| 1 | If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you see. |
| 2 | It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is specially |
| 3 | designed to be readable as is. |
| 4 | |
| 5 | =head1 NAME |
| 6 | |
| 7 | README.aix - Perl version 5 on IBM Unix (AIX) systems |
| 8 | |
| 9 | =head1 DESCRIPTION |
| 10 | |
| 11 | This document describes various features of IBM's Unix operating |
| 12 | system (AIX) that will affect how Perl version 5 (hereafter just Perl) |
| 13 | is compiled and/or runs. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | =head2 Compiling Perl 5 on AIX |
| 16 | |
| 17 | When compiling Perl, you must use an ANSI C compiler. AIX does not ship |
| 18 | an ANSI compliant C-compiler with AIX by default, but binary builds of |
| 19 | gcc for AIX are widely available. |
| 20 | |
| 21 | At the moment of writing, AIX supports two different native C compilers, |
| 22 | for which you have to pay: B<xlC> and B<vac>. If you decide to use either |
| 23 | of these two (which is quite a lot easier than using gcc), be sure to |
| 24 | upgrade to the latest available patch level. Currently: |
| 25 | |
| 26 | xlC.C 3.1.4.10 or 3.6.6.0 or 5.0.2.6 |
| 27 | vac.C 4.4.0.3 or 5.0.2.4 |
| 28 | |
| 29 | Perl can be compiled with either IBM's ANSI C compiler or with gcc. |
| 30 | The former is recommended, as not only can it compile Perl with no |
| 31 | difficulty, but also can take advantage of features listed later that |
| 32 | require the use of IBM compiler-specific command-line flags. |
| 33 | |
| 34 | The IBM's compiler patch levels 5.0.0.0 and 5.0.1.0 have compiler |
| 35 | optimization bugs that affect compiling perl.c and regcomp.c, |
| 36 | respectively. If Perl's configuration detects those compiler patch |
| 37 | levels, optimization is turned off for the said source code files. |
| 38 | Upgrading to at least 5.0.2.0 is recommended. |
| 39 | |
| 40 | If you decide to use gcc, make sure your installation is recent and |
| 41 | complete, and be sure to read the Perl README file for more gcc-specific |
| 42 | details. Please report any hoops you had to jump through to the development |
| 43 | team. |
| 44 | |
| 45 | =head2 OS level |
| 46 | |
| 47 | Before installing the patches to the IBM C-compiler you need to know the |
| 48 | level of patching for the Operating System. IBM's command 'oslevel' will |
| 49 | show the base, but is not always complete (in this example oslevel shows |
| 50 | 4.3.NULL, whereas the system might run most of 4.3.THREE): |
| 51 | |
| 52 | # oslevel |
| 53 | 4.3.0.0 |
| 54 | # lslpp -l | grep 'bos.rte ' |
| 55 | bos.rte 4.3.3.75 COMMITTED Base Operating System Runtime |
| 56 | bos.rte 4.3.2.0 COMMITTED Base Operating System Runtime |
| 57 | # |
| 58 | |
| 59 | The same might happen to AIX 5.1 or other OS levels. As a side note, perl |
| 60 | cannot be built without bos.adt.syscalls and bos.adt.libm installed |
| 61 | |
| 62 | # lslpp -l | egrep "syscalls|libm" |
| 63 | bos.adt.libm 5.1.0.25 COMMITTED Base Application Development |
| 64 | bos.adt.syscalls 5.1.0.25 COMMITTED System Calls Application |
| 65 | # |
| 66 | |
| 67 | =head2 Building Dynamic Extensions on AIX |
| 68 | |
| 69 | AIX supports dynamically loadable objects as well as shared libraries. |
| 70 | Shared libraries by convention end with the suffix .a, which is a bit |
| 71 | misleading, as an archive can contain static as well as dynamic members. |
| 72 | For perl dynamically loaded objects we use the .so suffix also used on |
| 73 | many other platforms. |
| 74 | |
| 75 | Note that starting from Perl 5.7.2 (and consequently 5.8.0) and AIX 4.3 |
| 76 | or newer Perl uses the AIX native dynamic loading interface in the so |
| 77 | called runtime linking mode instead of the emulated interface that was |
| 78 | used in Perl releases 5.6.1 and earlier or, for AIX releases 4.2 and |
| 79 | earlier. This change does break backward compatibility with compiled |
| 80 | modules from earlier perl releases. The change was made to make Perl |
| 81 | more compliant with other applications like Apache/mod_perl which are |
| 82 | using the AIX native interface. This change also enables the use of C++ |
| 83 | code with static constructors and destructors in perl extensions, which |
| 84 | was not possible using the emulated interface. |
| 85 | |
| 86 | =head2 The IBM ANSI C Compiler |
| 87 | |
| 88 | All defaults for Configure can be used. |
| 89 | |
| 90 | If you've chosen to use vac 4, be sure to run 4.4.0.3. Older versions |
| 91 | will turn up nasty later on. For vac 5 be sure to run at least 5.0.1.0, |
| 92 | but vac 5.0.2.3 or up is highly recommended. Note that since IBM has |
| 93 | removed vac 5.0.2.1 and 5.0.2.2 from the software depot, these versions |
| 94 | should be considered obsolete. |
| 95 | |
| 96 | Here's a brief lead of how to upgrade the compiler to the latest |
| 97 | level. Of course this is subject to changes. You can only upgrade |
| 98 | versions from ftp-available updates if the first three digit groups |
| 99 | are the same (in where you can skip intermediate unlike the patches |
| 100 | in the developer snapshots of perl), or to one version up where the |
| 101 | `base' is available. In other words, the AIX compiler patches are |
| 102 | cumulative. |
| 103 | |
| 104 | vac.C.4.4.0.1 => vac.C.4.4.0.3 is OK (vac.C.4.4.0.2 not needed) |
| 105 | xlC.C.3.1.3.3 => xlC.C.3.1.4.10 is NOT OK (xlC.C.3.1.4.0 is not available) |
| 106 | |
| 107 | # ftp ftp.software.ibm.com |
| 108 | Connected to service.boulder.ibm.com. |
| 109 | : welcome message ... |
