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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
5=head1 NAME
6
7Install - Build and Installation guide for perl 5.
8
9=head1 SYNOPSIS
10
11First, make sure you have an up-to-date version of Perl. If you
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
14subreleases (like 5.8.x and 5.10.x) are stable maintenance releases and
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.
20
21The basic steps to build and install perl 5 on a Unix system with all
22the defaults are to run, from a freshly unpacked source tree:
23
24 sh Configure -de
25 make
26 make test
27 make install
28
29Each of these is explained in further detail below.
30
31The above commands will install Perl to /usr/local (or some other
32platform-specific directory -- see the appropriate file in hints/.)
33If that's not okay with you, you can run Configure interactively, by
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".
38
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
44These options, and many more, are explained in further detail below.
45
46If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
47L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
48
49For information on what's new in this release, see the
50pod/perldelta.pod file. For more information about how to find more
51specific detail about changes, see the Changes file.
52
53=head1 DESCRIPTION
54
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
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
63 F<file> A filename
64
65Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
66you should probably at least skim through this document before
67proceeding.
68
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
72system (in the hints/ directory) you might also want to read it
73for even more information.
74
75For additional information about porting Perl, see the section on
76L<"Porting information"> below, and look at the files in the Porting/
77directory.
78
79=head1 PRELIMINARIES
80
81=head2 Changes and Incompatibilities
82
83Please see pod/perldelta.pod for a description of the changes and
84potential incompatibilities introduced with this release. A few of
85the most important issues are listed below, but you should refer
86to pod/perldelta.pod for more detailed information.
87
88B<WARNING:> This version is not binary compatible with prior releases of Perl.
89If you have built extensions (i.e. modules that include C code)
90using an earlier version of Perl, you will need to rebuild and reinstall
91those extensions.
92
93Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
94without reinstallation. See the discussion below on
95L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> for more details.
96
97The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
98
99On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the changes
100in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
101pod/perldelta.pod for a description of what's changed. See your
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.
105
106=head1 Run Configure
107
108Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
109things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
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
115At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
116defaults from then on.
117
118After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
119*.SH files and offer to run make depend.
120
121The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
122files.
123
124=head2 Common Configure options
125
126Configure supports a number of useful options. Run
127
128 Configure -h
129
130to get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
131Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
132
133=over 4
134
135=item C compiler
136
137To compile with gcc, if it's not the default compiler on your
138system, you should run
139
140 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
141
142This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or any another alternative
143compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
144
145=item Installation prefix
146
147By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
148/usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
149and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below for
150further details.)
151
152You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
153directory when Configure prompts you, or by using the Configure command
154line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
155
156 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
157
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
162for more details. Do not include a trailing slash, (i.e. /opt/perl/)
163or you may experience odd test failures.
164
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.
168
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
173/usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
174careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
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
182spaces in arguments to Configure. For that, you have to look carefully
183at config_arg1, config_arg2, etc.)
184
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
187
188 Configure -Dinstallusrbinperl
189
190or by answering 'yes' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
191
192In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to put
193(symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
194into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
195obvious and convenient place.
196
197=item Building a development release
198
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.
204
205=back
206
207If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
208output, you can run
209
210 sh Configure -des
211
212=head2 Altering Configure variables for C compiler switches etc.
213
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:
220
221 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_EXTERNAL_GLOB -DNO_HASH_SEED"
222
223To clarify, those ccflags values are not Configure options; if passed to
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.
227
228For more help on Configure switches, run
229
230 sh Configure -h
231
232=head2 Major Configure-time Build Options
233
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.
238
239=head3 Threads
240
241On some platforms, perl can be compiled with support for threads. To
242enable this, run
243
244 sh Configure -Dusethreads
245
246The default is to compile without thread support.
247
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
252(5005threads) was removed for release 5.10.
253
254The 'threads' module is for use with the ithreads implementation. The
255'Thread' module emulates the old 5005threads interface on top of the current
256ithreads model.
257
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
264C<-Accflags=-DPERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE=65536>.
265
266=head3 Large file support
267
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.
271
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
277will happen.
278
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.
283
284If you want to compile perl without large file support, use
285
286 sh Configure -Uuselargefiles
287
288=head3 64 bit support
289
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>,
292you can build a perl that uses 64 bits.
293
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.
298
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.
306
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.
313
314Natively 64-bit systems need neither -Duse64bitint nor -Duse64bitall.
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*
318options is planned for a future release of perl.
319
320=head3 Long doubles
321
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).
326
327=head3 "more bits"
328
329You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
330and the long double support.
331
332=head3 Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Hashes
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,
336enabling a "Denial of Service" attack against Perl. Such hashes may be
337a problem for example for mod_perl sites, sites with Perl CGI scripts
338and web services, that process data originating from external sources.
339
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
362example by using C<Configure -Accflags=-DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT>), in
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.
366
367B<Perl has never guaranteed any ordering of the hash keys>, and the
368ordering has already changed several times during the lifetime of Perl
3695. Also, the ordering of hash keys has always been, and continues to
370be, affected by the insertion order. Note that because of this
371randomisation for example the Data::Dumper results will be different
372between different runs of Perl, since Data::Dumper by default dumps
373hashes "unordered". The use of the Data::Dumper C<Sortkeys> option is
374recommended.
375
376=head3 SOCKS
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
381Version 5. The corresponding Configure option is -Dusesocks.
382You can find more about SOCKS from wikipedia at
383L<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOCKS>.
384
385=head3 Dynamic Loading
386
387By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading.
388If you want to force perl to be compiled completely
389statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
390you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
391With this option, you won't be able to use any new extension
392(XS) module without recompiling perl itself.
393
394=head3 Building a shared Perl library
395
396Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
397linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
398extensions, and various extra libraries, such as -lm.
399
400On systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
401replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
402several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
403different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
404you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
405can share the same library.
406
407The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
408penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
409mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
410and upgrades.
411
412In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
413test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
414Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
415results.
416
417The default name for the shared library is typically something like
418libperl.so.5.8.8 (for Perl 5.8.8), or libperl.so.588, or simply
419libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
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
424You can elect to build a shared libperl by
425
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
444 cd t; ./perl -MTestInit misc/failing_test.t
445
446or
447
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:
466
467 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
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
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
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
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()>
503by compiling with C<-Accflags="-DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV">, see section
504L</"Altering Configure variables for C compiler switches etc.">.
505You can force an embedded perl to use direct manipulation by setting
506C<PL_use_safe_putenv = 0;> after the C<perl_construct()> call.
507
508=head2 Installation Directories
509
510The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
511appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the installation
512questions are near the beginning of Configure. Do not include trailing
513slashes on directory names. At any point during the Configure process,
514you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use the defaults
515from then on. Alternatively, you can
516
517 grep '^install' config.sh
518
519after Configure has run to verify the installation paths.
