-For now, one may optionally subscribe to the mailing list by
-sending an email to: meta+subscribe@public-inbox.org
-(and confirming). However, reading over the mailing list is
-the least reliable method of reading a public-inbox.
+See Documentation/technical/ in the source tree for more details
+on specific topics, in particular data_structures.txt
+
+Faster tests
+------------
+
+The `make test' target provided by MakeMaker does not run in
+parallel. Our `make check' target supports parallel runs, and
+it also creates a `.prove' file to optimize `make check-run'.
+
+The prove(1) command (distributed with Perl) may also be used
+for finer-grained testing: prove -bvw t/foo.t
+
+If using a make(1) (e.g. GNU make) with `include' support, the
+`config.mak' Makefile snippet can be used to set environment
+variables such as PERL_INLINE_DIRECTORY and TMPDIR.
+
+With PERL_INLINE_DIRECTORY set to enable Inline::C support and
+TMPDIR pointed to a tmpfs(5) mount, `make check-run' takes 6-10s
+(load-dependent) on a busy workstation built in 2010.
+
+Perl notes
+----------
+
+* \w, \s, \d character classes all match Unicode characters;
+ so write out class ranges (e.g "[0-9]") if you only intend to
+ match ASCII. Do not use the "/a" (ASCII) modifier, that requires
+ Perl 5.14 and we're only depending on 5.10.1 at the moment.