perlfreebsd

PERLFREEBSD(1)	       Perl Programmers Reference Guide	       PERLFREEBSD(1)



NAME
       README.freebsd - Perl version 5 on FreeBSD systems

DESCRIPTION
       This document describes various features of FreeBSD that will affect
       how Perl version 5 (hereafter just Perl) is compiled and/or runs.

       FreeBSD core dumps from readdir_r with ithreads

       When perl is configured to use ithreads, it will use re-entrant
       library calls in preference to non-re-entrant versions.	There is a
       bug in FreeBSD’s "readdir_r" function in versions 4.5 and earlier that
       can cause a SEGV when reading large directories. A patch for FreeBSD
       libc is available (see
       http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=misc/30631 ) which has been
       integrated into FreeBSD 4.6.

       $^X doesn’t always contain a full path in FreeBSD

       perl 5.8.0 sets $^X where possible to a full path by asking the oper-
       ating system. On FreeBSD the full path of the perl interpreter is
       found by reading the symlink /proc/curproc/file. There is a bug on
       FreeBSD, where the result of reading this symlink is can be wrong in
       certain circumstances (see
       http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=35703 ).  In these cases
       perl will fall back to the old behaviour of using C’s argv[0] value
       for $^X.

       Perl will no longer be part of "base FreeBSD"

       Not as bad as it sounds--what this means is that Perl will no longer
       be part of the kernel build system of FreeBSD.  Perl will still very
       probably be part of the "default install", and in any case the latest
       version will be in the ports system.  The first FreeBSD version this
       change will affect is 5.0, all 4.n versions will keep the status quo.

AUTHOR
       Nicholas Clark <nick@ccl4.org>, collating wisdom supplied by Slaven
       Rezic and Tim Bunce.

       Please report any errors, updates, or suggestions to perlbug@perl.org.



perl v5.8.8			  2006-01-07		       PERLFREEBSD(1)