perl compilation: 'Too many levels of symbolic links' - perl

Question

In Linux, installation of perl is failing while running make test command
t/op/exec ...................................................... # Failed test 17 - at op/exec.t line 114
# $! eq 40, 'Too many levels of symbolic links'
FAILED at test 17
Error is not indicating for which symbolic link it is failing.
Steps Followed:
- Download perl archive from https://www.cpan.org/src/
- [user#hostname perl-5.28.3]$ tar -xvzf perl-5.28.3.tar.gz
- [user#hostname perl-5.28.3]$ cd perl-5.28.3
- [user#hostname perl-5.28.3]$ ./Configure -des -Dinstallprefix=<installation directory>
- [user#hostname perl-5.28.3]$ make
- [user#hostname perl-5.28.3]$ make test
Failed 2 tests out of 2464, 99.92% okay.
../cpan/Time-Local/t/Local.t
op/exec.t
Elapsed: 1317 sec
u=12.87 s=34.02 cu=548.85 cs=488.76 scripts=2464 tests=1158447
make: *** [test] Error 1
[user#hostname perl-5.28.3]$ t/TEST op/exec.t
t/op/exec ... # Failed test 17 - at op/exec.t line 114
# $! eq 40, 'Too many levels of symbolic links'
FAILED at test 17
Failed 1 test out of 1, 0.00% okay.
op/exec.t
Verified same behavior is happening for other perl version also, this is indicating some issue with my installation environment.
Any pointer can be helpful.

Answer 1

Thank you for the pointer #choroba.
Following was the root cause.
In <perl-5.28.3>/t/op/exec.t file, we find the following around line 114:
$rc = system { "lskdfj" } "lskdfj";
unless( ok($rc == 255 << 8 or $rc == -1 or $rc == 256 or $rc == 512) ) {
print "# \$rc == $rc\n";
}
unless ( ok( $! == 2 or $! =~ /\bno\b.*\bfile/i or
$! == 13 or $! =~ /permission denied/i or
$! == 22 or $! =~ /invalid argument/i ) ) {
diag sprintf "\$! eq %d, '%s'\n", $!, $!;
}
In my environment PATH env variable value was
[user#hostname perl-5.28.3]$ echo $PATH
/bin:/usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/dev_infra/platform/bin:/usr/dev_infra/generic/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/ade/bin
Within this PATH, for following paths ls attempt is throwing error 'Too many levels of symbolic links'
[user#hostname perl-5.28.3]$ ls -i /usr/local/bin /usr/local/ade/bin
ls: cannot access /usr/local/bin: Too many levels of symbolic links
ls: cannot access /usr/local/ade/bin: Too many levels of symbolic links
[user#hostname perl-5.28.3]$ ls -ltr /usr/local
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 20 Mar 30 2017 bin -> ./packages/local/bin
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 18 Mar 30 2017 ade -> /usr/local/nde/ade
After removing offending paths from PATH, make test is running successfully
[user#hostname perl-5.28.3]$ export PATH=/bin:/usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/dev_infra/platform/bin:/usr/dev_infra/generic/bin
[user#hostname perl-5.28.3]$ make test
All tests successful.
Elapsed: 1611 sec
u=14.47 s=44.63 cu=731.82 cs=575.84 scripts=2474 tests=1209537