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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
7df75831 7Install - Build and Installation guide for perl 5.
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8
9=head1 SYNOPSIS
10
7df75831 11First, make sure you have an up-to-date version of Perl. If you
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12didn't get your Perl source from CPAN, check the latest version at
13http://www.cpan.org/src/. Perl uses a version scheme where even-numbered
08854360 14subreleases (like 5.8.x and 5.10.x) are stable maintenance releases and
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15odd-numbered subreleases (like 5.7.x and 5.9.x) are unstable
16development releases. Development releases should not be used in
17production environments. Fixes and new features are first carefully
18tested in development releases and only if they prove themselves to be
19worthy will they be migrated to the maintenance releases.
3ce0d271 20
7df75831 21The basic steps to build and install perl 5 on a Unix system with all
dd3196cd 22the defaults are to run, from a freshly unpacked source tree:
8e07c86e 23
491517e0 24 sh Configure -de
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25 make
26 make test
27 make install
36477c24 28
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29Each of these is explained in further detail below.
30
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31The above commands will install Perl to /usr/local (or some other
32platform-specific directory -- see the appropriate file in hints/.)
7df75831 33If that's not okay with you, you can run Configure interactively, by
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34just typing "sh Configure" (without the -de args). You can also specify
35any prefix location by adding "-Dprefix='/some/dir'" to Configure's args.
36To explicitly name the perl binary, use the command
37"make install PERLNAME=myperl".
491517e0 38
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39Building perl from source requires an ANSI compliant C-Compiler.
40A minimum of C89 is required. Some features available in C99 will
41be probed for and used when found. The perl build process does not
42rely on anything more than C89.
43
ff52061e 44These options, and many more, are explained in further detail below.
7f678428 45
8d74ce1c 46If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
ff52061e 47L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
8d74ce1c 48
7beaa944 49For information on what's new in this release, see the
855e1b21 50pod/perl5133delta.pod file. For more information about how to find more
9519d2ec 51specific detail about changes, see the Changes file.
c3edaffb 52
1ec51d55 53=head1 DESCRIPTION
edb1cbcb 54
c3edaffb 55This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
56structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
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57read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
58by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
59
60 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
61 C<code> literal code
62 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
ce80d64e 63 F<file> A filename
1ec51d55 64
c42e3e15 65Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
ce80d64e 66you should probably at least skim through this document before
1ec51d55 67proceeding.
c3edaffb 68
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69In addition to this file, check if there is a README file specific to
70your operating system, since it may provide additional or different
71instructions for building Perl. If there is a hint file for your
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72system (in the hints/ directory) you might also want to read it
73for even more information.
c42e3e15 74
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75For additional information about porting Perl, see the section on
76L<"Porting information"> below, and look at the files in the Porting/
77directory.
d56c5707 78
ce80d64e 79=head1 PRELIMINARIES
c42e3e15 80
ce80d64e 81=head2 Changes and Incompatibilities
c42e3e15 82
855e1b21 83Please see pod/perl5133delta.pod for a description of the changes and
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84potential incompatibilities introduced with this release. A few of
85the most important issues are listed below, but you should refer
855e1b21 86to pod/perl5133delta.pod for more detailed information.
c42e3e15 87
fdd3cf50 88B<WARNING:> This version is not binary compatible with prior releases of Perl.
cc65bb49 89If you have built extensions (i.e. modules that include C code)
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90using an earlier version of Perl, you will need to rebuild and reinstall
91those extensions.
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92
93Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
dd3196cd 94without reinstallation. See the discussion below on
7df75831 95L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> for more details.
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96
97The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
98
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99On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the changes
100in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
855e1b21 101pod/perl5133delta.pod for a description of what's changed. See your
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102installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly incomplete)
103list of locally installed modules. Also see CPAN::autobundle for one
104way to make a "bundle" of your currently installed modules.
16dc217a 105
aa689395 106=head1 Run Configure
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107
108Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
109things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
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110you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
111almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
112since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
113the same function.
114
ce80d64e 115At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
d6baa268 116defaults from then on.
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117
118After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
1ec51d55 119*.SH files and offer to run make depend.
8e07c86e 120
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121The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
122files.
123
ce80d64e 124=head2 Common Configure options
844fc9f4 125
ce80d64e 126Configure supports a number of useful options. Run
844fc9f4 127
ce80d64e 128 Configure -h
d6baa268 129
ce80d64e 130to get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
fb73857a 131Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
132
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133=over 4
134
08854360 135=item C compiler
d6baa268 136
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137To compile with gcc, if it's not the default compiler on your
138system, you should run
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139
140 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
141
08854360 142This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or any another alternative
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143compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
144
d6baa268 145=item Installation prefix
4633a7c4 146
8e07c86e 147By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
8d74ce1c 148/usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
7df75831 149and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below for
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150further details.)
151
152You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
ce80d64e 153directory when Configure prompts you, or by using the Configure command
8d74ce1c 154line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
8e07c86e 155
25f94b33 156 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
4633a7c4 157
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158If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
159directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
160prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
161/opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
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162for more details. Do not include a trailing slash, (i.e. /opt/perl/)
163or you may experience odd test failures.
8e07c86e 164
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165NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
166as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
167attempt infinite recursion.
84902520 168
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169=item /usr/bin/perl
170
171It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
172find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
dd64f1c3 173/usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
d6baa268 174careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
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175vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing. If you insist
176on replacing your vendor's perl, useful information on how it was
177configured may be found with
178
179 perl -V:config_args
180
181(Check the output carefully, however, since this doesn't preserve
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182spaces in arguments to Configure. For that, you have to look carefully
183at config_arg1, config_arg2, etc.)
d6baa268 184
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185By default, Configure will not try to link /usr/bin/perl to the current
186version of perl. You can turn on that behavior by running
d6baa268 187
7d56c962 188 Configure -Dinstallusrbinperl
d6baa268 189
7d56c962 190or by answering 'yes' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
d6baa268 191
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192In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to put
193(symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
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194into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
195obvious and convenient place.
196
71c4561b 197=item Building a development release
04d420f9 198
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199For development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.9.x) if you want to
200use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel to Configure,
201because the default answer to the question "do you really want to
202Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel skips that
203sanity check.
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204
205=back
8e07c86e 206
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207If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
208output, you can run
209
210 sh Configure -des
211
dd3196cd 212=head2 Altering Configure variables for C compiler switches etc.
46bb10fb 213
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214For most users, most of the Configure defaults are fine, or can easily
215be set on the Configure command line. However, if Configure doesn't
216have an option to do what you want, you can change Configure variables
217after the platform hints have been run by using Configure's -A switch.
218For example, here's how to add a couple of extra flags to C compiler
219invocations:
46bb10fb 220
08854360 221 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_EXTERNAL_GLOB -DNO_HASH_SEED"
46bb10fb 222
5247441a 223To clarify, those ccflags values are not Configure options; if passed to
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224Configure directly, they won't do anything useful (they will define a
225variable in config.sh, but without taking any action based upon it).
226But when passed to the compiler, those flags will activate #ifdefd code.
5247441a 227
ce80d64e 228For more help on Configure switches, run
46bb10fb 229
ce80d64e 230 sh Configure -h
46bb10fb 231
ce80d64e 232=head2 Major Configure-time Build Options
46bb10fb 233
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234There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
235system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
236Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
237some of the main things you can change.
46bb10fb 238
ce80d64e 239=head3 Threads
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241On some platforms, perl can be compiled with support for threads. To
242enable this, run
4633a7c4 243
ce80d64e 244 sh Configure -Dusethreads
4633a7c4 245
ce80d64e 246The default is to compile without thread support.
cc65bb49 247
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248Perl used to have two different internal threads implementations. The current
249model (available internally since 5.6, and as a user-level module since 5.8) is
250called interpreter-based implementation (ithreads), with one interpreter per
251thread, and explicit sharing of data. The (deprecated) 5.005 version
54c46bd5 252(5005threads) was removed for release 5.10.
d6baa268 253
ce80d64e 254The 'threads' module is for use with the ithreads implementation. The
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255'Thread' module emulates the old 5005threads interface on top of the current
256ithreads model.
d6baa268 257
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258When using threads, perl uses a dynamically-sized buffer for some of
259the thread-safe library calls, such as those in the getpw*() family.
260This buffer starts small, but it will keep growing until the result
261fits. To get a fixed upper limit, you should compile Perl with
262PERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE defined to be the number of bytes you want. One
263way to do this is to run Configure with
08854360 264C<-Accflags=-DPERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE=65536>.
d6baa268 265
08854360 266=head3 Large file support
b367e8b0 267
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268Since Perl 5.6.0, Perl has supported large files (files larger than
2692 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
270support is on by default.
d6baa268 271
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272This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files,
273seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad in that if you are interfacing Perl
274using some extension, the components you are connecting to must also
275be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
276parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
08854360 277will happen.
d6baa268 278
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279There's also one known limitation with the current large files
280implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
281section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer formats
282like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
d6baa268 283
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284If you want to compile perl without large file support, use
285
286 sh Configure -Uuselargefiles
287
08854360 288=head3 64 bit support
d6baa268 289
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290If your platform does not run natively at 64 bits, but can simulate
291them with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>,
ce80d64e 292you can build a perl that uses 64 bits.
d6baa268 293
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294There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
295using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
296-Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
297the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
d6baa268 298
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299The C<use64bitint> option does only as much as is required to get
30064-bit integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long
301longs") while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because
302your pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint>
303does not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it
304might, but it doesn't have to). The C<use64bitint> simply means that
305you will be able to have 64 bit-wide scalar values.
d6baa268 306
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307The C<use64bitall> option goes all the way by attempting to switch
308integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
309create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
310resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
311have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
312aware.
d6baa268 313
08854360 314Natively 64-bit systems need neither -Duse64bitint nor -Duse64bitall.
