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1=head1 NAME
2
3Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
4
5=head1 SYNOPSIS
6
7f678428 7The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system are:
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8
9 rm -f config.sh
10 sh Configure
11 make
12 make test
13 make install
36477c24 14
aa689395 15 # You may also wish to add these:
16 (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
17 (cd pod && make html && mv *.html <www home dir>)
18 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
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19
20Each of these is explained in further detail below.
21
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22For information on non-Unix systems, see the section on
23L<"Porting information"> below.
7f678428 24
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25For information on what's new in this release, see the
26pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
27changes, see the Changes file.
c3edaffb 28
1ec51d55 29=head1 DESCRIPTION
edb1cbcb 30
c3edaffb 31This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
32structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
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33read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
34by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
35
36 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
37 C<code> literal code
38 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
39
40You should probably at least skim through this entire document before
41proceeding.
c3edaffb 42
eed2e782 43If you're building Perl on a non-Unix system, you should also read
44the README file specific to your operating system, since this may
45provide additional or different instructions for building Perl.
46
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47If there is a hint file for your system (in the hints/ directory) you
48should also read that hint file for specific information for your
49system. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh hint file.)
50
aa689395 51=head1 Space Requirements
eed2e782 52
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53The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 7 MB of disk space. The
54complete tree after completing make takes roughly 15 MB, though the
55actual total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
56directories need something on the order of 7 MB, though again that
57value is system-dependent.
8e07c86e 58
aa689395 59=head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
8e07c86e 60
edb1cbcb 61If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
62with the command
63
64 make realclean
c3edaffb 65
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66The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh file. If
67you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you change
68systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if you are
1ec51d55 69experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably not
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70re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or rename it, e.g.
71
72 mv config.sh config.sh.old
4633a7c4 73
e57fd563 74If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
75version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
76the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
77includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
78name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
79Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
80probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't, presently.
81Similarly, if you used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version
82numbers, you will probably want to adjust them as well.
83
84Also, be careful to check your architecture name. Some Linux systems
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85(such as Debian) use i386, while others may use i486 or i586. If you
86pick up a precompiled binary, it might not use the same name.
e57fd563 87
88In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
89Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
8e07c86e 90
aa689395 91=head1 Run Configure
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92
93Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
94things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
1ec51d55 95you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default
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96is almost always ok. At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d
97and Configure will use the defaults from then on.
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98
99After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
1ec51d55 100*.SH files and offer to run make depend.
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101
102Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h>
103to get a listing. To compile with gcc, for example, you can run
104
105 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
106
107This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
108compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
109
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110If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
111with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
112
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113By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
114/usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. You can specify a different 'prefix' for
115the default installation directory, when Configure prompts you or by
116using the Configure command line option -Dprefix='/some/directory',
117e.g.
118
25f94b33 119 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
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120
121If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the directories
122are simplified. For example, if you use prefix=/opt/perl,
123then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
4fdae800 124/opt/perl/lib/perl5/.
8e07c86e 125
aa689395 126By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
8e07c86e 127your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
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128statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
129you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
8e07c86e 130
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131If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
132output, you can run
133
134 sh Configure -des
135
136For my Solaris system, I usually use
137
138 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
139
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140=head2 GNU-style configure
141
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142If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
143use the supplied configure command, e.g.
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144
145 CC=gcc ./configure
146
1ec51d55 147The configure script emulates a few of the more common configure
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148options. Try
149
150 ./configure --help
151
152for a listing.
153
aa689395 154Cross compiling is not supported.
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155
156For systems that do not distinguish the files "Configure" and
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157"configure", Perl includes a copy of configure named
158configure.gnu.
46bb10fb 159
24b3df7f 160=head2 Extensions
161
edb1cbcb 162By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
163to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
164only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
5f05dabc 165DynaLoader, Fcntl, and IO are always built by default. Configure does
166not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX is always built
167by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can set the
168Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from the
169Configure command line. Similarly, the Opcode extension is always built
170by default, but you can skip it by setting the Configure variable
c3edaffb 171useopcode=false either in a hint file for from the command line.
24b3df7f 172
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173You can learn more about each of these extensions by consulting the
174documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
175ext/ subdirectory.
176
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177Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
178DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
179version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
180
24b3df7f 181In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
182to turn off each extension:
183
184 DB_File i_db
56c6f531 185 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
24b3df7f 186 Fcntl (Always included by default)
187 GDBM_File i_gdbm
9d67150a 188 IO (Always included by default)
24b3df7f 189 NDBM_File i_ndbm
190 ODBM_File i_dbm
191 POSIX useposix
192 SDBM_File (Always included by default)
c3edaffb 193 Opcode useopcode
24b3df7f 194 Socket d_socket
195
196Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
197
198 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
199
200Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
201library.
