INSTALL: mention that env vars can affect tests

1 files changed, 12 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/INSTALL b/INSTALL
index 89707cf6c4..308ffff863 100644
--- a/INSTALL
+++ b/INSTALL
@@ -1401,6 +1401,18 @@ The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
 
 at Perl startup.
 
+=item other environment variables
+
+Configure does not check for environment variables that can sometimes
+have a major influence on how perl is built or tested. For example,
+OBJECT_MODE on AIX determines the way the compiler and linker deal with
+their objects, but this is a variable that only influences build-time
+behaviour, and should not affect the perl scripts that are eventually
+executed by the perl binary. Other variables, like PERL_UNICODE,
+PERL5LIB, and PERL5OPTS will influence the behaviour of the test suite.
+So if you are getting strange test failures, you may want to try
+retesting with the various PERL variables unset.
+
 =item varargs
 
 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed