1 Jarkko's How to build Configure tweaked by Nick and Merijn.
3 The Configure script and config_h.SH file in the Perl distribution are
4 generated by a program called metaconfig. Metaconfig was originally
5 written by Larry Wall, and was subsequently enhanced and maintained
8 You have presumably obtained the metaconfig from the repository e.g.
10 $ git clone git://perl5.git.perl.org/metaconfig.git metaconfig
12 or some other way to obtain this file, like a complete compressed archive
13 from the previous pumpkin.
15 Normally this directory and perl directory are next to each other
16 so ../perl will get you to perl and ../perl/../metaconfig will get you
19 Contents of this directory:
22 U: Metaconfig units used for building Perl's Configure
23 U.check: Sample directory used for testing new metaconfig units.
24 see U.check/README for more information.
26 dist-3.5-20 is almost meta-4.0, still maintained by Raphael
27 Manfredi, but with a lot of fixes over 3.0, some changes
28 from the perl modifications merged and a much better
29 metalint. This directory comes from a tar distribution.
31 a git clone of "dist". Optionally present. See (a) below.
33 a symlink to the lib you actually use. For Merijn that is
34 metaconfig/dist -> ../lib/dist
36 (a) You need to have dist installed so that you have metalint and metaconfig
38 The dist version used for perl is dist-3.5-20 in this directory, which is
39 a slightly modified version of the original, which you can get at the SVN
40 repository https://dist.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/dist/trunk. If you'd
41 like to keep up to date with changes in dist, you can either use svn or
42 git to create your own clone. For git, that would be something like:
45 svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/dist/code/trunk/dist \
48 Unsurprisingly 'dist' uses (its) Configure to generate itself:
50 $ cd dist-3.5-20 # or dist-svn
51 $ chmod -R +w . # We have derived files in git :-(
56 After make install, remove lib/U/d_debugging.U in your target lib, as perl
57 uses its own way to set/define debugging (see INSTALL)
59 the dist-3.5-20 installation as used by Merijn is available on his CPAN as
62 dist's 'Configure' is similar to perl's but perhaps not quite as polished.
64 There are some perl specific "dist units" in the 'U' directory.
65 The U directory also contains some patches to 'dist' which have already
66 been applied to dist-3.5-20 directory.
67 We have not yet arranged for metaconfig to use perl's versions of the
68 'units' by default so you need some housekeeping in the perl directory...
72 If you plan to make changes to metaconfig or metalint locally (and you
73 probably want to, as both are written for perl4), consider installing
74 mconfig and mlint from the cmon subdirectory into your $PATH too. These
75 are the non-autoloading versions and can easily be changed. Here is what
76 I added at the beginning of mconfig:
79 BEGIN { $ENV{LC_ALL} = "C"; }
80 chdir "/pro/3gl/CPAN/perl";
81 { my @Cc = qw( Configure config_h.SH );
82 system "chown merijn @Cc";
84 #-d "merijn" or mkdir "merijn";
85 #system "cp -f Configure config_h.SH Porting/Glossary Porting/config.sh merijn/";
86 system "ls", "-l", @Cc;
90 I also added the first two lines of that patch to mlint
92 (b) You need to be in a/the Perl directory, i.e. either something from
93 //depot/perl/... or one of its branches
94 (e.g. Nick I-S is usually in //depot/perlio/...)
96 1) have a symlink to ../metaconfig/U called U
97 2) have a symlink to ../metaconfig/.package called .package
98 3) have a symlink to MANIFEST called MANIFEST.new
99 4) chmod +w Configure config_h.SH Porting/Glossary Porting/config*
101 (c) Write the new unit as U/perl/d_bar.U ('perl' can also be 'modified',
102 'compline' or any other existing folder, except for 'all'). Choose
103 the best appropriate subdir of U. See U/README for a description of
104 the various subdirectories.)
106 (d) Run metalint (or mlint) to see nits: as opposed to lint, the gripings
107 of metalint are usually serious :-) and need fixing
109 Exceptions are lots of
110 Your private U/modified/voidflags.U overrides the public one.
111 due to the perl special units
113 an alias to something like
114 $ metalint |& grep -v -e '^ Your private U/'
115 will make the process silence up on that (of course you can add an
116 option to mlint to disable that warning (which is already disabled
117 by the undocumented and forgotten -s option, but that also suppresses
122 "End.U": stale ?MAKE: dependency '$W'.
124 which is apparently normal ...
126 -- the next steps are in the perl folder
128 (e) chmod +w Configure config_h.SH
130 (f) metaconfig -m to regenerate Configure (or mconfig -m)
132 (g) metaconfig does not deal with depends in config_h.SH, so some
133 reorganization is needed.
135 perl Porting/config_h.SH
137 will fix the ordering
139 (h) The messy not-yet-automated part is that the knowledge of the new symbol
140 needs to be propagated to non-Configure lands like Win32, WinCE, Netware,
141 VMS, VOS, EPOC, ... see previous Configure changes to see which are these
142 heathen lands. Files to take care of are
143 {win32,wince,NetWare}/config_[hH]*, (Win32, WinCE, NetWare),
144 configure.com (VMS), VOS/config* (since 5.9 VOS uses Configure, though),
145 epoc/config.sh (EPOC). Depending on the kind of patch djgpp/config*
146 might also need adjusting (for example when adding/changing the list
149 For Win32 the process is semi-automated - if you have a Win32
150 machine to run dmake on ...
152 (i) Edit U/mkglossary (right near the top) to point to where you keep
153 dist's standard metaconfig units as well as your perl-specific ones.
155 (j) Run U/mksample to freshen the Porting/config* and Porting/Glossary.
156 Adjust the various compile-time options (e.g. 64bit, threads) as
158 You can skip this phase, it's not essential, just good housekeeping.
160 (k) Run the perl build chain
163 sh ./Configure -des -Dusedevel
165 The dependency for uconfig.h isn't carved in stone, so you might
166 need to regenerate it
168 perl regen/uconfig_h.pl
170 Then make and make test or make test_harness (with TEST_JOBS=5)
172 make all test_harness
174 Before you start committing, make sure that the other developers
179 -- the next steps are in the metaconfig folder again
181 (l) git add U/perl/foo/bar.U when you are ready ...
183 (m) git commit -m "Your commit description"
185 (n) When all patches are applied, tested and committed, and you are happy,
188 Merijn prefers to do steps (l) through (n) in git-gui