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315On these systems, it might be the default compilation mode, and there
316is currently no guarantee that passing no use64bitall option to the
317Configure process will build a 32bit perl. Implementing -Duse32bit*
1ed7425e 318options is planned for a future release of perl.
d6baa268 319
ce80d64e 320=head3 Long doubles
d6baa268 321
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322In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
323range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
324(that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
325this support (if it is available).
d6baa268 326
ce80d64e 327=head3 "more bits"
b367e8b0 328
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329You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
330and the long double support.
b367e8b0 331
ce80d64e 332=head3 Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Hashes
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333
334In Perls 5.8.0 and earlier it was easy to create degenerate hashes.
335Processing such hashes would consume large amounts of CPU time,
3debabd9 336enabling a "Denial of Service" attack against Perl. Such hashes may be
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337a problem for example for mod_perl sites, sites with Perl CGI scripts
338and web services, that process data originating from external sources.
339
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340In Perl 5.8.1 a security feature was introduced to make it harder to
341create such degenerate hashes. A visible side effect of this was that
342the keys(), values(), and each() functions may return the hash elements
343in different order between different runs of Perl even with the same
344data. It also had unintended binary incompatibility issues with
345certain modules compiled against Perl 5.8.0.
346
347In Perl 5.8.2 an improved scheme was introduced. Hashes will return
348elements in the same order as Perl 5.8.0 by default. On a hash by hash
349basis, if pathological data is detected during a hash key insertion,
350then that hash will switch to an alternative random hash seed. As
351adding keys can always dramatically change returned hash element order,
352existing programs will not be affected by this, unless they
353specifically test for pre-recorded hash return order for contrived
354data. (eg the list of keys generated by C<map {"\0"x$_} 0..15> trigger
355randomisation) In effect the new implementation means that 5.8.1 scheme
356is only being used on hashes which are under attack.
357
358One can still revert to the old guaranteed repeatable order (and be
359vulnerable to attack by wily crackers) by setting the environment
360variable PERL_HASH_SEED, see L<perlrun/PERL_HASH_SEED>. Another option
361is to add -DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT to the compilation flags (for
f80da78e 362example by using C<Configure -Accflags=-DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT>), in
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363which case one has to explicitly set the PERL_HASH_SEED environment
364variable to enable the security feature, or by adding -DNO_HASH_SEED to
365the compilation flags to completely disable the randomisation feature.
504f80c1 366
3debabd9 367B<Perl has never guaranteed any ordering of the hash keys>, and the
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368ordering has already changed several times during the lifetime of Perl
3695. Also, the ordering of hash keys has always been, and continues to
08854360 370be, affected by the insertion order. Note that because of this
86358043 371randomisation for example the Data::Dumper results will be different
08854360 372between different runs of Perl, since Data::Dumper by default dumps
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373hashes "unordered". The use of the Data::Dumper C<Sortkeys> option is
374recommended.
504f80c1 375
ce80d64e 376=head3 SOCKS
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377
378Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
379TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
380access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
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381Version 5. The corresponding Configure option is -Dusesocks.
382You can find more about SOCKS from wikipedia at
383L<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOCKS>.
1b9c9cf5 384
ce80d64e 385=head3 Dynamic Loading
d6baa268 386
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387By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading.
388If you want to force perl to be compiled completely
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389statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
390you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
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391With this option, you won't be able to use any new extension
392(XS) module without recompiling perl itself.
d6baa268 393
ce80d64e 394=head3 Building a shared Perl library
c3edaffb 395
396Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
397linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
8ba4bff0 398extensions, and various extra libraries, such as -lm.
c3edaffb 399
08854360 400On systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
9d67150a 401replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
c3edaffb 402several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
403different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
9d67150a 404you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
c3edaffb 405can share the same library.
406
407The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
9d67150a 408penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
aa689395 409mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
c3edaffb 410and upgrades.
411
412In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
9d67150a 413test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
c3edaffb 414Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
415results.
416
417The default name for the shared library is typically something like
08854360 418libperl.so.5.8.8 (for Perl 5.8.8), or libperl.so.588, or simply
9d67150a 419libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
c3edaffb 420based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
421version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
422isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
423
c3edaffb 424You can elect to build a shared libperl by
425
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426 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
427
428To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
429library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
430NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
431for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
432the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
433be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
434library search settings. You can find the name of the environment
435variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
436
437 grep ldlibpthname config.sh
438
439However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
440shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
441something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
442./perl:
443
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444 cd t; ./perl -MTestInit misc/failing_test.t
445
ce80d64e 446or
08854360 447
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448 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
449
450then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
451You can do this with
452
453 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
454
455for Bourne-style shells, or
456
457 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
458
459for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
460unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And
461again, it may be something other than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
462
463You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
464messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
465for example:
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466
467 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
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468
469There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
470want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
471with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
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472install a standard Perl 5.10.0 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
473try to build Perl 5.10.0 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
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474the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
475ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
476libperl.so.8 rather with the installed libperl.so.8? The answer is
477that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
478in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
479equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
480with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux, you can only override at runtime via
481LD_PRELOAD, specifying the exact filename you wish to be used; and on
482Digital Unix, you can override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the
483_RLD_ROOT environment variable to point to the perl build directory.
484
485In other words, it is generally not a good idea to try to build a perl
486with a shared library if $archlib/CORE/$libperl already exists from a
487previous build.
488
489A good workaround is to specify a different directory for the
490architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING version of perl.
491You can do this by changing all the *archlib* variables in config.sh to
492point to your new architecture-dependent library.
493
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494=head3 Environment access
495
496Perl often needs to write to the program's environment, such as when C<%ENV>
497is assigned to. Many implementations of the C library function C<putenv()>
498leak memory, so where possible perl will manipulate the environment directly
499to avoid these leaks. The default is now to perform direct manipulation
500whenever perl is running as a stand alone interpreter, and to call the safe
501but potentially leaky C<putenv()> function when the perl interpreter is
502embedded in another application. You can force perl to always use C<putenv()>
779ec477 503by compiling with -DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV. You can force an embedded perl to
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504use direct manipulation by setting C<PL_use_safe_putenv = 0;> after the
505C<perl_construct()> call.
506
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507=head2 Installation Directories
508
509The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
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510appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the installation
511questions are near the beginning of Configure. Do not include trailing
512slashes on directory names. At any point during the Configure process,
513you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use the defaults
514from then on. Alternatively, you can
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515
516 grep '^install' config.sh
517
518after Configure has run to verify the installation paths.
519
520The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
521people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
522distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
523need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
524you can safely skip the next section.
525
526The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
527
528=over 4
529
530=item Directories for the perl distribution
531
20a372dd 532By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.13.2.
ce80d64e 533$version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
20a372dd 5345.13.2 or 5.9.5, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
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535determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
536variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
537
538 Configure variable Default value
539 $prefixexp /usr/local
540 $binexp $prefixexp/bin
541 $scriptdirexp $prefixexp/bin
542 $privlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version
543 $archlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
544 $man1direxp $prefixexp/man/man1
545 $man3direxp $prefixexp/man/man3
546 $html1direxp (none)
547 $html3direxp (none)
548
549$prefixexp is generated from $prefix, with ~ expansion done to convert home
550directories into absolute paths. Similarly for the other variables listed. As
551file system calls do not do this, you should always reference the ...exp
552variables, to support users who build perl in their home directory.
553
554Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
555/usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
556instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
557directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
558the common style is shown here.
559
560=item Directories for site-specific add-on files
561
562After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
563CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
564be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
565
566 Configure variable Default value
567 $siteprefixexp $prefixexp
568 $sitebinexp $siteprefixexp/bin
569 $sitescriptexp $siteprefixexp/bin
570 $sitelibexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
571 $sitearchexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
572 $siteman1direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man1
573 $siteman3direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man3
574 $sitehtml1direxp (none)
575 $sitehtml3direxp (none)
576
577By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
578modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
579
580=item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
581
582Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
583distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
584for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
585
586 Configure variable Default value
587 $vendorprefixexp (none)
588 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
589 $vendorbinexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
590 $vendorscriptexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
591 $vendorlibexp
592 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
593 $vendorarchexp
594 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
595 $vendorman1direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man1
596 $vendorman3direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man3
597 $vendorhtml1direxp (none)
598 $vendorhtml3direxp (none)
599
600These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
601a vendor might choose the following settings:
602
603 $prefix /usr
604 $siteprefix /usr/local
605 $vendorprefix /usr
606
607This would have the effect of setting the following:
608
609 $binexp /usr/bin
610 $scriptdirexp /usr/bin
611 $privlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version
612 $archlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
613 $man1direxp /usr/man/man1
614 $man3direxp /usr/man/man3
615
616 $sitebinexp /usr/local/bin
617 $sitescriptexp /usr/local/bin
618 $sitelibexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
619 $sitearchexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
620 $siteman1direxp /usr/local/man/man1
621 $siteman3direxp /usr/local/man/man3
622
623 $vendorbinexp /usr/bin
624 $vendorscriptexp /usr/bin
625 $vendorlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
626 $vendorarchexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
627 $vendorman1direxp /usr/man/man1
628 $vendorman3direxp /usr/man/man3
629
630Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
631/usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
632the /usr/local hierarchy.
