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Perl-Repository-APC-2.002001
River stage zero No dependents
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/ FAQ

FAQ

What is this FAQ about?

This FAQ is about the scripts that come with the Perl::Repository::APC module. The README gives an overview, each script has a manpage, and this FAQ is about practical usage questions.

How portable are these scripts?

File system must be case sensitive because we are patching things as they actually happened on the perforce repo. And from tim to time we had filenames that conflict with a case tolerant filesystem. Other than that everything should be pretty portable.

How much disk space do I need to run buildaperl or binsearchaperl?

At the time of this writing (2003-03), the APC contains 18850 patches and all directories together occupy on my disk 630 MB. If you want to operate on a full APC, you do not need all of this. You only need the directories APC/5* and APC/perl-current-diffs. These currently add up to 500 MB.

If you only want to examine a subset, you can reduce the disk space needed significantly.

The most space on my installation though is not taken by the repository mirror but by the cache of installed perls I accumulate when I run binsearchaperl regularly. These need unlimited diskspace in theory. But the binary search algorithm finds its target with only at most 15 compilations if you have no cache, so you can delete the cache when you're done and one Gigabyte will suffice to successfully run binsearchaperl.

How can I run binary searches that need modules from CPAN?

Use the --prep=somescript switch to binsearchaperl. somescript must be a script that installs the needed module from CPAN. The output of that script is ignored by binsearchaperl.

Can I use binsearchaperl with a partial mirror of the APC?

If you want to only track, say, bleadperl, you need to mirror the directory associated with bleadperl (at the time of this writing 5.9.0) and the directory that contains the basis for bleadperl (at the time of this writing 5.8.0). See the sample Makefile in the eg directory how to create and maintain a custom subset of APC.

How can I find out the patch ID of, say perl 5.8.7?

Module::CoreList::patchlevel (given $Module::CoreList::VERSION >= 2.01)