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1If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you see.
2It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is specially
3designed to be readable as is.
4
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5=head1 NAME
6
cb8c159f 7INSTALL - Build and Installation guide for perl 5.
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8
9=head1 SYNOPSIS
10
7df75831 11First, make sure you have an up-to-date version of Perl. If you
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12didn't get your Perl source from CPAN, check the latest version at
13http://www.cpan.org/src/. Perl uses a version scheme where even-numbered
08854360 14subreleases (like 5.8.x and 5.10.x) are stable maintenance releases and
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15odd-numbered subreleases (like 5.7.x and 5.9.x) are unstable
16development releases. Development releases should not be used in
17production environments. Fixes and new features are first carefully
18tested in development releases and only if they prove themselves to be
19worthy will they be migrated to the maintenance releases.
3ce0d271 20
7df75831 21The basic steps to build and install perl 5 on a Unix system with all
dd3196cd 22the defaults are to run, from a freshly unpacked source tree:
8e07c86e 23
491517e0 24 sh Configure -de
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25 make
26 make test
27 make install
36477c24 28
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29Each of these is explained in further detail below.
30
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31The above commands will install Perl to /usr/local (or some other
32platform-specific directory -- see the appropriate file in hints/.)
7df75831 33If that's not okay with you, you can run Configure interactively, by
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34just typing "sh Configure" (without the -de args). You can also specify
35any prefix location by adding "-Dprefix='/some/dir'" to Configure's args.
36To explicitly name the perl binary, use the command
37"make install PERLNAME=myperl".
491517e0 38
668cbedd 39Building perl from source requires an ANSI compliant C compiler.
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40A minimum of C89 is required. Some features available in C99 will
41be probed for and used when found. The perl build process does not
42rely on anything more than C89.
43
ff52061e 44These options, and many more, are explained in further detail below.
7f678428 45
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46If you're building perl from a git repository, you should also consult
47the documentation in pod/perlgit.pod for information on that special
48circumstance.
49
8d74ce1c 50If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
ff52061e 51L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
8d74ce1c 52
7beaa944 53For information on what's new in this release, see the
37ee6528 54pod/perldelta.pod file. For more information about how to find more
9519d2ec 55specific detail about changes, see the Changes file.
c3edaffb 56
1ec51d55 57=head1 DESCRIPTION
edb1cbcb 58
c3edaffb 59This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
60structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
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61read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
62by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
63
64 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
65 C<code> literal code
66 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
ce80d64e 67 F<file> A filename
1ec51d55 68
c42e3e15 69Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
ce80d64e 70you should probably at least skim through this document before
1ec51d55 71proceeding.
c3edaffb 72
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73In addition to this file, check if there is a README file specific to
74your operating system, since it may provide additional or different
75instructions for building Perl. If there is a hint file for your
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76system (in the hints/ directory) you might also want to read it
77for even more information.
c42e3e15 78
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79For additional information about porting Perl, see the section on
80L<"Porting information"> below, and look at the files in the Porting/
81directory.
d56c5707 82
ce80d64e 83=head1 PRELIMINARIES
c42e3e15 84
ce80d64e 85=head2 Changes and Incompatibilities
c42e3e15 86
37ee6528 87Please see pod/perldelta.pod for a description of the changes and
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88potential incompatibilities introduced with this release. A few of
89the most important issues are listed below, but you should refer
37ee6528 90to pod/perldelta.pod for more detailed information.
c42e3e15 91
fdd3cf50 92B<WARNING:> This version is not binary compatible with prior releases of Perl.
cc65bb49 93If you have built extensions (i.e. modules that include C code)
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94using an earlier version of Perl, you will need to rebuild and reinstall
95those extensions.
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96
97Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
dd3196cd 98without reinstallation. See the discussion below on
7df75831 99L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> for more details.
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100
101The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
102
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103On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the changes
104in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
37ee6528 105pod/perldelta.pod for a description of what's changed. See your
ce80d64e 106installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly incomplete)
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107list of locally installed modules. Also see the L<CPAN> module's
108C<autobundle> function for one way to make a "bundle" of your currently
109installed modules.
16dc217a 110
aa689395 111=head1 Run Configure
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112
113Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
114things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
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115you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
116almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
117since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
118the same function.
119
ce80d64e 120At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
d6baa268 121defaults from then on.
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122
123After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
1ec51d55 124*.SH files and offer to run make depend.
8e07c86e 125
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126The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
127files.
128
ce80d64e 129=head2 Common Configure options
844fc9f4 130
ce80d64e 131Configure supports a number of useful options. Run
844fc9f4 132
ce80d64e 133 Configure -h
d6baa268 134
ce80d64e 135to get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
fb73857a 136Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
137
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138=over 4
139
08854360 140=item C compiler
d6baa268 141
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142To compile with gcc, if it's not the default compiler on your
143system, you should run
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144
145 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
146
08854360 147This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or any another alternative
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148compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
149
d6baa268 150=item Installation prefix
4633a7c4 151
8e07c86e 152By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
8d74ce1c 153/usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
7df75831 154and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below for
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155further details.)
156
157You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
ce80d64e 158directory when Configure prompts you, or by using the Configure command
8d74ce1c 159line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
8e07c86e 160
25f94b33 161 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
4633a7c4 162
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163If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
164directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
165prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
166/opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
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167for more details. Do not include a trailing slash, (i.e. /opt/perl/)
168or you may experience odd test failures.
8e07c86e 169
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170NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
171as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
172attempt infinite recursion.
84902520 173
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174=item /usr/bin/perl
175
176It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
177find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
dd64f1c3 178/usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
d6baa268 179careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
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180vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing. If you insist
181on replacing your vendor's perl, useful information on how it was
182configured may be found with
183
184 perl -V:config_args
185
186(Check the output carefully, however, since this doesn't preserve
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187spaces in arguments to Configure. For that, you have to look carefully
188at config_arg1, config_arg2, etc.)
d6baa268 189
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190By default, Configure will not try to link /usr/bin/perl to the current
191version of perl. You can turn on that behavior by running
d6baa268 192
7d56c962 193 Configure -Dinstallusrbinperl
d6baa268 194
7d56c962 195or by answering 'yes' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
d6baa268 196
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197In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to put
198(symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
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199into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
200obvious and convenient place.
201
71c4561b 202=item Building a development release
04d420f9 203
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204For development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.9.x) if you want to
205use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel to Configure,
206because the default answer to the question "do you really want to
207Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel skips that
208sanity check.
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209
210=back
8e07c86e 211
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212If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
213output, you can run
214
215 sh Configure -des
216
dd3196cd 217=head2 Altering Configure variables for C compiler switches etc.
46bb10fb 218
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219For most users, most of the Configure defaults are fine, or can easily
220be set on the Configure command line. However, if Configure doesn't
221have an option to do what you want, you can change Configure variables
222after the platform hints have been run by using Configure's -A switch.
223For example, here's how to add a couple of extra flags to C compiler
224invocations:
46bb10fb 225
08854360 226 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_EXTERNAL_GLOB -DNO_HASH_SEED"
46bb10fb 227
5247441a 228To clarify, those ccflags values are not Configure options; if passed to
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229Configure directly, they won't do anything useful (they will define a
230variable in config.sh, but without taking any action based upon it).
231But when passed to the compiler, those flags will activate #ifdefd code.
5247441a 232
ce80d64e 233For more help on Configure switches, run
46bb10fb 234
ce80d64e 235 sh Configure -h
46bb10fb 236
ce80d64e 237=head2 Major Configure-time Build Options
46bb10fb 238
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239There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
240system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
241Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
242some of the main things you can change.
46bb10fb 243
ce80d64e 244=head3 Threads
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246On some platforms, perl can be compiled with support for threads. To
247enable this, run
4633a7c4 248
ce80d64e 249 sh Configure -Dusethreads
4633a7c4 250
ce80d64e 251The default is to compile without thread support.
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253Perl used to have two different internal threads implementations. The current
254model (available internally since 5.6, and as a user-level module since 5.8) is
255called interpreter-based implementation (ithreads), with one interpreter per
256thread, and explicit sharing of data. The (deprecated) 5.005 version
54c46bd5 257(5005threads) was removed for release 5.10.
d6baa268 258
ce80d64e 259The 'threads' module is for use with the ithreads implementation. The
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260'Thread' module emulates the old 5005threads interface on top of the current
261ithreads model.
d6baa268 262
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263When using threads, perl uses a dynamically-sized buffer for some of
264the thread-safe library calls, such as those in the getpw*() family.
265This buffer starts small, but it will keep growing until the result
266fits. To get a fixed upper limit, you should compile Perl with
267PERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE defined to be the number of bytes you want. One
268way to do this is to run Configure with
08854360 269C<-Accflags=-DPERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE=65536>.
d6baa268 270
08854360 271=head3 Large file support
b367e8b0 272
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273Since Perl 5.6.0, Perl has supported large files (files larger than
2742 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
275support is on by default.
d6baa268 276
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277This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files,
278seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad in that if you are interfacing Perl
279using some extension, the components you are connecting to must also
280be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
281parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
08854360 282will happen.
d6baa268 283
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284There's also one known limitation with the current large files
285implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
286section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer formats
287like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
d6baa268 288
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289If you want to compile perl without large file support, use
290
291 sh Configure -Uuselargefiles
292
08854360 293=head3 64 bit support
d6baa268 294
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295If your platform does not run natively at 64 bits, but can simulate
296them with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>,
ce80d64e 297you can build a perl that uses 64 bits.
d6baa268 298
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299There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
300using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
301-Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
302the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
d6baa268 303
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304The C<use64bitint> option does only as much as is required to get
30564-bit integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long
306longs") while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because
307your pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint>
308does not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it
309might, but it doesn't have to). The C<use64bitint> simply means that
310you will be able to have 64 bit-wide scalar values.
d6baa268 311
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312The C<use64bitall> option goes all the way by attempting to switch
313integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
314create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
315resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
316have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
317aware.
d6baa268 318
08854360 319Natively 64-bit systems need neither -Duse64bitint nor -Duse64bitall.