202
203Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
aa689395 204the extensions you want.
24b3df7f 205
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206Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of
207Berkeley DB. Once Berkeley DB version 2 is released, DB_File will be
208upgraded to work with it. Configure will automatically detect this
209for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with version 2.
210
24b3df7f 211Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern Unix systems do)
212remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
213executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
214well build all the ones that will work on your system.
215
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216=head2 Including locally-installed libraries
217
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218Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
219dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
220Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
221automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
1ec51d55 222are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
4633a7c4 223how to obtain the libraries.
8e07c86e 224
1ec51d55 225Note: If your database header (.h) files are not in a
8e07c86e 226directory normally searched by your C compiler, then you will need to
1ec51d55 227include the appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by
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228Configure. If your database library (.a) files are not in a directory
229normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to
1ec51d55 230include the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by
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231Configure. See the examples below.
232
233=head2 Examples
234
235=over 4
236
aa689395 237=item gdbm in /usr/local
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238
239Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
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240GDBM_File extension. This examples assumes you have gdbm.h
241installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
242/usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
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243necessary steps out automatically.
244
245Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1ec51d55 246your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
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247
248When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
1ec51d55 249-L/usr/local/lib.
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250
251If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
252linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1ec51d55 253-L/usr/local/lib.
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254
255Again, this should all happen automatically. If you want to accept the
256defaults for all the questions and have Configure print out only terse
257messages, then you can just run
258
259 sh Configure -des
260
261and Configure should include the GDBM_File extension automatically.
262
263This should actually work if you have gdbm installed in any of
264(/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu, /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
265
266=item gdbm in /usr/you
267
268Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
269but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
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270have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
271still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
272an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
8e07c86e 273Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
1ec51d55 274/usr/you/lib to the list.
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275
276It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
277line):
278
279 sh Configure -des \
280 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
281 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
282
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283locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
284Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
8e07c86e 285
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286loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
287Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
288you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
289/usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
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290
291 sh Configure -des \
292 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
293 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
294
295=back
296
aa689395 297=head2 Installation Directories
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298
299The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
300appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
301installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
302
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303I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
304everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
305process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure
306will use the defaults from then on.
1ec51d55 307
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308By default, Configure uses the following directories for
309library files (archname is a string like sun4-sunos, determined
310by Configure)
311
46bb10fb 312 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.004
4633a7c4 313 /usr/local/lib/perl5/
24b3df7f 314 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/archname
315 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl
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316
317and the following directories for manual pages:
318
319 /usr/local/man/man1
320 /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3
321
322(Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
323/usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
324instead.) The module man pages are stuck in that strange spot so that
325they don't collide with other man pages stored in /usr/local/man/man3,
326and so that Perl's man pages don't hide system man pages. On some
327systems, B<man less> would end up calling up Perl's less.pm module man
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328page, rather than the less program. (This location may change in a
329future release of perl.)
330
331Note: Many users prefer to store the module man pages in
332/usr/local/man/man3. You can do this from the command line with
333
334 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/man/man3
335
336Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
337
338 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
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339
340If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
aa689395 341directory structure is simplified. For example, if you Configure with
342-Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the defaults are
4633a7c4 343
46bb10fb 344 /opt/perl/lib/archname/5.004
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345 /opt/perl/lib
346 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/archname
347 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl
348
349 /opt/perl/man/man1
350 /opt/perl/man/man3
351
352The perl executable will search the libraries in the order given
353above.
354
355The directories site_perl and site_perl/archname are empty, but are
356intended to be used for installing local or site-wide extensions. Perl
357will automatically look in these directories. Previously, most sites
358just put their local extensions in with the standard distribution.
359
46bb10fb 360In order to support using things like #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.004 after
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361a later version is released, architecture-dependent libraries are
362stored in a version-specific directory, such as
46bb10fb 363/usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.004/. In Perl 5.000 and 5.001, these
a6006777 364files were just stored in /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/. If you will
365not be using 5.001 binaries, you can delete the standard extensions from
366the /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/ directory. Locally-added extensions
367can be moved to the site_perl and site_perl/archname directories.
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368
369Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
370Configure.
371
aa689395 372=head2 Changing the installation directory
373
374Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
375associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
376will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
377sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
1ec51d55 378However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
aa689395 379packages may also wish to install perl into a different directory and
380use that management software to move perl to its final destination.
381This section describes how to do this. Someday, Configure may support
382an option -Dinstallprefix=/foo to simplify this.