633
634The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
635version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
636However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
637installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
7df75831 638See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below for more details
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639on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
640
641Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
642example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
643are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
644site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
645network. One way to do that would be something like
646
647 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
648
649=item otherlibdirs
650
651As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
652variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
653directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
654Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
655version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
656
657For example, if you have a bundle of perl libraries from a previous
658installation, perhaps in a strange place:
659
660 Configure -Dotherlibdirs=/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1
661
662=item APPLLIB_EXP
663
664There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
665that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
666separated list of directories, like this
667
668 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
669
670The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
671ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
672modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
673touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
674version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
675present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
676directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
677run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
678
785aa5e3 679=item usesitecustomize
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680
681Run-time customization of @INC can be enabled with:
682
36de116d 683 sh Configure -Dusesitecustomize
20ef40cf 684
785aa5e3
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685which will define USE_SITECUSTOMIZE and $Config{usesitecustomize}.
686When enabled, this makes perl run F<$sitelibexp/sitecustomize.pl> before
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687anything else. This script can then be set up to add additional
688entries to @INC.
689
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690=item Man Pages
691
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692By default, man pages will be installed in $man1dir and $man3dir, which
693are normally /usr/local/man/man1 and /usr/local/man/man3. If you
694want to use a .3pm suffix for perl man pages, you can do that with
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695
696 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
697
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698=item HTML pages
699
700Currently, the standard perl installation does not do anything with
701HTML documentation, but that may change in the future. Further, some
702add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The html Configure
703variables listed above are provided if you wish to specify where such
704documents should be placed. The default is "none", but will likely
705eventually change to something useful based on user feedback.
706
707=back
708
709Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
710to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
711architectures.
712
713Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
714directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
715filesystem.
c3edaffb 716
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717Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
718development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
7df75831 719discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below.
10c7e831 720
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721If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
722library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
723suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
2bf2710f 724
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725Thus, for example, if you Configure with
726-Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.9.0 are
2bf2710f 727
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728 Configure variable Default value
729 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0
730 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0/$archname
731 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0
732 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0/$archname
2bf2710f 733
ce80d64e 734=head2 Changing the installation directory
c3edaffb 735
ce80d64e 736Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
7df75831 737associated files) should be installed, and the directory in which it
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738will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
739sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
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740However, sites that use package management software such as rpm or
741dpkg, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
742wish to install perl into a different directory before moving perl
743to its final destination. There are two ways to do that:
744
745=over 4
746
747=item installprefix
c3edaffb 748
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749To install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory, use the following
750command line:
c3edaffb 751
7df75831 752 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
c3edaffb 753
ce80d64e 754(replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
2bf2710f 755
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756Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
757modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
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758follow this example. That's why it's usually better to use DESTDIR,
759as shown in the next section.
c3edaffb 760
7df75831 761=item DESTDIR
9d67150a 762
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763If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is convenient
764to compile it once and create an archive that can be installed on
765multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to create an
766archive that can be installed in /opt/perl. One way to do that is by
767using the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>. The DESTDIR is
768automatically prepended to all the installation paths. Thus you
769simply do:
830717a7 770
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771 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
772 make
773 make test
774 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
775 cd /tmp/perl5/opt/perl
776 tar cvf /tmp/perl5-archive.tar .
9d67150a 777
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778=back
779
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780=head2 Relocatable @INC
781
782To create a relocatable perl tree, use the following command line:
783
784 sh Configure -Duserelocatableinc
785
786Then the paths in @INC (and everything else in %Config) can be
787optionally located via the path of the perl executable.
788
789That means that, if the string ".../" is found at the start of any
790path, it's substituted with the directory of $^X. So, the relocation
791can be configured on a per-directory basis, although the default with
792"-Duserelocatableinc" is that everything is relocated. The initial
793install is done to the original configured prefix.
794
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795This option is not compatible with the building of a shared libperl
796("-Duseshrplib"), because in that case perl is linked with an hard-coded
797rpath that points at the libperl.so, that cannot be relocated.
798
ce80d64e 799=head2 Site-wide Policy settings
55479bb6 800
ce80d64e 801After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
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802answers (such as installation directories) in the Policy.sh file.
803If you want to build perl on another system using the same policy
804defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file to the new system's perl build
805directory, and Configure will use it. This will work even if Policy.sh was
a0a8d9d3 806generated for another version of Perl, or on a system with a
da1b4322 807different architecture and/or operating system. However, in such cases,
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808you should review the contents of the file before using it: for
809example, your new target may not keep its man pages in the same place
810as the system on which the file was generated.
55479bb6 811
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812Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
813answers, you should
c3edaffb 814
ce80d64e 815 rm -f Policy.sh
aa689395 816
ce80d64e 817to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
2ae324a7 818
ce80d64e 819Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
aa689395 820
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821If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
822to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
823platform-specific hints files.
aa689395 824
ce80d64e 825=head2 Disabling older versions of Perl
aa689395 826
ce80d64e 827Configure will search for binary compatible versions of previously
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828installed perl binaries in the tree that is specified as target tree,
829and these will be used as locations to search for modules by the perl
830being built. The list of perl versions found will be put in the Configure
831variable inc_version_list.
86058a2d 832
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833To disable this use of older perl modules, even completely valid pure perl
834modules, you can specify to not include the paths found:
b2a6d19e 835
ce80d64e 836 sh Configure -Dinc_version_list=none ...
d6baa268 837
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838When using the newer perl, you can add these paths again in the
839$PERL5LIB environment variable or with perl's -I runtime option.
86058a2d 840
ce80d64e 841=head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
86058a2d 842
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843Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
844where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
845read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
846architectures. You can do this (if your file system supports symbolic
847links) by
06c896bb 848
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849 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
850 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
851 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
06c896bb 852
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853This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
854pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
855unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
06c896bb 856
ce80d64e 857 make
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858 make test
859 make install
06c896bb 860
ce80d64e 861as usual, and Perl will be built in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
aa689395 862
3bf462b8
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863=head2 Building a debugging perl
864
865You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
3fe9a6f1 866B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
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867you probably want to have support for perl internal debugging code
868(activated by adding -DDEBUGGING to ccflags), and/or support for the
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869system debugger by adding -g to the optimisation flags. For that,
870use the parameter:
eaf812ae 871
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872 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING
873
874or
875
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876 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING=<mode>
877
878For a more eye appealing call, -DEBUGGING is defined to be an alias
879for -DDEBUGGING. For both, the -U calls are also supported, in order
880to be able to overrule the hints or Policy.sh settings.
881
7df75831 882Here are the DEBUGGING modes:
3bf462b8 883
7df75831 884=over 4
3bf462b8 885
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886=item -DDEBUGGING
887
888=item -DEBUGGING
889
890=item -DEBUGGING=both
891
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892Sets both -DDEBUGGING in the ccflags, and adds -g to optimize.
893
894You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently (see below),
895but usually it's convenient to have both.
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896
897=item -DEBUGGING=-g
898
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899=item -Doptimize=-g
900
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901Adds -g to optimize, but does not set -DDEBUGGING.
902
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903(Note: Your system may actually require something like cc -g2.
904Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for your system.)
905
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906=item -DEBUGGING=none
907
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908=item -UDEBUGGING
909
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910Removes -g from optimize, and -DDEBUGGING from ccflags.
911
912=back
913
3bf462b8 914If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
a522f097 915versions of perl under L<Building a shared Perl library>.
3bf462b8 916
1db12997
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917Note that a perl built with -DDEBUGGING will be bigger and will run more
918slowly than a standard perl.
919
920=head2 DTrace support
921
922On platforms where DTrace is available, it may be enabled by
923using the -Dusedtrace option to Configure. DTrace probes are available for
924subroutine entry (sub-entry) and subroutine exit (sub-exit). Here's a
925simple D script that uses them:
926
927 perl$target:::sub-entry, perl$target:::sub-return {
928 printf("%s %s (%s:%d)\n", probename == "sub-entry" ? "->" : "<-",
929 copyinstr(arg0), copyinstr(arg1), arg2);
930 }
931
932
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933=head2 Extensions
934
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935Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
936in the ext/ subdirectory.
937
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938By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
939to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
7df75831 940only if it is able to find the gdbm library.
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941
942To disable certain extensions so that they are not built, use the
943-Dnoextensions=... and -Donlyextensions=... options. They both accept
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944a space-separated list of extensions, such as C<IPC/SysV>. The extensions
945listed in
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946C<noextensions> are removed from the list of extensions to build, while
947the C<onlyextensions> is rather more severe and builds only the listed
948extensions. The latter should be used with extreme caution since
949certain extensions are used by many other extensions and modules:
950examples of such modules include Fcntl and IO. The order of processing
951these options is first C<only> (if present), then C<no> (if present).