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320On these systems, it might be the default compilation mode, and there
321is currently no guarantee that passing no use64bitall option to the
322Configure process will build a 32bit perl. Implementing -Duse32bit*
1ed7425e 323options is planned for a future release of perl.
d6baa268 324
ce80d64e 325=head3 Long doubles
d6baa268 326
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327In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
328range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
329(that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
330this support (if it is available).
d6baa268 331
ce80d64e 332=head3 "more bits"
b367e8b0 333
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334You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
335and the long double support.
b367e8b0 336
ce80d64e 337=head3 Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Hashes
504f80c1 338
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339Perl 5.18 reworked the measures used to secure its hash function
340from algorithmic complexity attacks. By default it will build with
341all of these measures enabled along with support for controlling and
342disabling them via environment variables.
343
344You can override various aspects of this feature by defining various
345symbols during configure. An example might be:
346
347 Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_HASH_FUNC_SIPHASH
348
349B<Unless stated otherwise these options are considered experimental or
350insecure and are not recommended for production use.>
351
352Perl 5.18 includes support for multiple hash functions, and changed
353the default (to ONE_AT_A_TIME_HARD), you can choose a different
354algorithm by defining one of the following symbols. Note that as of
355Perl 5.18 we can only recommend use of the default or SIPHASH. All
356the others are known to have security issues and are for research
357purposes only.
358
359 PERL_HASH_FUNC_SIPHASH
360 PERL_HASH_FUNC_SDBM
361 PERL_HASH_FUNC_DJB2
362 PERL_HASH_FUNC_SUPERFAST
363 PERL_HASH_FUNC_MURMUR3
364 PERL_HASH_FUNC_ONE_AT_A_TIME
365 PERL_HASH_FUNC_ONE_AT_A_TIME_HARD
366 PERL_HASH_FUNC_ONE_AT_A_TIME_OLD
367
368Perl 5.18 randomizes the order returned by keys(), values(), and each(),
369and allows controlling this behavior by using of the PERL_PERTURB_KEYS
370option. You can disable this option entirely with the define:
371
372 PERL_PERTURB_KEYS_DISABLED
373
374You can disable the environment variable checks and specify the type of
375key traversal randomization to be used by defining one of these:
376
377 PERL_PERTURB_KEYS_RANDOM
378 PERL_PERTURB_KEYS_DETERMINISTIC
379
380In Perl 5.18 the seed used for the hash function is randomly selected
eb717850 381at process start which can be overridden by specifying a seed by setting
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382the PERL_HASH_SEED environment variable.
383
384You can change this behavior by building perl with the
385
386 USE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT
387
388define, in which case one has to explicitly set the PERL_HASH_SEED
389environment variable to enable the security feature or by adding
390
391 NO_HASH_SEED
392
393to the compilation flags to completely disable the randomisation feature.
394Note these modes are poorly tested, insecure and not recommended.
504f80c1 395
3debabd9 396B<Perl has never guaranteed any ordering of the hash keys>, and the
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397ordering has already changed several times during the lifetime of Perl
3985. Also, the ordering of hash keys has always been, and continues to
08854360 399be, affected by the insertion order. Note that because of this
86358043 400randomisation for example the Data::Dumper results will be different
08854360 401between different runs of Perl, since Data::Dumper by default dumps
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402hashes "unordered". The use of the Data::Dumper C<Sortkeys> option is
403recommended.
504f80c1 404
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405See L<perlrun/PERL_HASH_SEED> and L<perlrun/PERL_PERTURB_KEYS> for details on
406the environment variables, and L<perlsec/Algorithmic Complexity Attacks> for
407further security details.
408
ce80d64e 409=head3 SOCKS
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410
411Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
412TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
413access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
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414Version 5. The corresponding Configure option is -Dusesocks.
415You can find more about SOCKS from wikipedia at
416L<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOCKS>.
1b9c9cf5 417
ce80d64e 418=head3 Dynamic Loading
d6baa268 419
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420By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading.
421If you want to force perl to be compiled completely
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422statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
423you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
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424With this option, you won't be able to use any new extension
425(XS) module without recompiling perl itself.
d6baa268 426
ce80d64e 427=head3 Building a shared Perl library
c3edaffb 428
429Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
430linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
8ba4bff0 431extensions, and various extra libraries, such as -lm.
c3edaffb 432
08854360 433On systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
9d67150a 434replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
c3edaffb 435several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
436different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
9d67150a 437you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
c3edaffb 438can share the same library.
439
440The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
9d67150a 441penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
aa689395 442mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
c3edaffb 443and upgrades.
444
445In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
9d67150a 446test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
c3edaffb 447Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
448results.
449
450The default name for the shared library is typically something like
08854360 451libperl.so.5.8.8 (for Perl 5.8.8), or libperl.so.588, or simply
9d67150a 452libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
c3edaffb 453based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
454version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
455isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
456
c3edaffb 457You can elect to build a shared libperl by
458
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459 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
460
461To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
462library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
b6c36746 463NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
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464for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
465the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
466be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
467library search settings. You can find the name of the environment
468variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
469
470 grep ldlibpthname config.sh
471
472However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
473shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
474something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
475./perl:
476
04bd6448 477 ./perl -MTestInit t/misc/failing_test.t
08854360 478
ce80d64e 479or
08854360 480
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481 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
482
483then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
484You can do this with
485
486 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
487
488for Bourne-style shells, or
489
490 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
491
492for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
493unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And
494again, it may be something other than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
495
496You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
497messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
498for example:
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499
500 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
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501
502There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
503want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
504with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
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505install a standard Perl 5.10.0 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
506try to build Perl 5.10.0 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
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507the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
508ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
509libperl.so.8 rather with the installed libperl.so.8? The answer is
510that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
511in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
512equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
513with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux, you can only override at runtime via
514LD_PRELOAD, specifying the exact filename you wish to be used; and on
515Digital Unix, you can override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the
516_RLD_ROOT environment variable to point to the perl build directory.
517
518In other words, it is generally not a good idea to try to build a perl
519with a shared library if $archlib/CORE/$libperl already exists from a
520previous build.
521
522A good workaround is to specify a different directory for the
523architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING version of perl.
524You can do this by changing all the *archlib* variables in config.sh to
525point to your new architecture-dependent library.
526
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527=head3 Environment access
528
529Perl often needs to write to the program's environment, such as when C<%ENV>
530is assigned to. Many implementations of the C library function C<putenv()>
531leak memory, so where possible perl will manipulate the environment directly
532to avoid these leaks. The default is now to perform direct manipulation
533whenever perl is running as a stand alone interpreter, and to call the safe
534but potentially leaky C<putenv()> function when the perl interpreter is
535embedded in another application. You can force perl to always use C<putenv()>
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536by compiling with C<-Accflags="-DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV">, see section
537L</"Altering Configure variables for C compiler switches etc.">.
538You can force an embedded perl to use direct manipulation by setting
539C<PL_use_safe_putenv = 0;> after the C<perl_construct()> call.
575e1338 540
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541=head2 Installation Directories
542
543The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
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544appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the installation
545questions are near the beginning of Configure. Do not include trailing
546slashes on directory names. At any point during the Configure process,
547you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use the defaults
548from then on. Alternatively, you can
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549
550 grep '^install' config.sh
551
552after Configure has run to verify the installation paths.
553
554The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
555people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
556distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
557need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
558you can safely skip the next section.
559
560The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
561
562=over 4
563
564=item Directories for the perl distribution
565
93a90a48 566By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.19.2.
ce80d64e 567$version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
8891dd8d 5685.12.3, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
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569determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
570variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
571
572 Configure variable Default value
573 $prefixexp /usr/local
574 $binexp $prefixexp/bin
575 $scriptdirexp $prefixexp/bin
576 $privlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version
577 $archlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
578 $man1direxp $prefixexp/man/man1
579 $man3direxp $prefixexp/man/man3
580 $html1direxp (none)
581 $html3direxp (none)
582
583$prefixexp is generated from $prefix, with ~ expansion done to convert home
584directories into absolute paths. Similarly for the other variables listed. As
585file system calls do not do this, you should always reference the ...exp
586variables, to support users who build perl in their home directory.
587
588Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
589/usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
590instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
591directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
592the common style is shown here.
