| 1 | If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you |
| 2 | see. It is written in the POD format (see perlpod manpage) which is |
| 3 | specially designed to be readable as is. |
| 4 | |
| 5 | =head1 NAME |
| 6 | |
| 7 | perlamiga - Perl under Amiga OS |
| 8 | |
| 9 | =head1 NOTE |
| 10 | |
| 11 | B<Perl 5.8.0 cannot be built in AmigaOS. You can use either the |
| 12 | maintenance release Perl 5.6.1 or the development release Perl 5.7.2 |
| 13 | in AmigaOS. See L</"PERL 5.8.0 BROKEN IN AMIGAOS"> if you want to help |
| 14 | fixing this problem.> |
| 15 | |
| 16 | =head1 SYNOPSIS |
| 17 | |
| 18 | One can read this document in the following formats: |
| 19 | |
| 20 | man perlamiga |
| 21 | multiview perlamiga.guide |
| 22 | |
| 23 | to list some (not all may be available simultaneously), or it may |
| 24 | be read I<as is>: either as F<README.amiga>, or F<pod/perlamiga.pod>. |
| 25 | |
| 26 | A recent version of perl for the Amiga can be found at the Geek Gadgets |
| 27 | section of the Aminet: |
| 28 | |
| 29 | http://www.aminet.net/~aminet/dev/gg |
| 30 | |
| 31 | =cut |
| 32 | |
| 33 | Contents |
| 34 | |
| 35 | perlamiga - Perl under Amiga OS |
| 36 | |
| 37 | NAME |
| 38 | SYNOPSIS |
| 39 | DESCRIPTION |
| 40 | - Prerequisites |
| 41 | - Starting Perl programs under AmigaOS |
| 42 | - Shortcomings of Perl under AmigaOS |
| 43 | INSTALLATION |
| 44 | Accessing documentation |
| 45 | - Manpages |
| 46 | - HTML |
| 47 | - GNU info files |
| 48 | - LaTeX docs |
| 49 | BUILD |
| 50 | - Build Prerequisites |
| 51 | - Getting the perl source |
| 52 | - Application of the patches |
| 53 | - Making |
| 54 | - Testing |
| 55 | - Installing the built perl |
| 56 | AUTHOR |
| 57 | SEE ALSO |
| 58 | |
| 59 | =head1 DESCRIPTION |
| 60 | |
| 61 | =head2 Prerequisites for Compiling Perl on AmigaOS |
| 62 | |
| 63 | =over 6 |
| 64 | |
| 65 | =item B<Unix emulation for AmigaOS: ixemul.library> |
| 66 | |
| 67 | You need the Unix emulation for AmigaOS, whose most important part is |
| 68 | B<ixemul.library>. For a minimum setup, get the latest versions |
| 69 | of the following packages from the Aminet archives |
| 70 | ( L<http://www.aminet.net/~aminet/> ): |
| 71 | |
| 72 | ixemul-bin |
| 73 | ixemul-env-bin |
| 74 | pdksh-bin |
| 75 | |
| 76 | Note also that this is a minimum setup; you might want to add other |
| 77 | packages of B<ADE> (the I<Amiga Developers Environment>). |
| 78 | |
| 79 | =item B<Version of Amiga OS> |
| 80 | |
| 81 | You need at the very least AmigaOS version 2.0. Recommended is version 3.1. |
| 82 | |
| 83 | =back |
| 84 | |
| 85 | =head2 Starting Perl programs under AmigaOS |
| 86 | |
| 87 | Start your Perl program F<foo> with arguments C<arg1 arg2 arg3> the |
| 88 | same way as on any other platform, by |
| 89 | |
| 90 | perl foo arg1 arg2 arg3 |
| 91 | |
| 92 | If you want to specify perl options C<-my_opts> to the perl itself (as |
| 93 | opposed to your program), use |
| 94 | |
| 95 | perl -my_opts foo arg1 arg2 arg3 |
| 96 | |
| 97 | Alternately, you can try to get a replacement for the system's B<Execute> |
