[ic] Red Hat 9 workaround (Debian addition)

[Mike Heins]

Quoting Philip S. Hempel (pshempel@linuxhardcore.com):
> On Sat, 2003-06-28 at 14:15, Mike Heins wrote:
> > Dear All,
> > 
> > I did some investigation of the Red Hat 9 Perl, and found:
> > 
[snip]
> > I produced an image of a Red Hat 9 perl that is built:
[snip]
> > It works fine for me, though you should use at your own risk. The worst
> > that could happen is you have to run the uninstall.sh script or otherwise
> > re-install the stock Perl RPMS.
> > 
> > Download the tar ball from one of:
> > 
> >     http://ftp.icdevgroup.org/perl/RHL-9/perl-kitchensink-5.8.0-rh9.tar.gz
> >     ftp://ftp.icdevgroup.org/pub/perl/RHL-9/perl-kitchensink-5.8.0-rh9.tar.gz
> 
> I have Debian builds without threads enabled for perl 5.8 on Debian
> sid if anyone would like. I don't have the bandwidth to support large
> downloads for these and they will be updated to the latest sid
> versions when any fixes are put in by the Debian maintainer. If I
> could offer them up to Mike or someone to post someplace as I work on
> these this would be great.
> 

We can definitely arrange to put these up on icdevgroup.org for you.
Racke can do that for you, or Jon, or myself. 

> BTW, This may be for Racke, but I am wanting to put in a bug report for
> IC and perl, I have found there are major issues that relate to the
> threads being enabled. I am not sure if this would do any good, since I
> have not followed the devel list for a while and do not know if this has
> already been discussed. I did not find any bugs for IC or Perl related
> to this. After compiling over 100 perl modules that used threads (I use
> perl for a crap load of stuff!) with the non-threaded perl, the problems
> I have had previously with attempting to create options has been fixed.
> I am almost sure that I will be getting rid of the PEOS I see now on an
> occasion since upgrading to threaded perl in Debian. Threaded Perl by
> the way screws with mod perl really badly causes many segfaults and
> reduces the performance of mod perl by at least 10% due to all the
> segfaults.

Indeed, the problem is not in Interchange as far as I can see. The
problem almost inevitably is related to an XS module or the signal
handling code interfering with child executables like PGP or Payflow..

> 
> If Rack happens to have a script to pull down and build all of the
> debian Perl packages I would be willing to compile all of them and make
> them available much quicker. (Why oh why did all the distributions have
> to go threaded with perl?).

I have no idea. Threads on Perl are not ready for prime time, and 
I think part of the blame has to go to Perl for not having a strong
enough warning about their use. Here is the current one:

    Note that Perl built with threading support runs slightly slower and
    uses more memory than plain Perl. The current implementation is
    believed to be stable, but it is fairly new, and so should be
    treated with caution.

IMO, it should not say "it is believed to be stable".  It should say
something like:

    The vast majority of Perl programs don't use or even support
    threads, and compiling them in greatly increases the risk of program
    instability. It is recommended that you do not enable threads except
    in a special Perl built for use with programs that can benefit
    greatly from them.

-- 
Mike Heins
Perusion -- Expert Interchange Consulting    http://www.perusion.com/
phone +1.513.523.7621      <mike@perusion.com>

There's nothing sweeter than life nor more precious than time.
-- Barney