Perl on the 80286

[Peter Kendell]

>From article <25715CC0.11956 at ateng.com>, by chip at ateng.com (Chip Salzenberg):
> According to pete at tcom.stc.co.uk (Peter Kendell):
>>From article <25696FB9.7258 at ateng.com>, by chip at ateng.com (Chip Salzenberg):
>>> You may not know it, but you need Perl.  Get it.
>>	I did. My machine (SVR2, 80286) can't build it. Now what?
> 
> Well, I've built Perl on a Xenix/286 system.  It compiled in large model,
> with the compiler flag that forces big data items out of the main data
> segment.  (The option "-Mt32" means that 32 bytes or more is "big".)
> 
> If you don't have a compiler with -Mt#, then you've got a problem with more
> than Perl.  Get a Real Compiler[tm].  Switch to Xenix/286.  Or something.

Chip has made the understandable (but mistaken) assumption that my
machine is a PC-AT (or clone thereof) and that I have the option of
buying it a new OS or compiler (or both).  Well, it ain't and I haven't.

And the problems here are far more deep-rooted than merely the compiler.
Configure broke the shell.  Perl.y broke yacc.  eval.c broke the
compiler. Etc.

Of course I've been able to work around most of the problems. I used ash
to run Configure (the increase stack size fix for /bin/sh isn't available
to me). I yacced perl.y on another machine. I expanded and simplified the
expressions that broke cc. I built perl (but note, *not on my machine*).

There are still some difficulties.  I can run individual parts of the
test suite but not the TEST script itself (help welcomed here).  Running
perl in debug mode causes a core dump.  Sdb can't help me much - if I
compile with -g the symbol table is too big for it.

So, you say, junk your box or upgrade it.  Stop whingeing. 

Fair does indeed.  But if you say this (and, in case you hadn't guessed,
the object of my posting was to make *someone* say this) then it's
bye-bye to perl the universal tool.  Whether I know I need it or not.

Larry, if you read this.  None of the above is intended in any way to
slight your efforts in developing perl.  Naturally you have the right to
enhance it as you see fit and inevitably it is difficult to ensure that
a worthwhile program is going to run on every machine from '286 to Cray.
Keep up the good work!  But please remember us little guys.

And Chip.  Please stop ordering people about.

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|		  Peter Kendell <pete at tcom.stc.co.uk>	        	   |
|				...{uunet!}mcvax!ukc!stc!pete		   |
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