API changes breaking CPANs modules with ld errors are not caught by BBC

Description
0351a62 hides symbols, some of which were used by CPAN modules.

We noticed that Algorithm-Heapify-XS depends upon Perl_do_ncmp.

And it seems FreeBSD dropped support for other distributions related to this commit:

Data-Swap
Devel-BeginLift
Text-ClearSilver
Apache-DB

(Note that some had other issues before.)

Steps to Reproduce

If we look at cpantesters, we see the ld failures are "UNKNOWN", and not "FAIL".

To see an example of the kind of failure we'd expect caught, clone demerphq/Algorithm-Heapify-XS and type perl Makefile.PL && make

Expected behavior

Changes made to the API don't break CPAN.
It would be expected that BBC would have caught these.

add sv_numne() to the API

add (or improve) SV numeric comparison APIs

@tonycoz

@tonycoz can we get an update on the status of this ticket? Thanks.

@tonycoz

@tonycoz can we get an update on the status of this ticket? Thanks.

The numeric APIs are done and merged.

The string APIs are less directly related to this issue, but still related.

I'll self-assign.

I want to add them to ppport.h too, though that has its complications.

This feels like it has multiple parts to it (and also overlaps with other issues not just this one); some parts of which may be a release blocker. We will tag it for now and come back later.

All of these have been failing since 5.37, so this is not a new regression and should not be a release blocker.

@tonycoz

Am I correct in thinking that the general plan at this point is to produce a "proper" XS-API for this and then provide a replacement for Perl_do_ncmp() using those functions in PPPORT? @tonycoz ?

@tonycoz

@tonycoz:

Note that Algorithm::Heapify::XS always failed on Win32:

C:/strawberry/c/bin/../lib/gcc/i686-w64-mingw32/8.3.0/../../../../i686-w64-mingw32/bin/ld.exe: XS.o:XS.c:(.text+0x1b2): undefined reference to `_imp__Perl_do_ncmp'

Hmm, I don't think anyone ever told me about this or I'd have tried to fix it. :-)

Hmm, I don't think anyone ever told me about this or I'd have tried to fix it. :-)

FWIW, Algorithm-Heapify-XS-0.05 builds and tests ok for me on Windows with perl-5.42.0.
There is, however, one compilation warning:

XS.xs:36:1: warning: 'Perl_do_ncmp' redeclared without dllimport attribute: previous dllimport ignored [-Wattributes]
   36 | Perl_do_ncmp(pTHX_ SV* const left, SV * const right)
      | ^~~~~~~~~~~~

@sisyphus

@sisyphus wrote:

There is, however, one compilation warning:

Which is now fixed (hopefully) with a v0.06 that i just now pushed to PAUSE, thanks!

Yep - 0.06 builds cleanly and tests and installs fine.

Hmm, I don't think anyone ever told me about this or I'd have tried to fix it. :-)

IIRC it was coming back as UNKNOWN (generally a build failure) on CPAN testers , unfortunately CPAN testers is unhappy today so I can't look at individual reports.

Hmm, I don't think anyone ever told me about this or I'd have tried to fix it. :-)

IIRC it was coming back as UNKNOWN (generally a build failure) on CPAN testers , unfortunately CPAN testers is unhappy today so I can't look at individual reports.

FWIW, Algorithm-Heapify-XS-0.08 was released to CPAN two days ago and is doing well on CPANtesters. However, it has not yet been CPANtested on Windows -- a condition it shares with many CPAN distros.

@jkeenan

@jkeenan wrote:

FWIW, Algorithm-Heapify-XS-0.08 was released to CPAN two days ago and is doing well on CPANtesters. However, it has not yet been CPANtested on Windows -- a condition it shares with many CPAN distros.

Yeah. It would be nice (at some level) to know that it works everywhere, although if nobody wants to use it on Windows I can understand, its approach to Heaps is kinda niche (but imo perlish). :-)

FWIW. I've tried to make sure it builds correctly now on everything since 5.18.4.

Yeah. It would be nice (at some level) to know that it works everywhere, although if nobody wants to use it on Windows I can understand, its approach to Heaps is kinda niche (but imo perlish). :-)

github actions can test your module on Windows, eg. https://github.com/tonycoz/imager/blob/master/.github/workflows/os-mswin32-mingw64.yml (you'll need to change the "on" clause)

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API changes breaking CPANs modules with ld errors are not caught by BBC #23918

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API changes breaking CPANs modules with ld errors are not caught by BBC #23918

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jkeenan commented on Feb 22, 2026

tonycoz commented on Feb 22, 2026

tonycoz commented on Feb 22, 2026

leonerd commented on Mar 30, 2026

Leont commented on Mar 31, 2026

demerphq commented on Jun 29, 2026

demerphq commented on Jun 29, 2026

sisyphus commented on Jun 29, 2026

demerphq commented on Jun 29, 2026

sisyphus commented on Jun 29, 2026

tonycoz commented on Jun 29, 2026

jkeenan commented on Jul 2, 2026

demerphq commented on Jul 2, 2026

tonycoz commented on Jul 2, 2026

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