593
594=item Directories for site-specific add-on files
595
596After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
597CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
598be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
599
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600 Configure Default
601 variable value
602 $siteprefixexp $prefixexp
603 $sitebinexp $siteprefixexp/bin
604 $sitescriptexp $siteprefixexp/bin
605 $sitelibexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
606 $sitearchexp
607 $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
608 $siteman1direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man1
609 $siteman3direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man3
610 $sitehtml1direxp (none)
611 $sitehtml3direxp (none)
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612
613By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
614modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
615
616=item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
617
618Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
619distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
620for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
621
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622 Configure Default
623 variable value
624 $vendorprefixexp (none)
625
626 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
627
628 $vendorbinexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
629 $vendorscriptexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
630 $vendorlibexp $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
631 $vendorarchexp
632 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
633 $vendorman1direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man1
634 $vendorman3direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man3
635 $vendorhtml1direxp (none)
636 $vendorhtml3direxp (none)
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637
638These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
639a vendor might choose the following settings:
640
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641 $prefix /usr
642 $siteprefix /usr/local
643 $vendorprefix /usr
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644
645This would have the effect of setting the following:
646
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647 $binexp /usr/bin
648 $scriptdirexp /usr/bin
649 $privlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version
650 $archlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
651 $man1direxp /usr/man/man1
652 $man3direxp /usr/man/man3
653
654 $sitebinexp /usr/local/bin
655 $sitescriptexp /usr/local/bin
656 $sitelibexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
657 $sitearchexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
658 $siteman1direxp /usr/local/man/man1
659 $siteman3direxp /usr/local/man/man3
660
661 $vendorbinexp /usr/bin
662 $vendorscriptexp /usr/bin
663 $vendorlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
664 $vendorarchexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
665 $vendorman1direxp /usr/man/man1
666 $vendorman3direxp /usr/man/man3
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667
668Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
668cbedd 669/usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end user are in
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670the /usr/local hierarchy.
671
672The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
673version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
674However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
675installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
7df75831 676See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below for more details
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677on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
678
679Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
680example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
681are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
682site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
683network. One way to do that would be something like
684
979b4168 685 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
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686
687=item otherlibdirs
688
689As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
690variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
691directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
692Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
693version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
694
695For example, if you have a bundle of perl libraries from a previous
696installation, perhaps in a strange place:
697
698 Configure -Dotherlibdirs=/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1
699
700=item APPLLIB_EXP
701
702There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
703that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
704separated list of directories, like this
705
706 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
707
708The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
709ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
710modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
711touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
712version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
713present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
714directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
715run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
716
785aa5e3 717=item usesitecustomize
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718
719Run-time customization of @INC can be enabled with:
720
36de116d 721 sh Configure -Dusesitecustomize
20ef40cf 722
785aa5e3
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723which will define USE_SITECUSTOMIZE and $Config{usesitecustomize}.
724When enabled, this makes perl run F<$sitelibexp/sitecustomize.pl> before
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725anything else. This script can then be set up to add additional
726entries to @INC.
727
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728=item Man Pages
729
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730By default, man pages will be installed in $man1dir and $man3dir, which
731are normally /usr/local/man/man1 and /usr/local/man/man3. If you
732want to use a .3pm suffix for perl man pages, you can do that with
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733
734 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
735
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736=item HTML pages
737
738Currently, the standard perl installation does not do anything with
739HTML documentation, but that may change in the future. Further, some
740add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The html Configure
741variables listed above are provided if you wish to specify where such
742documents should be placed. The default is "none", but will likely
743eventually change to something useful based on user feedback.
744
745=back
746
747Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
748to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
749architectures.
750
751Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
752directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
753filesystem.
c3edaffb 754
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755Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
756development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
7df75831 757discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below.
10c7e831 758
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759If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
760library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
761suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
2bf2710f 762
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763Thus, for example, if you Configure with
764-Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.9.0 are
2bf2710f 765
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766 Configure variable Default value
767 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0
768 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0/$archname
769 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0
770 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0/$archname
2bf2710f 771
ce80d64e 772=head2 Changing the installation directory
c3edaffb 773
ce80d64e 774Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
7df75831 775associated files) should be installed, and the directory in which it
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776will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
777sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
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778However, sites that use package management software such as rpm or
779dpkg, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
780wish to install perl into a different directory before moving perl
781to its final destination. There are two ways to do that:
782
783=over 4
784
785=item installprefix
c3edaffb 786
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787To install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory, use the following
788command line:
c3edaffb 789
7df75831 790 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
c3edaffb 791
ce80d64e 792(replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
2bf2710f 793
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794Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
795modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
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796follow this example. That's why it's usually better to use DESTDIR,
797as shown in the next section.
c3edaffb 798
7df75831 799=item DESTDIR
9d67150a 800
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801If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is convenient
802to compile it once and create an archive that can be installed on
803multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to create an
804archive that can be installed in /opt/perl. One way to do that is by
805using the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>. The DESTDIR is
806automatically prepended to all the installation paths. Thus you
807simply do:
830717a7 808
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809 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
810 make
811 make test
812 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
813 cd /tmp/perl5/opt/perl
814 tar cvf /tmp/perl5-archive.tar .
9d67150a 815
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816=back
817
32878f30
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818=head2 Relocatable @INC
819
820To create a relocatable perl tree, use the following command line:
821
822 sh Configure -Duserelocatableinc
823
824Then the paths in @INC (and everything else in %Config) can be
825optionally located via the path of the perl executable.
826
827That means that, if the string ".../" is found at the start of any
828path, it's substituted with the directory of $^X. So, the relocation
829can be configured on a per-directory basis, although the default with
830"-Duserelocatableinc" is that everything is relocated. The initial
831install is done to the original configured prefix.
832
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833This option is not compatible with the building of a shared libperl
834("-Duseshrplib"), because in that case perl is linked with an hard-coded
835rpath that points at the libperl.so, that cannot be relocated.
836
ce80d64e 837=head2 Site-wide Policy settings
55479bb6 838
ce80d64e 839After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
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840answers (such as installation directories) in the Policy.sh file.
841If you want to build perl on another system using the same policy
842defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file to the new system's perl build
843directory, and Configure will use it. This will work even if Policy.sh was
a0a8d9d3 844generated for another version of Perl, or on a system with a
da1b4322 845different architecture and/or operating system. However, in such cases,
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846you should review the contents of the file before using it: for
847example, your new target may not keep its man pages in the same place
848as the system on which the file was generated.
55479bb6 849
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850Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
851answers, you should
c3edaffb 852
ce80d64e 853 rm -f Policy.sh
aa689395 854
ce80d64e 855to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
2ae324a7 856
ce80d64e 857Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
aa689395 858
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859If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
860to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
861platform-specific hints files.
aa689395 862
ce80d64e 863=head2 Disabling older versions of Perl
aa689395 864
ce80d64e 865Configure will search for binary compatible versions of previously
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866installed perl binaries in the tree that is specified as target tree,
867and these will be used as locations to search for modules by the perl
868being built. The list of perl versions found will be put in the Configure
869variable inc_version_list.
86058a2d 870
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871To disable this use of older perl modules, even completely valid pure perl
872modules, you can specify to not include the paths found:
b2a6d19e 873
ce80d64e 874 sh Configure -Dinc_version_list=none ...
d6baa268 875
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876If you do want to use modules from some previous perl versions, the variable
877must contain a space separated list of directories under the site_perl
878directory, and has to include architecture-dependent directories separately,
879eg.
880
4683a5d7 881 sh Configure -Dinc_version_list="5.16.0/x86_64-linux 5.16.0" ...
274ca399 882
ce80d64e 883When using the newer perl, you can add these paths again in the
668cbedd 884PERL5LIB environment variable or with perl's -I runtime option.
86058a2d 885
ce80d64e 886=head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
86058a2d 887
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888Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
889where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
890read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
891architectures. You can do this (if your file system supports symbolic
892links) by
06c896bb 893
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894 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
895 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
896 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
06c896bb 897
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898This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
899pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
900unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
06c896bb 901
ce80d64e 902 make
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903 make test
904 make install
06c896bb 905
ce80d64e 906as usual, and Perl will be built in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
aa689395 907
3bf462b8
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908=head2 Building a debugging perl
909
910You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
3fe9a6f1 911B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
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912you probably want to have support for perl internal debugging code
913(activated by adding -DDEBUGGING to ccflags), and/or support for the
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914system debugger by adding -g to the optimisation flags. For that,
915use the parameter:
eaf812ae 916
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917 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING
918
919or
920
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921 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING=<mode>
922
923For a more eye appealing call, -DEBUGGING is defined to be an alias
924for -DDEBUGGING. For both, the -U calls are also supported, in order
925to be able to overrule the hints or Policy.sh settings.
926
7df75831 927Here are the DEBUGGING modes:
3bf462b8 928
7df75831 929=over 4
3bf462b8 930
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931=item -DDEBUGGING
932
933=item -DEBUGGING
934
935=item -DEBUGGING=both
936
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937Sets both -DDEBUGGING in the ccflags, and adds -g to optimize.
938
939You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently (see below),
940but usually it's convenient to have both.
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941
942=item -DEBUGGING=-g
943
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944=item -Doptimize=-g
945
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946Adds -g to optimize, but does not set -DDEBUGGING.
947
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948(Note: Your system may actually require something like cc -g2.
949Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for your system.)
950
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951=item -DEBUGGING=none
952
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953=item -UDEBUGGING
954
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955Removes -g from optimize, and -DDEBUGGING from ccflags.
956
957=back
958
3bf462b8 959If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
a522f097 960versions of perl under L<Building a shared Perl library>.
3bf462b8 961
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962Note that a perl built with -DDEBUGGING will be much bigger and will run
963much, much more slowly than a standard perl.
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964
965=head2 DTrace support
966
979b4168 967On platforms where DTrace is available, it may be enabled by
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968using the -Dusedtrace option to Configure. DTrace probes are available for
969subroutine entry (sub-entry) and subroutine exit (sub-exit). Here's a
970simple D script that uses them:
971
972 perl$target:::sub-entry, perl$target:::sub-return {
973 printf("%s %s (%s:%d)\n", probename == "sub-entry" ? "->" : "<-",
974 copyinstr(arg0), copyinstr(arg1), arg2);
975 }
976
977
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978=head2 Extensions
979
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980Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
981in the ext/ subdirectory.
982
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983By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
984to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
7df75831 985only if it is able to find the gdbm library.