383
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384Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You
385can edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to
386/tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local/wherever. Or, you can automate this
387process by placing the following lines in a file config.over before you
388run Configure (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice):
aa689395 389
390 installprefix=/tmp/perl5
391 test -d $installprefix || mkdir $installprefix
392 test -d $installprefix/bin || mkdir $installprefix/bin
393 installarchlib=`echo $installarchlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
394 installbin=`echo $installbin | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
395 installman1dir=`echo $installman1dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
396 installman3dir=`echo $installman3dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
397 installprivlib=`echo $installprivlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
398 installscript=`echo $installscript | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
399 installsitelib=`echo $installsitelib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
400 installsitearch=`echo $installsitearch | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
401
402Then, you can Configure and install in the usual way:
403
404 sh Configure -des
405 make
406 make test
407 make install
408
409=head2 Creating an installable tar archive
410
411If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
412convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
413installed on multiple systems. Here's one way to do that:
414
415 # Set up config.over to install perl into a different directory,
416 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
417 sh Configure -des
418 make
419 make test
420 make install
421 cd /tmp/perl5
422 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
423 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
424 cd /usr/local # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
425 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
426
427=head2 Configure-time Options
428
429There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
430system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
431Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
432some of the main things you can change.
433
434=head2 Binary Compatibility With Earlier Versions of Perl 5
435
436If you have dynamically loaded extensions that you built under
437perl 5.003 and that you wish to continue to use with perl 5.004, then you
438need to ensure that 5.004 remains binary compatible with 5.003.
439
440Starting with Perl 5.003, all functions in the Perl C source code have
441been protected by default by the prefix Perl_ (or perl_) so that you
442may link with third-party libraries without fear of namespace
443collisions. This change broke compatibility with version 5.002, so
444installing 5.003 or 5.004 over 5.002 or earlier will force you to
445re-build and install all of your dynamically loadable extensions.
446(The standard extensions supplied with Perl are handled
447automatically). You can turn off this namespace protection by adding
448-DNO_EMBED to your ccflags variable in config.sh.
449
450Perl 5.003's namespace protection was incomplete, but this has
451been fixed in 5.004. However, some sites may need to maintain
452complete binary compatibility with Perl 5.003. If you are building
1ec51d55 453Perl for such a site, then when Configure asks if you want binary
aa689395 454compatibility, answer "y".
455
456On the other hand, if you are embedding perl into another application
457and want the maximum namespace protection, then you probably ought to
1ec51d55 458answer "n" when Configure asks if you want binary compatibility.
aa689395 459
460The default answer of "y" to maintain binary compatibility is probably
461appropriate for almost everyone.
462
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463In a related issue, old extensions may possibly be affected by the changes
464in the Perl language in the current release. Please see pod/perldelta for
3fe9a6f1 465a description of what's changed.
466
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467=head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
468
469Previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in
1ec51d55 470stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl allow alternate IO
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471mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but the stdio mechanism is still
472the default and is the only supported mechanism.
473
474This PerlIO abstraction can be enabled either on the Configure command
475line with
476
477 sh Configure -Duseperlio
478
479or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
480
481If you choose to use the PerlIO abstraction layer, there are two
482(experimental) possibilities for the underlying IO calls. These have been
483tested to some extent on some platforms, but are not guaranteed to work
484everywhere.
485
486=over 4
487
488=item 1.
489
1ec51d55 490AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance to stdio.h in many
aa689395 491cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline" modules. Sfio
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492currently only builds on a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports.
493Because the data structures are completely different from stdio, perl
494extension modules or external libraries may not work. This
495configuration exists to allow these issues to be worked on.
496
497This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
498A (fairly old) version of sfio is in CPAN, and work is in progress to make
499it more easily buildable by adding Configure support.
500
501You select this option by
502
503 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
504
505If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
506that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
507Configure.
508
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509Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails
510to detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent).
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511Apparently, this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux
512and SunOS 4.
513
514You can test if you have this problem by trying the following shell
515script. (You may have to add some extra cflags and libraries. A
516portable version of this may eventually make its way into Configure.)
517
518 #!/bin/sh
519 cat > try.c <<'EOCP'
520 #include <stdio.h>
521 main() { printf("42\n"); }
522 EOCP
523 cc -o try try.c -lsfio
524 val=`./try`
525 if test X$val = X42; then
526 echo "Your sfio looks ok"
527 else
528 echo "Your sfio has the exit problem."
529 fi
530
531If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to your sfio sources
532and correct iffe's guess about atexit (or whatever is appropriate for
533your platform.)
534
535There also might be a more recent release of Sfio that fixes your
536problem.
537
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538=item 2.
