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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
7Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
8
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9=head1 Reporting Problems
10
11Wherever possible please use the perlbug tool supplied with this Perl
12to report problems, as it automatically includes summary configuration
13information about your perl, which may help us track down problems far
14more quickly. But first you should read the advice in this file,
15carefully re-read the error message and check the relevant manual pages
16on your system, as these may help you find an immediate solution. If
17you are not sure whether what you are seeing is a bug, you can send a
18message describing the problem to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup to
19get advice.
20
21The perlbug tool is installed along with perl, so after you have
22completed C<make install> it should be possible to run it with plain
23C<perlbug>. If the install fails, or you want to report problems with
24C<make test> without installing perl, then you can use C<make nok> to
25run perlbug to report the problem, or run it by hand from this source
26directory with C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug>
27
28If the build fails too early to run perlbug uninstalled, then please
29B<run> the C<./myconfig> shell script, and mail its output along with
30an accurate description of your problem to perlbug@perl.org
31
ce80d64e 32If Configure itself fails, and does not generate a config.sh file
40dd8381 33(needed to run C<./myconfig>), then please mail perlbug@perl.org the
ce80d64e 34description of how Configure fails along with details of your system
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35- for example the output from running C<uname -a>
36
37Please try to make your message brief but clear. Brief, clear bug
38reports tend to get answered more quickly. Please don't worry if your
39written English is not great - what matters is how well you describe
40the important technical details of the problem you have encountered,
41not whether your grammar and spelling is flawless.
42
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43Trim out unnecessary information. Do not include large files (such as
44config.sh or a complete Configure or make log) unless absolutely
45necessary. Do not include a complete transcript of your build
46session. Just include the failing commands, the relevant error
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47messages, and whatever preceding commands are necessary to give the
48appropriate context. Plain text should usually be sufficient--fancy
49attachments or encodings may actually reduce the number of people who
50read your message. Your message will get relayed to over 400
51subscribers around the world so please try to keep it brief but clear.
52
53If you are unsure what makes a good bug report please read "How to
54report Bugs Effectively" by Simon Tatham:
55http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html
56
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57=head1 SYNOPSIS
58
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59First, make sure you have an up-to-date version of Perl. If you
60didn't get your Perl source from CPAN, check the latest version at
61http://www.cpan.org/src/. Perl uses a version scheme where even-numbered
62subreleases (like 5.6.x and 5.8.x) are stable maintenance releases and
63odd-numbered subreleases (like 5.7.x and 5.9.x) are unstable
64development releases. Development releases should not be used in
65production environments. Fixes and new features are first carefully
66tested in development releases and only if they prove themselves to be
67worthy will they be migrated to the maintenance releases.
3ce0d271 68
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69The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system with all
70the defaults are:
8e07c86e 71
dc45a647 72 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
491517e0 73 sh Configure -de
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74 make
75 make test
76 make install
36477c24 77
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78Each of these is explained in further detail below.
79
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80The above commands will install Perl to /usr/local (or some other
81platform-specific directory -- see the appropriate file in hints/.)
ce80d64e 82If that's not okay with you, can run Configure interactively and use
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83
84 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
85 sh Configure
86 make
87 make test
88 make install
89
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90 # You may also wish to add these:
91 (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
92 (installhtml --help)
93 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
adbebc0b 94
ce80d64e 95or you can use some of the Configure options described below.
7f678428 96
8d74ce1c 97If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
40dd8381 98L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
8d74ce1c 99
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100For information on what's new in this release, see the
101pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
102changes, see the Changes file.
c3edaffb 103
1ec51d55 104=head1 DESCRIPTION
edb1cbcb 105
c3edaffb 106This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
107structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
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108read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
109by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
110
111 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
112 C<code> literal code
113 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
ce80d64e 114 F<file> A filename
1ec51d55 115
c42e3e15 116Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
ce80d64e 117you should probably at least skim through this document before
1ec51d55 118proceeding.
c3edaffb 119
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120In addition to this file, check if there is a README file specific to
121your operating system, since it may provide additional or different
122instructions for building Perl. If there is a hint file for your
123system (in the hints/ directory) you should also read that hint file
124for even more information. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh or
125the svr5.sh hint file.)
c42e3e15 126
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127For additional information about porting Perl, see the section on
128L<"Porting information"> below, and look at the files in the Porting/
129directory.
d56c5707 130
ce80d64e 131=head1 PRELIMINARIES
c42e3e15 132
ce80d64e 133=head2 Changes and Incompatibilities
c42e3e15 134
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135Please see pod/perldelta.pod for a description of the changes and
136potential incompatibilities introduced with this release. A few of
137the most important issues are listed below, but you should refer
138to pod/perldelta.pod for more detailed information.
c42e3e15 139
ce80d64e 140=head3 WARNING: This version is not binary compatible with releases of
9a664500 141Perl prior to 5.9.0.
1b1c1ae2 142
cc65bb49 143If you have built extensions (i.e. modules that include C code)
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144using an earlier version of Perl, you will need to rebuild and reinstall
145those extensions.
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146
147Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
148without reinstallation. See the discussions below on
149L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> and
fe23a901 150L<"Upgrading from 5.005 or 5.6 to 5.8.0"> for more details.
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151
152The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
153
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154On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the changes
155in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
156pod/perldelta.pod for a description of what's changed. See your
157installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly incomplete)
158list of locally installed modules. Also see CPAN::autobundle for one
159way to make a "bundle" of your currently installed modules.
16dc217a 160
ce80d64e 161=head2 Space Requirements
eed2e782 162
9a664500 163The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 60 MB of disk space.
8756f06c 164After completing make, it takes up roughly 100 MB, though the actual
d6baa268 165total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
8756f06c 166directories need something on the order of 45 MB, though again that
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167value is system-dependent. A perl build with debug symbols and
168-DDEBUGGING will require something on the order of 10 MB extra.
8e07c86e 169
aa689395 170=head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
8e07c86e 171
edb1cbcb 172If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
173with the command
174
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175 make distclean
176
177or
178
edb1cbcb 179 make realclean
c3edaffb 180
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181The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
182your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
183
184The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
185files. If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
186change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
187you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
d6baa268 188not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it
8e07c86e 189
d6baa268 190 rm -f config.sh
4633a7c4 191
e57fd563 192If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
193version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
194the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
195includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
196name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
197Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
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198probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't. Similarly, if you
199used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version numbers, you will
200probably want to adjust them as well.
e57fd563 201
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202Also, be careful to check your architecture name. For example, some
203Linux distributions use i386, while others may use i486. If you build
204it yourself, Configure uses the output of the arch command, which
205might be i586 or i686 instead. If you pick up a precompiled binary, or
206compile extensions on different systems, they might not all agree on
207the architecture name.
e57fd563 208
209In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
210Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
8e07c86e 211
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212If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
213installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
214using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
215settings"> below. If you wish to start with a fresh distribution, you
216also need to remove any old Policy.sh files you may have with
217
218 rm -f Policy.sh
dc45a647 219
aa689395 220=head1 Run Configure
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221
222Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
223things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
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224you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
225almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
226since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
227the same function.
228
ce80d64e 229At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
d6baa268 230defaults from then on.
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231
232After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
1ec51d55 233*.SH files and offer to run make depend.
8e07c86e 234
ce80d64e 235=head2 Common Configure options
844fc9f4 236
ce80d64e 237Configure supports a number of useful options. Run
844fc9f4 238
ce80d64e 239 Configure -h
d6baa268 240
ce80d64e 241to get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
fb73857a 242Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
243
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244=over 4
245
246=item gcc
247
248To compile with gcc you should run
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249
250 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
251
252This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
253compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
254
d6baa268 255=item Installation prefix
4633a7c4 256
8e07c86e 257By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
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258/usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
259and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for
260further details.)
261
262You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
ce80d64e 263directory when Configure prompts you, or by using the Configure command
8d74ce1c 264line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
8e07c86e 265
25f94b33 266 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
4633a7c4 267
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268If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
269directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
270prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
271/opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
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272for more details. Do not include a trailing slash, (i.e. /opt/perl/)
273or you may experience odd test failures.
8e07c86e 274
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275NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
276as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
277attempt infinite recursion.
84902520 278
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279=item /usr/bin/perl
280
281It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
282find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
dd64f1c3 283/usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
d6baa268 284careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
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285vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing. If you insist
286on replacing your vendor's perl, useful information on how it was
287configured may be found with
288
289 perl -V:config_args
290
291(Check the output carefully, however, since this doesn't preserve
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292spaces in arguments to Configure. For that, you have to look carefully
293at config_arg1, config_arg2, etc.)
d6baa268 294
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295By default, Configure will not try to link /usr/bin/perl to the current
296version of perl. You can turn on that behavior by running
d6baa268 297
7d56c962 298 Configure -Dinstallusrbinperl
d6baa268 299
7d56c962 300or by answering 'yes' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
d6baa268 301
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302In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to put
303(symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
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304into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
305obvious and convenient place.
306
ce80d64e 307=item Building a development release.
04d420f9 308
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309For development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.9.x) if you want to
310use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel to Configure,
311because the default answer to the question "do you really want to
312Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel skips that
313sanity check.
