Using perlbrew on Cygwin - a problem with gnu tar unwrapping perl archive files

[somian]

Discussed in #832

^{Originally posted by somian December 16, 2024}
I'm having some trouble setting up and using perlbrew on cygwin, and I don't think I am going to be the only one. Unfortunately I don't understand how to use Github and I don't have time to learn it right now. I'll describe the problem and I can offer a patch by uploading it to this message.

The problem occurs where perlbrew acts on a downloaded perl archive, using gnu tar to expand it. Gnu tar must not be used on a filename that is absolute, on cygwin or MSWindows, because it misunderstands the C: as referring to a remote tape drive or similar device. The flag --force-local must be used or tar dies with an error.

So, I have a fix that should not break any other platform. Thank you for your kind attention.

Here's my console error:

-bash-5.2$ perlbrew install perl-5.38.2
Fetching perl 5.38.2 as C:/Users/somia/perl5/perlbrew/dists/perl-5.38.2.tar.gz
Download https://cpan.metacpan.org/authors/id/P/PE/PEVANS/perl-5.38.2.tar.gz to C:/Users/somia/perl5/perlbrew/dists/perl-5.38.2.tar.gz
tar (child): Cannot connect to C: resolve failed

gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file
tar: Child returned status 128
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
Failed to extract C:/Users/somia/perl5/perlbrew/dists/perl-5.38.2.tar.gz at C:/Users/somia/perl5/perlbrew/bin/perlbrew line 1726.

cygwin-gnutar.patch

[gugod]

@somian Thanks for your contribution. Since I don't have a working cygwin environment, I have no way of confirming the result of your patch. I'm OK with just bring in all your changes as it looks like it's properly guarding the scope by checking $^O already.

If you are aware of any free CI service that would provide cygwin environment such that I could run tests in, I'd be glad to set it up so perlbrew can be more or less supported (at least tested) on cygwin.

[somian]

Thank you for looking at this error report and patch, @gugod. It seems that you found a CI service to test builds of perlbrew on cygwin, I am glad because I did not know of any service to guide you to.

[gugod]

Thank you for looking at this error report and patch, @gugod. It seems that you found a CI service to test builds of perlbrew on cygwin, I am glad because I did not know of any service to guide you to.

Thanks @somian -- I happened to notice that Github Action can run on windows and there is already a way to setup cygwin on top of that. With a bit of luck and searching on the internet I managed to setup a simple a simple way to run the installation of App-perlbrew distribution (of develop branch, or of branches of pull requests) well as the unit tests.

I'm going to briefly modify your patch and make a new pull request based on it too.