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986
987To disable certain extensions so that they are not built, use the
988-Dnoextensions=... and -Donlyextensions=... options. They both accept
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989a space-separated list of extensions, such as C<IPC/SysV>. The extensions
990listed in
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991C<noextensions> are removed from the list of extensions to build, while
992the C<onlyextensions> is rather more severe and builds only the listed
993extensions. The latter should be used with extreme caution since
994certain extensions are used by many other extensions and modules:
995examples of such modules include Fcntl and IO. The order of processing
996these options is first C<only> (if present), then C<no> (if present).
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997
998Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
999the extensions you want.
1000
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1001If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
1002running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
1003extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
1004it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
1005has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
1006extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
1007convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
1008you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
1009dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
1010Another way of specifying extra modules is described in
1011L<"Adding extra modules to the build"> below.
8d74ce1c 1012
dd3196cd 1013If you re-use an old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
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1014adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
1015for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
1016you.
1017
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1018=head2 Including locally-installed libraries
1019
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1020Perl comes with interfaces to number of libraries, including threads,
1021dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For the *db* extension, if
8d74ce1c 1022Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
7df75831 1023automatically include that extension. The threading extension needs
27021420 1024to be specified explicitly (see L</Threads>).
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1025
1026Those libraries are not distributed with perl. If your header (.h) files
1027for those libraries are not in a directory normally searched by your C
1028compiler, then you will need to include the appropriate -I/your/directory
1029option when prompted by Configure. If your libraries are not in a
1030directory normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will
1031need to include the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted
1032by Configure. See the examples below.
8d74ce1c 1033
ce80d64e 1034=head3 Examples
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1035
1036=over 4
1037
1038=item gdbm in /usr/local
1039
1040Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
d6baa268 1041GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
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1042installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
1043/usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
1044necessary steps out automatically.
1045
1046Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
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1047your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include, if it's
1048not here yet. Similarly, when Configure prompts you for linker flags,
1049you should include -L/usr/local/lib.
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1050
1051If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
1052linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1053-L/usr/local/lib.
1054
d6baa268
JH
1055Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1056you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1057/opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
8d74ce1c 1058
e8b9ce60
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1059=item BerkeleyDB in /usr/local/BerkeleyDB
1060
668cbedd 1061The version of BerkeleyDB distributed by Oracle installs in a
e8b9ce60
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1062version-specific directory by default, typically something like
1063/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7. To have Configure find that, you need to add
1064-I/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/include to cc flags, as in the previous example,
1065and you will also have to take extra steps to help Configure find -ldb.
1066Specifically, when Configure prompts you for library directories,
1067add /usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib to the list. Also, you will need to
1068add appropriate linker flags to tell the runtime linker where to find the
1069BerkeleyDB shared libraries.
1070
1071It is possible to specify this from the command line (all on one
8d74ce1c
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1072line):
1073
979b4168
KW
1074 sh Configure -de \
1075 -Dlocincpth='/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/include \
1076 /usr/local/include' \
1077 -Dloclibpth='/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib /usr/local/lib' \
1078 -Aldflags='-R/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib'
8d74ce1c
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1079
1080locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1081Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1082
1083loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
e8b9ce60 1084Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives.
8d74ce1c 1085
e8b9ce60
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1086The addition to ldflags is so that the dynamic linker knows where to find
1087the BerkeleyDB libraries. For Linux and Solaris, the -R option does that.
1088Other systems may use different flags. Use the appropriate flag for your
1089system.
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1090
1091=back
1092
ce80d64e
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1093=head2 Overriding an old config.sh
1094
dd3196cd
RGS
1095If you want to use an old config.sh produced by a previous run of
1096Configure, but override some of the items with command line options, you
1097need to use B<Configure -O>.
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1098
1099=head2 GNU-style configure
1100
1101If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
1102use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
1103
1104 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
1105
1106The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
1107options. Try
1108
1109 ./configure.gnu --help
1110
1111for a listing.
1112
1113(The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
1114that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
1115
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1116=head2 Malloc Issues
1117
1118Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
1119so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
1120the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
1121version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
1122perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
1123than your system malloc.
1124
1125However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
1126experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
1127that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
1128(Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
1129
1130=over 4
1131
1132=item Using the system malloc
1133
1134To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
1135
1136 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
1137
1138or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
1139
73d6d1b0
RGS
1140Note that Perl's malloc isn't always used by default; that actually
1141depends on your system. For example, on Linux and FreeBSD (and many more
1142systems), Configure chooses to use the system's malloc by default.
1143See the appropriate file in the F<hints/> directory to see how the
1144default is set.
1145
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1146=item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
1147
1148NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you just
7df75831 1149run Configure to accept all the defaults.
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1150
1151Perl's malloc family of functions are normally called Perl_malloc(),
1152Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree().
1153These names do not clash with the system versions of these functions.
1154
1155If this flag is enabled, however, Perl's malloc family of functions
1156will have the same names as the system versions. This may be required
1157sometimes if you have libraries that like to free() data that may have
1158been allocated by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1159
1160Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1161from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1162does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1163versions.
1164
1165=item -DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS
1166
1167This flag enables debugging mstats, which is required to use the
1168Devel::Peek::mstat() function. You cannot enable this unless you are
1169using Perl's malloc, so a typical Configure command would be
1170
7df75831 1171 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS -Dusemymalloc
ce80d64e
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1172
1173to enable this option.
1174
1175=back
1176
8e07c86e
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1177=head2 What if it doesn't work?
1178
8d74ce1c 1179If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
ff52061e 1180If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
8d74ce1c 1181
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1182=over 4
1183
25f94b33
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1184=item Running Configure Interactively
1185
1186If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1187Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1188guesses.
1189
1190All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
aa689395 1191have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1ec51d55 1192flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
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1193will use the defaults from then on.
1194
1195If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1196config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1197instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1198
aa689395 1199=item Hint files
8e07c86e 1200
a0a8d9d3
DD
1201Hint files tell Configure about a number of things:
1202
1203=over 4
1204
1205=item o
1206
1207The peculiarities or conventions of particular platforms -- non-standard
1208library locations and names, default installation locations for binaries,
1209and so on.
1210
1211=item o
1212
1213The deficiencies of the platform -- for example, library functions that,
1214although present, are too badly broken to be usable; or limits on
1215resources that are generously available on most platforms.
1216
1217=item o
1218
1219How best to optimize for the platform, both in terms of binary size and/or
1220speed, and for Perl feature support. Because of wide variations in the
1221implementation of shared libraries and of threading, for example, Configure
1222often needs hints in order to be able to use these features.
1223
1224=back
1225
1226The perl distribution includes many system-specific hints files
1227in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1228will offer to use that hint file. Unless you have a very good reason
1229not to, you should accept its offer.
8e07c86e
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1230
1231Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
f5b3b617
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1232If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1233for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1234More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
a0a8d9d3
DD
1235file, which also explains hint files known as callback-units.
1236
1237Note that any hint file is read before any Policy file, meaning that
1238Policy overrides hints -- see L</Site-wide Policy settings>.
8e07c86e 1239
73d6d1b0 1240=item WHOA THERE!!!
edb1cbcb 1241
82c11e95
RGS
1242If you are re-using an old config.sh, it's possible that Configure detects
1243different values from the ones specified in this file. You will almost
1244always want to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something
1245on your system.
edb1cbcb 1246
1247For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1248and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1249Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
bfb7748a
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1250Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1251issue a message:
edb1cbcb 1252
1253 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1254 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1255 Keep the previous value? [y]
1256
1ec51d55 1257In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
c3edaffb 1258should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
edb1cbcb 1259the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1260
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1261=item Changing Compilers
1262
1263If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1ec51d55 1264probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
dd3196cd 1265rename it, then rerun Configure with the options you want to use.
8e07c86e 1266
c3edaffb 1267=item Propagating your changes to config.sh
8e07c86e 1268
1ec51d55
CS
1269If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1270them to all the .SH files by running
1271
1272 sh Configure -S
1273
1274You will then have to rebuild by running
9d67150a 1275
1276 make depend
1277 make
8e07c86e 1278
48370efc
JH
1279=item config.over and config.arch
1280
668cbedd 1281You can also supply a shell script config.over to override
48370efc
JH
1282Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1283before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1284however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1285This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1286
1287There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1288config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1289architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1290hints file that creates the config.arch.
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1291
1292=item config.h
1293
1ec51d55
CS
1294Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1295Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1296The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
8e07c86e 1297
1ec51d55
CS
1298If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1299though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
8e07c86e
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1300lost.
1301
1302=item cflags
1303
1304If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1ec51d55 1305line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
5729ffdd
NC
1306optimizer on toke.c, find the switch structure marked 'or customize here',
1307and add a line for toke.c ahead of the catch-all *) so that it now reads:
1308
1309 : or customize here
1310
1311 case "$file" in
1312 toke) optimize='-g' ;;
1313 *) ;;
1314
1315You should not edit the generated file cflags directly, as your changes will
65c512c3 1316be lost the next time you run Configure, or if you edit config.sh.
8e07c86e 1317
f5b3b617
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1318To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1319see the file hints/README.hints.
1320
1321To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1322$ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1ec51d55
CS
1323
1324 sh Configure -S
1325 make depend
8e07c86e 1326
aa689395 1327=item No sh
8e07c86e 1328
c42e3e15
GS
1329If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1330Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1331system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
8e07c86e
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1332You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1333mechanism.
1334
c3edaffb 1335=item Porting information
1336
e6f03d26 1337Specific information for the OS/2, Plan 9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1ec51d55
CS
1338corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1339including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
ce80d64e 1340subdirectory. Porting/Glossary should especially come in handy.
c3edaffb 1341
7f678428 1342Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
468f45d5 1343http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
7f678428 1344various other operating systems.
