perltodo.pod

MSYS在windows下模拟了一个类unix的终端

=head1 NAME

perltodo - Perl TO-DO List

=head1 DESCRIPTION

This is a list of wishes for Perl.  It is maintained by Nathan
Torkington for the Perl porters.  Send updates to
I<[e-mail]>.  If you want to work on any of these
projects, be sure to check the perl5-porters archives for past ideas,
flames, and propaganda.  This will save you time and also prevent you
from implementing something that Larry has already vetoed.  One set
of archives may be found at:

    http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/


=head1 Infrastructure

=head2 Mailing list archives

Chaim suggests contacting egroup and asking them to archive the other
perl.org mailing lists.  Probably not advocacy, but definitely
perl6-porters, etc.

=head2 Bug tracking system

Richard Foley I<[e-mail]> is writing one.  We looked at
several, like gnats and the Debian system, but at the time we
investigated them, none met our needs.  Since then, Jitterbug has
matured, and may be worth reinvestigation.

The system we've developed is the recipient of perlbug mail, and any
followups it generates from perl5-porters.  New bugs are entered
into a mysql database, and sent on to
perl5-porters with the subject line rewritten to include a "ticket
number" (unique ID for the new bug).  If the incoming message already
had a ticket number in the subject line, then the message is logged
against that bug.  There is a separate email interface (not forwarding
to p5p) that permits porters to claim, categorize, and close tickets.

There is also a web interface to the system at http://bugs.perl.org.

The current delay in implementation is caused by perl.org lockups.
One suspect is the mail handling system, possibly going into loops.

We still desperately need a bugmaster, someone who will look at
every new "bug" and kill those that we already know about, those
that are not bugs at all, etc.

=head2 Regression Tests

The test suite for Perl serves two needs: ensuring features work, and
ensuring old bugs have not been reintroduced.  Both need work.

Brent LaVelle ([e-mail]) has stepped forward to work on
performance tests and improving the size of the test suite.

=over 4

=item Coverage

Do the tests that come with Perl exercise every line (or every block,
or ...)  of the Perl interpreter, and if not then how can we make them
do so?

=item Regression

No bug fixes should be made without a corresponding testsuite addition.
This needs a dedicated enforcer, as the current pumpking is either too
lazy or too stupid or both and lets enforcement wander all over the
map.  :-)

=item __DIE__

Tests that fail need to be of a form that can be readily mailed
to perlbug and diagnosed with minimal back-and-forth's to determine
which test failed, due to what cause, etc.

=item suidperl

We need regression/sanity tests for suidperl

=item The 25% slowdown from perl4 to perl5

This value may or may not be accurate, but it certainly is
eye-catching.  For some things perl5 is faster than perl4, but often
the reliability and extensibility have come at a cost of speed.  The
benchmark suite that Gisle released earlier has been hailed as both a
fantastic solution and as a source of entirely meaningless figures.
Do we need to test "real applications"?  Can you do so?  Anyone have
machines to dedicate to the task?  Identify the things that have grown
slower, and see if there's a way to make them faster.

=back

=head1 Configure

Andy Dougherty maintain(ed|s) a list of "todo" items for the configure
that comes with Perl.  See Porting/pumpkin.pod in the latest
source release.

=head2 Install HTML

Have "make install" give you the option to install HTML as well.  This
would be part of Configure.  Andy Wardley (certified Perl studmuffin)
will look into the current problems of HTML installation--is
'installhtml' preventing this from happening cleanly, or is pod2html
the problem?  If the latter, Brad Appleton's pod work may fix the
problem for free.

=head1 Perl Language

=head2 64-bit Perl

Verify complete 64 bit support so that the value of sysseek, or C<-s>, or
stat(), or tell can fit into a perl number without losing precision.
Work with the perl-64bit mailing list on perl.org.

=head2 Prototypes

=over 4

=item Named prototypes

Add proper named prototypes that actually work usefully.

=item Indirect objects

Fix prototype bug that forgets indirect objects.

=item Method calls

Prototypes for method calls.

=item Context

Return context prototype declarations.

=item Scoped subs

lexically-scoped subs, e.g. my sub

=back

=head1 Perl Internals

=head2 magic_setisa

C<magic_setisa> should be made to update %FIELDS [???]