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952
953Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
954the extensions you want.
955
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956If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
957running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
958extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
959it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
960has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
961extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
962convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
963you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
964dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
965Another way of specifying extra modules is described in
966L<"Adding extra modules to the build"> below.
8d74ce1c 967
dd3196cd 968If you re-use an old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
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969adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
970for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
971you.
972
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973=head2 Including locally-installed libraries
974
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975Perl comes with interfaces to number of libraries, including threads,
976dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For the *db* extension, if
8d74ce1c 977Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
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978automatically include that extension. The threading extension needs
979to be specified explicitely (see L<Threads>).
980
981Those libraries are not distributed with perl. If your header (.h) files
982for those libraries are not in a directory normally searched by your C
983compiler, then you will need to include the appropriate -I/your/directory
984option when prompted by Configure. If your libraries are not in a
985directory normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will
986need to include the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted
987by Configure. See the examples below.
8d74ce1c 988
ce80d64e 989=head3 Examples
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990
991=over 4
992
993=item gdbm in /usr/local
994
995Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
d6baa268 996GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
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997installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
998/usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
999necessary steps out automatically.
1000
1001Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
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1002your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include, if it's
1003not here yet. Similarly, when Configure prompts you for linker flags,
1004you should include -L/usr/local/lib.
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1005
1006If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
1007linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1008-L/usr/local/lib.
1009
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1010Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1011you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1012/opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
8d74ce1c 1013
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1014=item BerkeleyDB in /usr/local/BerkeleyDB
1015
1016The version of BerkeleyDB distributed by sleepycat.com installs in a
1017version-specific directory by default, typically something like
1018/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7. To have Configure find that, you need to add
1019-I/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/include to cc flags, as in the previous example,
1020and you will also have to take extra steps to help Configure find -ldb.
1021Specifically, when Configure prompts you for library directories,
1022add /usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib to the list. Also, you will need to
1023add appropriate linker flags to tell the runtime linker where to find the
1024BerkeleyDB shared libraries.
1025
1026It is possible to specify this from the command line (all on one
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1027line):
1028
7df75831 1029 sh Configure -de \
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1030 -Dlocincpth='/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/include /usr/local/include' \
1031 -Dloclibpth='/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib /usr/local/lib' \
1032 -Aldflags='-R/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib'
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1033
1034locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1035Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1036
1037loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
e8b9ce60 1038Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives.
8d74ce1c 1039
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1040The addition to ldflags is so that the dynamic linker knows where to find
1041the BerkeleyDB libraries. For Linux and Solaris, the -R option does that.
1042Other systems may use different flags. Use the appropriate flag for your
1043system.
8d74ce1c
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1044
1045=back
1046
ce80d64e
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1047=head2 Overriding an old config.sh
1048
dd3196cd
RGS
1049If you want to use an old config.sh produced by a previous run of
1050Configure, but override some of the items with command line options, you
1051need to use B<Configure -O>.
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1052
1053=head2 GNU-style configure
1054
1055If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
1056use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
1057
1058 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
1059
1060The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
1061options. Try
1062
1063 ./configure.gnu --help
1064
1065for a listing.
1066
1067(The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
1068that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
1069
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1070=head2 Malloc Issues
1071
1072Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
1073so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
1074the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
1075version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
1076perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
1077than your system malloc.
1078
1079However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
1080experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
1081that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
1082(Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
1083
1084=over 4
1085
1086=item Using the system malloc
1087
1088To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
1089
1090 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
1091
1092or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
1093
73d6d1b0
RGS
1094Note that Perl's malloc isn't always used by default; that actually
1095depends on your system. For example, on Linux and FreeBSD (and many more
1096systems), Configure chooses to use the system's malloc by default.
1097See the appropriate file in the F<hints/> directory to see how the
1098default is set.
1099
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1100=item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
1101
1102NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you just
7df75831 1103run Configure to accept all the defaults.
ce80d64e
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1104
1105Perl's malloc family of functions are normally called Perl_malloc(),
1106Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree().
1107These names do not clash with the system versions of these functions.
1108
1109If this flag is enabled, however, Perl's malloc family of functions
1110will have the same names as the system versions. This may be required
1111sometimes if you have libraries that like to free() data that may have
1112been allocated by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1113
1114Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1115from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1116does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1117versions.
1118
1119=item -DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS
1120
1121This flag enables debugging mstats, which is required to use the
1122Devel::Peek::mstat() function. You cannot enable this unless you are
1123using Perl's malloc, so a typical Configure command would be
1124
7df75831 1125 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS -Dusemymalloc
ce80d64e
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1126
1127to enable this option.
1128
1129=back
1130
8e07c86e
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1131=head2 What if it doesn't work?
1132
8d74ce1c 1133If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
ff52061e 1134If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
8d74ce1c 1135
8e07c86e
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1136=over 4
1137
25f94b33
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1138=item Running Configure Interactively
1139
1140If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1141Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1142guesses.
1143
1144All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
aa689395 1145have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1ec51d55 1146flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
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1147will use the defaults from then on.
1148
1149If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1150config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1151instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1152
aa689395 1153=item Hint files
8e07c86e 1154
a0a8d9d3
DD
1155Hint files tell Configure about a number of things:
1156
1157=over 4
1158
1159=item o
1160
1161The peculiarities or conventions of particular platforms -- non-standard
1162library locations and names, default installation locations for binaries,
1163and so on.
1164
1165=item o
1166
1167The deficiencies of the platform -- for example, library functions that,
1168although present, are too badly broken to be usable; or limits on
1169resources that are generously available on most platforms.
1170
1171=item o
1172
1173How best to optimize for the platform, both in terms of binary size and/or
1174speed, and for Perl feature support. Because of wide variations in the
1175implementation of shared libraries and of threading, for example, Configure
1176often needs hints in order to be able to use these features.
1177
1178=back
1179
1180The perl distribution includes many system-specific hints files
1181in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1182will offer to use that hint file. Unless you have a very good reason
1183not to, you should accept its offer.
8e07c86e
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1184
1185Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
f5b3b617
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1186If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1187for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1188More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
a0a8d9d3
DD
1189file, which also explains hint files known as callback-units.
1190
1191Note that any hint file is read before any Policy file, meaning that
1192Policy overrides hints -- see L</Site-wide Policy settings>.
8e07c86e 1193
73d6d1b0 1194=item WHOA THERE!!!
edb1cbcb 1195
82c11e95
RGS
1196If you are re-using an old config.sh, it's possible that Configure detects
1197different values from the ones specified in this file. You will almost
1198always want to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something
1199on your system.
edb1cbcb 1200
1201For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1202and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1203Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
bfb7748a
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1204Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1205issue a message:
edb1cbcb 1206
1207 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1208 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1209 Keep the previous value? [y]
1210
1ec51d55 1211In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
c3edaffb 1212should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
edb1cbcb 1213the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1214
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1215=item Changing Compilers
1216
1217If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1ec51d55 1218probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
dd3196cd 1219rename it, then rerun Configure with the options you want to use.
8e07c86e 1220
c3edaffb 1221=item Propagating your changes to config.sh
8e07c86e 1222
1ec51d55
CS
1223If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1224them to all the .SH files by running
1225
1226 sh Configure -S
1227
1228You will then have to rebuild by running
9d67150a 1229
1230 make depend
1231 make
8e07c86e 1232
48370efc
JH
1233=item config.over and config.arch
1234
1235You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride
1236Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1237before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1238however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1239This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1240
1241There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1242config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1243architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1244hints file that creates the config.arch.
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1245
1246=item config.h
1247
1ec51d55
CS
1248Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1249Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1250The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
8e07c86e 1251
1ec51d55
CS
1252If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1253though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
8e07c86e
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1254lost.
1255
1256=item cflags
1257
1258If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1ec51d55
CS
1259line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1260optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1261toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1262can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1263lost the next time you run Configure.
8e07c86e 1264
f5b3b617
AD
1265To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1266see the file hints/README.hints.
1267
1268To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1269$ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1ec51d55
CS
1270
1271 sh Configure -S
1272 make depend
8e07c86e 1273
aa689395 1274=item No sh
8e07c86e 1275
c42e3e15
GS
1276If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1277Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1278system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
8e07c86e
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1279You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1280mechanism.
1281
c3edaffb 1282=item Porting information
1283
e6f03d26 1284Specific information for the OS/2, Plan 9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1ec51d55
CS
1285corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1286including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
ce80d64e 1287subdirectory. Porting/Glossary should especially come in handy.
c3edaffb 1288
7f678428 1289Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
468f45d5 1290http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
7f678428 1291various other operating systems.
1292
ce80d64e 1293If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture, study carefully the
491517e0 1294section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
8502f9cc 1295in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file pod/perlrepository.pod.