539
540Normal stdio IO, but with all IO going through calls to the PerlIO
541abstraction layer. This configuration can be used to check that perl and
542extension modules have been correctly converted to use the PerlIO
543abstraction.
544
545This configuration should work on all platforms (but might not).
546
aa689395 547You select this option via:
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548
549 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Uusesfio
550
551If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure does not
552detect sfio, then this will be the default suggested by Configure.
553
554=back
555
aa689395 556=head2 Building a shared libperl.so Perl library
c3edaffb 557
558Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
559linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
560extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
561such as -lm.
562
9d67150a 563On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
564replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
c3edaffb 565several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
566different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
9d67150a 567you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
c3edaffb 568can share the same library.
569
570The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
9d67150a 571penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
aa689395 572mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
c3edaffb 573and upgrades.
574
575In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
9d67150a 576test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
c3edaffb 577Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
578results.
579
580The default name for the shared library is typically something like
a6006777 581libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
9d67150a 582libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
c3edaffb 583based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
584version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
585isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
586
587For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
588for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
589
590You can elect to build a shared libperl by
591
592 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
593
594To actually build perl, you must add the current working directory to your
aa689395 595LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable before running make. You can do
c3edaffb 596this with
597
598 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
599
600for Bourne-style shells, or
601
602 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
603
604for Csh-style shells. You *MUST* do this before running make.
605Folks running NeXT OPENSTEP must substitute DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
606LD_LIBRARY_PATH above.
607
9d67150a 608There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
609want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
610with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
a6006777 611install a standard Perl 5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
612try to build Perl 5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
9d67150a 613the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
614ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
7f678428 615libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is
9d67150a 616that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
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617in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
618equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
7beaa944 619with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't. On Digital Unix, you can
0dcb58f4 620override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the _RLD_ROOT environment variable
7beaa944 621to point to the perl build directory.
9d67150a 622
623The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different
624directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING
625version of perl. You can do this with by changing all the *archlib*
626variables in config.sh, namely archlib, archlib_exp, and
627installarchlib, to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
628
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629=head2 Malloc Issues
630
631Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed, so
632perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
633the malloc function on your system.
634
635The perl source is shipped with a version of malloc that is very fast
636but somewhat wasteful of space. On the other hand, your system's
637malloc() function is probably a bit slower but also a bit more frugal.
638
639For many uses, speed is probably the most important consideration, so
640the default behavior (for most systems) is to use the malloc supplied
641with perl. However, if you will be running very large applications
642(e.g. Tk or PDL) or if your system already has an excellent malloc, or
643if you are experiencing difficulties with extensions that use
644third-party libraries that call malloc, then you might wish to use
645your system's malloc. (Or, you might wish to explore the experimental
646malloc flags discussed below.)
647
648To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
649
650 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
651
652or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
653
aa689395 654=head2 Malloc Performance Flags
c3edaffb 655
55479bb6 656If you are using Perl's malloc, you may add one or
1ec51d55 657more of the following items to your cflags config.sh variable
55479bb6 658to change its behavior in potentially useful ways. You can find out
1ec51d55 659more about these flags by reading the malloc.c source.
55479bb6 660In a future version of perl, these might be enabled by default.
c3edaffb 661
aa689395 662=over 4
663
2ae324a7 664=item -DDEBUGGING_MSTATS
665
1ec51d55 666If DEBUGGING_MSTATS is defined, you can extract malloc
2ae324a7 667statistics from the Perl interpreter. The overhead this imposes is not
668large (perl just twiddles integers at malloc/free/sbrk time). When you
1ec51d55 669run perl with the environment variable PERL_DEBUG_MSTATS set to
2ae324a7 670either 1 or 2, the interpreter will dump statistics to stderr at exit
671time and (with a value of 2) after compilation. If you install the
672Devel::Peek module you can get the statistics whenever you like by
673invoking its mstat() function.
674
aa689395 675=item -DEMERGENCY_SBRK
676
1ec51d55 677If EMERGENCY_SBRK is defined, running out of memory need not be a
2ae324a7 678fatal error: a memory pool can allocated by assigning to the special
1ec51d55 679variable $^M. See perlvar(1) for more details.
aa689395 680
681=item -DPACK_MALLOC
682
1ec51d55 683If PACK_MALLOC is defined, malloc.c uses a slightly different
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684algorithm for small allocations (up to 64 bytes long). Such small
685allocations are quite common in typical Perl scripts.
aa689395 686
1ec51d55 687The expected memory savings (with 8-byte alignment in $alignbytes) is
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688about 20% for typical Perl usage. The expected slowdown due to the
689additional malloc overhead is in fractions of a percent. (It is hard
690to measure because of the effect of the saved memory on speed).
aa689395 691
692=item -DTWO_POT_OPTIMIZE
693
1ec51d55 694If TWO_POT_OPTIMIZE is defined, malloc.c uses a slightly different
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695algorithm for large allocations that are close to a power of two
696(starting with 16K). Such allocations are typical for big hashes and
697special-purpose scripts, especially image processing. If you will be
698manipulating very large blocks with sizes close to powers of two, it
699might be wise to define this macro.
aa689395 700
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701The expected saving of memory is 0-100% (100% in applications which
702require most memory in such 2**n chunks). The expected slowdown is
aa689395 703negligible.