520
521The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
522people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
523distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
524need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
525you can safely skip the next section.
526
527The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
528
529=over 4
530
531=item Directories for the perl distribution
532
533By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.13.9.
534$version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
5355.13.9 or 5.9.5, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
536determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
537variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
538
539 Configure variable Default value
540 $prefixexp /usr/local
541 $binexp $prefixexp/bin
542 $scriptdirexp $prefixexp/bin
543 $privlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version
544 $archlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
545 $man1direxp $prefixexp/man/man1
546 $man3direxp $prefixexp/man/man3
547 $html1direxp (none)
548 $html3direxp (none)
549
550$prefixexp is generated from $prefix, with ~ expansion done to convert home
551directories into absolute paths. Similarly for the other variables listed. As
552file system calls do not do this, you should always reference the ...exp
553variables, to support users who build perl in their home directory.
554
555Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
556/usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
557instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
558directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
559the common style is shown here.
560
561=item Directories for site-specific add-on files
562
563After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
564CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
565be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
566
567 Configure variable Default value
568 $siteprefixexp $prefixexp
569 $sitebinexp $siteprefixexp/bin
570 $sitescriptexp $siteprefixexp/bin
571 $sitelibexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
572 $sitearchexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
573 $siteman1direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man1
574 $siteman3direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man3
575 $sitehtml1direxp (none)
576 $sitehtml3direxp (none)
577
578By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
579modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
580
581=item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
582
583Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
584distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
585for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
586
587 Configure variable Default value
588 $vendorprefixexp (none)
589 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
590 $vendorbinexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
591 $vendorscriptexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
592 $vendorlibexp
593 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
594 $vendorarchexp
595 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
596 $vendorman1direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man1
597 $vendorman3direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man3
598 $vendorhtml1direxp (none)
599 $vendorhtml3direxp (none)
600
601These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
602a vendor might choose the following settings:
603
604 $prefix /usr
605 $siteprefix /usr/local
606 $vendorprefix /usr
607
608This would have the effect of setting the following:
609
610 $binexp /usr/bin
611 $scriptdirexp /usr/bin
612 $privlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version
613 $archlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
614 $man1direxp /usr/man/man1
615 $man3direxp /usr/man/man3
616
617 $sitebinexp /usr/local/bin
618 $sitescriptexp /usr/local/bin
619 $sitelibexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
620 $sitearchexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
621 $siteman1direxp /usr/local/man/man1
622 $siteman3direxp /usr/local/man/man3
623
624 $vendorbinexp /usr/bin
625 $vendorscriptexp /usr/bin
626 $vendorlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
627 $vendorarchexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
628 $vendorman1direxp /usr/man/man1
629 $vendorman3direxp /usr/man/man3
630
631Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
632/usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
633the /usr/local hierarchy.
634
635The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
636version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
637However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
638installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
639See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below for more details
640on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
641
642Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
643example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
644are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
645site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
646network. One way to do that would be something like
647
648 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
649
650=item otherlibdirs
651
652As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
653variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
654directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
655Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
656version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
657
658For example, if you have a bundle of perl libraries from a previous
659installation, perhaps in a strange place:
660
661 Configure -Dotherlibdirs=/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1
662
663=item APPLLIB_EXP
664
665There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
666that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
667separated list of directories, like this
668
669 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
670
671The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
672ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
673modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
674touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
675version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
676present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
677directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
678run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
679
680=item usesitecustomize
681
682Run-time customization of @INC can be enabled with:
683
684 sh Configure -Dusesitecustomize
685
686which will define USE_SITECUSTOMIZE and $Config{usesitecustomize}.
687When enabled, this makes perl run F<$sitelibexp/sitecustomize.pl> before
688anything else. This script can then be set up to add additional
689entries to @INC.
690
691=item Man Pages
692
693By default, man pages will be installed in $man1dir and $man3dir, which
694are normally /usr/local/man/man1 and /usr/local/man/man3. If you
695want to use a .3pm suffix for perl man pages, you can do that with
696
697 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
698
699=item HTML pages
700
701Currently, the standard perl installation does not do anything with
702HTML documentation, but that may change in the future. Further, some
703add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The html Configure
704variables listed above are provided if you wish to specify where such
705documents should be placed. The default is "none", but will likely
706eventually change to something useful based on user feedback.
707
708=back
709
710Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
711to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
712architectures.
713
714Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
715directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
716filesystem.
717
718Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
719development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
720discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below.
721
722If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
723library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
724suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
725
726Thus, for example, if you Configure with
727-Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.9.0 are
728
729 Configure variable Default value
730 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0
731 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0/$archname
732 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0
733 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0/$archname
734
735=head2 Changing the installation directory
736
737Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
738associated files) should be installed, and the directory in which it
739will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
740sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
741However, sites that use package management software such as rpm or
742dpkg, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
743wish to install perl into a different directory before moving perl
744to its final destination. There are two ways to do that:
745
746=over 4
747
748=item installprefix
749
750To install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory, use the following
751command line:
752
753 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
754
755(replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
756
757Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
758modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
759follow this example. That's why it's usually better to use DESTDIR,
760as shown in the next section.
761
762=item DESTDIR
763
764If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is convenient
765to compile it once and create an archive that can be installed on
766multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to create an
767archive that can be installed in /opt/perl. One way to do that is by
768using the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>. The DESTDIR is
769automatically prepended to all the installation paths. Thus you
770simply do:
771
772 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
773 make
774 make test
775 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
776 cd /tmp/perl5/opt/perl
777 tar cvf /tmp/perl5-archive.tar .
778
779=back
780
781=head2 Relocatable @INC
782
783To create a relocatable perl tree, use the following command line:
784
785 sh Configure -Duserelocatableinc
786
787Then the paths in @INC (and everything else in %Config) can be
788optionally located via the path of the perl executable.
789
790That means that, if the string ".../" is found at the start of any
791path, it's substituted with the directory of $^X. So, the relocation
792can be configured on a per-directory basis, although the default with
793"-Duserelocatableinc" is that everything is relocated. The initial
794install is done to the original configured prefix.
795
796This option is not compatible with the building of a shared libperl
797("-Duseshrplib"), because in that case perl is linked with an hard-coded
798rpath that points at the libperl.so, that cannot be relocated.
799
800=head2 Site-wide Policy settings
801
802After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
803answers (such as installation directories) in the Policy.sh file.
804If you want to build perl on another system using the same policy
805defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file to the new system's perl build
806directory, and Configure will use it. This will work even if Policy.sh was
807generated for another version of Perl, or on a system with a
808different architecture and/or operating system. However, in such cases,
809you should review the contents of the file before using it: for
810example, your new target may not keep its man pages in the same place
811as the system on which the file was generated.
