| 1 | If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you see. |
| 2 | It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is specially |
| 3 | designed to be readable as is. |
| 4 | |
| 5 | =head1 NAME |
| 6 | |
| 7 | README.beos - Perl version 5 on BeOS |
| 8 | |
| 9 | =head1 DESCRIPTION |
| 10 | |
| 11 | Notes for building Perl under BeOS. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | =head2 General Issues with Perl on BeOS |
| 14 | |
| 15 | To compile perl under BeOS R4 x86: |
| 16 | |
| 17 | ./Configure -d |
| 18 | |
| 19 | and hit ^C when it asks you if you want to make changes to config.sh; |
| 20 | edit config.sh and do the following: |
| 21 | change d_socket='define' to ='undef'; |
| 22 | remove SDBM, Errno, and Socket from dynamic_ext= and nonxs_ext=; |
| 23 | add '#define bool short' to x2p/a2p.h; |
| 24 | |
| 25 | ../Configure -S; make; make install |
| 26 | |
| 27 | cd ~/config/lib; ln -s 5.00502/BeOS-BePC/CORE/libperl.so . |
| 28 | |
| 29 | (substitute 5.00502 with the appropriate filename) |
| 30 | |
| 31 | =head2 BeOS Release-specific Notes |
| 32 | |
| 33 | =over 4 |
| 34 | |
| 35 | =item R4 x86 |
| 36 | |
| 37 | Dynamic loading finally works! Yay! This means you can compile your |
| 38 | own modules into perl. However, Sockets and Errno still don't work. |
| 39 | (Hopefully, sockets will at least work by R5, if not sooner.) |
| 40 | |
| 41 | =item R4 PPC |
| 42 | |
| 43 | I have not tested this. I rather severely doubt that dynamic loading |
| 44 | will work. (My BeBox is in pieces right now, following a nasty disk |
| 45 | crash.) You may have to disable dynamic loading to get the thing to |
| 46 | compile at all. (use `./Configure` without -d, and say 'no' to 'Build |
| 47 | a shared libperl.so'.) |
| 48 | |
| 49 | =back |
| 50 | |
| 51 | =head2 Contact Information |
| 52 | |
| 53 | If you have comments, problem reports, or even patches or bugfixes (gasp!) |
| 54 | please email me. |
| 55 | |
| 56 | 28 Jan 1999 |
| 57 | Tom Spindler |
| 58 | dogcow@isi.net |
| 59 | |
| 60 | =head2 Update 2002-05-30 |
| 61 | |
| 62 | The following tests fail on 5.8.0 Perl in BeOS Personal 5.03: |
| 63 | |
| 64 | t/op/lfs............................FAILED at test 17 |
| 65 | t/op/magic..........................FAILED at test 24 |
| 66 | ext/Fcntl/t/syslfs..................FAILED at test 17 |
| 67 | ext/File/Glob/t/basic...............FAILED at test 3 |
| 68 | ext/POSIX/t/sigaction...............FAILED at test 13 |
| 69 | ext/POSIX/t/waitpid.................FAILED at test 1 |
| 70 | |
| 71 | The reasons for the failures are as follows: |
| 72 | |
| 73 | =over 4 |
| 74 | |
| 75 | =item * |
| 76 | |
| 77 | The t/op/lfs and ext/Fcntl/t/syslfs failures indicate that the |
| 78 | LFS (large file support, files larger than 2 gigabytes) doesn't |
| 79 | work from Perl (BeFS itself is well capable of supporting large |
| 80 | files). What fails is that trying to position the file pointer |
| 81 | past 2 gigabytes doesn't work right, the position gets truncated |
| 82 | to its lower 32 bits. |
| 83 | |
| 84 | =item * |
| 85 | |
| 86 | The op/magic failures look like something funny going on with $0 and |
| 87 | $^X that I can't now figure out: none of the generated pathnames are |
| 88 | wrong as such, they just seem to accumulate "./" prefixes and infixes |
| 89 | in ways that define logic. |
| 90 | |
| 91 | =item * |
| 92 | |
| 93 | The Glob/t/basic indicates a bug in the getpw*() functions: |
| 94 | they do not always return the correct user db entries. |
| 95 | |
| 96 | =item * |
| 97 | |
| 98 | The sigaction #13 means that signal mask doesn't get properly restored |
| 99 | if sigaction returns early. |
| 100 | |
| 101 | =item * |
| 102 | |
| 103 | The waitpid failure means that after there are no more child |
| 104 | processes, waitpid is supposed to start returning -1 (and set |
| 105 | errno to ECHILD). In BeOS, it doesn't seem to. |
| 106 | |
| 107 | =back |
| 108 | |
| 109 | Disclaimer: I just installed BeOS Personal Edition 5.0 and the |
| 110 | Developer Tools, that is the whole extent of my BeOS expertise, |
| 111 | so please don't ask me for further help in BeOS Perl problems. |
| 112 | |
| 113 | jhi@iki.fi |