491517e0
JA
1296Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1297
8e07c86e
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1298=back
1299
ce80d64e 1300=head2 Adding extra modules to the build
fadf0ef5
JH
1301
1302You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1303CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1304command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1305
d3df0cfd 1306 Configure -Dextras="Bundle::LWP DBI"
fadf0ef5
JH
1307
1308or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
d3df0cfd 1309then answer "Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
fadf0ef5 1310The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
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1311This will only work if those modules are to be built as dynamic
1312extensions. If you wish to include those extra modules as static
1313extensions, see L<"Extensions"> above.
fadf0ef5
JH
1314
1315Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1316modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1317or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1318do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1319
1320Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1321dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
d3df0cfd 1322For example: you will need to have the Foo database specific
fadf0ef5
JH
1323headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1324process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1325
ce80d64e 1326=head2 suidperl
03739d21 1327
172dd959
JV
1328suidperl was an optional component of earlier releases of perl. It is no
1329longer available. Instead, use a tool specifically designed to handle
1330changes in privileges, such as B<sudo>.
03739d21 1331
8e07c86e
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1332=head1 make depend
1333
bfb7748a
AD
1334This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1335The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1336the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
ce80d64e 1337makefile, not Makefile, since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
bfb7748a
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1338(On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1339Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
8e07c86e
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1340
1341Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1342explicitly above.
1343
1344=head1 make
1345
1346This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1347
8d410bc4
YST
1348=head2 Expected errors
1349
f5b5f377 1350These error reports are normal, and can be ignored:
8d410bc4
YST
1351
1352 ...
1353 make: [extra.pods] Error 1 (ignored)
1354 ...
1355 make: [extras.make] Error 1 (ignored)
1356
8d74ce1c
AD
1357=head2 What if it doesn't work?
1358
8e07c86e 1359If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
7f678428 1360If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
8d74ce1c 1361the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
ff52061e 1362then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
8e07c86e
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1363
1364=over 4
1365
1ec51d55 1366=item hints
8e07c86e
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1367
1368If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1369for further tips and information.
1370
1ec51d55 1371=item extensions
8e07c86e 1372
1ec51d55 1373If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
ce80d64e 1374during the building of extensions, run
c3edaffb 1375
3a6175e1 1376 make minitest
c3edaffb 1377
1378to test your version of miniperl.
1379
e57fd563 1380=item locale
1381
bfb7748a
AD
1382If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1383them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1384running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1385See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
08854360 1386whole L<perllocale/"LOCALE PROBLEMS"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
3e6e419a
JH
1387The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1388
1389 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1390 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1391 LC_ALL = "En_US",
1392 LANG = (unset)
1393 are supported and installed on your system.
1394 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1395
1396at Perl startup.
e57fd563 1397
06aa495b
DM
1398=item other environment variables
1399
1400Configure does not check for environment variables that can sometimes
1401have a major influence on how perl is built or tested. For example,
1402OBJECT_MODE on AIX determines the way the compiler and linker deal with
1403their objects, but this is a variable that only influences build-time
1404behaviour, and should not affect the perl scripts that are eventually
1405executed by the perl binary. Other variables, like PERL_UNICODE,
adbb55c0 1406PERL5LIB, and PERL5OPT will influence the behaviour of the test suite.
06aa495b
DM
1407So if you are getting strange test failures, you may want to try
1408retesting with the various PERL variables unset.
1409
7f678428 1410=item varargs
c3edaffb 1411
1412If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
bfb7748a
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1413correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1414gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
ce80d64e 1415in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by installing gcc
bfb7748a
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1416correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1417your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
7f678428 1418See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
c3edaffb 1419
bfb7748a 1420=item util.c
c3edaffb 1421
1422If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
bfb7748a 1423numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
c3edaffb 1424
bfb7748a
AD
1425 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1426 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1427 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
c3edaffb 1428
1429it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
7f678428 1430previous L<"varargs"> item.
c3edaffb 1431
1ec51d55 1432=item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
c3edaffb 1433
1434If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
aa689395 1435the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1436Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
c3edaffb 1437fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1438of your local set-up.
1439
aa689395 1440=item nm extraction
c3edaffb 1441
1442If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1443try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1444with
1445
1446 sh Configure -Uusenm
1447
1448or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1ec51d55 1449If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
c3edaffb 1450config.sh.
1451
bfb7748a
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1452=item umask not found
1453
1454If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1455is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1456Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1457this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1458try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1459
7f678428 1460=item vsprintf
c3edaffb 1461
1462If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1463problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1464version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1465(Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1466d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1467
1468 d_vprintf='define'
1469
1470If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
bfb7748a
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1471on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1472the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
c3edaffb 1473
3fe9a6f1 1474=item do_aspawn
1475
1476If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1477problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
bfb7748a
AD
1478fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1479on L<"nm extraction">.
3fe9a6f1 1480
84902520
TB
1481=item __inet_* errors
1482
1483If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1484referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1485installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1486these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1487in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
6d240721
JH
1488newer version of BIND (and remove the files the old one left behind).
1489If you can't, you can either link with the updated resolver library provided
1490with BIND 8.1 or rename /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and
1491test process to avoid the problem.
1492
73d6d1b0 1493=item .*_r() prototype NOT found
6d240721
JH
1494
1495On a related note, if you see a bunch of complaints like the above about
1496reentrant functions - specifically networking-related ones - being present
1497but without prototypes available, check to see if BIND 8.1 (or possibly
1498other BIND 8 versions) is (or has been) installed. They install
1499header files such as netdb.h into places such as /usr/local/include (or into
1500another directory as specified at build/install time), at least optionally.
f1300be0 1501Remove them or put them in someplace that isn't in the C preprocessor's
6d240721
JH
1502header file include search path (determined by -I options plus defaults,
1503normally /usr/include).
84902520 1504
d6baa268
JH
1505=item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1506
1507This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1508gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1509changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1510rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1511update your gcc installation.
1512
aa689395 1513=item Optimizer
c3edaffb 1514
9d67150a 1515If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
aa689395 1516optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
9d67150a 1517
1518 optimize='-O'
1519
bfb7748a 1520to
9d67150a 1521
1522 optimize=' '
1523
1524then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1525with B<make depend; make>.
1526
4bbc1586 1527=item Missing functions and Undefined symbols
9d67150a 1528
4bbc1586
AD
1529If the build of miniperl fails with a long list of missing functions or
1530undefined symbols, check the libs variable in the config.sh file. It
1531should look something like
1532
1533 libs='-lsocket -lnsl -ldl -lm -lc'
1534
1535The exact libraries will vary from system to system, but you typically
1536need to include at least the math library -lm. Normally, Configure
1537will suggest the correct defaults. If the libs variable is empty, you
1538need to start all over again. Run
1539
1540 make distclean
1541
1542and start from the very beginning. This time, unless you are sure of
1543what you are doing, accept the default list of libraries suggested by
1544Configure.
1545
1546If the libs variable looks correct, you might have the
1547L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1548
1549If you stil have missing routines or undefined symbols, you probably
1550need to add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature
1551that Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete. If
1552you used a hint file, see if it has any relevant advice. You can also
1553look through through config.h for likely suspects.
8e07c86e 1554
1ec51d55 1555=item toke.c
8e07c86e 1556
1ec51d55
CS
1557Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1558toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1559allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1560each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1561makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
8e07c86e
AD
1562specific rule.
1563
7f678428 1564=item Missing dbmclose
8e07c86e 1565
c3edaffb 1566SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1567that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
8e07c86e 1568
1bb125e2
MB
1569=item error: too few arguments to function 'dbmclose'
1570
1571Building ODBM_File on some (Open)SUSE distributions might run into this
1572error, as the header file is broken. There are two ways to deal with this
1573
1574 1. Disable the use of ODBM_FILE
1575
1576 Configure ... -Dnoextensions=ODBM_File
1577
1578 2. Fix the header file, somewhat like this:
1579
1580 --- a/usr/include/dbm.h 2010-03-24 08:54:59.000000000 +0100
1581 +++ b/usr/include/dbm.h 2010-03-24 08:55:15.000000000 +0100
1582 @@ -59,4 +59,4 @@ extern datum firstkey __P((void));
1583
1584 extern datum nextkey __P((datum key));
1585
1586 -extern int dbmclose __P((DBM *));
1587 +extern int dbmclose __P((void));
1588
f3d9a6ba 1589=item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
7f678428 1590
1591If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1592the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1593then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1594Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
aa689395 1595systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
74b7c41f
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1596Most users will see warnings for the ones they don't have. The
1597phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to reassure you that nothing
1598unusual is happening, and the build process is continuing.
7f678428 1599
1600On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1601message
1602
f3d9a6ba 1603 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
7f678428 1604
1605then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1606the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1607extension without the -lgdbm library.
1608
1609It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1610this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1611quite that tightly coordinated.
1612
aa689395 1613=item sh: ar: not found
1614
1615This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1616was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1617make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1ec51d55 1618is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
aa689395 1619directory.
1620
1621=item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1622
1623Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1624with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1625bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1626
6087ac44
JH
1627=item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1628
11906ba0 1629If you get this error message from the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem test, your System
6087ac44
JH
1630V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1631also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1632to include the System V semaphores.
1633
11906ba0 1634=item ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem........semget: No space left on device
220f3621
GS
1635
1636Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1637both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1638ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1639with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1640system.