812
813Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
814answers, you should
815
816 rm -f Policy.sh
817
818to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
819
820Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
821
822If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
823to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
824platform-specific hints files.
825
826=head2 Disabling older versions of Perl
827
828Configure will search for binary compatible versions of previously
829installed perl binaries in the tree that is specified as target tree,
830and these will be used as locations to search for modules by the perl
831being built. The list of perl versions found will be put in the Configure
832variable inc_version_list.
833
834To disable this use of older perl modules, even completely valid pure perl
835modules, you can specify to not include the paths found:
836
837 sh Configure -Dinc_version_list=none ...
838
839If you do want to use modules from some previous perl versions, the variable
840must contain a space separated list of directories under the site_perl
841directory, and has to include architecture-dependent directories separately,
842eg.
843
844 sh Configure -Dinc_version_list="5.12.0/x86_64-linux 5.12.0" ...
845
846When using the newer perl, you can add these paths again in the
847$PERL5LIB environment variable or with perl's -I runtime option.
848
849=head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
850
851Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
852where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
853read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
854architectures. You can do this (if your file system supports symbolic
855links) by
856
857 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
858 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
859 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
860
861This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
862pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
863unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
864
865 make
866 make test
867 make install
868
869as usual, and Perl will be built in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
870
871=head2 Building a debugging perl
872
873You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
874B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
875you probably want to have support for perl internal debugging code
876(activated by adding -DDEBUGGING to ccflags), and/or support for the
877system debugger by adding -g to the optimisation flags. For that,
878use the parameter:
879
880 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING
881
882or
883
884 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING=<mode>
885
886For a more eye appealing call, -DEBUGGING is defined to be an alias
887for -DDEBUGGING. For both, the -U calls are also supported, in order
888to be able to overrule the hints or Policy.sh settings.
889
890Here are the DEBUGGING modes:
891
892=over 4
893
894=item -DDEBUGGING
895
896=item -DEBUGGING
897
898=item -DEBUGGING=both
899
900Sets both -DDEBUGGING in the ccflags, and adds -g to optimize.
901
902You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently (see below),
903but usually it's convenient to have both.
904
905=item -DEBUGGING=-g
906
907=item -Doptimize=-g
908
909Adds -g to optimize, but does not set -DDEBUGGING.
910
911(Note: Your system may actually require something like cc -g2.
912Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for your system.)
913
914=item -DEBUGGING=none
915
916=item -UDEBUGGING
917
918Removes -g from optimize, and -DDEBUGGING from ccflags.
919
920=back
921
922If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
923versions of perl under L<Building a shared Perl library>.
924
925Note that a perl built with -DDEBUGGING will be bigger and will run more
926slowly than a standard perl.
927
928=head2 DTrace support
929
930On platforms where DTrace is available, it may be enabled by
931using the -Dusedtrace option to Configure. DTrace probes are available for
932subroutine entry (sub-entry) and subroutine exit (sub-exit). Here's a
933simple D script that uses them:
934
935 perl$target:::sub-entry, perl$target:::sub-return {
936 printf("%s %s (%s:%d)\n", probename == "sub-entry" ? "->" : "<-",
937 copyinstr(arg0), copyinstr(arg1), arg2);
938 }
939
940
941=head2 Extensions
942
943Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
944in the ext/ subdirectory.
945
946By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
947to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
948only if it is able to find the gdbm library.
949
950To disable certain extensions so that they are not built, use the
951-Dnoextensions=... and -Donlyextensions=... options. They both accept
952a space-separated list of extensions, such as C<IPC/SysV>. The extensions
953listed in
954C<noextensions> are removed from the list of extensions to build, while
955the C<onlyextensions> is rather more severe and builds only the listed
956extensions. The latter should be used with extreme caution since
957certain extensions are used by many other extensions and modules:
958examples of such modules include Fcntl and IO. The order of processing
959these options is first C<only> (if present), then C<no> (if present).
960
961Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
962the extensions you want.
963
964If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
965running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
966extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
967it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
968has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
969extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
970convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
971you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
972dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
973Another way of specifying extra modules is described in
974L<"Adding extra modules to the build"> below.
975
976If you re-use an old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
977adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
978for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
979you.
980
981=head2 Including locally-installed libraries
982
983Perl comes with interfaces to number of libraries, including threads,
984dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For the *db* extension, if
985Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
986automatically include that extension. The threading extension needs
987to be specified explicitly (see L<Threads>).
988
989Those libraries are not distributed with perl. If your header (.h) files
990for those libraries are not in a directory normally searched by your C
991compiler, then you will need to include the appropriate -I/your/directory
992option when prompted by Configure. If your libraries are not in a
993directory normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will
994need to include the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted
995by Configure. See the examples below.
996
997=head3 Examples
998
999=over 4
1000
1001=item gdbm in /usr/local
1002
1003Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
1004GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
1005installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
1006/usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
1007necessary steps out automatically.
1008
1009Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1010your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include, if it's
1011not here yet. Similarly, when Configure prompts you for linker flags,
1012you should include -L/usr/local/lib.
1013
1014If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
1015linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1016-L/usr/local/lib.
1017
1018Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1019you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1020/opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
1021
1022=item BerkeleyDB in /usr/local/BerkeleyDB
1023
1024The version of BerkeleyDB distributed by sleepycat.com installs in a
1025version-specific directory by default, typically something like
1026/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7. To have Configure find that, you need to add
1027-I/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/include to cc flags, as in the previous example,
1028and you will also have to take extra steps to help Configure find -ldb.
1029Specifically, when Configure prompts you for library directories,
1030add /usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib to the list. Also, you will need to
1031add appropriate linker flags to tell the runtime linker where to find the
1032BerkeleyDB shared libraries.
1033
1034It is possible to specify this from the command line (all on one
1035line):
1036
1037 sh Configure -de \
1038 -Dlocincpth='/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/include /usr/local/include' \
1039 -Dloclibpth='/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib /usr/local/lib' \
1040 -Aldflags='-R/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib'
1041
1042locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1043Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1044
1045loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
1046Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives.
1047
1048The addition to ldflags is so that the dynamic linker knows where to find
1049the BerkeleyDB libraries. For Linux and Solaris, the -R option does that.
1050Other systems may use different flags. Use the appropriate flag for your
1051system.
1052
1053=back
1054
1055=head2 Overriding an old config.sh
1056
1057If you want to use an old config.sh produced by a previous run of
1058Configure, but override some of the items with command line options, you
1059need to use B<Configure -O>.
1060
1061=head2 GNU-style configure
1062
1063If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
1064use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
1065
1066 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
1067
1068The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
1069options. Try
1070
1071 ./configure.gnu --help
1072
1073for a listing.
1074
1075(The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
1076that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
1077
1078=head2 Malloc Issues
1079
1080Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
1081so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
1082the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
1083version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
1084perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
1085than your system malloc.
