If you’ve ever tried to use Devel::Leak to debug some perl memory leaks on debian, and found that sv_dump doesnt actually output anything useful for you then try the following:

apt-get install debugperl

then, download Devel::Perl from cpan, untar and build with the following magic:

debugperl Makefile.PL DEFINE=-DDEBUGGING

As  Brendan O’dea (or bod of l2tpns fame) from down under puts it quite succinctly:

The perl-*-debug package provides a debug-enabled binary as debugperl. It does not however include either the config.h or Config.pm which were which match that binary. This is not generally a problem if you just want to debug from the command line (“debugperl -D…”).

Devel::Leak however uses the former (config.h) in the .xs to determine
whether or not to use sv_dump, and the latter (Config.pm) to warn about
-DDEBUGGING in the Makefile.PL.

 

Hopefully this helps someone else googling.

Ever since Cyan Ogilvie introduced me to Debian, circa Woody, I’ve been one of the converted. Debian might be slow in it’s releases cycle, but you simply cannot beat the scope of packages and care taken in it’s assembly.

I’ve been doing customized Debian builds for some products, and I cannot imagine doing it on any other platform than Debian. Preseeded installations, and the awesome apt dependencies simply make it a pleasure to do customization.

Never mind the fact that Debian, like me, likes perl. A lot.

         (__)
         (oo)
   /------/
  / -pipe-    -pipe--pipe-
 *  /---/
    ~~   ~~
...."Have you mooed today?"...