1345
ce80d64e 1346If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture, study carefully the
491517e0 1347section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
c222ef46 1348in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file pod/perlgit.pod.
491517e0
JA
1349Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1350
8e07c86e
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1351=back
1352
ce80d64e 1353=head2 Adding extra modules to the build
fadf0ef5
JH
1354
1355You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1356CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1357command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1358
d3df0cfd 1359 Configure -Dextras="Bundle::LWP DBI"
fadf0ef5
JH
1360
1361or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
d3df0cfd 1362then answer "Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
fadf0ef5 1363The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
a522f097
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1364This will only work if those modules are to be built as dynamic
1365extensions. If you wish to include those extra modules as static
1366extensions, see L<"Extensions"> above.
fadf0ef5
JH
1367
1368Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1369modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1370or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1371do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1372
1373Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1374dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
d3df0cfd 1375For example: you will need to have the Foo database specific
fadf0ef5
JH
1376headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1377process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1378
ce80d64e 1379=head2 suidperl
03739d21 1380
172dd959
JV
1381suidperl was an optional component of earlier releases of perl. It is no
1382longer available. Instead, use a tool specifically designed to handle
1383changes in privileges, such as B<sudo>.
03739d21 1384
8e07c86e
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1385=head1 make depend
1386
bfb7748a
AD
1387This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1388The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1389the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
ce80d64e 1390makefile, not Makefile, since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
bfb7748a
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1391(On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1392Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
8e07c86e
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1393
1394Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1395explicitly above.
1396
1397=head1 make
1398
1399This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1400
8d410bc4
YST
1401=head2 Expected errors
1402
f5b5f377 1403These error reports are normal, and can be ignored:
8d410bc4
YST
1404
1405 ...
1406 make: [extra.pods] Error 1 (ignored)
1407 ...
1408 make: [extras.make] Error 1 (ignored)
1409
8d74ce1c
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1410=head2 What if it doesn't work?
1411
8e07c86e 1412If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
7f678428 1413If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
8d74ce1c 1414the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
ff52061e 1415then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
8e07c86e
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1416
1417=over 4
1418
1ec51d55 1419=item hints
8e07c86e
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1420
1421If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1422for further tips and information.
1423
1ec51d55 1424=item extensions
8e07c86e 1425
1ec51d55 1426If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
ce80d64e 1427during the building of extensions, run
c3edaffb 1428
3a6175e1 1429 make minitest
c3edaffb 1430
1431to test your version of miniperl.
1432
e57fd563 1433=item locale
1434
bfb7748a
AD
1435If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1436them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1437running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1438See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
08854360 1439whole L<perllocale/"LOCALE PROBLEMS"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
3e6e419a
JH
1440The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1441
1442 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1443 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1444 LC_ALL = "En_US",
1445 LANG = (unset)
1446 are supported and installed on your system.
1447 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1448
1449at Perl startup.
e57fd563 1450
06aa495b
DM
1451=item other environment variables
1452
1453Configure does not check for environment variables that can sometimes
1454have a major influence on how perl is built or tested. For example,
1455OBJECT_MODE on AIX determines the way the compiler and linker deal with
1456their objects, but this is a variable that only influences build-time
1457behaviour, and should not affect the perl scripts that are eventually
1458executed by the perl binary. Other variables, like PERL_UNICODE,
adbb55c0 1459PERL5LIB, and PERL5OPT will influence the behaviour of the test suite.
06aa495b
DM
1460So if you are getting strange test failures, you may want to try
1461retesting with the various PERL variables unset.
1462
7f678428 1463=item varargs
c3edaffb 1464
1465If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
bfb7748a
AD
1466correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1467gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
ce80d64e 1468in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by installing gcc
bfb7748a
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1469correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1470your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
7f678428 1471See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
c3edaffb 1472
bfb7748a 1473=item util.c
c3edaffb 1474
1475If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
bfb7748a 1476numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
c3edaffb 1477
19f4563d 1478 util.c: In function 'Perl_form':
bfb7748a
AD
1479 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1480 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
c3edaffb 1481
1482it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
7f678428 1483previous L<"varargs"> item.
c3edaffb 1484
1ec51d55 1485=item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
c3edaffb 1486
1487If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
aa689395 1488the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1489Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
c3edaffb 1490fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
668cbedd 1491of your local setup.
c3edaffb 1492
aa689395 1493=item nm extraction
c3edaffb 1494
1495If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1496try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1497with
1498
1499 sh Configure -Uusenm
1500
1501or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1ec51d55 1502If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
c3edaffb 1503config.sh.
1504
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1505=item umask not found
1506
1507If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1508is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1509Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1510this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1511try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1512
7f678428 1513=item vsprintf
c3edaffb 1514
1515If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1516problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1517version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1518(Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1519d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1520
1521 d_vprintf='define'
1522
1523If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
bfb7748a
AD
1524on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1525the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
c3edaffb 1526
3fe9a6f1 1527=item do_aspawn
1528
1529If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1530problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
bfb7748a
AD
1531fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1532on L<"nm extraction">.
3fe9a6f1 1533
84902520
TB
1534=item __inet_* errors
1535
1536If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1537referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1538installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1539these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1540in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
6d240721
JH
1541newer version of BIND (and remove the files the old one left behind).
1542If you can't, you can either link with the updated resolver library provided
1543with BIND 8.1 or rename /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and
1544test process to avoid the problem.
1545
73d6d1b0 1546=item .*_r() prototype NOT found
6d240721
JH
1547
1548On a related note, if you see a bunch of complaints like the above about
668cbedd 1549reentrant functions -- specifically networking-related ones -- being present
6d240721
JH
1550but without prototypes available, check to see if BIND 8.1 (or possibly
1551other BIND 8 versions) is (or has been) installed. They install
1552header files such as netdb.h into places such as /usr/local/include (or into
1553another directory as specified at build/install time), at least optionally.
f1300be0 1554Remove them or put them in someplace that isn't in the C preprocessor's
6d240721
JH
1555header file include search path (determined by -I options plus defaults,
1556normally /usr/include).
84902520 1557
d6baa268
JH
1558=item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1559
1560This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1561gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1562changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1563rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1564update your gcc installation.
1565
aa689395 1566=item Optimizer
c3edaffb 1567
9d67150a 1568If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
aa689395 1569optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
9d67150a 1570
1571 optimize='-O'
1572
bfb7748a 1573to
9d67150a 1574
1575 optimize=' '
1576
1577then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1578with B<make depend; make>.
1579
4bbc1586 1580=item Missing functions and Undefined symbols
9d67150a 1581
4bbc1586
AD
1582If the build of miniperl fails with a long list of missing functions or
1583undefined symbols, check the libs variable in the config.sh file. It
1584should look something like
1585
1586 libs='-lsocket -lnsl -ldl -lm -lc'
1587
1588The exact libraries will vary from system to system, but you typically
1589need to include at least the math library -lm. Normally, Configure
1590will suggest the correct defaults. If the libs variable is empty, you
1591need to start all over again. Run
1592
1593 make distclean
1594
1595and start from the very beginning. This time, unless you are sure of
1596what you are doing, accept the default list of libraries suggested by
1597Configure.
1598
1599If the libs variable looks correct, you might have the
1600L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1601
668cbedd 1602If you still have missing routines or undefined symbols, you probably
4bbc1586
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1603need to add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature
1604that Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete. If
1605you used a hint file, see if it has any relevant advice. You can also
1606look through through config.h for likely suspects.
8e07c86e 1607
1ec51d55 1608=item toke.c
8e07c86e 1609
1ec51d55
CS
1610Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1611toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1612allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
668cbedd 1613each file in cflags.SH. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1ec51d55 1614makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
8e07c86e
AD
1615specific rule.
1616
7f678428 1617=item Missing dbmclose
8e07c86e 1618
c3edaffb 1619SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1620that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
8e07c86e 1621
1bb125e2
MB
1622=item error: too few arguments to function 'dbmclose'
1623
1624Building ODBM_File on some (Open)SUSE distributions might run into this
1625error, as the header file is broken. There are two ways to deal with this
1626
1627 1. Disable the use of ODBM_FILE
1628
1629 Configure ... -Dnoextensions=ODBM_File
1630
1631 2. Fix the header file, somewhat like this:
1632
1633 --- a/usr/include/dbm.h 2010-03-24 08:54:59.000000000 +0100
1634 +++ b/usr/include/dbm.h 2010-03-24 08:55:15.000000000 +0100
1635 @@ -59,4 +59,4 @@ extern datum firstkey __P((void));
1636
1637 extern datum nextkey __P((datum key));
1638
1639 -extern int dbmclose __P((DBM *));
1640 +extern int dbmclose __P((void));
1641
f3d9a6ba 1642=item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
7f678428 1643
1644If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1645the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1646then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1647Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
aa689395 1648systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
74b7c41f
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1649Most users will see warnings for the ones they don't have. The
1650phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to reassure you that nothing
1651unusual is happening, and the build process is continuing.
7f678428 1652
1653On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1654message
1655
f3d9a6ba 1656 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
7f678428 1657
1658then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1659the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1660extension without the -lgdbm library.
1661
1662It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1663this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1664quite that tightly coordinated.
1665
aa689395 1666=item sh: ar: not found
1667
1668This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1669was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1670make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1ec51d55 1671is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
aa689395 1672directory.
1673
1674=item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1675
1676Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1677with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1678bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1679
6087ac44
JH
1680=item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1681
11906ba0 1682If you get this error message from the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem test, your System
6087ac44
JH
1683V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1684also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1685to include the System V semaphores.