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314
315=back
8e07c86e 316
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317If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
318output, you can run
319
320 sh Configure -des
321
ce80d64e 322For example for my Solaris/x86 system, I usually use
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323
324 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
325
ce80d64e 326=head2 Altering config.sh variables for C compiler switches etc.
46bb10fb 327
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328For most users, most of the Configure defaults are fine, or can easily
329be set on the Configure command line. However, if Configure doesn't
330have an option to do what you want, you can change Configure variables
331after the platform hints have been run by using Configure's -A switch.
332For example, here's how to add a couple of extra flags to C compiler
333invocations:
46bb10fb 334
2db3864f 335 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_EXTERNAL_GLOB -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC"
46bb10fb 336
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337To clarify, those ccflags values are not Configure options; if passed to
338Configure directly, they won't do anything useful (that will define a config.sh
339variable, but without taking any action based upon it). When passed to the
340compiler, those flags will activate #ifdefd code.
341
ce80d64e 342For more help on Configure switches, run
46bb10fb 343
ce80d64e 344 sh Configure -h
46bb10fb 345
ce80d64e 346=head2 Major Configure-time Build Options
46bb10fb 347
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348There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
349system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
350Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
351some of the main things you can change.
46bb10fb 352
ce80d64e 353=head3 Threads
cc65bb49 354
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355On some platforms, perl can be compiled with support for threads. To
356enable this, run
4633a7c4 357
ce80d64e 358 sh Configure -Dusethreads
4633a7c4 359
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360Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command
361line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
cc65bb49 362
ce80d64e 363The default is to compile without thread support.
cc65bb49 364
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365Perl has two different internal threads implementations. The current
366model (available internally since 5.6, and as a user-level module since
3675.8) is called interpreter-based implementation (ithreads), with one
368interpreter per thread, and explicit sharing of data. The 5.005
369version (5005threads) is considered obsolete, buggy, and unmaintained.
d6baa268 370
ce80d64e 371By default, Configure selects ithreads if -Dusethreads is specified.
d6baa268 372
ce80d64e 373However, if you insist, you can select the unsupported old 5005threads behavior
d6baa268 374
ce80d64e 375 sh Configure -Dusethreads -Duse5005threads
d6baa268 376
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377The 'threads' module is for use with the ithreads implementation. The
378'Thread' module offers an interface to either 5005threads or ithreads
379(whichever has been configured).
d6baa268 380
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381When using threads, perl uses a dynamically-sized buffer for some of
382the thread-safe library calls, such as those in the getpw*() family.
383This buffer starts small, but it will keep growing until the result
384fits. To get a fixed upper limit, you should compile Perl with
385PERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE defined to be the number of bytes you want. One
386way to do this is to run Configure with
387C<-Accflags=-DPERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE=65536>
d6baa268 388
ce80d64e 389=head3 Large file support.
b367e8b0 390
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391Since Perl 5.6.0, Perl has supported large files (files larger than
3922 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
393support is on by default.
d6baa268 394
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395This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files,
396seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad in that if you are interfacing Perl
397using some extension, the components you are connecting to must also
398be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
399parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
400will happen. One popular extension suffering from this ailment is the
401Apache extension mod_perl.
d6baa268 402
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403There's also one known limitation with the current large files
404implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
405section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer formats
406like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
d6baa268 407
ce80d64e 408=head3 64 bit support.
d6baa268 409
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410If your platform does not have run natively at 64 bits, but can
411simulate them with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>,
412you can build a perl that uses 64 bits.
d6baa268 413
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414There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
415using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
416-Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
417the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
d6baa268 418
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419The C<use64bitint> option does only as much as is required to get
42064-bit integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long
421longs") while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because
422your pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint>
423does not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it
424might, but it doesn't have to). The C<use64bitint> simply means that
425you will be able to have 64 bit-wide scalar values.
d6baa268 426
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427The C<use64bitall> option goes all the way by attempting to switch
428integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
429create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
430resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
431have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
432aware.
d6baa268 433
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434Natively 64-bit systems like Alpha and Cray need neither -Duse64bitint
435nor -Duse64bitall.
d6baa268 436
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437 NOTE: 64-bit support is still experimental on most platforms.
438 Existing support only covers the LP64 data model. In particular, the
439 LLP64 data model is not yet supported. 64-bit libraries and system
440 APIs on many platforms have not stabilized--your mileage may vary.
d6baa268 441
ce80d64e 442=head3 Long doubles
d6baa268 443
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444In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
445range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
446(that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
447this support (if it is available).
d6baa268 448
ce80d64e 449=head3 "more bits"
b367e8b0 450
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451You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
452and the long double support.
b367e8b0 453
ce80d64e 454=head3 Selecting File IO mechanisms
d6baa268 455
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456Executive summary: as of Perl 5.8, you should use the default "PerlIO"
457as the IO mechanism unless you have a good reason not to.
273cf8d1 458
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459In more detail: previous versions of perl used the standard IO
460mechanisms as defined in stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl
461introduced alternate IO mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but up
462until and including Perl 5.6, the stdio mechanism was still the default
463and the only supported mechanism.
d6baa268 464
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465Starting from Perl 5.8, the default mechanism is to use the PerlIO
466abstraction, because it allows better control of I/O mechanisms,
467instead of having to work with (often, work around) vendors' I/O
468implementations.
46bb10fb 469
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470This PerlIO abstraction can be (but again, unless you know what you
471are doing, should not be) disabled either on the Configure command
472line with
46bb10fb 473
6d5328bc 474 sh Configure -Uuseperlio
46bb10fb 475
6d5328bc 476or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
46bb10fb 477
ce80d64e 478=head3 Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Hashes
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479
480In Perls 5.8.0 and earlier it was easy to create degenerate hashes.
481Processing such hashes would consume large amounts of CPU time,
3debabd9 482enabling a "Denial of Service" attack against Perl. Such hashes may be
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483a problem for example for mod_perl sites, sites with Perl CGI scripts
484and web services, that process data originating from external sources.
485
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486In Perl 5.8.1 a security feature was introduced to make it harder to
487create such degenerate hashes. A visible side effect of this was that
488the keys(), values(), and each() functions may return the hash elements
489in different order between different runs of Perl even with the same
490data. It also had unintended binary incompatibility issues with
491certain modules compiled against Perl 5.8.0.
492
493In Perl 5.8.2 an improved scheme was introduced. Hashes will return
494elements in the same order as Perl 5.8.0 by default. On a hash by hash
495basis, if pathological data is detected during a hash key insertion,
496then that hash will switch to an alternative random hash seed. As
497adding keys can always dramatically change returned hash element order,
498existing programs will not be affected by this, unless they
499specifically test for pre-recorded hash return order for contrived
500data. (eg the list of keys generated by C<map {"\0"x$_} 0..15> trigger
501randomisation) In effect the new implementation means that 5.8.1 scheme
502is only being used on hashes which are under attack.
503
504One can still revert to the old guaranteed repeatable order (and be
505vulnerable to attack by wily crackers) by setting the environment
506variable PERL_HASH_SEED, see L<perlrun/PERL_HASH_SEED>. Another option
507is to add -DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT to the compilation flags (for
f80da78e 508example by using C<Configure -Accflags=-DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT>), in
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509which case one has to explicitly set the PERL_HASH_SEED environment
510variable to enable the security feature, or by adding -DNO_HASH_SEED to
511the compilation flags to completely disable the randomisation feature.
504f80c1 512
3debabd9 513B<Perl has never guaranteed any ordering of the hash keys>, and the
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514ordering has already changed several times during the lifetime of Perl
5155. Also, the ordering of hash keys has always been, and continues to
516be, affected by the insertion order. It is likely that Perl 5.10 and
517Perl 6 will randomise all hashes. Note that because of this
518randomisation for example the Data::Dumper results will be different
519between different runs of Perl since Data::Dumper by default dumps
520hashes "unordered". The use of the Data::Dumper C<Sortkeys> option is
521recommended.
504f80c1 522
ce80d64e 523=head3 SOCKS
1b9c9cf5
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524
525Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
526TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
527access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
528Version 5. You can find more about SOCKS from http://www.socks.nec.com/
529
ce80d64e 530=head3 Dynamic Loading
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531
532By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
533your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
534statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
535you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
536
ce80d64e 537=head3 Building a shared Perl library
c3edaffb 538
539Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
540linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
541extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
542such as -lm.
543
9d67150a 544On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
545replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
c3edaffb 546several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
547different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
9d67150a 548you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
c3edaffb 549can share the same library.
550
551The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
9d67150a 552penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
aa689395 553mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
c3edaffb 554and upgrades.
555
556In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
9d67150a 557test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
c3edaffb 558Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
559results.
