>   op/cmp...............FAILED at test 0
>   op/numconvert........FAILED at test 0
>   lib/bigfltpm.........FAILED at test 351
>   lib/complex..........FAILED at test 0
>   lib/trig.............FAILED at test 0

None of this stuff is surprising; VAX floating point is not IEEE floating
point, so anything that tries to compare floating point results with some
pre-calculated results may be expected to fail.

Just for curiosity, I'd love to know more about VAX floating point... is
it more accurate / less accurate? What does a fp register look like?

> I was wondering if someone else can confirm the errors by attempting to
> compile this on their--possibly faster--VAX system.  For the moment,
> I've switched my focus to recompiling a leaner kernel in order to free
> up a bit more memory for my compiles.  Not having a perl5 package is a
> bit of a problem as there are many other packages which depend upon it.

If you'll be building a kernel, I'll definitely have a perl package before
you. I'll post it when it's uploaded.

Thanks,
John Klos
Sixgirls Computing Labs