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6.6. The perlbug Program

As you develop and debug your own code, it's possible that you'll run into a bug in Perl itself. If you do, the best way to report it is with the perlbug program. perlbug is a Perl program designed to automate the process of reporting bugs in the Perl standard distribution and the standard modules. It works interactively, prompting you for the information needed and generating an email message addressed to . (If the bug you found is in one of the nonstandard Perl ports, see the documentation for that port to find out how to report bugs.) When you run perlbug, it prompts you to include all relevant information, making it easier for the Perl developers to reproduce and track down the bug. If you come up with a patch to resolve the problem, include that too.

Don't use perlbug to get help debugging your code (for that, see the list of newsgroups and other resources in Chapter 1, "Introduction to Perl"). But if you believe you've found a bug in Perl itself, perlbug is the way to report it.

To run perlbug, simply enter the command with any options you want to include. For example:

% perlbug -t

The possible options are:

-a address
Email address to send report to. Default is .

-b body
Body of report. If not included on the command line or in a file, you are given a chance to edit it.

-C
Don't send a copy to your Perl administrator.

-c address
Email address where copy should be sent. Default is your Perl administrator.

-d
Data mode. (The default if you redirect or pipe input.) Prints your configuration data, without mailing anything. Use with -v to get more complete data.

-e editor
Editor to use. Defaults to your default editor or to vi.

-f file
File containing prepared body of report.

-h
Prints help message.

-ok
Reports successful build on this system to Perl porters. Forces -S and -C; forces and supplies values for -s and -b. Use with -v to get more complete data. Only reports if this system is less than 60 days old.

-okay
Like -ok but will report on systems older than 60 days.

-r address
Return address. If not specified on the command line, perlbug prompts for it.

-S
Send without asking for confirmation.

-s subject
Subject to include. If not specified on command line, perlbug prompts for it.

-t
Test mode. Target address defaults to .

-v
Verbose. Includes verbose configuration data in report.



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