#387908 support building without a configured 'lo' interface

Package:
perl
Source:
perl
Description:
Larry Wall's Practical Extraction and Report Language
Submitter:
Max Kellermann
Date:
2010-11-08 10:21:08 UTC
Severity:
wishlist
#387908#5
Date:
2006-09-17 11:48:29 UTC
From:
To:
The Perl test suite fails on the test "lib/Net/Ping/t/500_ping_icmp"
when run on a Linux VServer, because it tries to ping 127.0.0.1 which
is not available on a VServer.  Perl should not make assumptions on
the network setup, and should not think that 127.0.0.1 is reachable
via ICMP.

The important part of the build log:

lib/Net/Ping/t/450_service................ok
lib/Net/Ping/t/500_ping_icmp..............# Failed test 2 in
../lib/Net/Ping/t/500_ping_icmp.t at line 28
#  ../lib/Net/Ping/t/500_ping_icmp.t line 28 is:   ok
$p->ping("127.0.0.1");
FAILED at test 2
lib/Net/Ping/t/510_ping_udp...............ok
#387908#10
Date:
2006-09-17 21:25:00 UTC
From:
To:
This is a reasonable assumption on any sanely configured Unix system.
VServer's failure to provide a loopback interface is inexcusable design
brokenness.
#387908#15
Date:
2006-09-17 21:35:30 UTC
From:
To:
While VServer's design decision is indeed arguable, there might be
other reasons why there is no echo-response from 127.0.0.1,
e.g. firewall rules, rate limits, icmp_echo_ignore_all.

Max
#387908#20
Date:
2006-09-17 23:23:14 UTC
From:
To:
True, but there's no reason to consider any of these other causes a bug in
the package either, as opposed to a misconfiguration of the build
environment.

And the only autobuilder in Debian that uses vserver is the amd64
autobuilder, which appears to have been able to build this version of perl
without incident; so I'm pretty sure there's no reason here to consider this
bug 'serious'.
#387908#27
Date:
2010-11-04 19:56:52 UTC
From:
To:
Agreed, I don't think there's anything to fix on the Perl side here.
Sorry about the delay.

Max, can I close this bug?
#387908#32
Date:
2010-11-04 20:14:46 UTC
From:
To:
I still don't think that any package should require networking to be
set up or even enabled in the kernel to build from source.

Note that perl does not even build-depend on ifupdown.  A bare Debian
system with all build dependencies installed (and nothing else) will
not be able to build perl.

Max
#387908#37
Date:
2010-11-04 21:46:54 UTC
From:
To:
There's lots of packages in the archive that don't meet your condition,
see for example libwww-perl, libtest-www-mechanize-perl, libembperl-perl,
dulwich, libhttp-server-simple-perl, and libapache2-mod-perl2.

I think you should try to drive this at the level of the Debian Policy
rather than file bugs against individual packages. The current practice is
clearly that requiring the loopback interface is acceptable but requiring
general network connectivity isn't.
#387908#42
Date:
2010-11-08 10:17:55 UTC
From:
To:
retitle 387908 support building without a configured 'lo' interface
severity 387908 wishlist
tag 387908 wontfix
thanks

I'm setting this to wishlist and I do not intend to fix it. Will
reconsider if I see a consensus on debian-devel and/or a recommendation
in the Debian Policy that building without 127.0.0.1 should be supported.