[perl #114924] Make method calls work with ::SUPER packages

Perl caches SUPER methods inside packages named Foo::SUPER.  But this
interferes with actual method calls on those packages (SUPER->foo,
foo::SUPER->foo).

The first time a package is looked up, it is vivified under the name
with which it is looked up.  So *SUPER:: will cause that package
to be called SUPER, and *main::SUPER:: will cause it to be named
main::SUPER.

main->SUPER::isa used to be very sensitive to the name of the
main::FOO package (where the cache is kept).  If it happened to be
called SUPER, that call would fail.

Fixing that bug (commit 3c104e59d83f) caused the CPAN module named
SUPER to fail, because SUPER->foo was now being treated as a
SUPER::method call.  gv_fetchmeth_pvn was using the ::SUPER suffix to
determine where to look for the method.  The package passed to it (the
::SUPER package) was being used to look for cached methods, but the
package with ::SUPER stripped off was being used for the rest of
lookup.  3c104e59d83f made main->SUPER::foo work by treating SUPER
as main::SUPER in that case.  Mentioning *main::SUPER:: or doing a
main->SUPER::foo call before loading SUPER.pm also caused it to fail,
even before 3c104e59d83f.

Instead of using publicly-visible packages for internal caches, we
should be keeping them internal, to avoid such side effects.

This commit adds a new member to the HvAUX struct, where a hash of GVs
is stored, to cache super methods.  I cannot simpy use a hash of CVs,
because I need GvCVGEN.  Using a hash of GVs allows the existing
method cache code to be used.

This new hash of GVs is not actually a stash, as it has no HvAUX
struct (i.e., no name, no mro_meta).  It doesn’t even need an @ISA
entry as before (which was only used to make isa caches reset), as it
shares its owner stash’s mro_meta generation numbers.  In fact, the
GVs inside it have their GvSTASH pointers pointing to the owner stash.

In terms of memory use, it is probably the same as before.  Every
stash and every iterated or weakly-referenced hash is now one pointer
larger than before, but every SUPER cache is smaller (no HvAUX, no
*ISA + @ISA + $ISA[0] + magic).

The code is a lot simpler now and uses fewer stash lookups, so it
should be faster.

This will break any XS code that expects the gv_fetchmeth_pvn to treat
the ::SUPER suffix as magical.  This behaviour was only barely docu-
mented (the suffix was mentioned, but what it did was not), and is
unused on CPAN.

1 files changed, 3 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/gv.h b/gv.h
index 30014b622d..8e09340053 100644
--- a/gv.h
+++ b/gv.h
@@ -235,6 +235,9 @@ Return the CV from the GV.
 #define GV_NO_SVGMAGIC	0x800	/* Skip get-magic on an SV argument;
 				   used only by gv_fetchsv(_nomg) */
 
+/* Flags for gv_fetchmeth_pvn and gv_autoload_pvn*/
+#define GV_SUPER	0x1000	/* SUPER::method */
+
 /* Flags for gv_autoload_*/
 #define GV_AUTOLOAD_ISMETHOD 1	/* autoloading a method? */