| 98 | command that honors the #!/usr/bin/perl syntax in scripts and set the s-Bit |
| 99 | of your scripts. Then you can invoke your scripts like under UNIX with |
| 100 | |
| 101 | foo arg1 arg2 arg3 |
| 102 | |
| 103 | (Note that having *nixish full path to perl F</usr/bin/perl> is not |
| 104 | necessary, F<perl> would be enough, but having full path would make it |
| 105 | easier to use your script under *nix.) |
| 106 | |
| 107 | =head2 Shortcomings of Perl under AmigaOS |
| 108 | |
| 109 | Perl under AmigaOS lacks some features of perl under UNIX because of |
| 110 | deficiencies in the UNIX-emulation, most notably: |
| 111 | |
| 112 | =over 6 |
| 113 | |
| 114 | =item * |
| 115 | |
| 116 | fork() |
| 117 | |
| 118 | =item * |
| 119 | |
| 120 | some features of the UNIX filesystem regarding link count and file dates |
| 121 | |
| 122 | =item * |
| 123 | |
| 124 | inplace operation (the -i switch) without backup file |
| 125 | |
| 126 | =item * |
| 127 | |
| 128 | umask() works, but the correct permissions are only set when the file is |
| 129 | finally close()d |
| 130 | |
| 131 | =back |
| 132 | |
| 133 | =head1 INSTALLATION |
| 134 | |
| 135 | Change to the installation directory (most probably ADE:), and |
| 136 | extract the binary distribution: |
| 137 | |
| 138 | lha -mraxe x perl-$VERSION-bin.lha |
| 139 | |
| 140 | or |
| 141 | |
| 142 | tar xvzpf perl-$VERSION-bin.tgz |
| 143 | |
| 144 | (Of course you need lha or tar and gunzip for this.) |
| 145 | |
| 146 | For installation of the Unix emulation, read the appropriate docs. |
| 147 | |
| 148 | =head1 Accessing documentation |
| 149 | |
| 150 | =head2 Manpages for Perl on AmigaOS |
| 151 | |
| 152 | If you have C<man> installed on your system, and you installed perl |
| 153 | manpages, use something like this: |
| 154 | |
| 155 | man perlfunc |
| 156 | man less |
| 157 | man ExtUtils.MakeMaker |
| 158 | |
| 159 | to access documentation for different components of Perl. Start with |
| 160 | |
| 161 | man perl |
| 162 | |
| 163 | Note: You have to modify your man.conf file to search for manpages |
| 164 | in the /ade/lib/perl5/man/man3 directory, or the man pages for the |
| 165 | perl library will not be found. |
| 166 | |
| 167 | Note that dot (F<.>) is used as a package separator for documentation |
| 168 | for packages, and as usual, sometimes you need to give the section - C<3> |
| 169 | above - to avoid shadowing by the I<less(1) manpage>. |
| 170 | |
| 171 | |
| 172 | =head2 Perl HTML Documentation on AmigaOS |
| 173 | |
| 174 | If you have some WWW browser available, you can build B<HTML> docs. |
| 175 | Cd to directory with F<.pod> files, and do like this |
| 176 | |
| 177 | cd /ade/lib/perl5/pod |
| 178 | pod2html |
| 179 | |
| 180 | After this you can direct your browser the file F<perl.html> in this |
| 181 | directory, and go ahead with reading docs. |
| 182 | |
| 183 | Alternatively you may be able to get these docs prebuilt from C<CPAN>. |
| 184 | |
| 185 | =head2 Perl GNU Info Files on AmigaOS |
| 186 | |
| 187 | Users of C<Emacs> would appreciate it very much, especially with |