1686
11906ba0 1687=item ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem........semget: No space left on device
220f3621
GS
1688
1689Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1690both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1691ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1692with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1693system.
1694
d6baa268
JH
1695=item GNU binutils
1696
1697If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1698tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1699with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1700may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1701under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1702to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1703vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1704Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1705
16dc217a
GS
1706=item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1707
1708The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1709make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1710archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1711C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1712archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1713incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1714official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1715that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1716archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1717
16dc217a
GS
1718=item invalid token: ##
1719
ce80d64e
AD
1720You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. To compile Perl, you
1721need to use a compiler that supports ANSI C. If there is a README
1722file for your system, it may have further details on your compiler
1723options.
16dc217a 1724
1ec51d55 1725=item Miscellaneous
8e07c86e 1726
7df75831 1727Some additional things that have been reported:
8e07c86e
AD
1728
1729Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1730
1731NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1732
668cbedd 1733UTS may need one or more of -K or -g, and #undef LSTAT.
8e07c86e 1734
11906ba0 1735FreeBSD can fail the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem.t test if SysV IPC has not been
5cda700b 1736configured in the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
ce80d64e 1737you will get a message telling you what to do.
6087ac44 1738
6c8d78fb
HS
1739Building Perl on a system that has also BIND (headers and libraries)
1740installed may run into troubles because BIND installs its own netdb.h
1741and socket.h, which may not agree with the operating system's ideas of
1742the same files. Similarly, including -lbind may conflict with libc's
1743view of the world. You may have to tweak -Dlocincpth and -Dloclibpth
1744to avoid the BIND.
1745
8e07c86e
AD
1746=back
1747
58a21a9b
JH
1748=head2 Cross-compilation
1749
e7a3c61b
JH
1750Perl can be cross-compiled. It is just not trivial, cross-compilation
1751rarely is. Perl is routinely cross-compiled for many platforms (as of
739a0b84 1752June 2005 at least PocketPC aka WinCE, Open Zaurus, Symbian, and
e7a3c61b
JH
1753the IBM OS/400). These platforms are known as the B<target> platforms,
1754while the systems where the compilation takes place are the B<host>
1755platforms.
1756
1757What makes the situation difficult is that first of all,
1758cross-compilation environments vary significantly in how they are set
1759up and used, and secondly because the primary way of configuring Perl
1760(using the rather large Unix-tool-dependent Configure script) is not
1761awfully well suited for cross-compilation. However, starting from
1762version 5.8.0, the Configure script also knows one way of supporting
668cbedd 1763cross-compilation support, so please keep reading.
e7a3c61b
JH
1764
1765See the following files for more information about compiling Perl for
1766the particular platforms:
1767
1768=over 4
1769
1770=item WinCE/PocketPC
1771
75472953 1772README.ce
e7a3c61b
JH
1773
1774=item Open Zaurus
1775
1776Cross/README
1777
e7a3c61b
JH
1778=item Symbian
1779
1780README.symbian
1781
1782=item OS/400
1783
1784README.os400
1785
1786=back
1787
1788Packaging and transferring either the core Perl modules or CPAN
1789modules to the target platform is also left up to the each
1790cross-compilation environment. Often the cross-compilation target
1791platforms are somewhat limited in diskspace: see the section
1792L<Minimizing the Perl installation> to learn more of the minimal set
1793of files required for a functional Perl installation.
1794
1795For some cross-compilation environments the Configure option
1796C<-Dinstallprefix=...> might be handy, see L<Changing the installation
1797directory>.
1798
1799About the cross-compilation support of Configure: what is known to
1800work is running Configure in a cross-compilation environment and
1801building the miniperl executable. What is known not to work is
1802building the perl executable because that would require building
1803extensions: Dynaloader statically and File::Glob dynamically, for
1804extensions one needs MakeMaker and MakeMaker is not yet
1805cross-compilation aware, and neither is the main Makefile.
1806
1807The cross-compilation setup of Configure has successfully been used in
1808at least two Linux cross-compilation environments. The setups were
1809both such that the host system was Intel Linux with a gcc built for
1810cross-compiling into ARM Linux, and there was a SSH connection to the
1811target system.
1812
1813To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch that
1814has to be used is C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
58a21a9b
JH
1815
1816 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1817
1818This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
b0f06652
VK
1819symbol C<usecrosscompile> available, and C<xconfig.h> will be used
1820for cross-compilation.
58a21a9b
JH
1821
1822During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1823into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1824cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1825target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1826transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1827the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1828methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1829F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1830
1831To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1832the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1833happens), supply Configure with
1834
1835 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1836
1837The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
93bc48fa
JH
1838must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1839You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
58a21a9b
JH
1840
1841 -Dtargetuser=luser
1842
1843but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
1844
93bc48fa
JH
1845Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
1846which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
1847This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
1848In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
1849environment:
58a21a9b
JH
1850
1851 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
1852 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc
1853 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1854 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1855 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
1856
1857If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
1858compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
1859C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
93bc48fa
JH
1860(The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
1861as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
1862will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
1863in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
58a21a9b
JH
1864
1865In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
1866choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
1867for example:
1868
1869 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
1870
1871Putting it all together:
1872
1873 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
93bc48fa
JH
1874 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1875 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
58a21a9b
JH
1876 -Dtargetuser=root \
1877 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
1878 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1879 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1880 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1881 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
1882 -D...
1883
e7a3c61b 1884or if you are happy with the defaults:
93bc48fa
JH
1885
1886 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1887 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1888 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1889 -D...
1890
e7a3c61b
JH
1891Another example where the cross-compiler has been installed under
1892F</usr/local/arm/2.95.5>:
1893
1894 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1895 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1896 -Dcc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/bin/arm-linux-gcc \
1897 -Dincpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
1898 -Dusrinc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
1899 -Dlibpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/lib
1900
8e07c86e
AD
1901=head1 make test
1902
d6baa268
JH
1903This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
1904'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
36bded94 1905wrong.
84902520 1906
84902520 1907Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
fb73857a 1908opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1909a few tty tests will be skipped.
c3edaffb 1910
c4f23d77
AD
1911=head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1912
1ec51d55 1913If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
36bded94 1914by hand to see if it makes any difference.
8e07c86e 1915
36bded94
AD
1916One way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1917individual subtests is to run the harness from the t directory:
aa689395 1918
785aa5e3 1919 cd t ; ./perl harness <list of tests>
aa689395 1920
fb73857a 1921(this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
785aa5e3
RGS
1922complicated constructs). If no list of tests is provided, harness
1923will run all tests.
10c7e831 1924
36bded94
AD
1925If individual tests fail, you can often run them by hand (from the main
1926perl directory), e.g.,
1927
1928 ./perl -MTestInit t/op/groups.t
1929
fb73857a 1930You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
10c7e831
JH
1931comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
1932shared library path if you get errors like:
1933
1934 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
1935
36bded94
AD
1936The file t/README in the t subdirectory contains more information about
1937running and modifying tests.
1938
10c7e831 1939See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
c3edaffb 1940
c4f23d77
AD
1941=over 4
1942
1943=item locale
1944
1ec51d55 1945Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
c07a80fd 1946may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
785aa5e3 1947'make test' exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1ec51d55
CS
1948one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1949LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
e57fd563 1950are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1951
1952If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
aa689395 1953
1954 setenv LC_ALL C
1955
1956(for C shell) or
1957
1958 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1959
1ec51d55
CS
1960for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1961make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
aa689395 1962is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
e57fd563 1963shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1ec51d55
CS
1964things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1965open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
e57fd563 1966external program.
eed2e782 1967
0740bb5b
AD
1968=item Timing problems
1969
c29923ff
JH
1970Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
1971sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
9341413f
JH
1972If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough,
1973these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again
1974with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive
1975and load-sensitive tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
3831a787
NC
1976F<ext/Time-HiRes/t/HiRes.t>, F<ext/threads-shared/t/waithires.t>,
1977F<ext/threads-shared/t/stress.t>, F<lib/Benchmark.t>,
9341413f 1978F<lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t>, and F<lib/Memoize/t/speed.t>.
0740bb5b 1979
f89caa8d
RGS
1980You might also experience some failures in F<t/op/stat.t> if you build
1981perl on an NFS filesystem, if the remote clock and the system clock are
1982different.
1983
c4f23d77
AD
1984=item Out of memory
1985
1986On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1987of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
7970f296
GS
1988For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
1989test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
c4f23d77
AD
1990
1991Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1992
04bd6448 1993 ./perl -MTestInit t/op/pat.t
c4f23d77
AD
1994
1995to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1996test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1997tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1998and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1999
a55bb48b
AD
2000=item libgcc_s.so.1: cannot open shared object file
2001
2002This message has been reported on gcc-3.2.3 and earlier installed with
2003a non-standard prefix. Setting the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable
2004(or equivalent) to include gcc's lib/ directory with the libgcc_s.so.1
2005shared library should fix the problem.
2006
4f76e5ba
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2007=item Failures from lib/File/Temp/t/security saying "system possibly insecure"
2008
2009First, such warnings are not necessarily serious or indicative of a
2010real security threat. That being said, they bear investigating.
2011
2012Note that each of the tests is run twice. The first time is in the
2013directory returned by File::Spec->tmpdir() (often /tmp on Unix
2014systems), and the second time in the directory from which the test was
2015run (usually the 't' directory, if the test was run as part of 'make
2016test').
2017
2018The tests may fail for the following reasons:
2019
2020(1) If the directory the tests are being run in is owned by somebody
2021other than the user running the tests, or by root (uid 0).
