Running perl6

Synopsis

Please run perl6 --help to see actual options.

They are currently changing on demand, there are a lot of debug options, so keeping this document in sync is currently not worth the effort -- sorry.

Run perl6 --test for a full test run. If everything succeeds - fine. If not, read on. If you want to know more, read on ;-)

Getting started

For a quick test, if everything is ok, try a one liner:

        perl6 -vwk -e'print(qq(Hello perl6\n))'

You should see the individual compilation steps and finally the output of above program.

If that fails, there are currently 3 steps that might be the culprit:

P6C -- the perl6 compiler

imcc -- the intermediate compiler

parrot -- the parrot interpreter

Individual steps

P6C

The perl6 compiler needs an uptodate grammar to work correctly. If you have modified the grammar in P6C/Parser.pm, you will need to make sure Perl6grammar.pm is regenerated by running

        perl6 --force-grammar -e'print qq(ok\n)' -vwk

or

        rm Perl6grammar.pm ; perl6 -vwk -e'print qq(ok\n)'

If this prints ok at the end, then it should be so. If not, let's look, what is broken.

The perl6 compiler spits out PIR files (parrot intermediate language), also known as IMCC files, because this is the name of the intermediate code compiler. So, after above test you should have a file named __eval__.imc in your current working directory. Have a look into it.

It should look similar to this:

        .sub __main
                call __setup
                call _main
                end
                ret
        .sub _main
                saveall
                $P1 = new PerlArray
                $I3 = 0
                $P1[$I3] = "ok\n"
                inc $I3
                .arg    $P1
                call    _print
                restoreall
                ret
        ... # more here

(Comments left out for brevity). If that's ok, we go on to:

IMCC

The intermediate code compiler reads above .imc file and - with current default behaviour - spits out parrot assembler files.

Let's try it manually:

        ../imcc/imcc -v -o __eval__.pasm __eval__.imc
        Reading __eval__.imc
        using optimization '0'
        assembly module __eval__.pasm written.
        481 lines compiled.

Now you should have a file __eval__.pasm, which starts like so:

        __main:
                bsr __setup
                bsr _main
                end
                ret
        _main:
                saveall
                new P0, 10       # .PerlArray
                set I0, 0
                set P0[I0], "ok\n"
                ...

If not, imcc is to blame. When it fails, you should see an error message, telling, what went wrong.

You could try:

        ../imcc/imcc -v  -r __eval__.imc
        Reading __eval__.imc, executing
        using optimization '0'
        481 lines compiled.
        Running...
        ok

So running directly is ok, but compiling to PASM is broken, if you get above output. Not to bad, you could run perl6 programs through imcc, which is parrot plus a small compiler ;-)

        perl6 --test -r

runs all tests through imcc. This will probably be the default run option for the next future.

assembling the pasm

The next step is running above parrot assembly file through the assembler (which is again imcc running in a diffrent mode) to generate PBC (parrot byte code).

        ../imcc/imcc -o ok.pbc __eval__.pasm

This generates the binary file ok.pbc, if the assembler worked.

and finally running

        ../../parrot ok.pbc
        ok

Summary

These individual steps are currently run by the perl6 driver program. Though there are, as already shown above, some short cuts:

        perl6 -r examples/life.p6

runs the program examples/life.p6 directly through imcc.

        perl6 -r -Rc examples/life.p6

runs the program and writes examples/life.pbc for later running by parrot.

        perl6 -k -RPd -v examples/life.p6

Above option -k tells perl6 to keep intermediate files. So you can run them with the appropriate command or you can run them with the perl6 driver. Flags after -R are passed on to the running program: imcc or parrot, though the former has some more options.

        perl6 ../../examples/assembly/life.pasm
        perl6 ../../examples/assembly/mops.pasm -Cv

DWIM.

Reporting bugs

If any of the above steps fail, please report the bug to <bugs-parrot@bugs6.perl.org> with the output of

        perl6 --version

and a description of the problem. If all tests are failing, please provide the intermediate files for one of the tests by running e.g.

        perl6 -wk t/compiler/{testnumber}_{subtest}.p6

If particular tests fail, please provide the test summary plus symptomatic cases of failures.

And finally, don't forget to report your OS environment including involved components like perl and C compiler.

Thanks.

AUTHOR

Leopold Tötsch <lt@toetsch.at>

$Id: debugging.pod,v 1.3 2003/08/29 17:07:12 chromatic Exp $

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