1086
1087However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
1088experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
1089that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
1090(Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
1091
1092=over 4
1093
1094=item Using the system malloc
1095
1096To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
1097
1098 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
1099
1100or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
1101
1102Note that Perl's malloc isn't always used by default; that actually
1103depends on your system. For example, on Linux and FreeBSD (and many more
1104systems), Configure chooses to use the system's malloc by default.
1105See the appropriate file in the F<hints/> directory to see how the
1106default is set.
1107
1108=item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
1109
1110NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you just
1111run Configure to accept all the defaults.
1112
1113Perl's malloc family of functions are normally called Perl_malloc(),
1114Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree().
1115These names do not clash with the system versions of these functions.
1116
1117If this flag is enabled, however, Perl's malloc family of functions
1118will have the same names as the system versions. This may be required
1119sometimes if you have libraries that like to free() data that may have
1120been allocated by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1121
1122Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1123from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1124does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1125versions.
1126
1127=item -DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS
1128
1129This flag enables debugging mstats, which is required to use the
1130Devel::Peek::mstat() function. You cannot enable this unless you are
1131using Perl's malloc, so a typical Configure command would be
1132
1133 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS -Dusemymalloc
1134
1135to enable this option.
1136
1137=back
1138
1139=head2 What if it doesn't work?
1140
1141If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1142If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1143
1144=over 4
1145
1146=item Running Configure Interactively
1147
1148If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1149Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1150guesses.
1151
1152All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1153have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1154flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1155will use the defaults from then on.
1156
1157If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1158config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1159instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1160
1161=item Hint files
1162
1163Hint files tell Configure about a number of things:
1164
1165=over 4
1166
1167=item o
1168
1169The peculiarities or conventions of particular platforms -- non-standard
1170library locations and names, default installation locations for binaries,
1171and so on.
1172
1173=item o
1174
1175The deficiencies of the platform -- for example, library functions that,
1176although present, are too badly broken to be usable; or limits on
1177resources that are generously available on most platforms.
1178
1179=item o
1180
1181How best to optimize for the platform, both in terms of binary size and/or
1182speed, and for Perl feature support. Because of wide variations in the
1183implementation of shared libraries and of threading, for example, Configure
1184often needs hints in order to be able to use these features.
1185
1186=back
1187
1188The perl distribution includes many system-specific hints files
1189in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1190will offer to use that hint file. Unless you have a very good reason
1191not to, you should accept its offer.
1192
1193Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1194If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1195for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1196More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
1197file, which also explains hint files known as callback-units.
1198
1199Note that any hint file is read before any Policy file, meaning that
1200Policy overrides hints -- see L</Site-wide Policy settings>.
1201
1202=item WHOA THERE!!!
1203
1204If you are re-using an old config.sh, it's possible that Configure detects
1205different values from the ones specified in this file. You will almost
1206always want to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something
1207on your system.
1208
1209For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1210and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1211Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1212Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1213issue a message:
1214
1215 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1216 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1217 Keep the previous value? [y]
1218
1219In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1220should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1221the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1222
1223=item Changing Compilers
1224
1225If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1226probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1227rename it, then rerun Configure with the options you want to use.
1228
1229=item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1230
1231If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1232them to all the .SH files by running
1233
1234 sh Configure -S
1235
1236You will then have to rebuild by running
1237
1238 make depend
1239 make
1240
1241=item config.over and config.arch
1242
1243You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride
1244Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1245before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1246however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1247This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1248
1249There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1250config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1251architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1252hints file that creates the config.arch.
1253
1254=item config.h
1255
1256Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1257Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1258The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1259
1260If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1261though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1262lost.
1263
1264=item cflags
1265
1266If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1267line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1268optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1269toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1270can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1271lost the next time you run Configure.
1272
1273To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1274see the file hints/README.hints.
1275
1276To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1277$ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1278
1279 sh Configure -S
1280 make depend
1281
1282=item No sh
1283
1284If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1285Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1286system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1287You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1288mechanism.
1289
1290=item Porting information
1291
1292Specific information for the OS/2, Plan 9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1293corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1294including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1295subdirectory. Porting/Glossary should especially come in handy.
1296
1297Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1298http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
1299various other operating systems.
1300
1301If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture, study carefully the
1302section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1303in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file pod/perlrepository.pod.
1304Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1305
1306=back
1307
1308=head2 Adding extra modules to the build
1309
1310You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1311CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1312command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1313
1314 Configure -Dextras="Bundle::LWP DBI"
1315
1316or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
1317then answer "Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
1318The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
1319This will only work if those modules are to be built as dynamic
1320extensions. If you wish to include those extra modules as static
1321extensions, see L<"Extensions"> above.
1322
1323Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1324modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1325or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1326do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1327
1328Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1329dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
1330For example: you will need to have the Foo database specific
1331headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1332process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1333
1334=head2 suidperl
1335
1336suidperl was an optional component of earlier releases of perl. It is no
1337longer available. Instead, use a tool specifically designed to handle
1338changes in privileges, such as B<sudo>.
1339
1340=head1 make depend
1341
1342This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1343The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1344the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1345makefile, not Makefile, since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1346(On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1347Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1348
1349Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1350explicitly above.
1351
1352=head1 make
1353
1354This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1355
1356=head2 Expected errors
1357
1358These error reports are normal, and can be ignored:
1359
1360 ...
1361 make: [extra.pods] Error 1 (ignored)
1362 ...
1363 make: [extras.make] Error 1 (ignored)
1364
1365=head2 What if it doesn't work?
1366
1367If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1368If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1369the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1370then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1371
1372=over 4
1373
1374=item hints
1375
1376If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1377for further tips and information.
1378
1379=item extensions
1380
1381If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1382during the building of extensions, run
1383
1384 make minitest
1385
1386to test your version of miniperl.
1387
1388=item locale
1389
1390If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1391them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1392running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1393See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1394whole L<perllocale/"LOCALE PROBLEMS"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1395The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1396
1397 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1398 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1399 LC_ALL = "En_US",
1400 LANG = (unset)
1401 are supported and installed on your system.
1402 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1403
1404at Perl startup.
1405
1406=item other environment variables
1407
1408Configure does not check for environment variables that can sometimes
1409have a major influence on how perl is built or tested. For example,
1410OBJECT_MODE on AIX determines the way the compiler and linker deal with
1411their objects, but this is a variable that only influences build-time
1412behaviour, and should not affect the perl scripts that are eventually
1413executed by the perl binary. Other variables, like PERL_UNICODE,
1414PERL5LIB, and PERL5OPT will influence the behaviour of the test suite.
1415So if you are getting strange test failures, you may want to try
1416retesting with the various PERL variables unset.