2022
2023This failure can happen if the Perl source code distribution is
668cbedd 2024unpacked in such a way that the user IDs in the distribution package
4f76e5ba
AD
2025are used as-is. Some tar programs do this.
2026
2027(2) If the directory the tests are being run in is writable by group or
2028by others, and there is no sticky bit set for the directory. (With
2029UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to a directory means the right to
2030add or remove files in that directory. The 'sticky bit' is a feature
2031used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if the bit is
2032set for a directory, no one but the owner (or root) can remove that
2033file even if the permissions would otherwise allow file removal by
2034others.)
2035
2036This failure may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the
2037permissions policy used on this particular system. This failure can
2038also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit (this
2039is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle File::Temp
2040should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or if the system
2041supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons it is not being
2042used. This is, for example, the case with HP-UX: as of HP-UX release
204311.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX doesn't use it
2044on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also, as with the permissions, some
2045local policy might dictate that the stickiness is not used.
781948c1 2046
b2b23189
JH
2047(3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
2048any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
2049directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
4f76e5ba
AD
2050(2). For Unix systems, this is usually not an issue if you are
2051building on a local disk. See the documentation for the File::Temp
2052module for more information about 'chown giveaway'.
781948c1
JH
2053
2054See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
4f76e5ba 2055about the various security aspects of temporary files.
781948c1 2056
c4f23d77
AD
2057=back
2058
5ee651a9
NC
2059The core distribution can now run its regression tests in parallel on
2060Unix-like platforms. Instead of running C<make test>, set C<TEST_JOBS> in
2061your environment to the number of tests to run in parallel, and run
2062C<make test_harness>. On a Bourne-like shell, this can be done as
2063
2064 TEST_JOBS=3 make test_harness # Run 3 tests in parallel
2065
2066An environment variable is used, rather than parallel make itself, because
2067L<TAP::Harness> needs to be able to schedule individual non-conflicting test
2068scripts itself, and there is no standard interface to C<make> utilities to
2069interact with their job schedulers.
2070
8e07c86e
AD
2071=head1 make install
2072
2073This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1ec51d55 2074Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
8e07c86e 2075to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
aa689395 2076pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
ce80d64e
AD
2077are not root, you must still have permission to install into the directories
2078in question and you should ignore any messages about chown not working.
2079
19f4563d 2080If "make install" just says "'install' is up to date" or something
ce80d64e
AD
2081similar, you may be on a case-insensitive filesystems such as Mac's HFS+,
2082and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion is brought to you
2083by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
8e07c86e 2084
dd64f1c3
AD
2085=head2 Installing perl under different names
2086
2087If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
2088when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
2089indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
2090
2091 make install PERLNAME=myperl
2092
beb13193 2093You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
be8498a1 2094"perl5.8.9") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
beb13193
RS
2095
2096 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
2097
5cda700b
AD
2098This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (e.g. to
2099avoid conflicts with an ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor).
be8498a1 2100Without this the versioned binary would be called "perl55.8.8".
beb13193 2101
ce80d64e
AD
2102=head2 Installing perl under a different directory
2103
2104You can install perl under a different destination directory by using
2105the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>, with a command like
2106
2107 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
2108
2109DESTDIR is automatically prepended to all the installation paths. See
7df75831 2110the example in L<"DESTDIR"> above.
ce80d64e 2111
dd64f1c3
AD
2112=head2 Installed files
2113
8e07c86e
AD
2114If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
2115anything, you can run
4633a7c4 2116
8e07c86e
AD
2117 ./perl installperl -n
2118 ./perl installman -n
2119
1ec51d55 2120make install will install the following:
8e07c86e 2121
d56c5707
JH
2122 binaries
2123
8e07c86e 2124 perl,
be8498a1 2125 perl5.n.n where 5.n.n is the current release number. This
8e07c86e 2126 will be a link to perl.
668cbedd 2127 a2p awk-to-perl translator.
d56c5707
JH
2128
2129 scripts
2130
979b4168
KW
2131 cppstdin This is used by the deprecated switch perl -P,
2132 if your cc -E can't read from stdin.
2133 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header
2134 files.
668cbedd 2135 config_data Manage Module::Build-like module configuration.
979b4168
KW
2136 corelist Shows versions of modules that come with
2137 different
668cbedd
KW
2138 versions of perl.
2139 cpan The CPAN shell.
668cbedd
KW
2140 enc2xs Encoding module generator.
2141 find2perl find-to-perl translator.
979b4168
KW
2142 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C
2143 headers.
8e07c86e 2144 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
73d6d1b0
RGS
2145 instmodsh A shell to examine installed modules.
2146 libnetcfg Configure libnet.
24b3df7f 2147 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
8e07c86e 2148 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
668cbedd 2149 perlivp Perl Installation Verification Procedure.
73d6d1b0 2150 piconv A Perl implementation of the encoding conversion
668cbedd
KW
2151 utility iconv.
2152 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules.
8e07c86e 2153 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
d56c5707
JH
2154 pod2man,
2155 pod2text,
d56c5707 2156 pod2usage
668cbedd
KW
2157 podchecker POD syntax checker.
2158 podselect Prints sections of POD documentation.
2159 prove A command-line tool for running tests.
2160 psed A Perl implementation of sed.
2161 ptar A Perl implementation of tar.
2162 ptardiff A diff for tar archives.
2163 ptargrep A grep for tar archives.
2164 s2p sed-to-perl translator.
2165 shasum A tool to print or check SHA checksums.
2166 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors.
2167 xsubpp Compiler to convert Perl XS code into C code.
979b4168 2168 zipdetails display the internal structure of zip files
8e07c86e 2169
d56c5707
JH
2170 library files
2171
2172 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
8e07c86e 2173 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
d56c5707
JH
2174
2175 documentation
2176
d6baa268
JH
2177 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2178 module man
2179 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
8e07c86e
AD
2180 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2181
33cceb07 2182installperl will also create the directories listed above
d6baa268 2183in L<"Installation Directories">.
4633a7c4 2184
d56c5707 2185Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
d6baa268 2186under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
56c6f531
JH
2187optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2188program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
8e07c86e 2189
33cceb07
RGS
2190=head2 Installing only version-specific parts
2191
d56c5707
JH
2192Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2193installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
33cceb07 2194perl alongside an already installed production version without
d56c5707
JH
2195disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2196To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2197
2198 Configure -Dversiononly
2199
2200or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2201you can just manually run
2202
2203 ./perl installperl -v
2204
2205and skip installman altogether.
33cceb07 2206
d56c5707
JH
2207See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2208approach.
2209
f4ce0e6d
RGS
2210=head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2211
2212Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2213system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2214header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2215by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2216library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2217
668cbedd 2218Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
f4ce0e6d
RGS
2219of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2220hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2221For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2222structures.
2223
2224=head1 installhtml --help
2225
2226Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2227format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2228documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2229
2230Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2231html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2232
2233The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2234perl documentation:
2235
2236 ./installhtml \
2237 --podroot=. \
2238 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2239 --recurse \
2240 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2241 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2242 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2243 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
f4ce0e6d
RGS
2244 --verbose
2245
2246See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2247many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2248see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2249resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2250(and would welcome patches for them).
2251
2252You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2253the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2254
2255=head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2256
2257Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2258available in TeX format. Type
2259
2260 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2261
2262=head1 Starting all over again
2263
668cbedd 2264If you wish to rebuild perl from the same build directory, you should
f4ce0e6d
RGS
2265clean it out with the command
2266
2267 make distclean
2268
2269or
2270
2271 make realclean
2272
2273The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
2274your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
2275
2276If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
2277change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
668cbedd 2278you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should not reuse
f4ce0e6d
RGS
2279your old config.sh.
2280
2281If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
2282installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
2283using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
2284settings"> above.
2285
ff52061e
RGS
2286=head1 Reporting Problems
2287
2288Wherever possible please use the perlbug tool supplied with this Perl
2289to report problems, as it automatically includes summary configuration
2290information about your perl, which may help us track down problems far
2291more quickly. But first you should read the advice in this file,
2292carefully re-read the error message and check the relevant manual pages
2293on your system, as these may help you find an immediate solution. If
2294you are not sure whether what you are seeing is a bug, you can send a
2295message describing the problem to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup to
2296get advice.
2297
2298The perlbug tool is installed along with perl, so after you have
2299completed C<make install> it should be possible to run it with plain
2300C<perlbug>. If the install fails, or you want to report problems with
2301C<make test> without installing perl, then you can use C<make nok> to
2302run perlbug to report the problem, or run it by hand from this source
2303directory with C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug>
2304
2305If the build fails too early to run perlbug uninstalled, then please
2306B<run> the C<./myconfig> shell script, and mail its output along with
2307an accurate description of your problem to perlbug@perl.org
2308
2309If Configure itself fails, and does not generate a config.sh file
2310(needed to run C<./myconfig>), then please mail perlbug@perl.org the
2311description of how Configure fails along with details of your system
668cbedd 2312-- for example the output from running C<uname -a>
ff52061e
RGS
2313
2314Please try to make your message brief but clear. Brief, clear bug
2315reports tend to get answered more quickly. Please don't worry if your
668cbedd 2316written English is not great -- what matters is how well you describe
ff52061e
RGS
2317the important technical details of the problem you have encountered,
2318not whether your grammar and spelling is flawless.
