[platform-testers] Request for testing GnuCOBOL 3.1-rc1

[Simon Sobisch]

Dear platform testers,

GnuCOBOL 3.1-rc1 was released and while we do have some
early-user-feedback we'd like to receive some test results from a more
wide audience.


Test environments _not needed_ (as we have these covered with CI and
user-feedback already):
* mingw64
* cygwin, cygwin-64

We look especially for test results on non-gnu environments (CC, make,
libc), very old gnu environments, and other architectures than x86.


We want to ensure that GnuCOBOL 3.1 will work on all these environments,
ideally without any unexpected test results. The final release is
planned to happen in August 2020, but possibly fixes may need some time
before...


Steps to take for testing:

1 download and unpack the tarball (see below)

2 check DEPENDENCIES for the mandatory (mostly gcc + gmp or mpir) and
optional dependencies (berkeley-db, cjson, libxml2, gettext)

3 run its configure + make with appropriate flags

4 run make check
  * should end without unexpected results (and exit code 0)
  * known issues below

5 ideally: run make test
  * needs perl installed
  * try to download an external file via curl/wget,
    if you don't want that or it isn't possible please
    get in on your own, see tests/cobol85/README
  * should end without showing a diff (and exit code 0)

Please report back any success/issues/suggestions to this mail address,
also accepting encrypted messages. Thank you!


Tarballs:

You may choose the format that is most appropriate for you

https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gnucobol/gnucobol-3.1-rc1.tar.gz
https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gnucobol/gnucobol-3.1-rc1.tar.xz
https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gnucobol/gnucobol-3.1-rc1.tar.bz2
https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/gnucobol/gnucobol-3.1-rc1.tar.lz


Known issues: none for "make test", the following for "make check":

* possibly failing tests:
  * very long literal in error message
* possibly failing tests (false positives):
  * temporary path invalid
  * compiler outputs (assembler)
  * function with variable-length RETURNING item
    (unexpected C warning)

Thank you very much for providing this service!
Simon Sobisch - for the GnuCOBOL developer team