560
561The default name for the shared library is typically something like
ce80d64e 562libperl.so.6.2 (for Perl 5.6.2), or libperl.so.602, or simply
9d67150a 563libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
c3edaffb 564based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
565version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
566isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
567
568For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
569for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
570
571You can elect to build a shared libperl by
572
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573 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
574
575To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
576library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
577NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
578for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
579the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
580be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
581library search settings. You can find the name of the environment
582variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
583
584 grep ldlibpthname config.sh
585
586However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
587shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
588something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
589./perl:
590
591 cd t; ./perl misc/failing_test.t
592or
593 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
594
595then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
596You can do this with
597
598 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
599
600for Bourne-style shells, or
601
602 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
603
604for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
605unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And
606again, it may be something other than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
607
608You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
609messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
610for example:
61118126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
612
613There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
614want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
615with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
616install a standard Perl 5.8.0 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
617try to build Perl 5.8.0 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
618the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
619ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
620libperl.so.8 rather with the installed libperl.so.8? The answer is
621that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
622in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
623equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
624with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux, you can only override at runtime via
625LD_PRELOAD, specifying the exact filename you wish to be used; and on
626Digital Unix, you can override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the
627_RLD_ROOT environment variable to point to the perl build directory.
628
629In other words, it is generally not a good idea to try to build a perl
630with a shared library if $archlib/CORE/$libperl already exists from a
631previous build.
632
633A good workaround is to specify a different directory for the
634architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING version of perl.
635You can do this by changing all the *archlib* variables in config.sh to
636point to your new architecture-dependent library.
637
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638=head3 Environment access
639
640Perl often needs to write to the program's environment, such as when C<%ENV>
641is assigned to. Many implementations of the C library function C<putenv()>
642leak memory, so where possible perl will manipulate the environment directly
643to avoid these leaks. The default is now to perform direct manipulation
644whenever perl is running as a stand alone interpreter, and to call the safe
645but potentially leaky C<putenv()> function when the perl interpreter is
646embedded in another application. You can force perl to always use C<putenv()>
779ec477 647by compiling with -DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV. You can force an embedded perl to
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648use direct manipulation by setting C<PL_use_safe_putenv = 0;> after the
649C<perl_construct()> call.
650
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651=head2 Installation Directories
652
653The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
654appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
655installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
656Do not include trailing slashes on directory names.
657
658I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
659everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
660process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use
661the defaults from then on. Alternatively, you can
662
663 grep '^install' config.sh
664
665after Configure has run to verify the installation paths.
666
667The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
668people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
669distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
670need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
671you can safely skip the next section.
672
673The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
674
675=over 4
676
677=item Directories for the perl distribution
678
679By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.9.0.
680$version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
6815.9.0 or 5.9.1, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
682determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
683variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
684
685 Configure variable Default value
686 $prefixexp /usr/local
687 $binexp $prefixexp/bin
688 $scriptdirexp $prefixexp/bin
689 $privlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version
690 $archlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
691 $man1direxp $prefixexp/man/man1
692 $man3direxp $prefixexp/man/man3
693 $html1direxp (none)
694 $html3direxp (none)
695
696$prefixexp is generated from $prefix, with ~ expansion done to convert home
697directories into absolute paths. Similarly for the other variables listed. As
698file system calls do not do this, you should always reference the ...exp
699variables, to support users who build perl in their home directory.
700
701Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
702/usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
703instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
704directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
705the common style is shown here.
706
707=item Directories for site-specific add-on files
708
709After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
710CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
711be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
712
713 Configure variable Default value
714 $siteprefixexp $prefixexp
715 $sitebinexp $siteprefixexp/bin
716 $sitescriptexp $siteprefixexp/bin
717 $sitelibexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
718 $sitearchexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
719 $siteman1direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man1
720 $siteman3direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man3
721 $sitehtml1direxp (none)
722 $sitehtml3direxp (none)
723
724By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
725modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
726
727=item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
728
729Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
730distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
731for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
732
733 Configure variable Default value
734 $vendorprefixexp (none)
735 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
736 $vendorbinexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
737 $vendorscriptexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
738 $vendorlibexp
739 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
740 $vendorarchexp
741 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
742 $vendorman1direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man1
743 $vendorman3direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man3
744 $vendorhtml1direxp (none)
745 $vendorhtml3direxp (none)
746
747These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
748a vendor might choose the following settings:
749
750 $prefix /usr
751 $siteprefix /usr/local
752 $vendorprefix /usr
753
754This would have the effect of setting the following:
755
756 $binexp /usr/bin
757 $scriptdirexp /usr/bin
758 $privlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version
759 $archlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
760 $man1direxp /usr/man/man1
761 $man3direxp /usr/man/man3
762
763 $sitebinexp /usr/local/bin
764 $sitescriptexp /usr/local/bin
765 $sitelibexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
766 $sitearchexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
767 $siteman1direxp /usr/local/man/man1
768 $siteman3direxp /usr/local/man/man3
769
770 $vendorbinexp /usr/bin
771 $vendorscriptexp /usr/bin
772 $vendorlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
773 $vendorarchexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
774 $vendorman1direxp /usr/man/man1
775 $vendorman3direxp /usr/man/man3
776
777Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
778/usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
779the /usr/local hierarchy.
780
781The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
782version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
783However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
784installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
785See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for more details
786on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
787
788Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
789example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
790are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
791site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
792network. One way to do that would be something like
793
794 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
795
796=item otherlibdirs
797
798As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
799variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
800directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
801Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
802version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
803
804For example, if you have a bundle of perl libraries from a previous
805installation, perhaps in a strange place:
806
807 Configure -Dotherlibdirs=/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1
808
809=item APPLLIB_EXP
810
811There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
812that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
813separated list of directories, like this
814
815 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
816
817The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
818ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
819modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
820touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
821version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
822present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
823directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
824run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
825
20ef40cf
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826=item USE_SITECUSTOMIZE
827
828Run-time customization of @INC can be enabled with:
829
36de116d 830 sh Configure -Dusesitecustomize
20ef40cf 831
36de116d 832Which will define USE_SITECUSTOMIZE and $Config{usesitecustomize}.
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833When enabled, make perl run F<$sitelibexp/sitecustomize.pl> before
834anything else. This script can then be set up to add additional
835entries to @INC.
836
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837=item Man Pages
838
839In versions 5.005_57 and earlier, the default was to store module man
840pages in a version-specific directory, such as
841/usr/local/lib/perl5/$version/man/man3. The default for 5.005_58 and
842after is /usr/local/man/man3 so that most users can find the man pages
843without resetting MANPATH.
844
845You can continue to use the old default from the command line with
846
847 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.9.0/man/man3
848
849Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
850
851 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
852
853Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
854Configure.
855
856=item HTML pages
857
858Currently, the standard perl installation does not do anything with
859HTML documentation, but that may change in the future. Further, some
860add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The html Configure
861variables listed above are provided if you wish to specify where such
862documents should be placed. The default is "none", but will likely
863eventually change to something useful based on user feedback.
864
865=back
866
867Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
868to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
869architectures.
870
871Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
872directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
873filesystem.
c3edaffb 874
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875Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
876development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
877discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below.
10c7e831 878
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879If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
880library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
881suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
2bf2710f 882
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883Thus, for example, if you Configure with
884-Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.9.0 are
2bf2710f 885
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886 Configure variable Default value
887 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0
888 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0/$archname
889 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0
890 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0/$archname
2bf2710f 891
ce80d64e 892=head2 Changing the installation directory
c3edaffb 893
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894Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
895associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
896will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
897sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
898However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
899packages, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
900wish to install perl into a different directory and use that
901management software to move perl to its final destination. This
902section describes how to do that.
c3edaffb 903
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904Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You
905could edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to
906/tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local, or you could simply use the
907following command line:
c3edaffb 908
ce80d64e 909 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
c3edaffb 910
ce80d64e 911(replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
2bf2710f 912
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913Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
914modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
915follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with
916that problem.
c3edaffb 917
ce80d64e 918=head2 Creating an installable tar archive
9d67150a 919
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920If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is convenient
921to compile it once and create an archive that can be installed on
922multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to create an
923archive that can be installed in /opt/perl. One way to do that is by
924using the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>. The DESTDIR is
925automatically prepended to all the installation paths. Thus you
926simply do:
830717a7 927
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928 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
929 make
930 make test
931 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
932 cd /tmp/perl5/opt/perl
933 tar cvf /tmp/perl5-archive.tar .
9d67150a 934
ce80d64e 935=head2 Site-wide Policy settings
55479bb6 936
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937After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
938answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact
939person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another
940system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file
941to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate
a0a8d9d3
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942hint file for your system. This will work even if Policy.sh was
943generated for another version of Perl, or on a system with a
da1b4322 944different architecture and/or operating system. However, in such cases,
a0a8d9d3
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945you should review the contents of the file before using it: for
946example, your new target may not keep its man pages in the same place
947as the system on which the file was generated.
55479bb6 948
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949Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
950answers, you should
c3edaffb 951
ce80d64e 952 rm -f Policy.sh
aa689395 953
ce80d64e 954to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
2ae324a7 955
ce80d64e 956Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
aa689395 957
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958If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
959to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
960platform-specific hints files.
aa689395 961
ce80d64e 962=head2 Disabling older versions of Perl
aa689395 963
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964Configure will search for binary compatible versions of previously
965installed perl binaries in the tree that is specified as target tree
966and these will be used by the perl being built.
