Re: Texinfo 7.0.90 pretest on CentOS 8-stream (Unicode::Collate)

[Bruno Haible]

Gavin Smith wrote:
> As the log file shows, the Unicode::Collate module is not found.

Indeed: just running perl with a 1-line input

  $ perl
  use Unicode::Collate;

produces an error on CentOS 8-stream, but not e.g. on Ubuntu.

When I manually search for it in @INC, I don't see it installed:

  $ for d in <@INC as printed by 'perl -V'>; do
      find $d/ -name '*Collate*'
    done

prints nothing about *Unicode/Collate* in CentOS 8-stream, where it prints
e.g. /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.34/Unicode/Collate.pm
     /usr/share/perl/5.34/Unicode/Collate
on Ubuntu.

> You can also run "corelist -a Unicode::Collate" to confirm it is a core
> module.

Yes, according to this command, Unicode::Collate version 1.19 should be
present.

> It's possible that a distribution does something to install fewer packages,

The packaging source code for this module is here:
https://git.centos.org/rpms/perl/blob/c8s/f/SPECS/perl.spec
lines 2816..2832. Apparently they intended Unicode::Collate to be packaged
as a separate dnf package.

And indeed,

$ dnf list | grep perl | grep -i unicode

list both perl-Unicode-Normalize and perl-Unicode-Collate as available.

But

$ dnf list installed | grep perl | grep -i unicode

shows that perl-Unicode-Normalize is installed, but perl-Unicode-Collate is not.

> Is it possible that Unicode::Collate is installed on the system somewhere
> but that we aren't finding it due to incorrect @INC?

No.
  $ find /usr -name Collate.pm
finds I18N/Collate.pm but no Unicode/Collate.pm.

> Or is there any reason why Unicode::Collate wouldn't be installed?  Was
> Perl installed in an unusual way on this system?

No.

For comparison, here are the results for older CentOS distributions:
  - CentOS 8: The same 52 test failures.
  - CentOS 7: "make check" passes.
  - CentOS 6: "make check" passes.

> I don't know what the solution to this is.

You could, at configure time, test what's the exit code of 'perl' when
run with 1-line input:
  use Unicode::Collate;

Bruno