1641
d6baa268
JH
1642=item GNU binutils
1643
1644If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1645tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1646with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1647may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1648under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1649to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1650vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1651Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1652
16dc217a
GS
1653=item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1654
1655The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1656make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1657archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1658C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1659archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1660incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1661official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1662that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1663archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1664
16dc217a
GS
1665=item invalid token: ##
1666
ce80d64e
AD
1667You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. To compile Perl, you
1668need to use a compiler that supports ANSI C. If there is a README
1669file for your system, it may have further details on your compiler
1670options.
16dc217a 1671
1ec51d55 1672=item Miscellaneous
8e07c86e 1673
7df75831 1674Some additional things that have been reported:
8e07c86e
AD
1675
1676Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1677
1678NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1679
9ede5bc8 1680UTS may need one or more of -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
8e07c86e 1681
11906ba0 1682FreeBSD can fail the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem.t test if SysV IPC has not been
5cda700b 1683configured in the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
ce80d64e 1684you will get a message telling you what to do.
6087ac44 1685
6c8d78fb
HS
1686Building Perl on a system that has also BIND (headers and libraries)
1687installed may run into troubles because BIND installs its own netdb.h
1688and socket.h, which may not agree with the operating system's ideas of
1689the same files. Similarly, including -lbind may conflict with libc's
1690view of the world. You may have to tweak -Dlocincpth and -Dloclibpth
1691to avoid the BIND.
1692
8e07c86e
AD
1693=back
1694
58a21a9b
JH
1695=head2 Cross-compilation
1696
e7a3c61b
JH
1697Perl can be cross-compiled. It is just not trivial, cross-compilation
1698rarely is. Perl is routinely cross-compiled for many platforms (as of
1699June 2005 at least PocketPC aka WinCE, Open Zaurus, EPOC, Symbian, and
1700the IBM OS/400). These platforms are known as the B<target> platforms,
1701while the systems where the compilation takes place are the B<host>
1702platforms.
1703
1704What makes the situation difficult is that first of all,
1705cross-compilation environments vary significantly in how they are set
1706up and used, and secondly because the primary way of configuring Perl
1707(using the rather large Unix-tool-dependent Configure script) is not
1708awfully well suited for cross-compilation. However, starting from
1709version 5.8.0, the Configure script also knows one way of supporting
1710cross-compilation support, please keep reading.
1711
1712See the following files for more information about compiling Perl for
1713the particular platforms:
1714
1715=over 4
1716
1717=item WinCE/PocketPC
1718
75472953 1719README.ce
e7a3c61b
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1720
1721=item Open Zaurus
1722
1723Cross/README
1724
1725=item EPOC
1726
1727README.epoc
1728
1729=item Symbian
1730
1731README.symbian
1732
1733=item OS/400
1734
1735README.os400
1736
1737=back
1738
1739Packaging and transferring either the core Perl modules or CPAN
1740modules to the target platform is also left up to the each
1741cross-compilation environment. Often the cross-compilation target
1742platforms are somewhat limited in diskspace: see the section
1743L<Minimizing the Perl installation> to learn more of the minimal set
1744of files required for a functional Perl installation.
1745
1746For some cross-compilation environments the Configure option
1747C<-Dinstallprefix=...> might be handy, see L<Changing the installation
1748directory>.
1749
1750About the cross-compilation support of Configure: what is known to
1751work is running Configure in a cross-compilation environment and
1752building the miniperl executable. What is known not to work is
1753building the perl executable because that would require building
1754extensions: Dynaloader statically and File::Glob dynamically, for
1755extensions one needs MakeMaker and MakeMaker is not yet
1756cross-compilation aware, and neither is the main Makefile.
1757
1758The cross-compilation setup of Configure has successfully been used in
1759at least two Linux cross-compilation environments. The setups were
1760both such that the host system was Intel Linux with a gcc built for
1761cross-compiling into ARM Linux, and there was a SSH connection to the
1762target system.
1763
1764To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch that
1765has to be used is C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
58a21a9b
JH
1766
1767 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1768
1769This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
b0f06652
VK
1770symbol C<usecrosscompile> available, and C<xconfig.h> will be used
1771for cross-compilation.
58a21a9b
JH
1772
1773During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1774into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1775cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1776target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1777transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1778the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1779methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1780F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1781
1782To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1783the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1784happens), supply Configure with
1785
1786 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1787
1788The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
93bc48fa
JH
1789must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1790You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
58a21a9b
JH
1791
1792 -Dtargetuser=luser
1793
1794but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
1795
93bc48fa
JH
1796Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
1797which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
1798This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
1799In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
1800environment:
58a21a9b
JH
1801
1802 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
1803 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc
1804 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1805 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1806 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
1807
1808If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
1809compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
1810C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
93bc48fa
JH
1811(The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
1812as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
1813will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
1814in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
58a21a9b
JH
1815
1816In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
1817choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
1818for example:
1819
1820 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
1821
1822Putting it all together:
1823
1824 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
93bc48fa
JH
1825 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1826 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
58a21a9b
JH
1827 -Dtargetuser=root \
1828 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
1829 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1830 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1831 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1832 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
1833 -D...
1834
e7a3c61b 1835or if you are happy with the defaults:
93bc48fa
JH
1836
1837 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1838 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1839 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1840 -D...
1841
e7a3c61b
JH
1842Another example where the cross-compiler has been installed under
1843F</usr/local/arm/2.95.5>:
1844
1845 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1846 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1847 -Dcc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/bin/arm-linux-gcc \
1848 -Dincpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
1849 -Dusrinc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
1850 -Dlibpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/lib
1851
8e07c86e
AD
1852=head1 make test
1853
d6baa268
JH
1854This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
1855'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
1856wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
84902520 1857
84902520 1858Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
fb73857a 1859opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1860a few tty tests will be skipped.
c3edaffb 1861
c4f23d77
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1862=head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1863
1ec51d55
CS
1864If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1865by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
c3edaffb 1866bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
8e07c86e 1867
761cea1c 1868 ./perl -MTestInit t/op/groups.t
8e07c86e 1869
aa689395 1870Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1ec51d55 1871individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
aa689395 1872
785aa5e3 1873 cd t ; ./perl harness <list of tests>
aa689395 1874
fb73857a 1875(this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
785aa5e3
RGS
1876complicated constructs). If no list of tests is provided, harness
1877will run all tests.
10c7e831 1878
fb73857a 1879You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
10c7e831
JH
1880comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
1881shared library path if you get errors like:
1882
1883 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
1884
1885See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
c3edaffb 1886
c4f23d77
AD
1887=over 4
1888
1889=item locale
1890
1ec51d55 1891Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
c07a80fd 1892may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
785aa5e3 1893'make test' exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1ec51d55
CS
1894one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1895LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
e57fd563 1896are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1897
1898If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
aa689395 1899
1900 setenv LC_ALL C
1901
1902(for C shell) or
1903
1904 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1905
1ec51d55
CS
1906for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1907make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
aa689395 1908is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
e57fd563 1909shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1ec51d55
CS
1910things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1911open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
e57fd563 1912external program.
eed2e782 1913
0740bb5b
AD
1914=item Timing problems
1915
c29923ff
JH
1916Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
1917sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
9341413f
JH
1918If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough,
1919these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again
1920with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive
1921and load-sensitive tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
3831a787
NC
1922F<ext/Time-HiRes/t/HiRes.t>, F<ext/threads-shared/t/waithires.t>,
1923F<ext/threads-shared/t/stress.t>, F<lib/Benchmark.t>,
9341413f 1924F<lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t>, and F<lib/Memoize/t/speed.t>.
0740bb5b 1925
f89caa8d
RGS
1926You might also experience some failures in F<t/op/stat.t> if you build
1927perl on an NFS filesystem, if the remote clock and the system clock are
1928different.
1929
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AD
1930=item Out of memory
1931
1932On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1933of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
7970f296
GS
1934For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
1935test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
c4f23d77
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1936
1937Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1938
785aa5e3 1939 cd t; ./perl -MTestInit op/pat.t
c4f23d77
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1940
1941to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1942test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1943tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1944and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1945
a55bb48b
AD
1946=item libgcc_s.so.1: cannot open shared object file
1947
1948This message has been reported on gcc-3.2.3 and earlier installed with
1949a non-standard prefix. Setting the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable
1950(or equivalent) to include gcc's lib/ directory with the libgcc_s.so.1
1951shared library should fix the problem.
1952
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1953=item Failures from lib/File/Temp/t/security saying "system possibly insecure"
1954
1955First, such warnings are not necessarily serious or indicative of a
1956real security threat. That being said, they bear investigating.
1957
1958Note that each of the tests is run twice. The first time is in the
1959directory returned by File::Spec->tmpdir() (often /tmp on Unix
1960systems), and the second time in the directory from which the test was
1961run (usually the 't' directory, if the test was run as part of 'make
1962test').
1963
1964The tests may fail for the following reasons:
1965
1966(1) If the directory the tests are being run in is owned by somebody
1967other than the user running the tests, or by root (uid 0).
1968
1969This failure can happen if the Perl source code distribution is
1970unpacked in such a way that the user ids in the distribution package
1971are used as-is. Some tar programs do this.