967See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> for more details.
86058a2d 968
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969To disable this use of older perl modules, even completely valid pure perl
970modules, you can specify to not include the paths found:
b2a6d19e 971
ce80d64e 972 sh Configure -Dinc_version_list=none ...
d6baa268 973
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974When using the newer perl, you can add these paths again in the
975$PERL5LIB environment variable or with perl's -I runtime option.
86058a2d 976
ce80d64e 977=head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
86058a2d 978
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979Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
980where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
981read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
982architectures. You can do this (if your file system supports symbolic
983links) by
06c896bb 984
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985 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
986 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
987 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
06c896bb 988
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989This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
990pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
991unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
06c896bb 992
ce80d64e 993 make
06c896bb 994
ce80d64e 995as usual, and Perl will be built in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
aa689395 996
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997=head2 Building a debugging perl
998
999You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
3fe9a6f1 1000B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
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1001you probably want to have support for perl internal debugging code
1002(activated by adding -DDEBUGGING to ccflags), and/or support for the
1003system debugger by adding -g to optimize.
1004
1005 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING=<mode>
1006
1007For a more eye appealing call, -DEBUGGING is defined to be an alias
1008for -DDEBUGGING. For both, the -U calls are also supported, in order
1009to be able to overrule the hints or Policy.sh settings.
1010
1011=over 4
1012
1013=item -DEBUGGING=old
1014
1015Which is the default, and supports the old convention of
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1016
1017 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
1018
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1019This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
1020to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
1021executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
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1022cc -g2. Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for
1023your system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags
1024variable in config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's
1025internal state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by default
1026if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to reuse your
1027old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the optimize and
1028ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes as shown in
1029L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
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1030
1031You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
1032it's convenient to have both.
3bf462b8 1033
eaf812ae
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1034=over 4
1035
1036=item -DDEBUGGING
1037
1038=item -DEBUGGING
1039
1040=item -DEBUGGING=both
1041
1042Sets both -DDEBUGGING in the ccflags, and add -g to optimize.
1043
1044=item -DEBUGGING=-g
1045
1046Adds -g to optimize, but does not set -DDEBUGGING.
1047
1048=item -DEBUGGING=none
1049
1050Removes -g from optimize, and -DDEBUGGING from ccflags.
1051
1052=back
1053
3bf462b8 1054If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
a522f097 1055versions of perl under L<Building a shared Perl library>.
3bf462b8 1056
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1057=head2 Extensions
1058
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1059Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
1060in the ext/ subdirectory.
1061
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1062By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
1063to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
1064only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
8d74ce1c 1065Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
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1066is always built by default. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
1067set the Configure variable useposix=false from the Configure command line.
8d74ce1c 1068
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GS
1069If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
1070running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
1071extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
1072it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
1073has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
1074extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
1075convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
1076you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
1077dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
1078
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1079If you have dynamic loading, another way of specifying extra modules
1080is described in L<"Adding extra modules to the build"> below.
1081
c42e3e15 1082You can learn more about each of the supplied extensions by consulting the
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1083documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
1084ext/ subdirectory.
1085
1086Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
1087DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
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1088version. Configure will suggest this as the default.
1089
1090To disable certain extensions so that they are not built, use the
1091-Dnoextensions=... and -Donlyextensions=... options. They both accept
1092a space-separated list of extensions. The extensions listed in
1093C<noextensions> are removed from the list of extensions to build, while
1094the C<onlyextensions> is rather more severe and builds only the listed
1095extensions. The latter should be used with extreme caution since
1096certain extensions are used by many other extensions and modules:
1097examples of such modules include Fcntl and IO. The order of processing
1098these options is first C<only> (if present), then C<no> (if present).
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1099
1100Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
1101the extensions you want.
1102
1103Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley
1104DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect
1105this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with earlier
1106releases of version 2.
1107
1108If you re-use your old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
1109adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
1110for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
1111you.
1112
80c1f5de 1113Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern systems do)
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1114remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
1115executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
1116well build all the ones that will work on your system.
1117
1118=head2 Including locally-installed libraries
1119
1120Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
1121dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
1122Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
1123automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
1124are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
1125how to obtain the libraries.
1126
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1127If your database header (.h) files are not in a directory normally
1128searched by your C compiler, then you will need to include the
1129appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by Configure. If
ce80d64e 1130your database libraries are not in a directory normally
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1131searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to include
1132the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by Configure.
1133See the examples below.
8d74ce1c 1134
ce80d64e 1135=head3 Examples
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1136
1137=over 4
1138
1139=item gdbm in /usr/local
1140
1141Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
d6baa268 1142GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
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1143installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
1144/usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
1145necessary steps out automatically.
1146
1147Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1148your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
1149
1150When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
1151-L/usr/local/lib.
1152
1153If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
1154linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1155-L/usr/local/lib.
1156
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1157Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1158you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1159/opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
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1160
1161=item gdbm in /usr/you
1162
1163Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
1164but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
1165have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
1166still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
1167an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
1168Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
1169/usr/you/lib to the list.
1170
1171It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
1172line):
1173
d6baa268 1174 sh Configure -de \
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1175 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
1176 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
1177
1178locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1179Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1180
1181loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
1182Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
1183you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
1184/usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
1185
d6baa268 1186 sh Configure -de \
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1187 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
1188 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
1189
1190=back
1191
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1192=head2 Building DB, NDBM, and ODBM interfaces with Berkeley DB 3
1193
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1194A Perl interface for DB3 is part of Berkeley DB, but if you want to
1195compile the standard Perl DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you must follow
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1196following instructions.
1197
1198Berkeley DB3 from Sleepycat Software is by default installed without
ce80d64e 1199DB1 compatibility code (needed for the DB_File interface) and without
bb636fa4 1200links to compatibility files. So if you want to use packages written
ce80d64e 1201for the DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you need to configure DB3 with
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1202--enable-compat185 (and optionally with --enable-dump185) and create
1203additional references (suppose you are installing DB3 with
1204--prefix=/usr):
1205
1206 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdbm.so
1207 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libndbm.so
f1300be0 1208 echo '#define DB_DBM_HSEARCH 1' >dbm.h
bb636fa4 1209 echo '#include <db.h>' >>dbm.h
f1300be0 1210 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/dbm.h
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1211 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/ndbm.h
1212
1213Optionally, if you have compiled with --enable-compat185 (not needed
1214for ODBM/NDBM):
1215
1216 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb1.so
1217 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb.so
1218
1219ODBM emulation seems not to be perfect, but is quite usable,
1220using DB 3.1.17:
1221
1222 lib/odbm.............FAILED at test 9
1223 Failed 1/64 tests, 98.44% okay
1224
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1225=head2 Overriding an old config.sh
1226
1227If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
1228with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
1229
1230=head2 GNU-style configure
1231
1232If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
1233use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
1234
1235 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
1236
1237The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
1238options. Try
1239
1240 ./configure.gnu --help
1241
1242for a listing.
1243
1244(The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
1245that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
1246
1247See L<Cross-compilation> below for information on cross-compiling.
1248
1249=head2 Malloc Issues
1250
1251Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
1252so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
1253the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
1254version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
1255perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
1256than your system malloc.
1257
1258However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
1259experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
1260that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
1261(Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
1262
1263=over 4
1264
1265=item Using the system malloc
1266
1267To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
1268
1269 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
1270
1271or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
1272
1273=item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
1274
1275NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you just
1276run Configure to accept all the defaults on those platforms.
1277
1278Perl's malloc family of functions are normally called Perl_malloc(),
1279Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree().
1280These names do not clash with the system versions of these functions.
1281
1282If this flag is enabled, however, Perl's malloc family of functions
1283will have the same names as the system versions. This may be required
1284sometimes if you have libraries that like to free() data that may have
1285been allocated by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1286
1287Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1288from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1289does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1290versions.
1291
1292=item -DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS
1293
1294This flag enables debugging mstats, which is required to use the
1295Devel::Peek::mstat() function. You cannot enable this unless you are
1296using Perl's malloc, so a typical Configure command would be
1297
1298 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS -Dusemymalloc='y'
1299
1300to enable this option.
1301
1302=back
1303
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1304=head2 What if it doesn't work?
1305
8d74ce1c 1306If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
40dd8381 1307If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
8d74ce1c 1308
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1309=over 4
1310
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1311=item Running Configure Interactively
1312
1313If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1314Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1315guesses.
1316
1317All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
aa689395 1318have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1ec51d55 1319flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
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1320will use the defaults from then on.
1321
1322If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1323config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1324instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1325
aa689395 1326=item Hint files
8e07c86e 1327
a0a8d9d3
DD
1328Hint files tell Configure about a number of things:
1329
1330=over 4
1331
1332=item o
1333
1334The peculiarities or conventions of particular platforms -- non-standard
1335library locations and names, default installation locations for binaries,
1336and so on.
1337
1338=item o
1339
1340The deficiencies of the platform -- for example, library functions that,
1341although present, are too badly broken to be usable; or limits on
1342resources that are generously available on most platforms.
