Mac Forum / Programming / Perl / January 2005

I thought I'd play around with Mac::Glue, so I fired up the CPAN shell
to install it. The installation went, in part, like this:

   [...]
   Manifying blib/man3/Mac::AETE::Format::Glue.3pm
   Manifying blib/man3/Mac::AETE::Dialect.3pm
   Manifying blib/man3/Mac::AETE::Parser.3pm
   Manifying blib/man3/Mac::Glue.3pm
   Manifying blib/man3/Mac::AETE::App.3pm
   Created and installed Dialect glue for AppleScript.rsrc (AppleScript)

At this point, things seemed to go haywire. The perl process was taking
up the bulk of CPU time, the virtual memory consumption for that process
was well over a gigabyte and growing, the system was almost completely
unresponsive, and it was staying that way for 20 minutes or more.

I've never seen a CPAN installation do this sort of thing before.

Thinking something had gone off the rails, I did a `clean Mac::Glue`,
then tried it again. The installation did the same thing at the same
point, so I decided to just let it run while I watched television. The
computer sat there making all kinds of painful noises for the next hour
and a half before it settled down; when I came back to check, the
following text was on the console:

   Manifying blib/man3/Mac::AETE::Format::Glue.3pm
   Manifying blib/man3/Mac::AETE::Dialect.3pm
   Manifying blib/man3/Mac::AETE::Parser.3pm
   Manifying blib/man3/Mac::Glue.3pm
   Manifying blib/man3/Mac::AETE::App.3pm
   Created and installed Dialect glue for AppleScript.rsrc (AppleScript)
   *** malloc: vm_allocate(size=268435456) failed (error code=3)
   *** malloc[8585]: error: Can't allocate region
   Out of memory!
   *** malloc: vm_allocate(size=268435456) failed (error code=3)
   *** malloc[8585]: error: Can't allocate region
   Out of memory!
   END failed--call queue aborted, <DATA> line 1.
   *** malloc: vm_allocate(size=268435456) failed (error code=3)
   *** malloc[10104]: error: Can't allocate region
   Out of memory!
   *** malloc: vm_allocate(size=268435456) failed (error code=3)
   *** malloc[10104]: error: Can't allocate region
   Out of memory!
   END failed--call queue aborted.
     /usr/bin/make -j3 -- OK
   Running make test
   PERL_DL_NONLAZY=1 /usr/bin/perl "-MExtUtils::Command::MM" "-e" "test_harness(0, 'blib/lib', 'blib/arch')" t/*.t
   t/glue....Please run gluedialect and gluescriptadds programs at /Users/cdevers/.cpan/build/Mac-Glue-1.22/blib/lib/Mac/Glue.pm line 1341, <DATA> line 1.
   t/glue....ok                                                                
   t/pod.....ok                                                                
   All tests successful.
   Files=2, Tests=11,  6 wallclock secs ( 1.11 cusr +  0.30 csys =  1.41 CPU)
     /usr/bin/make test -- OK
   Running make install
   Appending installation info to ///System/Library/Perl/5.8.1/darwin-thread-multi-2level/perllocal.pod
   Installing /Library/Perl/5.8.1/Mac/Glue.pm
   Installing /Library/Perl/5.8.1/Mac/Glue/Common.pm
   Installing /Library/Perl/5.8.1/Mac/Glue/glues/dialects/AppleScript
   Installing /Library/Perl/5.8.1/Mac/Glue/glues/dialects/AppleScript.pod
   Installing /man/man3/Mac::AETE::App.3pm
   Installing /man/man3/Mac::AETE::Dialect.3pm
   Installing /man/man3/Mac::AETE::Format::Glue.3pm
   Installing /man/man3/Mac::AETE::Parser.3pm
   Installing /man/man3/Mac::Glue.3pm
   Writing ///Library/Perl/5.8.1/darwin-thread-multi-2level/auto/Mac/Glue/.packlist
     /usr/bin/make install -j3 -- OK

   cpan>

So... in spite of some nasty looking errors, the installation made it to
the tests, and they appear to have all passed cleanly.

Is this trustworthy?

This is a dual G5/1.8ghz running the stock version of Perl. In detail:

   % hostinfo
   Mach kernel version:
        Darwin Kernel Version 7.7.0:
   Sun Nov  7 16:06:51 PST 2004; root:xnu/xnu-517.9.5.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC
   Kernel configured for up to 2 processors.
   2 processors are physically available.
   Processor type: ppc970 (PowerPC 970)
   Processors active: 0 1
   Primary memory available: 1024.00 megabytes.
   Default processor set: 158 tasks, 316 threads, 2 processors
   Load average: 0.06, Mach factor: 1.93

   % sw_vers
   ProductName:    Mac OS X
   ProductVersion: 10.3.7
   BuildVersion:   7S215

   % uname -a
   Darwin macgarnicle 7.7.0 Darwin Kernel Version 7.7.0: Sun Nov  7
   16:06:51 PST 2004; root:xnu/xnu-517.9.5.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC  Power
   Macintosh powerpc

   % perl -v | grep -i 'this is perl'
   This is perl, v5.8.1-RC3 built for darwin-thread-multi-2level

Any ideas? Are installations like this normal for Mac::Glue?