1417
1418=item varargs
1419
1420If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1421correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1422gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1423in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by installing gcc
1424correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1425your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1426See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1427
1428=item util.c
1429
1430If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1431numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1432
1433 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1434 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1435 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1436
1437it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1438previous L<"varargs"> item.
1439
1440=item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1441
1442If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1443the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1444Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1445fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1446of your local set-up.
1447
1448=item nm extraction
1449
1450If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1451try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1452with
1453
1454 sh Configure -Uusenm
1455
1456or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1457If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1458config.sh.
1459
1460=item umask not found
1461
1462If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1463is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1464Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1465this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1466try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1467
1468=item vsprintf
1469
1470If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1471problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1472version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1473(Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1474d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1475
1476 d_vprintf='define'
1477
1478If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1479on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1480the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1481
1482=item do_aspawn
1483
1484If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1485problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1486fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1487on L<"nm extraction">.
1488
1489=item __inet_* errors
1490
1491If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1492referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1493installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1494these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1495in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1496newer version of BIND (and remove the files the old one left behind).
1497If you can't, you can either link with the updated resolver library provided
1498with BIND 8.1 or rename /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and
1499test process to avoid the problem.
1500
1501=item .*_r() prototype NOT found
1502
1503On a related note, if you see a bunch of complaints like the above about
1504reentrant functions - specifically networking-related ones - being present
1505but without prototypes available, check to see if BIND 8.1 (or possibly
1506other BIND 8 versions) is (or has been) installed. They install
1507header files such as netdb.h into places such as /usr/local/include (or into
1508another directory as specified at build/install time), at least optionally.
1509Remove them or put them in someplace that isn't in the C preprocessor's
1510header file include search path (determined by -I options plus defaults,
1511normally /usr/include).
1512
1513=item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1514
1515This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1516gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1517changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1518rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1519update your gcc installation.
1520
1521=item Optimizer
1522
1523If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1524optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1525
1526 optimize='-O'
1527
1528to
1529
1530 optimize=' '
1531
1532then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1533with B<make depend; make>.
1534
1535=item Missing functions and Undefined symbols
1536
1537If the build of miniperl fails with a long list of missing functions or
1538undefined symbols, check the libs variable in the config.sh file. It
1539should look something like
1540
1541 libs='-lsocket -lnsl -ldl -lm -lc'
1542
1543The exact libraries will vary from system to system, but you typically
1544need to include at least the math library -lm. Normally, Configure
1545will suggest the correct defaults. If the libs variable is empty, you
1546need to start all over again. Run
1547
1548 make distclean
1549
1550and start from the very beginning. This time, unless you are sure of
1551what you are doing, accept the default list of libraries suggested by
1552Configure.
1553
1554If the libs variable looks correct, you might have the
1555L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1556
1557If you stil have missing routines or undefined symbols, you probably
1558need to add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature
1559that Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete. If
1560you used a hint file, see if it has any relevant advice. You can also
1561look through through config.h for likely suspects.
1562
1563=item toke.c
1564
1565Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1566toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1567allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1568each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1569makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1570specific rule.
1571
1572=item Missing dbmclose
1573
1574SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1575that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1576
1577=item error: too few arguments to function 'dbmclose'
1578
1579Building ODBM_File on some (Open)SUSE distributions might run into this
1580error, as the header file is broken. There are two ways to deal with this
1581
1582 1. Disable the use of ODBM_FILE
1583
1584 Configure ... -Dnoextensions=ODBM_File
1585
1586 2. Fix the header file, somewhat like this:
1587
1588 --- a/usr/include/dbm.h 2010-03-24 08:54:59.000000000 +0100
1589 +++ b/usr/include/dbm.h 2010-03-24 08:55:15.000000000 +0100
1590 @@ -59,4 +59,4 @@ extern datum firstkey __P((void));
1591
1592 extern datum nextkey __P((datum key));
1593
1594 -extern int dbmclose __P((DBM *));
1595 +extern int dbmclose __P((void));
1596
1597=item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1598
1599If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1600the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1601then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1602Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1603systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1604Most users will see warnings for the ones they don't have. The
1605phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to reassure you that nothing
1606unusual is happening, and the build process is continuing.
1607
1608On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1609message
1610
1611 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1612
1613then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1614the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1615extension without the -lgdbm library.
1616
1617It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1618this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1619quite that tightly coordinated.
1620
1621=item sh: ar: not found
1622
1623This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1624was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1625make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1626is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1627directory.
1628
1629=item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1630
1631Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1632with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1633bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1634
1635=item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1636
1637If you get this error message from the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem test, your System
1638V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1639also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1640to include the System V semaphores.
1641
1642=item ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem........semget: No space left on device
1643
1644Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1645both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1646ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1647with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1648system.
1649
1650=item GNU binutils
1651
1652If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1653tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1654with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1655may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1656under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1657to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1658vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1659Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1660
1661=item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1662
1663The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1664make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1665archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1666C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1667archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1668incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1669official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1670that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1671archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1672
1673=item invalid token: ##
1674
1675You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. To compile Perl, you
1676need to use a compiler that supports ANSI C. If there is a README
1677file for your system, it may have further details on your compiler
1678options.
1679
1680=item Miscellaneous
1681
1682Some additional things that have been reported:
1683
1684Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1685
1686NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1687
1688UTS may need one or more of -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1689
1690FreeBSD can fail the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1691configured in the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1692you will get a message telling you what to do.
1693
1694Building Perl on a system that has also BIND (headers and libraries)
1695installed may run into troubles because BIND installs its own netdb.h
1696and socket.h, which may not agree with the operating system's ideas of
1697the same files. Similarly, including -lbind may conflict with libc's
1698view of the world. You may have to tweak -Dlocincpth and -Dloclibpth
1699to avoid the BIND.
1700
1701=back
1702
1703=head2 Cross-compilation
1704
1705Perl can be cross-compiled. It is just not trivial, cross-compilation
1706rarely is. Perl is routinely cross-compiled for many platforms (as of
1707June 2005 at least PocketPC aka WinCE, Open Zaurus, EPOC, Symbian, and
1708the IBM OS/400). These platforms are known as the B<target> platforms,
1709while the systems where the compilation takes place are the B<host>
1710platforms.
1711
1712What makes the situation difficult is that first of all,
1713cross-compilation environments vary significantly in how they are set
1714up and used, and secondly because the primary way of configuring Perl
1715(using the rather large Unix-tool-dependent Configure script) is not
1716awfully well suited for cross-compilation. However, starting from
1717version 5.8.0, the Configure script also knows one way of supporting
1718cross-compilation support, please keep reading.
