perl 3.0 patch #8 patch 7 continued

[perl5.git] / README

			Perl Kit, Version 3.0

		    Copyright (c) 1989, Larry Wall

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option)
    any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
    Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Perl is a language that combines some of the features of C, sed, awk and shell.
See the manual page for more hype.

Perl will probably not run on machines with a small address space.

Please read all the directions below before you proceed any further, and
then follow them carefully.

After you have unpacked your kit, you should have all the files listed
in MANIFEST.

Installation

1)  Run Configure.  This will figure out various things about your system.
    Some things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will
    ask you about.  It will then proceed to make config.h, config.sh, and
    Makefile.

    You might possibly have to trim # comments from the front of Configure
    if your sh doesn't handle them, but all other # comments will be taken
    care of.

    (If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file config.H to
    config.h and edit the config.h to reflect your system's peculiarities.)

2)  Glance through config.h to make sure system dependencies are correct.
    Most of them should have been taken care of by running the Configure script.

    If you have any additional changes to make to the C definitions, they
    can be done in the Makefile, or in config.h.  Bear in mind that they will
    get undone next time you run Configure.

3)  make depend

    This will look for all the includes and modify Makefile accordingly.
    Configure will offer to do this for you.

4)  make

    This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.

    If you can't compile successfully, try adding a -DCRIPPLED_CC flag.
    (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it compiled right!)
    This simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that
    get indigestion easily.  If that has no effect, try turning off
    optimization.  If you have missing routines, you probably need to
    add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature that
    Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete.

    Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files without
    some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or allocate larger
    internal tables.  It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
    Makefile.SH, since a default rule only take effect in the
    absence of a specific rule.

    The 3b2 needs to turn off -O.
    AIX/RT may need a -a switch and -DCRIPPLED_CC.
    SGI machines may need -Ddouble="long float".
    Ultrix (2.3) may need to hand assemble teval.s with a -J switch.
    SCO Xenix may need -m25000 for yacc.
    Genix needs to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.

5)  make test

    This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made.
    If it doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went wrong.
    See the README in the t subdirectory.  Note that you can't run it
    in background if this disables opening of /dev/tty.  If "make test"
    bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run TEST by hand to see if
    it makes any difference.

6)  make install

    This will put perl into a public directory (such as /usr/local/bin).
    It will also try to put the man pages in a reasonable place.  It will not
    nroff the man page, however.  You may need to be root to do this.  If
    you are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
    ignore any messages about chown not working.

7)  Read the manual entry before running perl.

8)  IMPORTANT!  Help save the world!  Communicate any problems and suggested
    patches to me, lwall@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov (Larry Wall), so we can
    keep the world in sync.  If you have a problem, there's someone else
    out there who either has had or will have the same problem.

    If possible, send in patches such that the patch program will apply them.
    Context diffs are the best, then normal diffs.  Don't send ed scripts--
    I've probably changed my copy since the version you have.

    Watch for perl patches in comp.lang.perl.  Patches will generally be
    in a form usable by the patch program.  If you are just now bringing up
    perl and aren't sure how many patches there are, write to me and I'll
    send any you don't have.  Your current patch level is shown in patchlevel.h.


Just a personal note:  I want you to know that I create nice things like this
because it pleases the Author of my story.  If this bothers you, then your
notion of Authorship needs some revision.  But you can use perl anyway. :-)

							The author.