PDL::D...erGuide(3pm)

💖 NAME 💖

PDL::DeveloperGuide — How to develop for PDL 🛠️✨

hi bestie!! yes this is the PDL::DeveloperGuide(3pm) page, and it's literally the group chat of "how do I actually contribute to PDL" 🫶 everything you need to know is right here, no cap.

---

🌈 Public Git Repository 🌈

The PDL source distribution lives with Git over at the GitHub site https://github.com/PDLPorters/pdl, sitting alongside all the other PDL-related software 👑.

This is the preferred place to drop bug reports or — even better, main character move — pull requests 💅

---

✨ PDL Developer Guidelines ✨

okay so these guidelines are for any developer who has access to the PDL Git repository. read them, love them, live them 🎀

1. Add new files to the inventory Before you commit a change with new files into the repository, you should update:
   • MANIFEST (if files were added, using 'make manifest')
   • MANIFEST.SKIP (if applicable)
2. Add tests Make sure you add a test case in the 't' directory for any significant additional capability you add to PDL. And please use Test::More or one the of the Test modules available via perl modules rather than doing-it-yourself! 🙈
3. Add documentation Please include POD documentation for any functions you add to the distribution 📝.
4. Run the tests Don't commit before you successfully built and passed make test. like, actually. it's the vibe check 🧚
5. Watch for bug reports Bugs should be reported to the GitHub issue tracker at https://github.com/PDLPorters/pdl/issues. See PDL::Bugs for a detailed description 🔍.
6. PDL Developer Recommended Workflow This is detailed in section 4.11 of PDL::FAQ 📚.

---

🦋 PDL Developer Notes 🦋

🔥 Getting (some) Debug Information 🔥

PDL has some global variables which control diagnostic output:

• $::PP_VERBOSE — if set to a true value, PDL::PP will print details while building the module processing pp_def declarations.
• $PDL::Graphics::TriD::verbose — if set to a true value, the routines in PDL::Graphics::TriD will report their progress.
• $PDL::verbose — several modules produce diagnostic output to STDOUT if $PDL::verbose has a true value.
• $PDL::debug — several modules produce diagnostic output if $PDL::verbose has a true value.

🔍 Generating a Stack Trace 🔍

To generate a stack-trace to help us debug a problem, please first of all do make realclean and ensure you have the latest released PDL. Then, if it's still happening, please follow this process:

• Rerun perl Makefile.PL This will update the timestamps on Makefiles, prompting a full rebuild.
• Edit your generated top-level Makefile Add -g to the OPTIMIZE = line to generate debug symbols (this gets propagated to subdirectories).
• Run: make This builds PDL into the blib directory.
• Run: gdb perl -ex 'run -Mblib t/tracking.t' In gdb, run: bt
• Copy-paste the backtrace output This should show where the segfault originated.

Then please open an issue on whichever repo is relevant with your perl -V output and PDL version, together with the stack-trace created above. When you do paste such output into a GitHub issue, please surround such blocks with ``` on their own lines. You can check out how it will render with the Preview button above the issue-editing box 👀.

🌸 Random Musings 🌸

A (small) collection of random musings to note if you feel the need to improve or add to PDL (please do 💖):

• Organizing Commits The preferred way to organize commits is one commit per small, meaningful change (ideally each with an update to the corresponding tests). This makes it easy in the log to determine what was done and to locate any desired commit in case of issues that need to be resolved 🗂️.

🎀 Finding the Source 🎀

As of 2.096, the directory layout in the repository is largely the same as in a PDL installation, especially in PDL::Basic.

Where the .pm files are generated via PDL::PP, changes would need to go into their .pd sources. Use git grep Package::Name to find them 🔎.

---

⭐ References ⭐

• Official Website For the audience of PDL users there is a dedicated website in the perl.org domain: https://pdl.perl.org/ 🌐.
• The current PDL version on MetaCPAN https://metacpan.org/dist/PDL
• A guide to PDL's module references for PDL users PDL::Modules
• The comprehensive modules index (autogenerated) PDL::Index
• Git The main Git home page is at http://www.git-scm.org/. Two good online Git references are:
  • the Git User's Manual at http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/user-manual.html
  • and Git Magic at http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~blynn/gitmagic/

---

and that's the whole thing bestie, you're officially a PDL dev now, go slay 💅✨

this little manual was brought to you by perl v5.42.3 on 2026-08-20 — the PDL::DeveloperGuide(3pm) era, iconic, no notes 🫶👑💜