=head2 Garbage Collection

There was talk of a mark-and-sweep garbage collector at TPC2, but the
(to users) unpredictable nature of its behaviour put some off.
Sarathy, I believe, did the work.  Here's what he has to say:

Yeah, I hope to implement it someday too.  The points that were
raised in TPC2 were all to do with calling DESTROY() methods, but
I think we can accommodate that by extending bless() to stash
extra information for objects so we track their lifetime accurately
for those that want their DESTROY() to be predictable (this will be
a speed hit, naturally, and will therefore be optional, naturally. :)

[N.B. Don't even ask me about this now!  When I have the time to
write a cogent summary, I'll post it.]

=head2 Reliable signals

Sarathy and Dan Sugalski are working on this.  Chip posted a patch
earlier, but it was not accepted into 5.005.  The issue is tricky,
because it has the potential to greatly slow down the core.

There are at least three things to consider:

=over 4

=item Alternate runops() for signal despatch

Sarathy and Dan are discussed this on perl5-porters.

=item Figure out how to die() in delayed sighandler

=item Add tests for Thread::Signal

=item Automatic tests against CPAN

Is there some way to automatically build all/most of CPAN with
the new Perl and check that the modules there pass all the tests?

=back

=head2 Interpolated regex performance bugs

  while (<>) {
    $found = 0;
    foreach $pat (@patterns) {
      $found++ if /$pat/o;
    }
    print if $found;
  }

The qr// syntax added in 5.005 has solved this problem, but
it needs more thorough documentation.

=head2 Memory leaks from failed eval/regcomp

The only known memory leaks in Perl are in failed code or regexp
compilation.  Fix this.  Hugo Van Der Sanden will attempt this but
won't have tuits until January 1999.

=head2 Make XS easier to use

There was interest in SWIG from porters, but nothing has happened
lately.

=head2 Make embedded Perl easier to use

This is probably difficult for the same reasons that "XS For Dummies"
will be difficult.

=head2 Namespace cleanup

    CPP-space:    restrict CPP symbols exported from headers
    header-space: move into CORE/perl/
    API-space:    begin list of things that constitute public api
    env-space:    Configure should use PERL_CONFIG instead of CONFIG etc.

=head2 MULTIPLICITY

Complete work on safe recursive interpreters C<Perl-E<gt>new()>.
Sarathy says that a reference implementation exists.

=head2 MacPerl

Chris Nandor and Matthias Neeracher are working on better integrating
MacPerl into the Perl distribution.

=head1 Documentation

There's a lot of documentation that comes with Perl.  The quantity of
documentation makes it difficult for users to know which section of
which manpage to read in order to solve their problem.  Tom
Christiansen has done much of the documentation work in the past.

=head2 A clear division into tutorial and reference

Some manpages (e.g., perltoot and perlreftut) clearly set out to
educate the reader about a subject.  Other manpages (e.g., perlsub)
are references for which there is no tutorial, or are references with
a slight tutorial bent.  If things are either tutorial or reference,
then the reader knows which manpage to read to learn about a subject,
and which manpage to read to learn all about an aspect of that
subject.  Part of the solution to this is:

=head2 Remove the artificial distinction between operators and functions

History shows us that users, and often porters, aren't clear on the
operator-function distinction.  The present split in reference
material between perlfunc and perlop hinders user navigation.  Given
that perlfunc is by far the larger of the two, move operator reference
into perlfunc.

=head2 More tutorials

More documents of a tutorial nature could help.  Here are some
candidates:

=over 4

=item Regular expressions

Robin Berjon ([e-mail]) has volunteered.

=item I/O

Mark-Jason Dominus ([e-mail]) has an outline for perliotut.

=item pack/unpack

This is badly needed.  There has been some discussion on the
subject on perl5-porters.

=item Debugging

Ronald Kimball ([e-mail]) has volunteered.

=back

=head2 Include a search tool

perldoc should be able to 'grep' fulltext indices of installed POD
files.  This would let people say:

  perldoc -find printing numbers with commas

and get back the perlfaq entry on 'commify'.

This solution, however, requires documentation to contain the keywords
the user is searching for.  Even when the users know what they're
looking for, often they can't spell it.