704
705=back
706
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707=head2 Building a debugging perl
708
709You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
3fe9a6f1 710B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
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711you probably want to do
712
713 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
714
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715This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
716to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
717executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
718cc -g2. Check you man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for your
719system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags variable in
1ec51d55 720config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's internal
203c3eec 721state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by
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722default if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to
723reuse your old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the
3fe9a6f1 724optimize and ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes
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725as shown in L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
726
727You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
728it's convenient to have both.
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729
730If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
731versions of perl under L<Building a shared libperl.so Perl library>.
732
aa689395 733=head2 Other Compiler Flags
734
735For most users, all of the Configure defaults are fine. However,
736you can change a number of factors in the way perl is built
1ec51d55 737by adding appropriate -D directives to your ccflags variable in
aa689395 738config.sh.
739
740For example, you can replace the rand() and srand() functions in the
741perl source by any other random number generator by a trick such as the
742following:
743
744 sh Configure -Dccflags='-Drand=random -Dsrand=srandom'
745
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746or by adding -Drand=random and -Dsrand=srandom to your ccflags
747at the appropriate Configure prompt. (Note: Although this worked for
748me, it might not work for you if your system's header files give
749different prototypes for rand() and random() or srand() and srandom().)
750
751You should also run Configure interactively to verify that a hint file
752doesn't inadvertently override your ccflags setting. (Hints files
753shouldn't do that, but some might.)
c3edaffb 754
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755=head2 What if it doesn't work?
756
757=over 4
758
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759=item Running Configure Interactively
760
761If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
762Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
763guesses.
764
765All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
aa689395 766have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1ec51d55 767flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
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768will use the defaults from then on.
769
770If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
771config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
772instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
773
aa689395 774=item Hint files
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775
776The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
777in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
778will offer to use that hint file.
779
780Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
781If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint
1ec51d55 782file for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an
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783extensive example.
784
edb1cbcb 785=item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
786
787Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
7884.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
789standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
790will see a message:
791
792 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
793 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
794 Keep the recommended value? [y]
795
796You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
797relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
798overriding it.
799
800If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
801used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
802to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
803system.
804
805For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
806and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
807Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
808Now, Configure will find your gdbm library and will issue a message:
809
810 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
811 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
812 Keep the previous value? [y]
813
1ec51d55 814In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
c3edaffb 815should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
edb1cbcb 816the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
817
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818=item Changing Compilers
819
820If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1ec51d55 821probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
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822rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
823with the options you want to use.
824
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825This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
826gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
8e07c86e 827
c3edaffb 828=item Propagating your changes to config.sh
8e07c86e 829
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830If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
831them to all the .SH files by running
832
833 sh Configure -S
834
835You will then have to rebuild by running
9d67150a 836
837 make depend
838 make
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839
840=item config.over
841
842You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride Configure's
843guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just before config.sh
844is created. You have to be careful with this, however, as Configure
d52d4e46 845does no checking that your changes make sense. See the section on
7f678428 846L<"Changing the installation directory"> for an example.
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847
848=item config.h
849
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850Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
851Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
852The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
8e07c86e 853
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854If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
855though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
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856lost.
857
858=item cflags
859
860If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
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861line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
862optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
863toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
864can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
865lost the next time you run Configure.
8e07c86e 866
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867To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh
868and change either $ccflags or $optimize,
869and then re-run
870
871 sh Configure -S
872 make depend
8e07c86e 873
aa689395 874=item No sh
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875
876If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file config_H to
877config.h and edit the config.h to reflect your system's peculiarities.
878You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
879mechanism.
880
c3edaffb 881=item Porting information
882
2ae324a7 883Specific information for the OS/2, Plan9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
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884corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
885including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
c3edaffb 886subdirectory.
887
7f678428 888Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1ec51d55 889http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports for current information on ports to
7f678428 890various other operating systems.
891
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892=back
893
894=head1 make depend
895
896This will look for all the includes.
