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 perlbug@perl.com. (If the bug you found is in one of the non-standard 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 as a way to get help debugging your code (see the list of newsgroups and other resources in Chapter 1, Introduction to Perl, for that), 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 perlbug@perl.com.

-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 perlbug-test@perl.com.

-v

Verbose. Includes verbose configuration data in report.