avoid autoflushing behavior of fork/system/exec on Solaris (thanks

to fflush(NULL) bug)

p4raw-id: //depot/perl@5627

2 files changed, 26 insertions, 6 deletions

diff --git a/hints/solaris_2.sh b/hints/solaris_2.sh
index 5a8cbfab8b..65f8158ff0 100644
--- a/hints/solaris_2.sh
+++ b/hints/solaris_2.sh
@@ -479,6 +479,29 @@ case "$uselongdouble" in
 	;;
 esac
 
+case "$fflushNULL" in
+"$define"|true|[yY]*)
+	# allow them to force it the other way
+	;;
+*)
+	# All versions of Solaris appear to have a stdio bug that improperly
+	# flushes the input end of pipes.  So we avoid the autoflush on
+	# fork/system/exec support for now. :-(  See the test case in:
+	#   http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2000-03/msg00373.html
+	# XXX this needs a Configure test so that more such platforms can be
+	# caught automatically.
+	fflushNULL=undef
+	fflushall=undef
+	cat >&4 <<EOM
+
+*** Solaris has a bug that affects input pipes, and so I have disabled
+*** support for automatic flushing on fork/system/exec.  If you want
+*** automatic flushing anyway, rerun Configure again with -DfflushNULL.
+
+EOM
+	;;
+esac
+
 rm -f try.c try.o try
 # keep that leading tab
 	ccisworkshop=''
diff --git a/pod/perldelta.pod b/pod/perldelta.pod
index 8e62de0bf7..408b48c372 100644
--- a/pod/perldelta.pod
+++ b/pod/perldelta.pod
@@ -4,12 +4,6 @@ perldelta - what's new for perl v5.6.0
 
 =head1 DESCRIPTION
 
-This is an unsupported alpha release, meant for intrepid Perl
-developers only.  The included sources may not even build correctly on
-some platforms.  Subscribing to perl5-porters is the best way to
-monitor and contribute to the progress of development releases (see
-http://www.hut.fi/~jhi/perl5-porters.html for info).
-
 This document describes differences between the 5.005 release and this one.
 
 =head1 Incompatible Changes
@@ -986,6 +980,9 @@ was attempted.  This mostly eliminates confusing
 buffering mishaps suffered by users unaware of how Perl internally
 handles I/O.
 
+This is not supported on some platforms like Solaris where a suitably
+correct implementation of fflush(NULL) isn't available.
+
 =head2 Better diagnostics on meaningless filehandle operations
 
 Constructs such as C<< open(<FH>) >> and C<< close(<FH>) >>