| 110 | Name (ftp.software.ibm.com:merijn): anonymous |
| 111 | 331 Guest login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password. |
| 112 | Password: |
| 113 | ... accepted login stuff |
| 114 | ftp> cd /aix/fixes/v4/ |
| 115 | ftp> dir other other.ll |
| 116 | output to local-file: other.ll? y |
| 117 | 200 PORT command successful. |
| 118 | 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls. |
| 119 | 226 Transfer complete. |
| 120 | ftp> dir xlc xlc.ll |
| 121 | output to local-file: xlc.ll? y |
| 122 | 200 PORT command successful. |
| 123 | 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls. |
| 124 | 226 Transfer complete. |
| 125 | ftp> bye |
| 126 | ... goodbye messages |
| 127 | # ls -l *.ll |
| 128 | -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn system 1169432 Nov 2 17:29 other.ll |
| 129 | -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn system 29170 Nov 2 17:29 xlc.ll |
| 130 | |
| 131 | On AIX 4.2 using xlC, we continue: |
| 132 | |
| 133 | # lslpp -l | fgrep 'xlC.C ' |
| 134 | xlC.C 3.1.4.9 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler |
| 135 | xlC.C 3.1.4.0 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler |
| 136 | # grep 'xlC.C.3.1.4.*.bff' xlc.ll |
| 137 | -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6286336 Jul 22 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.1.bff |
| 138 | -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6173696 Aug 24 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.10.bff |
| 139 | -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6319104 Aug 14 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.2.bff |
| 140 | -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6316032 Oct 21 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.3.bff |
| 141 | -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6315008 Dec 20 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.4.bff |
| 142 | -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6178816 Mar 28 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.5.bff |
| 143 | -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6188032 May 22 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.6.bff |
| 144 | -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6191104 Sep 5 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.7.bff |
| 145 | -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6185984 Jan 13 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.8.bff |
| 146 | -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6169600 May 27 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.9.bff |
| 147 | # wget ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/fixes/v4/xlc/xlC.C.3.1.4.10.bff |
| 148 | # |
| 149 | |
| 150 | On AIX 4.3 using vac, we continue: |
| 151 | |
| 152 | # lslpp -l | grep 'vac.C ' |
| 153 | vac.C 5.0.2.2 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler |
| 154 | vac.C 5.0.2.0 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler |
| 155 | # grep 'vac.C.5.0.2.*.bff' other.ll |
| 156 | -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 13592576 Apr 16 2001 vac.C.5.0.2.0.bff |
| 157 | -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 14133248 Apr 9 2002 vac.C.5.0.2.3.bff |
| 158 | -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 14173184 May 20 2002 vac.C.5.0.2.4.bff |
| 159 | # wget ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/fixes/v4/other/vac.C.5.0.2.4.bff |
| 160 | # |
| 161 | |
| 162 | Likewise on all other OS levels. Then execute the following command, and |
| 163 | fill in its choices |
| 164 | |
| 165 | # smit install_update |
| 166 | -> Install and Update from LATEST Available Software |
| 167 | * INPUT device / directory for software [ vac.C.5.0.2.4.bff ] |
| 168 | [ OK ] |
| 169 | [ OK ] |
| 170 | |
| 171 | Follow the messages ... and you're done. |
| 172 | |
| 173 | =head2 Using GNU's gcc for building perl |
| 174 | |
| 175 | Using gcc-3.0 (tested with 3.0.4) now works out of the box, as do |
| 176 | recent gcc-2.9 builds available directly from IBM as part of their Linux |
| 177 | compatibility packages, available here: |
| 178 | |
| 179 | http://www.ibm.com/servers/aix/products/aixos/linux/ |
| 180 | |
| 181 | =head2 Using Large Files with Perl |
| 182 | |
| 183 | Should yield no problems. |
| 184 | |
| 185 | =head2 Threaded Perl |
| 186 | |
| 187 | Threads seem to work OK, though at the moment not all tests pass when |
| 188 | threads are used in combination with 64bit configurations. |
| 189 | |
| 190 | =head2 64-bit Perl |
| 191 | |
| 192 | If your AIX is installed with 64-bit support, you can expect 64bit |
| 193 | configurations to work. In combination with threads some tests might |
| 194 | still fail. |
| 195 | |
| 196 | =head2 AIX 4.2 and extensions using C++ with statics |
| 197 | |
| 198 | In AIX 4.2 Perl extensions that use C++ functions that use statics |
| 199 | may have problems in that the statics are not getting initialized. |
| 200 | In newer AIX releases this has been solved by linking Perl with |
| 201 | the libC_r library, but unfortunately in AIX 4.2 the said library |
| 202 | has an obscure bug where the various functions related to time |
| 203 | (such as time() and gettimeofday()) return broken values, and |
| 204 | therefore in AIX 4.2 Perl is not linked against the libC_r. |
| 205 | |
| 206 | =head1 AUTHOR |
| 207 | |
| 208 | H.Merijn Brand <h.m.brand@hccnet.nl> |
| 209 | |
| 210 | =head1 DATE |
| 211 | |
| 212 | Version 0.0.5: 22 May 2002 |
| 213 | |
| 214 | =cut |