No perldoc for POSIX?

Question

On some other systems, like Ubuntu, perldoc POSIX works, but on Arch,

%> perldoc POSIX
No documentation found for "POSIX".

%> perldoc /usr/lib/perl5/core_perl/POSIX.pm
No documentation found for "/usr/lib/perl5/core_perl/POSIX.pm".

Did I missed some packages? Other libaries like LWP::UserAgent works through.

Answer 1

The core perldoc comes with the perl package in arch. e.g. perldoc perllol. For most modules all the utility does is build the documentation from the POD in the source though. /usr/lib/perl5/core_perl/POSIX.pm happens to have no POD so doesn't build any documentation. I guess because it is an XS module so most of it's function is in C somewhere else.

Comparing Arch to a Debian box with perldoc, on Debian some of the core modules also have a separate .pod file in /usr/share/perl/5.x/ whereas Arch has none.

POSIX.pm seems to be slightly different again in that the .pod is in the lib directory..

debian$ find /usr/lib/ -name "*.pod"
/usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Config.pod
/usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/POSIX.pod

Which makes it look like debian does something custom here.

In fact, if you check the perl source POSIX.pod is a separate file sitting next to the perl module.

Maybe file a bug with arch to have it included? I guess you could argue for it to be changed in Perl instead, if it goes against some standard. There's Perl people on stackoverflow that would probably know.

Answer 2

My personal preference is to use the online documentation, selecting the Perl version appropriately. For your specific questions about the POSIX core module there is this. For non-core Perl modules look to metacpan for documentation, viewing the source code and/or downloads, of course.