1972
1973(2) If the directory the tests are being run in is writable by group or
1974by others, and there is no sticky bit set for the directory. (With
1975UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to a directory means the right to
1976add or remove files in that directory. The 'sticky bit' is a feature
1977used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if the bit is
1978set for a directory, no one but the owner (or root) can remove that
1979file even if the permissions would otherwise allow file removal by
1980others.)
1981
1982This failure may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the
1983permissions policy used on this particular system. This failure can
1984also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit (this
1985is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle File::Temp
1986should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or if the system
1987supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons it is not being
1988used. This is, for example, the case with HP-UX: as of HP-UX release
198911.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX doesn't use it
1990on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also, as with the permissions, some
1991local policy might dictate that the stickiness is not used.
781948c1 1992
b2b23189
JH
1993(3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
1994any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
1995directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
4f76e5ba
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1996(2). For Unix systems, this is usually not an issue if you are
1997building on a local disk. See the documentation for the File::Temp
1998module for more information about 'chown giveaway'.
781948c1
JH
1999
2000See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
4f76e5ba 2001about the various security aspects of temporary files.
781948c1 2002
c4f23d77
AD
2003=back
2004
5ee651a9
NC
2005The core distribution can now run its regression tests in parallel on
2006Unix-like platforms. Instead of running C<make test>, set C<TEST_JOBS> in
2007your environment to the number of tests to run in parallel, and run
2008C<make test_harness>. On a Bourne-like shell, this can be done as
2009
2010 TEST_JOBS=3 make test_harness # Run 3 tests in parallel
2011
2012An environment variable is used, rather than parallel make itself, because
2013L<TAP::Harness> needs to be able to schedule individual non-conflicting test
2014scripts itself, and there is no standard interface to C<make> utilities to
2015interact with their job schedulers.
2016
8e07c86e
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2017=head1 make install
2018
2019This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1ec51d55 2020Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
8e07c86e 2021to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
aa689395 2022pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
ce80d64e
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2023are not root, you must still have permission to install into the directories
2024in question and you should ignore any messages about chown not working.
2025
2026If "make install" just says "`install' is up to date" or something
2027similar, you may be on a case-insensitive filesystems such as Mac's HFS+,
2028and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion is brought to you
2029by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
8e07c86e 2030
dd64f1c3
AD
2031=head2 Installing perl under different names
2032
2033If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
2034when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
2035indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
2036
2037 make install PERLNAME=myperl
2038
beb13193 2039You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
be8498a1 2040"perl5.8.9") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
beb13193
RS
2041
2042 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
2043
5cda700b
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2044This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (e.g. to
2045avoid conflicts with an ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor).
be8498a1 2046Without this the versioned binary would be called "perl55.8.8".
beb13193 2047
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2048=head2 Installing perl under a different directory
2049
2050You can install perl under a different destination directory by using
2051the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>, with a command like
2052
2053 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
2054
2055DESTDIR is automatically prepended to all the installation paths. See
7df75831 2056the example in L<"DESTDIR"> above.
ce80d64e 2057
dd64f1c3
AD
2058=head2 Installed files
2059
8e07c86e
AD
2060If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
2061anything, you can run
4633a7c4 2062
8e07c86e
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2063 ./perl installperl -n
2064 ./perl installman -n
2065
1ec51d55 2066make install will install the following:
8e07c86e 2067
d56c5707
JH
2068 binaries
2069
8e07c86e 2070 perl,
be8498a1 2071 perl5.n.n where 5.n.n is the current release number. This
8e07c86e
AD
2072 will be a link to perl.
2073 suidperl,
be8498a1 2074 sperl5.n.n If you requested setuid emulation.
8e07c86e 2075 a2p awk-to-perl translator
d56c5707
JH
2076
2077 scripts
2078
73d6d1b0
RGS
2079 cppstdin This is used by the deprecated switch perl -P, if
2080 your cc -E can't read from stdin.
8e07c86e 2081 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
73d6d1b0
RGS
2082 config_data Manage Module::Build-like module configuration
2083 corelist Shows versions of modules that come with different
2084 versions of perl
2085 cpan The CPAN shell
2086 cpan2dist The CPANPLUS distribution creator
2087 cpanp The CPANPLUS shell
2088 cpanp-run-perl An helper for cpanp
f5b5f377 2089 dprofpp Perl code profiler post-processor
73d6d1b0 2090 enc2xs Encoding module generator
8e07c86e 2091 find2perl find-to-perl translator
aa689395 2092 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
8e07c86e 2093 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
73d6d1b0
RGS
2094 instmodsh A shell to examine installed modules.
2095 libnetcfg Configure libnet.
24b3df7f 2096 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
8e07c86e 2097 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
73d6d1b0
RGS
2098 perlivp Perl Installation Verification Procedure
2099 piconv A Perl implementation of the encoding conversion
2100 utility iconv
aa689395 2101 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
8e07c86e 2102 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
aa689395 2103 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
d56c5707
JH
2104 pod2man,
2105 pod2text,
d56c5707 2106 pod2usage
73d6d1b0
RGS
2107 podchecker POD syntax checker
2108 podselect Prints sections of POD documentation
2109 prove A command-line tool for running tests
2110 psed A Perl implementation of sed
2111 ptar A Perl implementation of tar
2112 ptardiff A diff for tar archives
2113 s2p sed-to-perl translator
2114 shasum A tool to print or check SHA checksums
aa689395 2115 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
73d6d1b0 2116 xsubpp Compiler to convert Perl XS code into C code
8e07c86e 2117
d56c5707
JH
2118 library files
2119
2120 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
8e07c86e 2121 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
d56c5707
JH
2122
2123 documentation
2124
d6baa268
JH
2125 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2126 module man
2127 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
8e07c86e
AD
2128 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2129
33cceb07 2130installperl will also create the directories listed above
d6baa268 2131in L<"Installation Directories">.
4633a7c4 2132
d56c5707 2133Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
d6baa268 2134under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
56c6f531
JH
2135optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2136program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
8e07c86e 2137
33cceb07
RGS
2138=head2 Installing only version-specific parts
2139
d56c5707
JH
2140Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2141installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
33cceb07 2142perl alongside an already installed production version without
d56c5707
JH
2143disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2144To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2145
2146 Configure -Dversiononly
2147
2148or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2149you can just manually run
2150
2151 ./perl installperl -v
2152
2153and skip installman altogether.
33cceb07 2154
d56c5707
JH
2155See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2156approach.
2157
f4ce0e6d
RGS
2158=head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2159
2160Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2161system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2162header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2163by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2164library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2165
2166Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2167of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2168hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2169For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2170structures.
2171
2172=head1 installhtml --help
2173
2174Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2175format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2176documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2177
2178Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2179html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2180
2181The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2182perl documentation:
2183
2184 ./installhtml \
2185 --podroot=. \
2186 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2187 --recurse \
2188 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2189 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2190 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2191 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2192 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
2193 --verbose
2194
2195See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2196many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2197see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2198resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2199(and would welcome patches for them).
2200
2201You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2202the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2203
2204=head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2205
2206Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2207available in TeX format. Type
2208
2209 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2210
2211=head1 Starting all over again
2212
2213If you wish to re-build perl from the same build directory, you should
2214clean it out with the command
2215
2216 make distclean
2217
2218or
2219
2220 make realclean
2221
2222The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
2223your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
2224
2225If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
2226change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
2227you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should not re-use
2228your old config.sh.
2229
2230If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
2231installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
2232using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
2233settings"> above.
2234
ff52061e
RGS
2235=head1 Reporting Problems
2236
2237Wherever possible please use the perlbug tool supplied with this Perl
2238to report problems, as it automatically includes summary configuration
2239information about your perl, which may help us track down problems far
2240more quickly. But first you should read the advice in this file,
2241carefully re-read the error message and check the relevant manual pages
2242on your system, as these may help you find an immediate solution. If
2243you are not sure whether what you are seeing is a bug, you can send a
2244message describing the problem to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup to
2245get advice.
2246
2247The perlbug tool is installed along with perl, so after you have
2248completed C<make install> it should be possible to run it with plain
2249C<perlbug>. If the install fails, or you want to report problems with
2250C<make test> without installing perl, then you can use C<make nok> to
2251run perlbug to report the problem, or run it by hand from this source
2252directory with C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug>
2253
2254If the build fails too early to run perlbug uninstalled, then please
2255B<run> the C<./myconfig> shell script, and mail its output along with
2256an accurate description of your problem to perlbug@perl.org
2257
2258If Configure itself fails, and does not generate a config.sh file
2259(needed to run C<./myconfig>), then please mail perlbug@perl.org the
2260description of how Configure fails along with details of your system
2261- for example the output from running C<uname -a>
2262
2263Please try to make your message brief but clear. Brief, clear bug
2264reports tend to get answered more quickly. Please don't worry if your
2265written English is not great - what matters is how well you describe
2266the important technical details of the problem you have encountered,
2267not whether your grammar and spelling is flawless.
2268
2269Trim out unnecessary information. Do not include large files (such as
2270config.sh or a complete Configure or make log) unless absolutely
2271necessary. Do not include a complete transcript of your build
2272session. Just include the failing commands, the relevant error
2273messages, and whatever preceding commands are necessary to give the
2274appropriate context. Plain text should usually be sufficient--fancy
2275attachments or encodings may actually reduce the number of people who
2276read your message. Your message will get relayed to over 400
2277subscribers around the world so please try to keep it brief but clear.