=head2 Include a locate tool

perldoc should be able to help people find the manpages on a
particular high-level subject:

  perldoc -find web

would tell them manpages, web pages, and books with material on web
programming.  Similarly C<perldoc -find databases>, C<perldoc -find
references> and so on.

We need something in the vicinity of:

  % perl -help random stuff
  No documentation for perl function `random stuff' found
  The following entry in perlfunc.pod matches /random/a:
    =item rand EXPR

    =item rand

    Returns a random fractional number greater than or equal to C<0> and less
    than the value of EXPR.  (EXPR should be positive.)  If EXPR is
    omitted, the value C<1> is used.  Automatically calls C<srand()> unless
    C<srand()> has already been called.  See also C<srand()>.

    (Note: If your rand function consistently returns numbers that are too
    large or too small, then your version of Perl was probably compiled
    with the wrong number of RANDBITS.)
  The following pod pages seem to have /stuff/a:
    perlfunc.pod	(7 hits)
    perlfaq7.pod	(6 hits)
    perlmod.pod		(4 hits)
    perlsyn.pod		(3 hits)
    perlfaq8.pod	(2 hits)
    perlipc.pod		(2 hits)
    perl5004delta.pod	(1 hit)
    perl5005delta.pod	(1 hit)
    perlcall.pod	(1 hit)
    perldelta.pod	(1 hit)
    perlfaq3.pod	(1 hit)
    perlfaq5.pod	(1 hit)
    perlhist.pod	(1 hit)
    perlref.pod		(1 hit)
    perltoc.pod		(1 hit)
    perltrap.pod	(1 hit)
  Proceed to open perlfunc.pod? [y] n
  Do you want to speak perl interactively? [y] n
  Should I dial 911? [y] n
  Do you need psychiatric help? [y] y
  <PELIZA> Hi, what bothers you today?
           A Python programmer in the next cubby is driving me nuts!
  <PELIZA> Hmm, thats fixable.  Just [rest censored]

=head2 Separate function manpages by default

Perl should install 'manpages' for every function/operator into the
3pl or 3p manual section.  By default.  The splitman program in the
Perl source distribution does the work of turning big perlfunc into
little 3p pages.

=head2 Users can't find the manpages

Make C<perldoc> tell users what they need to add to their .login or
.cshrc to set their MANPATH correctly.

=head2 Install ALL Documentation

Make the standard documentation kit include the VMS, OS/2, Win32,
Threads, etc information.  installperl and pod/Makefile should know
enough to copy README.foo to perlfoo.pod before building everything,
when appropriate.

=head2 Outstanding issues to be documented

Tom has a list of 5.005_5* features or changes that require
documentation.

Create one document that coherently explains the delta between the
last camel release and the current release.  perldelta was supposed
to be that, but no longer.  The things in perldelta never seemed to
get placed in the right places in the real manpages, either.  This
needs work.

=head2 Adapt www.linuxhq.com for Perl

This should help glorify documentation and get more people involved in
perl development.

=head2 Replace man with a perl program

Can we reimplement man in Perl?  Tom has a start.  I believe some of
the Linux systems distribute a manalike.  Alternatively, build on
perldoc to remove the unfeatures like "is slow" and "has no apropos".

=head2 Unicode tutorial

We could use more work on helping people understand Perl's new
Unicode support that Larry has created.

=head1 Modules

=head2 Update the POSIX extension to conform with the POSIX 1003.1 Edition 2

The current state of the POSIX extension is as of Edition 1, 1991,
whereas the Edition 2 came out in 1996.  ISO/IEC 9945:1-1996(E),
ANSI/IEEE Std 1003.1, 1996 Edition. ISBN 1-55937-573-6.  The updates
were legion: threads, IPC, and real time extensions.

=head2 Module versions

Automate the checking of versions in the standard distribution so
it's easy for a pumpking to check whether CPAN has a newer version
that we should be including?

=head2 New modules

Which modules should be added to the standard distribution?  This ties
in with the SDK discussed on the perl-sdk list at perl.org.

=head2 Profiler

Make the profiler (Devel::DProf) part of the standard release, and
document it well.

=head2 Tie Modules

=over 4