t/00-load.t Failing Due To "unsupported version: 2.1.1"

[wbraswell]

As with #168 , I am seeing this error now, on a stable system where I have never seen it before!

This bug appears to be related to #165

As you can see from gsl-config below, my GSL version is 2.1, but still I am getting failure due to unsupported version: 2.1.1

SYSTEM INFO:
Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS

$ uname -a
Linux hostname 4.4.0-21-generic #37-Ubuntu SMP Mon Apr 18 18:33:37 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ perl -v
This is perl 5, version 22, subversion 1 (v5.22.1) built for x86_64-linux-gnu-thread-multi
$ gsl-config --version
2.1
$ gsl-config --libs
-L/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu -lgsl -lgslcblas -lm
$ gsl-config --cflags
-I/usr/include
$ dpkg -s libgsl-dev
Package: libgsl-dev
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: libdevel
Installed-Size: 6094
Architecture: amd64
Source: gsl
Version: 2.1+dfsg-2

BRIEF ERROR OUTPUT:

unsupported version: 2.1.1 at t/00-load.t line 14.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at t/00-load.t line 15.
# Tests were run but no plan was declared and done_testing() was not seen.
# Looks like your test exited with 255 just after 1.
t/00-load.t ........ 
Dubious, test returned 255 (wstat 65280, 0xff00)
All 1 subtests passed
...
[[[ OTHER TESTS HERE ]]]
...
Test Summary Report
-------------------
t/00-load.t      (Wstat: 65280 Tests: 1 Failed: 0)
  Non-zero exit status: 255
  Parse errors: No plan found in TAP output
t/SF.t           (Wstat: 0 Tests: 1074 Failed: 0)
  TODO passed:   22
t/SparseMatrix.t (Wstat: 512 Tests: 0 Failed: 0)
  Non-zero exit status: 2
  Parse errors: No plan found in TAP output
Files=56, Tests=4093, 13 wallclock secs ( 0.84 usr  0.13 sys + 11.65 cusr  1.11 csys = 13.73 CPU)
Result: FAIL
Failed 2/56 test programs. 0/4093 subtests failed.
! Installing Math::GSL failed.

FULL BUILD OUTPUT:
https://pastebin.com/cvDRkkXD

[leto]

@wbraswell thanks for the detailed bug report. Can you tell me how you install GSL? Are you using a Debian package? Sometimes they append their own version number, and we might need to teach Math::GSL source code that 2.1.1 is the same as 2.1

[wbraswell]

@leto I am very happy to provide detailed bug reports and do all I can to help fix it! :-)
I install via Debian packages, both in Ubuntu (as shown above) and in Debian itself. Here are the pertinent packages:
https://github.com/wbraswell/rperl/blob/master/Docker/rperl_for_git_release_testing/Dockerfile#L36-L37

[wbraswell]

Also, you can see in my original post above that Debian does append something weird +dfsg-2 to the end of the version string Version: 2.1+dfsg-2
COPIED FROM ORIGINAL POST:

$ dpkg -s libgsl-dev
Package: libgsl-dev
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: libdevel
Installed-Size: 6094
Architecture: amd64
Source: gsl
Version: 2.1+dfsg-2

[leto]

@wbraswell I think maybe the +dfsg-2 is somehow being mangled into 2.1.1, which the Math::GSL build system doesn't know about and so it fails. Our build system needs to learn how to deal with this format, which comes from git describe. Our build system should ignore the + and any following characters in a version string, strip them off, and that should avoid this bug.

[leto]

@wbraswell one way to solve this is modifying the current_version variable in Build.PL, stripping out the weird stuff at the end, and things Should Work (tm) 😄

[wbraswell]

@leto
Where is the 2.1.1 number originating from?

I would assume the most correct way to find this number is by calling gsl-config, but as you can see from my original post this gives the correct 2.1:

$ gsl-config --version
2.1

It is only the call to dpkg that returns the weird 2.1+dfsg-2 version, and I don't think your software is calling the OS-specific dpkg command?

[leto]

@wbraswell you are right, Math::GSL code does not use dpkg but it does read PkgConfig files from the filesystem in some places, and I think it might be possible that Debian is putting it's own version number there, and it's being mangled to 2.1.1. That is my current theory, not 100% sure of that

[wbraswell]

@leto
Please show me exactly how & where Math::GSL checks for the desired GSL version number, and then I will investigate my operating system accordingly.