2319
2320Trim out unnecessary information. Do not include large files (such as
2321config.sh or a complete Configure or make log) unless absolutely
2322necessary. Do not include a complete transcript of your build
2323session. Just include the failing commands, the relevant error
2324messages, and whatever preceding commands are necessary to give the
668cbedd 2325appropriate context. Plain text should usually be sufficient -- fancy
ff52061e
RGS
2326attachments or encodings may actually reduce the number of people who
2327read your message. Your message will get relayed to over 400
2328subscribers around the world so please try to keep it brief but clear.
2329
5acb7768
NC
2330If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
2331inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send
2332it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription
2333unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who be able
2334to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help
2335co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all
2336platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for security
2337issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently distributed on CPAN.
2338
ff52061e
RGS
2339If you are unsure what makes a good bug report please read "How to
2340report Bugs Effectively" by Simon Tatham:
2341http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html
2342
7df75831 2343=head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5
4633a7c4 2344
93a90a48 2345Perl 5.19.2 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
cc65bb49 2346In other words, you will have to recompile your XS modules.
14eee2f1 2347
693762b4 2348In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
33cceb07
RGS
23495.X.Y) to another similar minor version (e.g. 5.X.(Y+1))) without
2350re-compiling all of your extensions. You can also safely leave the old
2351version around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
693762b4 2352
be8498a1
RGS
2353Usually, most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to be
2354used with a newer version of Perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
ce80d64e 2355(These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
693762b4 2356
33cceb07
RGS
2357Suppose you already have version 5.8.7 installed. The directories
2358searched by 5.8.7 are typically like:
d6baa268 2359
33cceb07
RGS
2360 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.7/$archname
2361 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.7
2362 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7/$archname
2363 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
d6baa268 2364
33cceb07
RGS
2365Now, suppose you install version 5.8.8. The directories
2366searched by version 5.8.8 will be:
d6baa268 2367
33cceb07
RGS
2368 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.8/$archname
2369 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.8
2370 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/$archname
2371 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8
d6baa268 2372
33cceb07
RGS
2373 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7/$archname
2374 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
c42e3e15 2375 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
bfb7748a 2376
c42e3e15 2377Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
d6baa268 2378of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
33cceb07
RGS
2379directories. This way, modules installed under 5.8.7 will continue
2380to be usable by 5.8.7 but will also accessible to 5.8.8. Further,
d6baa268 2381suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
33cceb07
RGS
2382present only in 5.8.8. That new module will get installed into
2383/usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8 and will be available to 5.8.8,
2384but will not interfere with the 5.8.7 version.
bfb7748a 2385
c42e3e15 2386The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
fe23a901 23875.6.0 and above will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
d6baa268 2388
33cceb07
RGS
2389Lastly, suppose you now install 5.10.0, which is not binary compatible
2390with 5.8.x. The directories searched by 5.10.0 (if you don't change the
fe23a901
RF
2391Configure defaults) will be:
2392
33cceb07
RGS
2393 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.10.0/$archname
2394 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.10.0
2395 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0/$archname
2396 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0
d6baa268 2397
33cceb07 2398 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8
d6baa268 2399
33cceb07 2400 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
fe23a901 2401
d6baa268 2402 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
bfb7748a 2403
cc65bb49
AD
2404Note that the earlier $archname entries are now gone, but pure perl
2405modules from earlier versions will still be found.
2406
0a08c020
GS
2407This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2408to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2409versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
693762b4
AD
2410
2411=head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
4633a7c4 2412
1ec51d55 2413Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
d6baa268 2414separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
0a08c020
GS
2415won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2416libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2417way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
d52d4e46 2418
93a90a48 2419 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.19.2
d52d4e46 2420
93a90a48 2421and adding /opt/perl5.19.2/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
d52d4e46 2422may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2423scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2424
693762b4 2425Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
33cceb07 2426(e.g. 5.10 for all 5.10.x versions), but change directory with
693762b4
AD
2427each major version.
2428
6877a1cf
AD
2429If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2430seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2431subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2432yet.
2433
2136887a 2434=head2 Upgrading from 5.19.0 or earlier
693762b4 2435
93a90a48 2436B<Perl 5.19.2 may not be binary compatible with Perl 5.19.0 or
4683a5d7 2437earlier Perl releases.> Perl modules having binary parts
e655887d 2438(meaning that a C compiler is used) will have to be recompiled to be
93a90a48
DG
2439used with 5.19.2. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with
24405.19.2, you may safely do so without disturbing the older
7df75831 2441installations. (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5">
e655887d 2442above.)
c42e3e15
GS
2443
2444See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2445incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
cc65bb49 2446perllocal.pod, not perllocale.pod, for installed module information.
693762b4 2447
8ebf57cf
JH
2448=head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2449
2450The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2451Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2452operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2453
c8214fdf 2454Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way:
5cda700b
AD
2455Encode, with its big conversion tables, consumes a lot of
2456space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything. The
2457Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network
c8214fdf
JH
2458programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all
2459depends on what do you need to do.
2460
8ebf57cf
JH
2461In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2462recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2463depends on what you need.
2464
2465Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2466
2467 use strict;
2468 use warnings;
2469 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2470 print("$f\n");
2471 }
2472
93a90a48 2473in Linux with perl-5.19.2 is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
8ebf57cf
JH
2474
2475 ./bin/perl
93a90a48
DG
2476 ./lib/perl5/5.19.2/strict.pm
2477 ./lib/perl5/5.19.2/warnings.pm
2478 ./lib/perl5/5.19.2/i686-linux/File/Glob.pm
2479 ./lib/perl5/5.19.2/feature.pm
2480 ./lib/perl5/5.19.2/XSLoader.pm
2481 ./lib/perl5/5.19.2/i686-linux/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
8ebf57cf 2482
00930d57
AD
2483Secondly, for perl-5.10.1, the Debian perl-base package contains 591 files,
2484(of which 510 are for lib/unicore) totaling about 3.5MB in its i386 version.
2485Omitting the lib/unicore/* files for brevity, the remaining files are:
8ebf57cf 2486
bfe08c74 2487 /usr/bin/perl
00930d57
AD
2488 /usr/bin/perl5.10.1
2489 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Config.pm
2490 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Config_git.pl
2491 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Config_heavy.pl
2492 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Cwd.pm
2493 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/DynaLoader.pm
2494 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Errno.pm
2495 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Fcntl.pm
2496 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/File/Glob.pm
2497 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Hash/Util.pm
2498 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO.pm
2499 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/File.pm
2500 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/Handle.pm
2501 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/Pipe.pm
2502 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/Seekable.pm
2503 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/Select.pm
2504 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/Socket.pm
2505 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2506 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2507 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/List/Util.pm
2508 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/POSIX.pm
2509 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Scalar/Util.pm
2510 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Socket.pm
2511 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/XSLoader.pm
2512 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/Cwd/Cwd.so
2513 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2514 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2515 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2516 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2517 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2518 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2519 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/Hash/Util/Util.so
2520 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/IO/IO.so
2521 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/List/Util/Util.so
2522 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2523 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2524 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2525 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2526 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/lib.pm
2527 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/re.pm
8ebf57cf 2528 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
bfe08c74 2529 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
00930d57 2530 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian
8ebf57cf 2531 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
bfe08c74 2532 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
00930d57 2533 /usr/share/lintian/overrides/perl-base
8ebf57cf 2534 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
00930d57
AD
2535 /usr/share/man/man1/perl5.10.1.1.gz
2536 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/AutoLoader.pm
2537 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Carp.pm
2538 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Carp/Heavy.pm
2539 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Exporter.pm
2540 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2541 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/File/Spec.pm
2542 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2543 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/FileHandle.pm
2544 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Getopt/Long.pm
2545 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/IPC/Open2.pm
2546 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/IPC/Open3.pm
2547 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/SelectSaver.pm
2548 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Symbol.pm
2549 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Text/ParseWords.pm
2550 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Text/Tabs.pm
2551 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Text/Wrap.pm
2552 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Tie/Hash.pm
2553 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/attributes.pm
2554 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/base.pm
2555 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/bytes.pm
2556 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/bytes_heavy.pl
2557 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/constant.pm
2558 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/fields.pm
2559 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/integer.pm
2560 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/locale.pm
2561 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/overload.pm
2562 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/strict.pm
2563 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/unicore/*
2564 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/utf8.pm
2565 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/utf8_heavy.pl
2566 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/vars.pm
2567 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/warnings.pm
2568 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/warnings/register.pm
8ebf57cf 2569
e7a3c61b
JH
2570A nice trick to find out the minimal set of Perl library files you will
2571need to run a Perl program is
2572
a0a8d9d3 2573 perl -e 'do "prog.pl"; END { print "$_\n" for sort keys %INC }'
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2574
2575(this will not find libraries required in runtime, unfortunately, but
2576it's a minimal set) and if you want to find out all the files you can
2577use something like the below
2578
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2579 strace perl -le 'do "x.pl"' 2>&1 \
2580 | perl -nle '/^open\(\"(.+?)"/ && print $1'
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2581
2582(The 'strace' is Linux-specific, other similar utilities include 'truss'
2583and 'ktrace'.)
2584
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2585=head2 C<-DNO_MATHOMS>
2586
2587If you configure perl with C<-Accflags=-DNO_MATHOMS>, the functions from
2588F<mathoms.c> will not be compiled in. Those functions are no longer used
2589by perl itself; for source compatibility reasons, though, they weren't
2590completely removed.
2591
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2592=head1 DOCUMENTATION
2593
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2594Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2595is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
8e07c86e 2596build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
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2597can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2598sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
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2599
2600=head1 AUTHOR
2601
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2602Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2603heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2604feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
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2606If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2607L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2608
2609=head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2610
2611This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
d6baa268 2612the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
f5b3b617 2613If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
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2614a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2615and the contact information to match your distribution.