Re: vms:test variables

[h.becker]

On 04/09/2014 03:01 PM, John E. Malmberg wrote:
> The test is mainly testing for the older Perl 5.8.x from the HP kit to
> avoid using it.  Craig Berry did a manual custom install of 5.10 on
> Encompasserve that looks a lot like the new PCSI kit install for 5.18,
> so the test_make.com procedure did not detect that it was an older Perl.

OK, so it doesn't test whether the "required" version is available or
not :-(

> I will find out if Craig Berry has time to update Perl on Encompasserve,
> or if he is ok if I just do it.

It is updated:
$ pipe perl -version |search sys$pipe version
This is perl 5, version 18, subversion 2 (v5.18.2) built for VMS_AXP
$
Thanks.

>>> Perl 5.18 and later suppresses the incorrect ".dir" being appended to
>>> paths by default.  The incorrect behavior can be optionally turned on
>>> for existing PERL/VMS scripts that expect the buggy behavior.  I did not
>>> test the script with older versions of Perl, or with the older behavior
>>> enabled.
> ...
> Some other DECC$ logicals may also be needed for fixing various bugs in
> the UNIX format file name parsing, as the CRTL is by default maintaining
> backwards compatibility for programs that are expecting buggy behavior.

I'm not sure whether I need to understand. Just running the perl script,
without the CRTL aka DECC$ features enabled via logical names, it
complains "No tests in scripts,..."

So I made some changes to
- my version of make to expand a single bash/shell 'do nothing' command
":" without arguments to a "continue"; to print "not supported" for the
-j NUM option with NUM>1
- TEST_MAKE.COM (it probably will be named run_make_tests.com and live
in tests) to accept the -make option
- run_make_tests.pl to handle all this and to write some more debug
info, like:

DEBUG ON
OS name = 'VMS'
Port type: VMS
Make path: usr_ods5:[becker_h.make.make]make.exe
Make    = 'mcr usr_ods5:[becker_h.make.make]make.exe'
Jobs:      parallel jobs are not supported on this platform
Features:  archives else-if oneshell order-only second-expansion
shortest-stem target-specific undefine
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                      Running tests for GNU make on VMS
                               GNU Make 4.0.90
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...


and could run the tests with my current version of GNU make. So I'm
ready for some fun: after the tests there are these two files
^[-^.tests^]bar.y;1 ^[-^.tests^]foo.x;1 in the tests directory.

> That is something that needs to be investigated.  Something about
> running in the test script is changing the behavior of GNU make for a
> few tests.

Finding test problems seems not as easy as it could be. Some makefiles
are re-written, also the numbering scheme is somehow confusing:
automatic.base;1    automatic.diff;1    automatic.log;1
automatic.log_1;1   automatic.log_2;1   automatic.log_3;1
automatic.log_4;1   automatic.log_5;1   automatic.log_6;1
automatic.mk;2      automatic.mk;1      automatic.mk_1;1
automatic.mk_2;1    automatic.mk_3;1    automatic.run;1

And the .run files are missing the setup, like the touch commands. It is
worse on Unix, as there is only one automatic.mk and not two versions of it.