1719
1720See the following files for more information about compiling Perl for
1721the particular platforms:
1722
1723=over 4
1724
1725=item WinCE/PocketPC
1726
1727README.ce
1728
1729=item Open Zaurus
1730
1731Cross/README
1732
1733=item EPOC
1734
1735README.epoc
1736
1737=item Symbian
1738
1739README.symbian
1740
1741=item OS/400
1742
1743README.os400
1744
1745=back
1746
1747Packaging and transferring either the core Perl modules or CPAN
1748modules to the target platform is also left up to the each
1749cross-compilation environment. Often the cross-compilation target
1750platforms are somewhat limited in diskspace: see the section
1751L<Minimizing the Perl installation> to learn more of the minimal set
1752of files required for a functional Perl installation.
1753
1754For some cross-compilation environments the Configure option
1755C<-Dinstallprefix=...> might be handy, see L<Changing the installation
1756directory>.
1757
1758About the cross-compilation support of Configure: what is known to
1759work is running Configure in a cross-compilation environment and
1760building the miniperl executable. What is known not to work is
1761building the perl executable because that would require building
1762extensions: Dynaloader statically and File::Glob dynamically, for
1763extensions one needs MakeMaker and MakeMaker is not yet
1764cross-compilation aware, and neither is the main Makefile.
1765
1766The cross-compilation setup of Configure has successfully been used in
1767at least two Linux cross-compilation environments. The setups were
1768both such that the host system was Intel Linux with a gcc built for
1769cross-compiling into ARM Linux, and there was a SSH connection to the
1770target system.
1771
1772To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch that
1773has to be used is C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
1774
1775 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1776
1777This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
1778symbol C<usecrosscompile> available, and C<xconfig.h> will be used
1779for cross-compilation.
1780
1781During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1782into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1783cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1784target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1785transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1786the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1787methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1788F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1789
1790To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1791the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1792happens), supply Configure with
1793
1794 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1795
1796The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
1797must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1798You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
1799
1800 -Dtargetuser=luser
1801
1802but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
1803
1804Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
1805which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
1806This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
1807In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
1808environment:
1809
1810 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
1811 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc
1812 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1813 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1814 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
1815
1816If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
1817compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
1818C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
1819(The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
1820as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
1821will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
1822in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
1823
1824In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
1825choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
1826for example:
1827
1828 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
1829
1830Putting it all together:
1831
1832 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1833 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1834 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
1835 -Dtargetuser=root \
1836 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
1837 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1838 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1839 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1840 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
1841 -D...
1842
1843or if you are happy with the defaults:
1844
1845 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1846 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1847 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1848 -D...
1849
1850Another example where the cross-compiler has been installed under
1851F</usr/local/arm/2.95.5>:
1852
1853 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1854 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1855 -Dcc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/bin/arm-linux-gcc \
1856 -Dincpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
1857 -Dusrinc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
1858 -Dlibpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/lib
1859
1860=head1 make test
1861
1862This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
1863'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
1864wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1865
1866Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1867opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1868a few tty tests will be skipped.
1869
1870=head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1871
1872If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1873by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1874bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1875
1876 ./perl -MTestInit t/op/groups.t
1877
1878Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1879individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1880
1881 cd t ; ./perl harness <list of tests>
1882
1883(this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1884complicated constructs). If no list of tests is provided, harness
1885will run all tests.
1886
1887You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1888comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
1889shared library path if you get errors like:
1890
1891 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
1892
1893See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
1894
1895=over 4
1896
1897=item locale
1898
1899Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1900may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1901'make test' exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1902one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1903LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1904are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1905
1906If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1907
1908 setenv LC_ALL C
1909
1910(for C shell) or
1911
1912 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1913
1914for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1915make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1916is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1917shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1918things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1919open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1920external program.
1921
1922=item Timing problems
1923
1924Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
1925sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
1926If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough,
1927these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again
1928with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive
1929and load-sensitive tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
1930F<ext/Time-HiRes/t/HiRes.t>, F<ext/threads-shared/t/waithires.t>,
1931F<ext/threads-shared/t/stress.t>, F<lib/Benchmark.t>,
1932F<lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t>, and F<lib/Memoize/t/speed.t>.
1933
1934You might also experience some failures in F<t/op/stat.t> if you build
1935perl on an NFS filesystem, if the remote clock and the system clock are
1936different.
1937
1938=item Out of memory
1939
1940On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1941of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
1942For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
1943test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
1944
1945Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1946
1947 cd t; ./perl -MTestInit op/pat.t
1948
1949to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1950test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1951tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1952and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1953
1954=item libgcc_s.so.1: cannot open shared object file
1955
1956This message has been reported on gcc-3.2.3 and earlier installed with
1957a non-standard prefix. Setting the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable
1958(or equivalent) to include gcc's lib/ directory with the libgcc_s.so.1
1959shared library should fix the problem.
1960
1961=item Failures from lib/File/Temp/t/security saying "system possibly insecure"
1962
1963First, such warnings are not necessarily serious or indicative of a
1964real security threat. That being said, they bear investigating.
1965
1966Note that each of the tests is run twice. The first time is in the
1967directory returned by File::Spec->tmpdir() (often /tmp on Unix
1968systems), and the second time in the directory from which the test was
1969run (usually the 't' directory, if the test was run as part of 'make
1970test').
1971
1972The tests may fail for the following reasons:
1973
1974(1) If the directory the tests are being run in is owned by somebody
1975other than the user running the tests, or by root (uid 0).
1976
1977This failure can happen if the Perl source code distribution is
1978unpacked in such a way that the user ids in the distribution package
1979are used as-is. Some tar programs do this.
1980
1981(2) If the directory the tests are being run in is writable by group or
1982by others, and there is no sticky bit set for the directory. (With
1983UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to a directory means the right to
1984add or remove files in that directory. The 'sticky bit' is a feature
1985used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if the bit is
1986set for a directory, no one but the owner (or root) can remove that
1987file even if the permissions would otherwise allow file removal by
1988others.)
1989
1990This failure may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the
1991permissions policy used on this particular system. This failure can
1992also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit (this
1993is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle File::Temp
1994should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or if the system
1995supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons it is not being
1996used. This is, for example, the case with HP-UX: as of HP-UX release
199711.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX doesn't use it
1998on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also, as with the permissions, some
1999local policy might dictate that the stickiness is not used.
2000
2001(3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
2002any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
2003directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
2004(2). For Unix systems, this is usually not an issue if you are
2005building on a local disk. See the documentation for the File::Temp
2006module for more information about 'chown giveaway'.
2007
2008See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
2009about the various security aspects of temporary files.
2010
2011=back
2012
2013The core distribution can now run its regression tests in parallel on
2014Unix-like platforms. Instead of running C<make test>, set C<TEST_JOBS> in
2015your environment to the number of tests to run in parallel, and run
2016C<make test_harness>. On a Bourne-like shell, this can be done as
2017
2018 TEST_JOBS=3 make test_harness # Run 3 tests in parallel
2019
2020An environment variable is used, rather than parallel make itself, because
2021L<TAP::Harness> needs to be able to schedule individual non-conflicting test
2022scripts itself, and there is no standard interface to C<make> utilities to
2023interact with their job schedulers.