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897The output is stored in makefile. The only difference between
898Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at the bottom of
899makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
900makefile, not Makefile since the Unix make command reads
901makefile first. (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in
c3edaffb 902a different file. Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh
903if in doubt.)
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904
905Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
906explicitly above.
907
908=head1 make
909
910This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
911
912If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
7f678428 913If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
914the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help, you can
915send a message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
916perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
aa689395 917See L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
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918
919=over 4
920
1ec51d55 921=item hints
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922
923If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
924for further tips and information.
925
1ec51d55 926=item extensions
8e07c86e 927
1ec51d55 928If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
c3edaffb 929during the building of extensions, you should run
930
931 make minitest
932
933to test your version of miniperl.
934
e57fd563 935=item locale
936
937If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try
938unsetting them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang
939while running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C
940locale. See the discussion under L<make test> below about locales.
941
1ec51d55 942=item malloc duplicates
c3edaffb 943
aa689395 944If you get duplicates upon linking for malloc et al, add -DHIDEMYMALLOC
945or -DEMBEDMYMALLOC to your ccflags variable in config.sh.
c3edaffb 946
7f678428 947=item varargs
c3edaffb 948
949If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
950correctly. When using gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define'
951and i_varargs='undef' in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by
952running fixincludes correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't
7f678428 953forget to propagate your changes (see
954L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
955See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
c3edaffb 956
1ec51d55 957=item croak
c3edaffb 958
959If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
960numbers will vary in different versions of perl):
961
962 util.c: In function `Perl_croak':
963 util.c:962: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
964 proto.h:45: prototype declaration
965
966it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
7f678428 967previous L<"varargs"> item.
c3edaffb 968
9d67150a 969=item Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading
c3edaffb 970
971If you have problems with dynamic loading using gcc on SunOS or
972Solaris, and you are using GNU as and GNU ld, you may need to add
1ec51d55 973-B/bin/ (for SunOS) or -B/usr/ccs/bin/ (for Solaris) to your
c3edaffb 974$ccflags, $ldflags, and $lddlflags so that the system's versions of as
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975and ld are used. Note that the trailing '/' is required.
976Alternatively, you can use the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX
c3edaffb 977environment variable to ensure that Sun's as and ld are used. Consult
1ec51d55 978your gcc documentation for further information on the -B option and
c3edaffb 979the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX variable.
980
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981One convenient way to ensure you are not using GNU as and ld is to
982invoke Configure with
983
984 sh Configure -Dcc='gcc -B/usr/ccs/bin/'
985
986for Solaris systems. For a SunOS system, you must use -B/bin/
987instead.
988
9d67150a 989=item ld.so.1: ./perl: fatal: relocation error:
990
991If you get this message on SunOS or Solaris, and you're using gcc,
7f678428 992it's probably the GNU as or GNU ld problem in the previous item
993L<"Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading">.
9d67150a 994
1ec51d55 995=item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
c3edaffb 996
997If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
aa689395 998the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
999Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
c3edaffb 1000fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1001of your local set-up.
1002
1003=item dlopen: stub interception failed
1004
1005The primary cause of the 'dlopen: stub interception failed' message is
1006that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable includes a directory
1007which is a symlink to /usr/lib (such as /lib).
1008
aa689395 1009The reason this causes a problem is quite subtle. The file libdl.so.1.0
c3edaffb 1010actually *only* contains functions which generate 'stub interception
1011failed' errors! The runtime linker intercepts links to
1012"/usr/lib/libdl.so.1.0" and links in internal implementation of those
1013functions instead. [Thanks to Tim Bunce for this explanation.]
1014
aa689395 1015=item nm extraction
c3edaffb 1016
1017If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1018try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1019with
1020
1021 sh Configure -Uusenm
1022
1023or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1ec51d55 1024If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
c3edaffb 1025config.sh.
1026
7f678428 1027=item vsprintf
c3edaffb 1028
1029If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1030problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1031version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1032(Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1033d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1034
1035 d_vprintf='define'
1036
1037If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1038on a number of other common functions too. You are probably better off
1039re-running Configure without using nm extraction (see previous item).
1040
3fe9a6f1 1041=item do_aspawn
1042
1043If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1044problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1045fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous items
1046on L<"vsprintf"> and L<"nm extraction">.
1047
aa689395 1048=item Optimizer
c3edaffb 1049
9d67150a 1050If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
aa689395 1051optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
9d67150a 1052
1053 optimize='-O'
1054
1055to something like
1056
1057 optimize=' '
1058
1059then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1060with B<make depend; make>.
