914963 - Warning from perl interpreter.: defined(@array) is deprecated at mozilla/config/milestone.pl line 58.

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox Build System :: General, defect)

Description

[ISHIKAWA, Chiaki]

I recently upgraded my PC&s perl package (Debian GNU/Linux) to
the following version:

 perl --version

This is perl 5, version 18, subversion 1 (v5.18.1) built for x86_64-linux-gnu-thread-multi
(with 45 registered patches, see perl -V for more detail)

Copyright 1987-2013, Larry Wall
  [... rest omitted ...]

Now when I run mozilla/mach to build thunderbird,
I get the following warning.
It seems perl deprecates the particular construct in the newer version.
The message is printed at different stages: I saw three of them.

2:58.09 defined(@array) is deprecated at /COMM-CENTRAL/comm-central/mozilla/config/milestone.pl line 58.
2:58.09 	(Maybe you should just omit the defined()?)

I will defer the proper change to the people in the know.

TIA

Comment 1

[Ralph Giles (:rillian)]

Attachment: Remove suprious defined(@array)

This warning has been annoying me too. To quote http://perldoc.perl.org/perldiag.html

"defined() is not usually useful on arrays because it checks for an undefined scalar value. If you want to see if the array is empty, just use if (@array) { # not empty } for example."

My patch changes the check as suggested.

Comment 2

[Ralph Giles (:rillian)]

Adding Dão who touched the file most recently.

Comment 3

[Gregory Szorc [:gps]]

Comment on attachment 822006 [details] [diff] [review]
Remove suprious defined(@array)

Review of attachment 822006 [details] [diff] [review]:
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you.

Comment 4

[Ralph Giles (:rillian)]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/mozilla-inbound/rev/f94365dffb6f

Comment 5

[ISHIKAWA, Chiaki]

Thank you. A few less lines to read with puzzled look :-)

Comment 6

[Carsten Book [:Tomcat]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/f94365dffb6f

Comment 7

[Kent James (:rkent)]

The impact of this bug is beyond just a spurious warning. On esr24, my Thunderbird mach refuses to run at all until this patch is applied.

I'll live with this and apply it manually, but if others have this issue we might want to backport this.