1343
1344=item o
1345
1346How best to optimize for the platform, both in terms of binary size and/or
1347speed, and for Perl feature support. Because of wide variations in the
1348implementation of shared libraries and of threading, for example, Configure
1349often needs hints in order to be able to use these features.
1350
1351=back
1352
1353The perl distribution includes many system-specific hints files
1354in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1355will offer to use that hint file. Unless you have a very good reason
1356not to, you should accept its offer.
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1357
1358Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
f5b3b617
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1359If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1360for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1361More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
a0a8d9d3
DD
1362file, which also explains hint files known as callback-units.
1363
1364Note that any hint file is read before any Policy file, meaning that
1365Policy overrides hints -- see L</Site-wide Policy settings>.
8e07c86e 1366
edb1cbcb 1367=item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1368
1369Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
13704.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
1371standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
1372will see a message:
1373
1374 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1375 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
1376 Keep the recommended value? [y]
1377
1378You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
1379relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
1380overriding it.
1381
1382If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
1383used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
1384to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
1385system.
1386
1387For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1388and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1389Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
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1390Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1391issue a message:
edb1cbcb 1392
1393 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1394 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1395 Keep the previous value? [y]
1396
1ec51d55 1397In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
c3edaffb 1398should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
edb1cbcb 1399the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1400
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1401=item Changing Compilers
1402
1403If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1ec51d55 1404probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
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1405rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
1406with the options you want to use.
1407
1ec51d55
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1408This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
1409gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
8e07c86e 1410
c3edaffb 1411=item Propagating your changes to config.sh
8e07c86e 1412
1ec51d55
CS
1413If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1414them to all the .SH files by running
1415
1416 sh Configure -S
1417
1418You will then have to rebuild by running
9d67150a 1419
1420 make depend
1421 make
8e07c86e 1422
48370efc
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1423=item config.over and config.arch
1424
1425You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride
1426Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1427before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1428however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1429This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1430
1431There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1432config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1433architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1434hints file that creates the config.arch.
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1435
1436=item config.h
1437
1ec51d55
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1438Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1439Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1440The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
8e07c86e 1441
1ec51d55
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1442If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1443though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
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1444lost.
1445
1446=item cflags
1447
1448If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1ec51d55
CS
1449line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1450optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1451toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1452can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1453lost the next time you run Configure.
8e07c86e 1454
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1455To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1456see the file hints/README.hints.
1457
1458To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1459$ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1ec51d55
CS
1460
1461 sh Configure -S
1462 make depend
8e07c86e 1463
aa689395 1464=item No sh
8e07c86e 1465
c42e3e15
GS
1466If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1467Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1468system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
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1469You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1470mechanism.
1471
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1472=item Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX and BIN_SH
1473
1474In Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX, Configure might abort with
1475
1476Build a threading Perl? [n]
1477Configure[2437]: Syntax error at line 1 : `config.sh' is not expected.
1478
1479This indicates that Configure is being run with a broken Korn shell
1480(even though you think you are using a Bourne shell by using
1481"sh Configure" or "./Configure"). The Korn shell bug has been reported
1482to Compaq as of February 1999 but in the meanwhile, the reason ksh is
1483being used is that you have the environment variable BIN_SH set to
1484'xpg4'. This causes /bin/sh to delegate its duties to /bin/posix/sh
1485(a ksh). Unset the environment variable and rerun Configure.
1486
1487=item HP-UX 11, pthreads, and libgdbm
1488
1489If you are running Configure with -Dusethreads in HP-UX 11, be warned
1490that POSIX threads and libgdbm (the GNU dbm library) compiled before
1491HP-UX 11 do not mix. This will cause a basic test run by Configure to
1492fail
1493
1494Pthread internal error: message: __libc_reinit() failed, file: ../pthreads/pthread.c, line: 1096
1495Return Pointer is 0xc082bf33
1496sh: 5345 Quit(coredump)
1497
1498and Configure will give up. The cure is to recompile and install
1499libgdbm under HP-UX 11.
1500
c3edaffb 1501=item Porting information
1502
e6f03d26 1503Specific information for the OS/2, Plan 9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1ec51d55
CS
1504corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1505including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
ce80d64e 1506subdirectory. Porting/Glossary should especially come in handy.
c3edaffb 1507
7f678428 1508Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
468f45d5 1509http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
7f678428 1510various other operating systems.
1511
ce80d64e 1512If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture, study carefully the
491517e0
JA
1513section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1514in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file Porting/patching.pod.
1515Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1516
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1517=back
1518
ce80d64e 1519=head2 Adding extra modules to the build
fadf0ef5
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1520
1521You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1522CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1523command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1524
1525 Configure -Dextras="Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI"
1526
1527or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
1528then answer "Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
1529The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
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1530This will only work if those modules are to be built as dynamic
1531extensions. If you wish to include those extra modules as static
1532extensions, see L<"Extensions"> above.
fadf0ef5
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1533
1534Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1535modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1536or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1537do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1538
1539Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1540dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
1541For example: you will need to have the zlib.h header and the libz
1542library installed for the Compress::Zlib, or the Foo database specific
1543headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1544process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1545
ce80d64e 1546=head2 suidperl
03739d21 1547
ce80d64e
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1548suidperl is an optional component, which is normally neither built
1549nor installed by default. From perlfaq1:
03739d21
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1550
1551 On some systems, setuid and setgid scripts (scripts written
1552 in the C shell, Bourne shell, or Perl, for example, with the
1553 set user or group ID permissions enabled) are insecure due to
1554 a race condition in the kernel. For those systems, Perl versions
1555 5 and 4 attempt to work around this vulnerability with an optional
1556 component, a special program named suidperl, also known as sperl.
1557 This program attempts to emulate the set-user-ID and set-group-ID
1558 features of the kernel.
1559
1560Because of the buggy history of suidperl, and the difficulty
1561of properly security auditing as large and complex piece of
1562software as Perl, we cannot recommend using suidperl and the feature
1563should be considered deprecated.
ce80d64e
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1564Instead, use a tool specifically designed to handle changes in
1565privileges, such as B<sudo>, http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/ .
03739d21 1566
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1567=head1 make depend
1568
bfb7748a
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1569This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1570The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1571the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
ce80d64e 1572makefile, not Makefile, since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
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1573(On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1574Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
8e07c86e
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1575
1576Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1577explicitly above.
1578
1579=head1 make
1580
1581This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1582
8d410bc4
YST
1583=head2 Expected errors
1584
1585These errors are normal, and can be ignored:
1586
1587 ...
1588 make: [extra.pods] Error 1 (ignored)
1589 ...
1590 make: [extras.make] Error 1 (ignored)
1591
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1592=head2 What if it doesn't work?
1593
8e07c86e 1594If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
7f678428 1595If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
8d74ce1c 1596the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
40dd8381 1597then see L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
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1598
1599=over 4
1600
1ec51d55 1601=item hints
8e07c86e
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1602
1603If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1604for further tips and information.
1605
1ec51d55 1606=item extensions
8e07c86e 1607
1ec51d55 1608If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
ce80d64e 1609during the building of extensions, run
c3edaffb 1610
3a6175e1 1611 make minitest
c3edaffb 1612
1613to test your version of miniperl.
1614
e57fd563 1615=item locale
1616
bfb7748a
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1617If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1618them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1619running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1620See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1621whole L<"Locale problems"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
3e6e419a
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1622The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1623
1624 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1625 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1626 LC_ALL = "En_US",
1627 LANG = (unset)
1628 are supported and installed on your system.
1629 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1630
1631at Perl startup.
e57fd563 1632
7f678428 1633=item varargs
c3edaffb 1634
1635If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
bfb7748a
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1636correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1637gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
ce80d64e 1638in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by installing gcc
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1639correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1640your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
7f678428 1641See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
c3edaffb 1642
bfb7748a 1643=item util.c
c3edaffb 1644
1645If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
bfb7748a 1646numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
c3edaffb 1647
bfb7748a
AD
1648 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1649 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1650 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
c3edaffb 1651
1652it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
7f678428 1653previous L<"varargs"> item.
c3edaffb 1654
1ec51d55 1655=item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
c3edaffb 1656
1657If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
aa689395 1658the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1659Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
c3edaffb 1660fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1661of your local set-up.
1662
aa689395 1663=item nm extraction
c3edaffb 1664
1665If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1666try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1667with
1668
1669 sh Configure -Uusenm
1670
1671or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1ec51d55 1672If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
c3edaffb 1673config.sh.
1674
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1675=item umask not found
1676
1677If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1678is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1679Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1680this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1681try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1682
7f678428 1683=item vsprintf
c3edaffb 1684
1685If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1686problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1687version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1688(Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1689d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1690
1691 d_vprintf='define'
1692
1693If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
bfb7748a
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1694on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1695the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
c3edaffb 1696
3fe9a6f1 1697=item do_aspawn
1698
1699If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1700problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
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1701fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1702on L<"nm extraction">.
3fe9a6f1 1703
84902520
TB
1704=item __inet_* errors
1705
1706If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1707referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1708installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1709these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1710in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
6d240721
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1711newer version of BIND (and remove the files the old one left behind).
1712If you can't, you can either link with the updated resolver library provided
1713with BIND 8.1 or rename /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and
1714test process to avoid the problem.
