=head1 FAQ

=over

=item What is this FAQ about?

This FAQ is about the scripts that come with the Perl::Repository::APC
module. The README gives an overview, each script has a manpage, and
this FAQ is about practical usage questions.

=item How portable are these scripts?

File system must be case sensitive because we are patching things as
they actually happened on the perforce repo. And from tim to time we
had filenames that conflict with a case tolerant filesystem. Other
than that everything should be pretty portable.

=item How much disk space do I need to run buildaperl or binsearchaperl?

At the time of this writing (2003-03), the APC contains 18850 patches
and all directories together occupy on my disk 630 MB. If you want to
operate on a full APC, you do not need all of this. You only need the
directories APC/5* and APC/perl-current-diffs. These currently add up
to 500 MB.

If you only want to examine a subset, you can reduce the disk space
needed significantly.

The most space on my installation though is not taken by the
repository mirror but by the cache of installed perls I accumulate
when I run binsearchaperl regularly. These need unlimited diskspace
in theory. But the binary search algorithm finds its target with only
at most 15 compilations if you have no cache, so you can delete the
cache when you're done and one Gigabyte will suffice to successfully
run binsearchaperl.

=item How can I run binary searches that need modules from CPAN?

Use the --prep=somescript switch to binsearchaperl. C<somescript> must
be a script that installs the needed module from CPAN. The output of
that script is ignored by binsearchaperl.

=item Can I use binsearchaperl with a partial mirror of the APC?

If you want to only track, say, bleadperl, you need to mirror the
directory associated with bleadperl (at the time of this writing
5.9.0) and the directory that contains the basis for bleadperl (at the
time of this writing 5.8.0). See the sample Makefile in the eg
directory how to create and maintain a custom subset of APC.

=item How can I find out the patch ID of, say perl 5.8.7?

Module::CoreList::patchlevel (given $Module::CoreList::VERSION >= 2.01)

=back