1061
1ec51d55 1062=item CRIPPLED_CC
9d67150a 1063
1ec51d55 1064If you still can't compile successfully, try adding a -DCRIPPLED_CC
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1065flag. (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it compiled right!)
1066This simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that get
1067indigestion easily.
9d67150a 1068
1069=item Missing functions
1070
1071If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
1072other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
1073there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
1074likely suspects.
8e07c86e 1075
1ec51d55 1076=item toke.c
8e07c86e 1077
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1078Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1079toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1080allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1081each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1082makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
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1083specific rule.
1084
7f678428 1085=item Missing dbmclose
8e07c86e 1086
c3edaffb 1087SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1088that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
8e07c86e 1089
f3d9a6ba 1090=item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
7f678428 1091
1092If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1093the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1094then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1095Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
aa689395 1096systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
7f678428 1097For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1098unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
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1099they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1100reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1101process is continuing.
7f678428 1102
1103On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1104message
1105
f3d9a6ba 1106 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
7f678428 1107
1108then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1109the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1110extension without the -lgdbm library.
1111
1112It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1113this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1114quite that tightly coordinated.
1115
aa689395 1116=item sh: ar: not found
1117
1118This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1119was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1120make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1ec51d55 1121is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
aa689395 1122directory.
1123
1124=item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1125
1126Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1127with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1128bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1129
1ec51d55 1130=item Miscellaneous
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1131
1132Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1133
1134Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1135
1136NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1137
1ec51d55 1138UTS may need one or more of -DCRIPPLED_CC, -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
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1139
1140If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.
1141
1142Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
1143
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1144=back
1145
1146=head1 make test
1147
1148This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If it
1149doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went wrong. See the
1ec51d55 1150file t/README in the t subdirectory. Note that you can't run the
aa689395 1151tests in background if this disables opening of /dev/tty.
c3edaffb 1152
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1153If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1154by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
c3edaffb 1155bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
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1156
1157 ./perl op/groups.t
1158
aa689395 1159Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1ec51d55 1160individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
aa689395 1161
1162 ./perl harness
1163
1ec51d55 1164(this assumes that most tests succeed, since harness uses
aa689395 1165complicated constructs).
1166
c3edaffb 1167You can also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1168comments that apply to your system.
1169
1ec51d55 1170Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
c07a80fd 1171may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
3fe9a6f1 1172B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1ec51d55
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1173one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1174LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
e57fd563 1175are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1176
1177If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
aa689395 1178
1179 setenv LC_ALL C
1180
1181(for C shell) or
1182
1183 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1184
1ec51d55
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1185for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1186make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
aa689395 1187is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
e57fd563 1188shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
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1189things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1190open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
e57fd563 1191external program.
eed2e782 1192
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1193=head1 make install
1194
1195This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1ec51d55 1196Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
8e07c86e 1197to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
aa689395 1198pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
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1199are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
1200ignore any messages about chown not working.
1201
1202If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
1203anything, you can run
4633a7c4 1204
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1205 ./perl installperl -n
1206 ./perl installman -n
1207
1ec51d55 1208make install will install the following:
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1209
1210 perl,
1211 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
1212 will be a link to perl.
1213 suidperl,
1214 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
1215 a2p awk-to-perl translator
1216 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
1217 read from stdin.
1218 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
1219 s2p sed-to-perl translator
1220 find2perl find-to-perl translator
aa689395 1221 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
8e07c86e 1222 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
24b3df7f 1223 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
8e07c86e 1224 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
aa689395 1225 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
8e07c86e 1226 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
aa689395 1227 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
1228 pod2man, and
1229 pod2text
1230 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
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1231
1232 library files in $privlib and $archlib specified to
1233 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
1234 man pages in the location specified to Configure, usually
1235 something like /usr/local/man/man1.
1236 module in the location specified to Configure, usually
1237 man pages under /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3.
1238 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
1239
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1240Installperl will also create the library directories $siteperl and
1241$sitearch listed in config.sh. Usually, these are something like
24b3df7f 1242 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
1243 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$archname
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1244where $archname is something like sun4-sunos. These directories
1245will be used for installing extensions.
1246
56c6f531
JH
1247Perl's *.h header files and the libperl.a library are also installed
1248under $archlib so that any user may later build new extensions, run the
1249optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
1250program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
8e07c86e 1251
aa689395 1252=head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
4633a7c4 1253
eed2e782 1254You can safely install the current version of perl5 and still run scripts
56c6f531 1255under the old binaries for versions 5.003 and later ONLY. Instead of
eed2e782 1256starting your script with #!/usr/local/bin/perl, just start it with
56c6f531 1257#!/usr/local/bin/perl5.003 (or whatever version you want to run.)
a6006777 1258If you want to retain a version of Perl 5 prior to 5.003, you'll
eed2e782 1259need to install the current version in a separate directory tree,
1260since some of the architecture-independent library files have changed
1261in incompatible ways.