1715
1716=item *_r() prototype NOT found
1717
1718On a related note, if you see a bunch of complaints like the above about
1719reentrant functions - specifically networking-related ones - being present
1720but without prototypes available, check to see if BIND 8.1 (or possibly
1721other BIND 8 versions) is (or has been) installed. They install
1722header files such as netdb.h into places such as /usr/local/include (or into
1723another directory as specified at build/install time), at least optionally.
f1300be0 1724Remove them or put them in someplace that isn't in the C preprocessor's
6d240721
JH
1725header file include search path (determined by -I options plus defaults,
1726normally /usr/include).
84902520 1727
d6baa268
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1728=item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1729
1730This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1731gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1732changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1733rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1734update your gcc installation.
1735
aa689395 1736=item Optimizer
c3edaffb 1737
9d67150a 1738If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
aa689395 1739optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
9d67150a 1740
1741 optimize='-O'
1742
bfb7748a 1743to
9d67150a 1744
1745 optimize=' '
1746
1747then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1748with B<make depend; make>.
1749
4bbc1586 1750=item Missing functions and Undefined symbols
9d67150a 1751
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1752If the build of miniperl fails with a long list of missing functions or
1753undefined symbols, check the libs variable in the config.sh file. It
1754should look something like
1755
1756 libs='-lsocket -lnsl -ldl -lm -lc'
1757
1758The exact libraries will vary from system to system, but you typically
1759need to include at least the math library -lm. Normally, Configure
1760will suggest the correct defaults. If the libs variable is empty, you
1761need to start all over again. Run
1762
1763 make distclean
1764
1765and start from the very beginning. This time, unless you are sure of
1766what you are doing, accept the default list of libraries suggested by
1767Configure.
1768
1769If the libs variable looks correct, you might have the
1770L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1771
1772If you stil have missing routines or undefined symbols, you probably
1773need to add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature
1774that Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete. If
1775you used a hint file, see if it has any relevant advice. You can also
1776look through through config.h for likely suspects.
8e07c86e 1777
1ec51d55 1778=item toke.c
8e07c86e 1779
1ec51d55
CS
1780Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1781toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1782allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1783each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1784makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
8e07c86e
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1785specific rule.
1786
7f678428 1787=item Missing dbmclose
8e07c86e 1788
c3edaffb 1789SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1790that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
8e07c86e 1791
f3d9a6ba 1792=item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
7f678428 1793
1794If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1795the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1796then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1797Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
aa689395 1798systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
7f678428 1799For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1800unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
f3d9a6ba
CS
1801they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1802reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1803process is continuing.
7f678428 1804
1805On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1806message
1807
f3d9a6ba 1808 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
7f678428 1809
1810then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1811the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1812extension without the -lgdbm library.
1813
1814It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1815this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1816quite that tightly coordinated.
1817
aa689395 1818=item sh: ar: not found
1819
1820This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1821was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1822make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1ec51d55 1823is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
aa689395 1824directory.
1825
1826=item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1827
1828Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1829with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1830bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1831
6087ac44
JH
1832=item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1833
11906ba0 1834If you get this error message from the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem test, your System
6087ac44
JH
1835V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1836also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1837to include the System V semaphores.
1838
11906ba0 1839=item ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem........semget: No space left on device
220f3621
GS
1840
1841Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1842both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1843ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1844with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1845system.
1846
d6baa268
JH
1847=item GNU binutils
1848
1849If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1850tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1851with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1852may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1853under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1854to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1855vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1856Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1857
16dc217a
GS
1858=item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1859
1860The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1861make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1862archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1863C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1864archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1865incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1866official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1867that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1868archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1869
16dc217a
GS
1870=item invalid token: ##
1871
ce80d64e
AD
1872You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. To compile Perl, you
1873need to use a compiler that supports ANSI C. If there is a README
1874file for your system, it may have further details on your compiler
1875options.
16dc217a 1876
1ec51d55 1877=item Miscellaneous
8e07c86e
AD
1878
1879Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1880
1881Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1882
1883NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1884
9ede5bc8 1885UTS may need one or more of -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
8e07c86e 1886
11906ba0 1887FreeBSD can fail the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem.t test if SysV IPC has not been
5cda700b 1888configured in the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
ce80d64e 1889you will get a message telling you what to do.
6087ac44 1890
d6baa268
JH
1891HP-UX 11 Y2K patch "Y2K-1100 B.11.00.B0125 HP-UX Core OS Year 2000
1892Patch Bundle" has been reported to break the io/fs test #18 which
1893tests whether utime() can change timestamps. The Y2K patch seems to
1894break utime() so that over NFS the timestamps do not get changed
1895(on local filesystems utime() still works).
1896
6c8d78fb
HS
1897Building Perl on a system that has also BIND (headers and libraries)
1898installed may run into troubles because BIND installs its own netdb.h
1899and socket.h, which may not agree with the operating system's ideas of
1900the same files. Similarly, including -lbind may conflict with libc's
1901view of the world. You may have to tweak -Dlocincpth and -Dloclibpth
1902to avoid the BIND.
1903
8e07c86e
AD
1904=back
1905
58a21a9b
JH
1906=head2 Cross-compilation
1907
e7a3c61b
JH
1908Perl can be cross-compiled. It is just not trivial, cross-compilation
1909rarely is. Perl is routinely cross-compiled for many platforms (as of
1910June 2005 at least PocketPC aka WinCE, Open Zaurus, EPOC, Symbian, and
1911the IBM OS/400). These platforms are known as the B<target> platforms,
1912while the systems where the compilation takes place are the B<host>
1913platforms.
1914
1915What makes the situation difficult is that first of all,
1916cross-compilation environments vary significantly in how they are set
1917up and used, and secondly because the primary way of configuring Perl
1918(using the rather large Unix-tool-dependent Configure script) is not
1919awfully well suited for cross-compilation. However, starting from
1920version 5.8.0, the Configure script also knows one way of supporting
1921cross-compilation support, please keep reading.
1922
1923See the following files for more information about compiling Perl for
1924the particular platforms:
1925
1926=over 4
1927
1928=item WinCE/PocketPC
1929
75472953 1930README.ce
e7a3c61b
JH
1931
1932=item Open Zaurus
1933
1934Cross/README
1935
1936=item EPOC
1937
1938README.epoc
1939
1940=item Symbian
1941
1942README.symbian
1943
1944=item OS/400
1945
1946README.os400
1947
1948=back
1949
1950Packaging and transferring either the core Perl modules or CPAN
1951modules to the target platform is also left up to the each
1952cross-compilation environment. Often the cross-compilation target
1953platforms are somewhat limited in diskspace: see the section
1954L<Minimizing the Perl installation> to learn more of the minimal set
1955of files required for a functional Perl installation.
1956
1957For some cross-compilation environments the Configure option
1958C<-Dinstallprefix=...> might be handy, see L<Changing the installation
1959directory>.
1960
1961About the cross-compilation support of Configure: what is known to
1962work is running Configure in a cross-compilation environment and
1963building the miniperl executable. What is known not to work is
1964building the perl executable because that would require building
1965extensions: Dynaloader statically and File::Glob dynamically, for
1966extensions one needs MakeMaker and MakeMaker is not yet
1967cross-compilation aware, and neither is the main Makefile.
1968
1969The cross-compilation setup of Configure has successfully been used in
1970at least two Linux cross-compilation environments. The setups were
1971both such that the host system was Intel Linux with a gcc built for
1972cross-compiling into ARM Linux, and there was a SSH connection to the
1973target system.
1974
1975To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch that
1976has to be used is C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
58a21a9b
JH
1977
1978 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1979
1980This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
b0f06652
VK
1981symbol C<usecrosscompile> available, and C<xconfig.h> will be used
1982for cross-compilation.
58a21a9b
JH
1983
1984During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1985into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1986cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1987target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1988transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1989the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1990methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1991F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1992
1993To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1994the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1995happens), supply Configure with
1996
1997 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1998
1999The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
93bc48fa
JH
2000must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
2001You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
58a21a9b
JH
2002
2003 -Dtargetuser=luser
2004
2005but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
2006
93bc48fa
JH
2007Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
2008which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
2009This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
2010In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
2011environment:
58a21a9b
JH
2012
2013 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
2014 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc
2015 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
2016 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
2017 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
2018
2019If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
2020compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
2021C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
93bc48fa
JH
2022(The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
2023as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
2024will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
2025in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
58a21a9b
JH
2026
2027In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
2028choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
2029for example:
2030
2031 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
2032
2033Putting it all together:
2034
2035 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
93bc48fa
JH
2036 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
2037 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
58a21a9b
JH
2038 -Dtargetuser=root \
2039 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
2040 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
2041 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
2042 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
2043 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
2044 -D...
2045
e7a3c61b 2046or if you are happy with the defaults:
93bc48fa
JH
2047
2048 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
2049 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
2050 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
2051 -D...
