| 1 | If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you |
| 2 | see. It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is |
| 3 | specially designed to be readable as is. |
| 4 | |
| 5 | =head1 NAME |
| 6 | |
| 7 | README.machten - Perl version 5 on Power MachTen systems |
| 8 | |
| 9 | =head1 DESCRIPTION |
| 10 | |
| 11 | This document describes how to build Perl 5 on Power MachTen systems, |
| 12 | and discusses a few wrinkles in the implementation. |
| 13 | |
| 14 | =head2 Perl version 5.8.x and greater not supported |
| 15 | |
| 16 | B<Power MachTen is not supported by versions of Perl later than |
| 17 | 5.6.x.> |
| 18 | If you wish to build a version from the 5.6 track, please |
| 19 | obtain a source distribution from the archive at |
| 20 | L<http://cpan.org/src/5.0/> and follow the instructions in its |
| 21 | README.machten file. |
| 22 | |
| 23 | MachTen is no longer supported by its developers, Tenon Intersystems. |
| 24 | A UNIX environment hosted on Mac OS Classic, MachTen has been |
| 25 | superseded by Mac OS X and by BSD and Linux implementations for Macintosh |
| 26 | hardware. |
| 27 | The final version of Power MachTen, 4.1.4, lacks many features found in |
| 28 | modern implementations of UNIX, and has a number of bugs. |
| 29 | These shortcomings prevent recent versions of Perl from being able to use |
| 30 | extensions on MachTen, and cause numerous test suite failures in the |
| 31 | perl core. |
| 32 | |
| 33 | In September 2003, a discussion on the MachTen mailing list determined |
| 34 | that there was no interest in making a later version of Perl build |
| 35 | successfully on MachTen. |
| 36 | Consequently, support for building Perl under MachTen has been suppressed |
| 37 | in Perl distributions published after February 2004. |
| 38 | The hints file, F<hints/machten.sh>, remains a part of the |
| 39 | distributions for reference purposes. |
| 40 | |
| 41 | =head2 Compiling Perl 5.6.x on MachTen |
| 42 | |
| 43 | To compile perl 5.6.x under MachTen 4.1.4 (and probably earlier versions): |
| 44 | |
| 45 | ./Configure -de |
| 46 | make |
| 47 | make test |
| 48 | make install |
| 49 | |
| 50 | This builds and installs a statically-linked perl; MachTen's dynamic |
| 51 | linking facilities are not adequate to support Perl's use of |
| 52 | dynamically linked libraries. (See F<hints/machten.sh> for more |
| 53 | information.) |
| 54 | |
| 55 | You should have at least 32 megabytes of free memory on your |
| 56 | system before running the C<make> command. |
| 57 | |
| 58 | For much more information on building perl -- for example, on how to |
| 59 | change the default installation directory -- see F<INSTALL>. |
| 60 | |
| 61 | =head2 Failures during C<make test> on MachTen |
| 62 | |
| 63 | =over 4 |
| 64 | |
| 65 | =item op/lexassign.t |
| 66 | |
| 67 | This test may fail when first run after building perl. It does not |
| 68 | fail subsequently. The cause is unknown. |
| 69 | |
| 70 | =item pragma/warnings.t |
| 71 | |
| 72 | Test 257 fails due to a failure to warn about attempts to read from a |
| 73 | filehandle which is a duplicate of stdout when stdout is attached to a |
| 74 | pipe. The output of the test contains a block comment which discusses |
| 75 | a different failure, not applicable to MachTen. |
| 76 | |
| 77 | The root of the problem is that Machten does not assign a file type to |
| 78 | either end of a pipe (see L<stat>), resulting, among other things |
| 79 | in Perl's C<-p> test failing on file descriptors belonging to pipes. |
| 80 | As a result, perl becomes confused, and the test for reading from a |
| 81 | write-only file fails. I am reluctant to patch perl to get around |
| 82 | this, as it's clearly an OS bug (about which Tenon has been informed), |
| 83 | and limited in its effect on practical Perl programs. |
| 84 | |
| 85 | =back |
| 86 | |
| 87 | =head2 Building external modules on MachTen |
| 88 | |
| 89 | To add an external module to perl, build in the normal way, which |
| 90 | is documented in L<ExtUtils::MakeMaker>, or which can be driven |
| 91 | automatically by the CPAN module (see L<CPAN>), which is part of the |
| 92 | standard distribution. If you want to install a module which |
| 93 | contains XS code (C or C++ source which compiles to object code |
| 94 | for linking with perl), you will have to replace your perl binary with |
| 95 | a new version containing the new statically-linked object module. The |
| 96 | build process tells you how to do this. |
| 97 | |
| 98 | There is a gotcha, however, which users usually encounter immediately |
| 99 | they respond to CPAN's invitation to C<install Bundle::CPAN>. When |
| 100 | installing a I<bundle> -- a group of modules which together achieve |
| 101 | some particular purpose, the installation process for later modules in |
| 102 | the bundle tends to assume that earlier modules have been fully |
| 103 | installed and are available for use. This is not true on a |
| 104 | statically-linked system for earlier modules which contain XS code. |
| 105 | As a result the installation of the bundle fails. The work-around is |
| 106 | not to install the bundle as a one-shot operation, but instead to see |
| 107 | what modules it contains, and install these one-at-a-time by hand in |
| 108 | the order given. |
| 109 | |
| 110 | =head1 AUTHOR |
| 111 | |
| 112 | Dominic Dunlop <domo@computer.org> |
| 113 | |
| 114 | =head1 DATE |
| 115 | |
| 116 | Version 1.1.0 2004-02-13 |