| 188 | C<CPerl> mode loaded. You need to get latest C<pod2info> from C<CPAN>, |
| 189 | or, alternately, prebuilt info pages. |
| 190 | |
| 191 | =head2 Perl LaTeX Documentation on AmigaOS |
| 192 | |
| 193 | Can be constructed using C<pod2latex>. |
| 194 | |
| 195 | =head1 BUILDING PERL ON AMIGAOS |
| 196 | |
| 197 | Here we discuss how to build Perl under AmigaOS. |
| 198 | |
| 199 | =head2 Build Prerequisites for Perl on AmigaOS |
| 200 | |
| 201 | You need to have the latest B<ixemul> (Unix emulation for Amiga) |
| 202 | from Aminet. |
| 203 | |
| 204 | =head2 Getting the Perl Source for AmigaOS |
| 205 | |
| 206 | You can either get the latest perl-for-amiga source from Ninemoons |
| 207 | and extract it with: |
| 208 | |
| 209 | tar xvzpf perl-$VERSION-src.tgz |
| 210 | |
| 211 | or get the official source from CPAN: |
| 212 | |
| 213 | http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0 |
| 214 | |
| 215 | Extract it like this |
| 216 | |
| 217 | tar xvzpf perl-$VERSION.tar.gz |
| 218 | |
| 219 | You will see a message about errors while extracting F<Configure>. This |
| 220 | is normal and expected. (There is a conflict with a similarly-named file |
| 221 | F<configure>, but it causes no harm.) |
| 222 | |
| 223 | =head2 Making Perl on AmigaOS |
| 224 | |
| 225 | Remember to use a hefty wad of stack (I use 2000000) |
| 226 | |
| 227 | sh configure.gnu --prefix=/gg |
| 228 | |
| 229 | Now type |
| 230 | |
| 231 | make depend |
| 232 | |
| 233 | Now! |
| 234 | |
| 235 | make |
| 236 | |
| 237 | =head2 Testing Perl on AmigaOS |
| 238 | |
| 239 | Now run |
| 240 | |
| 241 | make test |
| 242 | |
| 243 | Some tests will be skipped because they need the fork() function: |
| 244 | |
| 245 | F<io/pipe.t>, F<op/fork.t>, F<lib/filehand.t>, F<lib/open2.t>, F<lib/open3.t>, |
| 246 | F<lib/io_pipe.t>, F<lib/io_sock.t> |
| 247 | |
| 248 | =head2 Installing the built Perl on AmigaOS |
| 249 | |
| 250 | Run |
| 251 | |
| 252 | make install |
| 253 | |
| 254 | =head1 PERL 5.8.0 BROKEN IN AMIGAOS |
| 255 | |
| 256 | As told above, Perl 5.6.1 was still good in AmigaOS, as was 5.7.2. |
| 257 | After Perl 5.7.2 (change #11423, see the Changes file, and the file |
| 258 | pod/perlhack.pod for how to get the individual changes) Perl dropped |
| 259 | its internal support for vfork(), and that was very probably the step |
| 260 | that broke AmigaOS (since the ixemul library has only vfork). |
| 261 | The build finally fails when the ext/DynaLoader is being built, and |
| 262 | PERL ends up as "0" in the produced Makefile, trying to run "0" does |
| 263 | not quite work. Also, executing miniperl in backticks seems to |
| 264 | generate nothing: very probably related to the (v)fork problems. |
| 265 | B<Fixing the breakage requires someone quite familiar with the ixemul |
| 266 | library, and how one is supposed to run external commands in AmigaOS |
| 267 | without fork().> |
| 268 | |
| 269 | =head1 AUTHORS |
| 270 | |
| 271 | Norbert Pueschel, pueschel@imsdd.meb.uni-bonn.de |
| 272 | Jan-Erik Karlsson, trg@privat.utfors.se |
| 273 | |
| 274 | =head1 SEE ALSO |
| 275 | |
| 276 | perl(1). |
| 277 | |
| 278 | =cut |