2052
e7a3c61b
JH
2053Another example where the cross-compiler has been installed under
2054F</usr/local/arm/2.95.5>:
2055
2056 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
2057 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
2058 -Dcc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/bin/arm-linux-gcc \
2059 -Dincpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
2060 -Dusrinc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
2061 -Dlibpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/lib
2062
8e07c86e
AD
2063=head1 make test
2064
d6baa268
JH
2065This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
2066'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
2067wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
84902520 2068
84902520 2069Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
fb73857a 2070opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
2071a few tty tests will be skipped.
c3edaffb 2072
c4f23d77
AD
2073=head2 What if make test doesn't work?
2074
1ec51d55
CS
2075If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
2076by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
c3edaffb 2077bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
8e07c86e
AD
2078
2079 ./perl op/groups.t
2080
aa689395 2081Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1ec51d55 2082individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
aa689395 2083
2084 ./perl harness
2085
fb73857a 2086(this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
10c7e831
JH
2087complicated constructs). For extension and library tests you
2088need a little bit more: you need to setup your environment variable
2089PERL_CORE to a true value (like "1"), and you need to supply the
2090right Perl library path:
2091
2092 setenv PERL_CORE 1
2093 ./perl -I../lib ../ext/Socket/Socket.t
2094 ./perl -I../lib ../lib/less.t
aa689395 2095
5cda700b 2096(For csh-like shells on UNIX; adjust appropriately for other platforms.)
fb73857a 2097You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
10c7e831
JH
2098comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
2099shared library path if you get errors like:
2100
2101 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
2102
2103See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
c3edaffb 2104
c4f23d77
AD
2105=over 4
2106
2107=item locale
2108
1ec51d55 2109Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
c07a80fd 2110may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
3fe9a6f1 2111B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1ec51d55
CS
2112one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
2113LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
e57fd563 2114are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
2115
2116If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
aa689395 2117
2118 setenv LC_ALL C
2119
2120(for C shell) or
2121
2122 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
2123
1ec51d55
CS
2124for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
2125make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
aa689395 2126is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
e57fd563 2127shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1ec51d55
CS
2128things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
2129open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
e57fd563 2130external program.
eed2e782 2131
0740bb5b
AD
2132=item Timing problems
2133
c29923ff
JH
2134Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
2135sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
9341413f
JH
2136If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough,
2137these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again
2138with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive
2139and load-sensitive tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
2140F<ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t>, F<lib/Benchmark.t>,
2141F<lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t>, and F<lib/Memoize/t/speed.t>.
0740bb5b 2142
c4f23d77
AD
2143=item Out of memory
2144
2145On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
2146of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
7970f296
GS
2147For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
2148test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
c4f23d77
AD
2149
2150Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
2151
2152 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
2153
2154to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
2155test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
2156tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
2157and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
2158
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2159=item Failures from lib/File/Temp/t/security saying "system possibly insecure"
2160
2161First, such warnings are not necessarily serious or indicative of a
2162real security threat. That being said, they bear investigating.
2163
2164Note that each of the tests is run twice. The first time is in the
2165directory returned by File::Spec->tmpdir() (often /tmp on Unix
2166systems), and the second time in the directory from which the test was
2167run (usually the 't' directory, if the test was run as part of 'make
2168test').
2169
2170The tests may fail for the following reasons:
2171
2172(1) If the directory the tests are being run in is owned by somebody
2173other than the user running the tests, or by root (uid 0).
2174
2175This failure can happen if the Perl source code distribution is
2176unpacked in such a way that the user ids in the distribution package
2177are used as-is. Some tar programs do this.
2178
2179(2) If the directory the tests are being run in is writable by group or
2180by others, and there is no sticky bit set for the directory. (With
2181UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to a directory means the right to
2182add or remove files in that directory. The 'sticky bit' is a feature
2183used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if the bit is
2184set for a directory, no one but the owner (or root) can remove that
2185file even if the permissions would otherwise allow file removal by
2186others.)
2187
2188This failure may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the
2189permissions policy used on this particular system. This failure can
2190also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit (this
2191is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle File::Temp
2192should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or if the system
2193supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons it is not being
2194used. This is, for example, the case with HP-UX: as of HP-UX release
219511.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX doesn't use it
2196on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also, as with the permissions, some
2197local policy might dictate that the stickiness is not used.
781948c1 2198
b2b23189
JH
2199(3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
2200any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
2201directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
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2202(2). For Unix systems, this is usually not an issue if you are
2203building on a local disk. See the documentation for the File::Temp
2204module for more information about 'chown giveaway'.
781948c1
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2205
2206See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
4f76e5ba 2207about the various security aspects of temporary files.
781948c1 2208
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2209=back
2210
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2211=head1 make install
2212
2213This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1ec51d55 2214Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
8e07c86e 2215to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
aa689395 2216pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
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2217are not root, you must still have permission to install into the directories
2218in question and you should ignore any messages about chown not working.
2219
2220If "make install" just says "`install' is up to date" or something
2221similar, you may be on a case-insensitive filesystems such as Mac's HFS+,
2222and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion is brought to you
2223by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
8e07c86e 2224
dd64f1c3
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2225=head2 Installing perl under different names
2226
2227If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
2228when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
2229indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
2230
2231 make install PERLNAME=myperl
2232
beb13193
RS
2233You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
2234"perl5.005") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
2235
2236 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
2237
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2238This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (e.g. to
2239avoid conflicts with an ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor).
2240Without this the versioned binary would be called "perl55.005".
beb13193 2241
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2242=head2 Installing perl under a different directory
2243
2244You can install perl under a different destination directory by using
2245the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>, with a command like
2246
2247 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
2248
2249DESTDIR is automatically prepended to all the installation paths. See
2250the example in L<"Creating an installable tar archive"> above.
2251
2252
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2253=head2 Installed files
2254
8e07c86e
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2255If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
2256anything, you can run
4633a7c4 2257
8e07c86e
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2258 ./perl installperl -n
2259 ./perl installman -n
2260
1ec51d55 2261make install will install the following:
8e07c86e 2262
d56c5707
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2263 binaries
2264
8e07c86e
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2265 perl,
2266 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
2267 will be a link to perl.
2268 suidperl,
2269 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
2270 a2p awk-to-perl translator
d56c5707
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2271
2272 scripts
2273
8e07c86e
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2274 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
2275 read from stdin.
2276 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
2277 s2p sed-to-perl translator
2278 find2perl find-to-perl translator
aa689395 2279 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
8e07c86e 2280 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
24b3df7f 2281 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
8e07c86e 2282 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
aa689395 2283 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
8e07c86e 2284 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
aa689395 2285 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
d56c5707
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2286 pod2man,
2287 pod2text,
2288 pod2checker,
2289 pod2select,
2290 pod2usage
aa689395 2291 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
95667ae4 2292 dprofpp Perl code profile post-processor
8e07c86e 2293
d56c5707
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2294 library files
2295
2296 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
8e07c86e 2297 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
d56c5707
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2298
2299 documentation
2300
d6baa268
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2301 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2302 module man
2303 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
8e07c86e
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2304 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2305
d6baa268
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2306Installperl will also create the directories listed above
2307in L<"Installation Directories">.
4633a7c4 2308
d56c5707 2309Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
d6baa268 2310under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
56c6f531
JH
2311optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2312program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
8e07c86e 2313
d56c5707
JH
2314Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2315installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
2316perl alongside an already installed production version of perl without
2317disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2318To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2319
2320 Configure -Dversiononly
2321
2322or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2323you can just manually run
2324
2325 ./perl installperl -v
2326
2327and skip installman altogether.
2328See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2329approach.
2330
aa689395 2331=head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
4633a7c4 2332
9a664500 2333Perl 5.9 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
cc65bb49 2334In other words, you will have to recompile your XS modules.
14eee2f1 2335
693762b4 2336In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
9a664500 23375.8.0) to another similar version (e.g. 5.8.2) without re-compiling
693762b4
AD
2338all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
2339around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
2340For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
9a664500 2341with 5.8.2, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
693762b4 2342top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
9a664500 2343#!/usr/local/bin/perl5.8.2.
693762b4 2344
ce80d64e
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2345Usually, most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use
2346with a newer version of Perl Here is how it is supposed to work.
2347(These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
693762b4 2348
d6baa268
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2349Suppose you already have version 5.005_03 installed. The directories
2350searched by 5.005_03 are
2351
2352 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503/$archname
2353 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503
2354 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2355 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2356
0a08c020
GS
2357Beginning with 5.6.0 the version number in the site libraries are
2358fully versioned. Now, suppose you install version 5.6.0. The directories
2359searched by version 5.6.0 will be
d6baa268 2360
0a08c020
GS
2361 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/$archname
2362 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0
2363 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
2364 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
d6baa268
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2365
2366 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2367 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
c42e3e15 2368 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
bfb7748a 2369
c42e3e15 2370Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
d6baa268
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2371of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
2372directories. This way, modules installed under 5.005_03 will continue
0a08c020 2373to be usable by 5.005_03 but will also accessible to 5.6.0. Further,
d6baa268 2374suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
0a08c020
GS
2375present only in 5.6.0. That new module will get installed into
2376/usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0 and will be available to 5.6.0,
d6baa268 2377but will not interfere with the 5.005_03 version.
bfb7748a 2378
c42e3e15 2379The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
fe23a901 23805.6.0 and above will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
d6baa268 2381
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2382Lastly, suppose you now install 5.8.0, which is not binary compatible
2383with 5.6.0. The directories searched by 5.8.0 (if you don't change the
fe23a901
RF
2384Configure defaults) will be:
2385
2386 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0/$archname
2387 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0
2388 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/$archname
2389 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0
d6baa268 2390
0a08c020 2391 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
d6baa268 2392
d6baa268 2393 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
fe23a901 2394
d6baa268 2395 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
bfb7748a 2396
cc65bb49
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2397Note that the earlier $archname entries are now gone, but pure perl
2398modules from earlier versions will still be found.