2278
5acb7768
NC
2279If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
2280inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send
2281it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription
2282unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who be able
2283to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help
2284co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all
2285platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for security
2286issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently distributed on CPAN.
2287
ff52061e
RGS
2288If you are unsure what makes a good bug report please read "How to
2289report Bugs Effectively" by Simon Tatham:
2290http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html
2291
7df75831 2292=head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5
4633a7c4 2293
35dec5db 2294Perl 5.12 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
cc65bb49 2295In other words, you will have to recompile your XS modules.
14eee2f1 2296
693762b4 2297In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
33cceb07
RGS
22985.X.Y) to another similar minor version (e.g. 5.X.(Y+1))) without
2299re-compiling all of your extensions. You can also safely leave the old
2300version around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
693762b4 2301
be8498a1
RGS
2302Usually, most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to be
2303used with a newer version of Perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
ce80d64e 2304(These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
693762b4 2305
33cceb07
RGS
2306Suppose you already have version 5.8.7 installed. The directories
2307searched by 5.8.7 are typically like:
d6baa268 2308
33cceb07
RGS
2309 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.7/$archname
2310 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.7
2311 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7/$archname
2312 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
d6baa268 2313
33cceb07
RGS
2314Now, suppose you install version 5.8.8. The directories
2315searched by version 5.8.8 will be:
d6baa268 2316
33cceb07
RGS
2317 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.8/$archname
2318 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.8
2319 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/$archname
2320 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8
d6baa268 2321
33cceb07
RGS
2322 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7/$archname
2323 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
c42e3e15 2324 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
bfb7748a 2325
c42e3e15 2326Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
d6baa268 2327of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
33cceb07
RGS
2328directories. This way, modules installed under 5.8.7 will continue
2329to be usable by 5.8.7 but will also accessible to 5.8.8. Further,
d6baa268 2330suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
33cceb07
RGS
2331present only in 5.8.8. That new module will get installed into
2332/usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8 and will be available to 5.8.8,
2333but will not interfere with the 5.8.7 version.
bfb7748a 2334
c42e3e15 2335The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
fe23a901 23365.6.0 and above will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
d6baa268 2337
33cceb07
RGS
2338Lastly, suppose you now install 5.10.0, which is not binary compatible
2339with 5.8.x. The directories searched by 5.10.0 (if you don't change the
fe23a901
RF
2340Configure defaults) will be:
2341
33cceb07
RGS
2342 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.10.0/$archname
2343 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.10.0
2344 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0/$archname
2345 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0
d6baa268 2346
33cceb07 2347 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8
d6baa268 2348
33cceb07 2349 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
fe23a901 2350
d6baa268 2351 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
bfb7748a 2352
cc65bb49
AD
2353Note that the earlier $archname entries are now gone, but pure perl
2354modules from earlier versions will still be found.
2355
0a08c020
GS
2356This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2357to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2358versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
693762b4
AD
2359
2360=head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
4633a7c4 2361
1ec51d55 2362Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
d6baa268 2363separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
0a08c020
GS
2364won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2365libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2366way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
d52d4e46 2367
20a372dd 2368 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.13.2
d52d4e46 2369
20a372dd 2370and adding /opt/perl5.13.2/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
d52d4e46 2371may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2372scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2373
693762b4 2374Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
33cceb07 2375(e.g. 5.10 for all 5.10.x versions), but change directory with
693762b4
AD
2376each major version.
2377
6877a1cf
AD
2378If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2379seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2380subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2381yet.
2382
6f15df47 2383=head2 Upgrading from 5.11.0 or earlier
693762b4 2384
20a372dd 2385B<Perl 5.13.2 is binary incompatible with Perl 5.11.1 and any earlier
dd3196cd 2386Perl release.> Perl modules having binary parts
e655887d 2387(meaning that a C compiler is used) will have to be recompiled to be
20a372dd
MT
2388used with 5.13.2. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with
23895.13.2, you may safely do so without disturbing the older
7df75831 2390installations. (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5">
e655887d 2391above.)
c42e3e15
GS
2392
2393See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2394incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
cc65bb49 2395perllocal.pod, not perllocale.pod, for installed module information.
693762b4 2396
8ebf57cf
JH
2397=head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2398
2399The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2400Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2401operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2402
c8214fdf 2403Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way:
5cda700b
AD
2404Encode, with its big conversion tables, consumes a lot of
2405space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything. The
2406Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network
c8214fdf
JH
2407programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all
2408depends on what do you need to do.
2409
8ebf57cf
JH
2410In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2411recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2412depends on what you need.
2413
2414Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2415
2416 use strict;
2417 use warnings;
2418 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2419 print("$f\n");
2420 }
2421
bfe08c74 2422in Linux is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
8ebf57cf
JH
2423
2424 ./bin/perl
bfe08c74
RGS
2425 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/strict.pm
2426 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/warnings.pm
2427 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/File/Glob.pm
2428 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/XSLoader.pm
2429 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
8ebf57cf
JH
2430
2431Secondly, Debian perl-base package contains the following files,
bfe08c74 2432size about 1.9MB in its i386 version:
8ebf57cf 2433
bfe08c74
RGS
2434 /usr/bin/perl
2435 /usr/bin/perl5.8.4
2436 /usr/lib/perl/5.8
2437 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B.pm
2438 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B/Deparse.pm
2439 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Config.pm
2440 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Cwd.pm
2441 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Data/Dumper.pm
2442 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/DynaLoader.pm
2443 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Errno.pm
2444 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Fcntl.pm
2445 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/File/Glob.pm
2446 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO.pm
2447 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/File.pm
2448 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Handle.pm
2449 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Pipe.pm
2450 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Seekable.pm
2451 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Select.pm
2452 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket.pm
2453 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/POSIX.pm
2454 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Socket.pm
2455 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/XSLoader.pm
2456 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.bs
2457 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.so
2458 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.bs
2459 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.so
2460 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a
2461 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2462 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2463 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2464 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2465 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/extralibs.ld
2466 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs
2467 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2468 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.bs
2469 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2470 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.bs
2471 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.so
2472 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.bs
2473 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2474 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2475 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2476 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.bs
2477 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2478 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/lib.pm
2479 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/re.pm
2480 /usr/share/doc/perl-base
8ebf57cf 2481 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
bfe08c74
RGS
2482 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2483 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian.gz
8ebf57cf 2484 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
bfe08c74 2485 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
8ebf57cf 2486 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
bfe08c74
RGS
2487 /usr/share/perl/5.8
2488 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/AutoLoader.pm
2489 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp.pm
2490 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp/Heavy.pm
2491 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter.pm
2492 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2493 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec.pm
2494 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2495 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/FileHandle.pm
2496 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Getopt/Long.pm
2497 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2498 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2499 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open2.pm
2500 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open3.pm
2501 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/List/Util.pm
2502 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Scalar/Util.pm
2503 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/SelectSaver.pm
2504 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Symbol.pm
2505 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/ParseWords.pm
2506 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Tabs.pm
2507 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Wrap.pm
2508 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/attributes.pm
2509 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/base.pm
2510 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes.pm
2511 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes_heavy.pl
2512 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/constant.pm
2513 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/fields.pm
2514 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/integer.pm
2515 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/locale.pm
2516 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/overload.pm
2517 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/strict.pm
2518 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8.pm
2519 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8_heavy.pl
2520 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/vars.pm
2521 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings.pm
2522 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings/register.pm
8ebf57cf 2523
e7a3c61b
JH
2524A nice trick to find out the minimal set of Perl library files you will
2525need to run a Perl program is
2526
a0a8d9d3 2527 perl -e 'do "prog.pl"; END { print "$_\n" for sort keys %INC }'
e7a3c61b
JH
2528
2529(this will not find libraries required in runtime, unfortunately, but
2530it's a minimal set) and if you want to find out all the files you can
2531use something like the below
2532
2533 strace perl -le 'do "x.pl"' 2>&1 | perl -nle '/^open\(\"(.+?)"/ && print $1'
2534
2535(The 'strace' is Linux-specific, other similar utilities include 'truss'
2536and 'ktrace'.)
2537
c19ccd8c
RGS
2538=head2 C<-DNO_MATHOMS>
2539
2540If you configure perl with C<-Accflags=-DNO_MATHOMS>, the functions from
2541F<mathoms.c> will not be compiled in. Those functions are no longer used
2542by perl itself; for source compatibility reasons, though, they weren't
2543completely removed.
2544
8e07c86e
AD
2545=head1 DOCUMENTATION
2546
bfb7748a
AD
2547Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2548is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
8e07c86e 2549build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
bfb7748a
AD
2550can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2551sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
8e07c86e
AD
2552
2553=head1 AUTHOR
2554
bfb7748a
AD
2555Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2556heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2557feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
fb73857a 2558
f5b3b617
AD
2559If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2560L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2561
2562=head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2563
2564This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
d6baa268 2565the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
f5b3b617 2566If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
d6baa268
JH
2567a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2568and the contact information to match your distribution.