2024
2025=head1 make install
2026
2027This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
2028Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
2029to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
2030pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
2031are not root, you must still have permission to install into the directories
2032in question and you should ignore any messages about chown not working.
2033
2034If "make install" just says "`install' is up to date" or something
2035similar, you may be on a case-insensitive filesystems such as Mac's HFS+,
2036and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion is brought to you
2037by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
2038
2039=head2 Installing perl under different names
2040
2041If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
2042when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
2043indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
2044
2045 make install PERLNAME=myperl
2046
2047You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
2048"perl5.8.9") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
2049
2050 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
2051
2052This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (e.g. to
2053avoid conflicts with an ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor).
2054Without this the versioned binary would be called "perl55.8.8".
2055
2056=head2 Installing perl under a different directory
2057
2058You can install perl under a different destination directory by using
2059the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>, with a command like
2060
2061 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
2062
2063DESTDIR is automatically prepended to all the installation paths. See
2064the example in L<"DESTDIR"> above.
2065
2066=head2 Installed files
2067
2068If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
2069anything, you can run
2070
2071 ./perl installperl -n
2072 ./perl installman -n
2073
2074make install will install the following:
2075
2076 binaries
2077
2078 perl,
2079 perl5.n.n where 5.n.n is the current release number. This
2080 will be a link to perl.
2081 suidperl,
2082 sperl5.n.n If you requested setuid emulation.
2083 a2p awk-to-perl translator
2084
2085 scripts
2086
2087 cppstdin This is used by the deprecated switch perl -P, if
2088 your cc -E can't read from stdin.
2089 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
2090 config_data Manage Module::Build-like module configuration
2091 corelist Shows versions of modules that come with different
2092 versions of perl
2093 cpan The CPAN shell
2094 cpan2dist The CPANPLUS distribution creator
2095 cpanp The CPANPLUS shell
2096 cpanp-run-perl An helper for cpanp
2097 dprofpp Perl code profiler post-processor
2098 enc2xs Encoding module generator
2099 find2perl find-to-perl translator
2100 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
2101 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
2102 instmodsh A shell to examine installed modules.
2103 libnetcfg Configure libnet.
2104 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
2105 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
2106 perlivp Perl Installation Verification Procedure
2107 piconv A Perl implementation of the encoding conversion
2108 utility iconv
2109 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
2110 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
2111 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
2112 pod2man,
2113 pod2text,
2114 pod2usage
2115 podchecker POD syntax checker
2116 podselect Prints sections of POD documentation
2117 prove A command-line tool for running tests
2118 psed A Perl implementation of sed
2119 ptar A Perl implementation of tar
2120 ptardiff A diff for tar archives
2121 ptargrep A grep for tar archives
2122 s2p sed-to-perl translator
2123 shasum A tool to print or check SHA checksums
2124 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
2125 xsubpp Compiler to convert Perl XS code into C code
2126
2127 library files
2128
2129 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
2130 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
2131
2132 documentation
2133
2134 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2135 module man
2136 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
2137 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2138
2139installperl will also create the directories listed above
2140in L<"Installation Directories">.
2141
2142Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
2143under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
2144optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2145program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
2146
2147=head2 Installing only version-specific parts
2148
2149Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2150installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
2151perl alongside an already installed production version without
2152disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2153To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2154
2155 Configure -Dversiononly
2156
2157or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2158you can just manually run
2159
2160 ./perl installperl -v
2161
2162and skip installman altogether.
2163
2164See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2165approach.
2166
2167=head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2168
2169Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2170system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2171header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2172by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2173library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2174
2175Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2176of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2177hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2178For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2179structures.
2180
2181=head1 installhtml --help
2182
2183Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2184format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2185documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2186
2187Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2188html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2189
2190The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2191perl documentation:
2192
2193 ./installhtml \
2194 --podroot=. \
2195 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2196 --recurse \
2197 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2198 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2199 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2200 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2201 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
2202 --verbose
2203
2204See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2205many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2206see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2207resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2208(and would welcome patches for them).
2209
2210You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2211the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2212
2213=head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2214
2215Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2216available in TeX format. Type
2217
2218 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2219
2220=head1 Starting all over again
2221
2222If you wish to re-build perl from the same build directory, you should
2223clean it out with the command
2224
2225 make distclean
2226
2227or
2228
2229 make realclean
2230
2231The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
2232your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
2233
2234If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
2235change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
2236you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should not re-use
2237your old config.sh.
2238
2239If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
2240installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
2241using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
2242settings"> above.
2243
2244=head1 Reporting Problems
2245
2246Wherever possible please use the perlbug tool supplied with this Perl
2247to report problems, as it automatically includes summary configuration
2248information about your perl, which may help us track down problems far
2249more quickly. But first you should read the advice in this file,
2250carefully re-read the error message and check the relevant manual pages
2251on your system, as these may help you find an immediate solution. If
2252you are not sure whether what you are seeing is a bug, you can send a
2253message describing the problem to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup to
2254get advice.
2255
2256The perlbug tool is installed along with perl, so after you have
2257completed C<make install> it should be possible to run it with plain
2258C<perlbug>. If the install fails, or you want to report problems with
2259C<make test> without installing perl, then you can use C<make nok> to
2260run perlbug to report the problem, or run it by hand from this source
2261directory with C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug>
2262
2263If the build fails too early to run perlbug uninstalled, then please
2264B<run> the C<./myconfig> shell script, and mail its output along with
2265an accurate description of your problem to perlbug@perl.org
2266
2267If Configure itself fails, and does not generate a config.sh file
2268(needed to run C<./myconfig>), then please mail perlbug@perl.org the
2269description of how Configure fails along with details of your system
2270- for example the output from running C<uname -a>
2271
2272Please try to make your message brief but clear. Brief, clear bug
2273reports tend to get answered more quickly. Please don't worry if your
2274written English is not great - what matters is how well you describe
2275the important technical details of the problem you have encountered,
2276not whether your grammar and spelling is flawless.
2277
2278Trim out unnecessary information. Do not include large files (such as
2279config.sh or a complete Configure or make log) unless absolutely
2280necessary. Do not include a complete transcript of your build
2281session. Just include the failing commands, the relevant error
2282messages, and whatever preceding commands are necessary to give the
2283appropriate context. Plain text should usually be sufficient--fancy
2284attachments or encodings may actually reduce the number of people who
2285read your message. Your message will get relayed to over 400
2286subscribers around the world so please try to keep it brief but clear.
2287
2288If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
2289inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send
2290it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription
2291unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who be able
2292to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help
2293co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all
2294platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for security
2295issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently distributed on CPAN.