2399
0a08c020 2400Assuming the users in your site are still actively using perl 5.6.0 and
fe23a901 24015.005 after you installed 5.8.0, you can continue to install add-on
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2402extensions using any of perl 5.8.0, 5.6.0, or 5.005. The installations
2403of these different versions remain distinct, but remember that the
2404newer versions of perl are automatically set up to search the
2405compatible site libraries of the older ones. This means that
2406installing a new XS extension with 5.005 will make it visible to both
24075.005 and 5.6.0, but not to 5.8.0. Installing a pure perl module with
24085.005 will make it visible to all three versions. Later, if you
2409install the same extension using, say, perl 5.8.0, it will override the
24105.005-installed version, but only for perl 5.8.0.
0a08c020
GS
2411
2412This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2413to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2414versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
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2415
2416=head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
4633a7c4 2417
1ec51d55 2418Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
d6baa268 2419separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
0a08c020
GS
2420won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2421libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2422way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
d52d4e46 2423
9a664500 2424 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.8.2
d52d4e46 2425
9a664500 2426and adding /opt/perl5.8.2/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
d52d4e46 2427may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2428scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2429
693762b4 2430Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
cc65bb49 2431(e.g. 5.8 for all 5.8.x versions), but change directory with
693762b4
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2432each major version.
2433
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2434If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2435seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2436subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2437yet.
2438
e655887d 2439=head2 Upgrading from 5.005 or 5.6 to 5.8.0
693762b4 2440
9a664500 2441B<Perl 5.9.0 is binary incompatible with Perl 5.8.x, Perl 5.6.x, 5.005,
e655887d
CB
2442and any earlier Perl release.> Perl modules having binary parts
2443(meaning that a C compiler is used) will have to be recompiled to be
9a664500
AMS
2444used with 5.9.0. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with
24455.9.0, you may safely do so without disturbing the older
e655887d
CB
2446installations. (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5">
2447above.)
c42e3e15
GS
2448
2449See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2450incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
cc65bb49 2451perllocal.pod, not perllocale.pod, for installed module information.
693762b4 2452
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2453=head1 Coexistence with perl4
2454
2455You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
2456
1ec51d55
CS
2457By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
2458they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
8e07c86e
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2459
2460In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
1ec51d55 2461perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
8e07c86e
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2462process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
2463However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
d6baa268 2464the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036 (or
4dc3e0af 2465whatever the appropriate pathname is). See L<perltrap> for
d6baa268 2466possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
8e07c86e 2467
aa689395 2468=head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2469
d6baa268
JH
2470Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2471system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
1ec51d55 2472header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
d6baa268
JH
2473by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2474library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
aa689395 2475
d6baa268
JH
2476Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2477of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2478hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2479For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2480structures.
aa689395 2481
fb73857a 2482=head1 installhtml --help
aa689395 2483
3e3baf6d
TB
2484Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2485format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
fb73857a 2486documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
aa689395 2487
d6baa268
JH
2488Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2489html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2490
fb73857a 2491The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
3e3baf6d 2492perl documentation:
aa689395 2493
3e3baf6d
TB
2494 ./installhtml \
2495 --podroot=. \
2496 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2497 --recurse \
2498 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2499 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2500 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2501 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2502 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
2503 --verbose
2504
2505See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2506many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2507see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2508resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2509(and would welcome patches for them).
aa689395 2510
fb73857a 2511You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2512the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2513
aa689395 2514=head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2515
2516Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2517available in TeX format. Type
2518
2519 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2520
8ebf57cf
JH
2521=head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2522
2523The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2524Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2525operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2526
c8214fdf 2527Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way:
5cda700b
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2528Encode, with its big conversion tables, consumes a lot of
2529space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything. The
2530Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network
c8214fdf
JH
2531programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all
2532depends on what do you need to do.
2533
8ebf57cf
JH
2534In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2535recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2536depends on what you need.
2537
2538Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2539
2540 use strict;
2541 use warnings;
2542 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2543 print("$f\n");
2544 }
2545
bfe08c74 2546in Linux is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
8ebf57cf
JH
2547
2548 ./bin/perl
bfe08c74
RGS
2549 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/strict.pm
2550 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/warnings.pm
2551 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/File/Glob.pm
2552 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/XSLoader.pm
2553 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
8ebf57cf
JH
2554
2555Secondly, Debian perl-base package contains the following files,
bfe08c74 2556size about 1.9MB in its i386 version:
8ebf57cf 2557
bfe08c74
RGS
2558 /usr/bin/perl
2559 /usr/bin/perl5.8.4
2560 /usr/lib/perl/5.8
2561 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B.pm
2562 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B/Deparse.pm
2563 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Config.pm
2564 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Cwd.pm
2565 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Data/Dumper.pm
2566 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/DynaLoader.pm
2567 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Errno.pm
2568 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Fcntl.pm
2569 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/File/Glob.pm
2570 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO.pm
2571 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/File.pm
2572 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Handle.pm
2573 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Pipe.pm
2574 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Seekable.pm
2575 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Select.pm
2576 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket.pm
2577 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/POSIX.pm
2578 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Socket.pm
2579 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/XSLoader.pm
2580 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.bs
2581 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.so
2582 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.bs
2583 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.so
2584 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a
2585 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2586 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2587 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2588 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2589 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/extralibs.ld
2590 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs
2591 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2592 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.bs
2593 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2594 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.bs
2595 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.so
2596 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.bs
2597 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2598 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2599 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2600 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.bs
2601 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2602 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/lib.pm
2603 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/re.pm
2604 /usr/share/doc/perl-base
8ebf57cf 2605 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
bfe08c74
RGS
2606 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2607 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian.gz
8ebf57cf 2608 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
bfe08c74 2609 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
8ebf57cf 2610 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
bfe08c74
RGS
2611 /usr/share/perl/5.8
2612 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/AutoLoader.pm
2613 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp.pm
2614 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp/Heavy.pm
2615 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter.pm
2616 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2617 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec.pm
2618 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2619 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/FileHandle.pm
2620 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Getopt/Long.pm
2621 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2622 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2623 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open2.pm
2624 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open3.pm
2625 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/List/Util.pm
2626 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Scalar/Util.pm
2627 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/SelectSaver.pm
2628 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Symbol.pm
2629 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/ParseWords.pm
2630 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Tabs.pm
2631 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Wrap.pm
2632 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/attributes.pm
2633 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/base.pm
2634 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes.pm
2635 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes_heavy.pl
2636 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/constant.pm
2637 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/fields.pm
2638 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/integer.pm
2639 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/locale.pm
2640 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/overload.pm
2641 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/strict.pm
2642 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8.pm
2643 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8_heavy.pl
2644 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/vars.pm
2645 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings.pm
2646 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings/register.pm
8ebf57cf 2647
e7a3c61b
JH
2648A nice trick to find out the minimal set of Perl library files you will
2649need to run a Perl program is
2650
a0a8d9d3 2651 perl -e 'do "prog.pl"; END { print "$_\n" for sort keys %INC }'
e7a3c61b
JH
2652
2653(this will not find libraries required in runtime, unfortunately, but
2654it's a minimal set) and if you want to find out all the files you can
2655use something like the below
2656
2657 strace perl -le 'do "x.pl"' 2>&1 | perl -nle '/^open\(\"(.+?)"/ && print $1'
2658
2659(The 'strace' is Linux-specific, other similar utilities include 'truss'
2660and 'ktrace'.)
2661
8e07c86e
AD
2662=head1 DOCUMENTATION
2663
bfb7748a
AD
2664Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2665is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
8e07c86e 2666build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
bfb7748a
AD
2667can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2668sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
8e07c86e 2669
1ec51d55 2670Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
bfb7748a
AD
2671along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and
2672running (either):
34a2a22e
RM
2673
2674 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
aa689395 2675 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
34a2a22e
RM
2676
2677This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
aa689395 2678(You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
2679set-up.)
34a2a22e 2680
bfb7748a
AD
2681Note that you must have performed the installation already before running
2682the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate
2683the documentation.
34a2a22e 2684
8e07c86e
AD
2685=head1 AUTHOR
2686
bfb7748a
AD
2687Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2688heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2689feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
fb73857a 2690
f5b3b617
AD
2691If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2692L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2693
2694=head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2695
2696This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
d6baa268 2697the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
f5b3b617 2698If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
d6baa268
JH
2699a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2700and the contact information to match your distribution.