4633a7c4 1262
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1263The old architecture-dependent files are stored in a version-specific
1264directory (such as /usr/local/lib/perl5/sun4-sunos/5.003) so that they
1265will still be accessible even after a later version is installed.
1266(Note: Perl 5.000 and 5.001 did not put their architecture-dependent
1267libraries in a version-specific directory. They are simply in
1268/usr/local/lib/perl5/$archname. If you will not be using 5.000 or
12695.001, you may safely remove those files.)
1270
1271In general, the standard library files in /usr/local/lib/perl5 should
1272be usable by all versions of perl5. However, the diagnostics.pm module
1273uses the /usr/local/lib/perl5/pod/perldiag.pod documentation file, so
1274the C<use diagnostics;> pragma and the splain script will only identify
1275and explain any warnings or errors that the most recently-installed
1276version of perl can generate.
4633a7c4 1277
d52d4e46 1278Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use with a newer
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LW
1279version of perl. If you do run into problems, and you want to continue
1280to use the old version of perl along with your extension, simply move
1281those extension files to the appropriate version directory, such as
1ec51d55 1282/usr/local/lib/perl/archname/5.003. Then Perl 5.003 will find your
aa689395 1283files in the 5.003 directory, and newer versions of perl will find your
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1284newer extension in the site_perl directory.
1285
1ec51d55 1286Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
d52d4e46 1287separate directories. One convenient way to do this is by
1288using a separate prefix for each version, such as
1289
46bb10fb 1290 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.004
d52d4e46 1291
46bb10fb 1292and adding /opt/perl5.004/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
d52d4e46 1293may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
1294scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
1295
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1296If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
1297seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
1298subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
1299yet.
1300
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1301=head1 Coexistence with perl4
1302
1303You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
1304
1ec51d55
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1305By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
1306they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
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1307
1308In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
1ec51d55 1309perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
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1310process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
1311However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
1ec51d55 1312the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036
edb1cbcb 1313(or whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod
1314for possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
8e07c86e 1315
aa689395 1316=head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
1317
1318Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from
1319the system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
1ec51d55 1320header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
aa689395 1321by perl. These files will be placed in the architectural library directory
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1322you specified to Configure; by default this is
1323/usr/local/lib/perl5/ARCH/VERSION, where ARCH is your architecture
1324(such as sun4-solaris) and VERSION is the version of perl you are
1325building (for example, 5.004).
aa689395 1326
1ec51d55 1327Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the
aa689395 1328conversion of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have
1329to hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse
1330correctly. For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and
1331certain structures.
1332
1333=head1 cd pod && make html && mv *.html (www home dir)
1334
1335Some sites may wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
1336available in HTML format. Type
1337
1338 cd pod && make html && mv *.html <www home dir>
1339
1340where F<www home dir> is wherever your site keeps HTML files.
1341
1342=head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
1343
1344Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
1345available in TeX format. Type
1346
1347 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
1348
1349=head1 Reporting Problems
1350
1351If you have difficulty building perl, and none of the advice in this
1352file helps, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant
1353manual pages on your system doesn't help either, then you should send a
1354message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
1355perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
1356
1ec51d55 1357Please include the output of the ./myconfig shell script
aa689395 1358that comes with the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the
1ec51d55 1359perlbug program that comes with the perl distribution,
aa689395 1360but you need to have perl compiled and installed before you can use it.
1361
1ec51d55 1362You might also find helpful information in the Porting
aa689395 1363directory of the perl distribution.
1364
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1365=head1 DOCUMENTATION
1366
1367Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation is
1368in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
1369build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
1ec51d55 1370can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This
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1371is sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
1372
1ec51d55
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1373Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
1374along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory
34a2a22e
RM
1375and running (either):
1376
1377 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
aa689395 1378 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
34a2a22e
RM
1379
1380This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
aa689395 1381(You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
1382set-up.)
34a2a22e
RM
1383
1384Note that you must have performed the installation already before
1385running the above, since the script collects the installed files to
1386generate the documentation.
1387
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1388=head1 AUTHOR
1389
1ec51d55
CS
1390Andy Dougherty doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu , borrowing very heavily
1391from the original README by Larry Wall, and also with lots of helpful
1392feedback from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
8e07c86e 1393
a5f75d66 1394=head1 LAST MODIFIED
24b3df7f 1395
0dcb58f4 1396$Id: INSTALL,v 1.18 1997/05/29 18:24:10 doughera Exp $