2296
2297If you are unsure what makes a good bug report please read "How to
2298report Bugs Effectively" by Simon Tatham:
2299http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html
2300
2301=head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5
2302
2303Perl 5.12 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
2304In other words, you will have to recompile your XS modules.
2305
2306In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
23075.X.Y) to another similar minor version (e.g. 5.X.(Y+1))) without
2308re-compiling all of your extensions. You can also safely leave the old
2309version around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
2310
2311Usually, most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to be
2312used with a newer version of Perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
2313(These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
2314
2315Suppose you already have version 5.8.7 installed. The directories
2316searched by 5.8.7 are typically like:
2317
2318 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.7/$archname
2319 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.7
2320 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7/$archname
2321 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
2322
2323Now, suppose you install version 5.8.8. The directories
2324searched by version 5.8.8 will be:
2325
2326 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.8/$archname
2327 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.8
2328 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/$archname
2329 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8
2330
2331 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7/$archname
2332 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
2333 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2334
2335Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
2336of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
2337directories. This way, modules installed under 5.8.7 will continue
2338to be usable by 5.8.7 but will also accessible to 5.8.8. Further,
2339suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
2340present only in 5.8.8. That new module will get installed into
2341/usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8 and will be available to 5.8.8,
2342but will not interfere with the 5.8.7 version.
2343
2344The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
23455.6.0 and above will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
2346
2347Lastly, suppose you now install 5.10.0, which is not binary compatible
2348with 5.8.x. The directories searched by 5.10.0 (if you don't change the
2349Configure defaults) will be:
2350
2351 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.10.0/$archname
2352 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.10.0
2353 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0/$archname
2354 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0
2355
2356 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8
2357
2358 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
2359
2360 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2361
2362Note that the earlier $archname entries are now gone, but pure perl
2363modules from earlier versions will still be found.
2364
2365This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2366to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2367versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
2368
2369=head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
2370
2371Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
2372separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
2373won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2374libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2375way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
2376
2377 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.13.9
2378
2379and adding /opt/perl5.13.9/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
2380may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2381scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2382
2383Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
2384(e.g. 5.10 for all 5.10.x versions), but change directory with
2385each major version.
2386
2387If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2388seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2389subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2390yet.
2391
2392=head2 Upgrading from 5.13.8 or earlier
2393
2394B<Perl 5.13.9 is binary incompatible with Perl 5.13.8 and any earlier
2395Perl release.> Perl modules having binary parts
2396(meaning that a C compiler is used) will have to be recompiled to be
2397used with 5.13.9. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with
23985.13.9, you may safely do so without disturbing the older
2399installations. (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5">
2400above.)
2401
2402See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2403incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
2404perllocal.pod, not perllocale.pod, for installed module information.
2405
2406=head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2407
2408The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2409Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2410operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2411
2412Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way:
2413Encode, with its big conversion tables, consumes a lot of
2414space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything. The
2415Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network
2416programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all
2417depends on what do you need to do.
2418
2419In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2420recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2421depends on what you need.
2422
2423Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2424
2425 use strict;
2426 use warnings;
2427 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2428 print("$f\n");
2429 }
2430
2431in Linux is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
2432
2433 ./bin/perl
2434 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/strict.pm
2435 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/warnings.pm
2436 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/File/Glob.pm
2437 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/XSLoader.pm
2438 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2439
2440Secondly, Debian perl-base package contains the following files,
2441size about 1.9MB in its i386 version:
2442
2443 /usr/bin/perl
2444 /usr/bin/perl5.8.4
2445 /usr/lib/perl/5.8
2446 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B.pm
2447 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B/Deparse.pm
2448 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Config.pm
2449 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Cwd.pm
2450 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Data/Dumper.pm
2451 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/DynaLoader.pm
2452 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Errno.pm
2453 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Fcntl.pm
2454 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/File/Glob.pm
2455 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO.pm
2456 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/File.pm
2457 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Handle.pm
2458 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Pipe.pm
2459 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Seekable.pm
2460 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Select.pm
2461 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket.pm
2462 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/POSIX.pm
2463 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Socket.pm
2464 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/XSLoader.pm
2465 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.bs
2466 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.so
2467 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.bs
2468 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.so
2469 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a
2470 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2471 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2472 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2473 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2474 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/extralibs.ld
2475 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs
2476 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2477 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.bs
2478 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2479 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.bs
2480 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.so
2481 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.bs
2482 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2483 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2484 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2485 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.bs
2486 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2487 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/lib.pm
2488 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/re.pm
2489 /usr/share/doc/perl-base
2490 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
2491 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2492 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian.gz
2493 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
2494 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
2495 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
2496 /usr/share/perl/5.8
2497 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/AutoLoader.pm
2498 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp.pm
2499 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp/Heavy.pm
2500 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter.pm
2501 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2502 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec.pm
2503 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2504 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/FileHandle.pm
2505 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Getopt/Long.pm
2506 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2507 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2508 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open2.pm
2509 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open3.pm
2510 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/List/Util.pm
2511 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Scalar/Util.pm
2512 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/SelectSaver.pm
2513 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Symbol.pm
2514 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/ParseWords.pm
2515 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Tabs.pm
2516 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Wrap.pm
2517 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/attributes.pm
2518 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/base.pm
2519 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes.pm
2520 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes_heavy.pl
2521 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/constant.pm
2522 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/fields.pm
2523 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/integer.pm
2524 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/locale.pm
2525 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/overload.pm
2526 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/strict.pm
2527 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8.pm
2528 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8_heavy.pl
2529 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/vars.pm
2530 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings.pm
2531 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings/register.pm
2532
2533A nice trick to find out the minimal set of Perl library files you will
2534need to run a Perl program is
2535
2536 perl -e 'do "prog.pl"; END { print "$_\n" for sort keys %INC }'
2537
2538(this will not find libraries required in runtime, unfortunately, but
2539it's a minimal set) and if you want to find out all the files you can
2540use something like the below
2541
2542 strace perl -le 'do "x.pl"' 2>&1 | perl -nle '/^open\(\"(.+?)"/ && print $1'
2543
2544(The 'strace' is Linux-specific, other similar utilities include 'truss'
2545and 'ktrace'.)
2546
2547=head2 C<-DNO_MATHOMS>
2548
2549If you configure perl with C<-Accflags=-DNO_MATHOMS>, the functions from
2550F<mathoms.c> will not be compiled in. Those functions are no longer used
2551by perl itself; for source compatibility reasons, though, they weren't
2552completely removed.
2553
2554=head1 DOCUMENTATION
2555
2556Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2557is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
2558build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
2559can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2560sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
2561
2562=head1 AUTHOR
2563
2564Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2565heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2566feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
2567
2568If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2569L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2570
2571=head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2572
2573This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2574the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2575If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2576a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2577and the contact information to match your distribution.