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.
7 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl 5.
11 First, make sure you have an up-to-date version of Perl. If you
12 didn't get your Perl source from CPAN, check the latest version at
13 http://www.cpan.org/src/. Perl uses a version scheme where even-numbered
14 subreleases (like 5.8.x and 5.10.x) are stable maintenance releases and
15 odd-numbered subreleases (like 5.7.x and 5.9.x) are unstable
16 development releases. Development releases should not be used in
17 production environments. Fixes and new features are first carefully
18 tested in development releases and only if they prove themselves to be
19 worthy will they be migrated to the maintenance releases.
21 The basic steps to build and install perl 5 on a Unix system with all
22 the defaults are to run, from a freshly unpacked source tree:
29 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
31 The above commands will install Perl to /usr/local (or some other
32 platform-specific directory -- see the appropriate file in hints/.)
33 If that's not okay with you, you can run Configure interactively, by
34 just typing "sh Configure" (without the -de args). You can also specify
35 any prefix location by adding "-Dprefix='/some/dir'" to Configure's args.
36 To explicitly name the perl binary, use the command
37 "make install PERLNAME=myperl".
39 Building perl from source requires an ANSI compliant C-Compiler.
40 A minimum of C89 is required. Some features available in C99 will
41 be probed for and used when found. The perl build process does not
42 rely on anything more than C89.
44 These options, and many more, are explained in further detail below.
46 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
47 L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
49 For information on what's new in this release, see the
50 pod/perl5135delta.pod file. For more information about how to find more
51 specific detail about changes, see the Changes file.
55 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
56 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
57 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
58 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
60 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
62 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
65 Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
66 you should probably at least skim through this document before
69 In addition to this file, check if there is a README file specific to
70 your operating system, since it may provide additional or different
71 instructions for building Perl. If there is a hint file for your
72 system (in the hints/ directory) you might also want to read it
73 for even more information.
75 For additional information about porting Perl, see the section on
76 L<"Porting information"> below, and look at the files in the Porting/
81 =head2 Changes and Incompatibilities
83 Please see pod/perl5135delta.pod for a description of the changes and
84 potential incompatibilities introduced with this release. A few of
85 the most important issues are listed below, but you should refer
86 to pod/perl5135delta.pod for more detailed information.
88 B<WARNING:> This version is not binary compatible with prior releases of Perl.
89 If you have built extensions (i.e. modules that include C code)
90 using an earlier version of Perl, you will need to rebuild and reinstall
93 Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
94 without reinstallation. See the discussion below on
95 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> for more details.
97 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
99 On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the changes
100 in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
101 pod/perl5135delta.pod for a description of what's changed. See your
102 installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly incomplete)
103 list of locally installed modules. Also see CPAN::autobundle for one
104 way to make a "bundle" of your currently installed modules.
108 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
109 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
110 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
111 almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
112 since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
115 At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
116 defaults from then on.
118 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
119 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
121 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
124 =head2 Common Configure options
126 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run
130 to get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
131 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
137 To compile with gcc, if it's not the default compiler on your
138 system, you should run
140 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
142 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or any another alternative
143 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
145 =item Installation prefix
147 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
148 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
149 and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below for
152 You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
153 directory when Configure prompts you, or by using the Configure command
154 line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
156 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
158 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
159 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
160 prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
161 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
162 for more details. Do not include a trailing slash, (i.e. /opt/perl/)
163 or you may experience odd test failures.
165 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
166 as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
167 attempt infinite recursion.
171 It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
172 find 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
174 careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
175 vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing. If you insist
176 on replacing your vendor's perl, useful information on how it was
177 configured may be found with
181 (Check the output carefully, however, since this doesn't preserve
182 spaces in arguments to Configure. For that, you have to look carefully
183 at config_arg1, config_arg2, etc.)
185 By default, Configure will not try to link /usr/bin/perl to the current
186 version of perl. You can turn on that behavior by running
188 Configure -Dinstallusrbinperl
190 or by answering 'yes' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
192 In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to put
193 (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
194 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
195 obvious and convenient place.
197 =item Building a development release
199 For development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.9.x) if you want to
200 use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel to Configure,
201 because the default answer to the question "do you really want to
202 Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel skips that
207 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
212 =head2 Altering Configure variables for C compiler switches etc.
214 For most users, most of the Configure defaults are fine, or can easily
215 be set on the Configure command line. However, if Configure doesn't
216 have an option to do what you want, you can change Configure variables
217 after the platform hints have been run by using Configure's -A switch.
218 For example, here's how to add a couple of extra flags to C compiler
221 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_EXTERNAL_GLOB -DNO_HASH_SEED"
223 To clarify, those ccflags values are not Configure options; if passed to
224 Configure directly, they won't do anything useful (they will define a
225 variable in config.sh, but without taking any action based upon it).
226 But when passed to the compiler, those flags will activate #ifdefd code.
228 For more help on Configure switches, run
232 =head2 Major Configure-time Build Options
234 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
235 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
236 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
237 some of the main things you can change.
241 On some platforms, perl can be compiled with support for threads. To
244 sh Configure -Dusethreads
246 The default is to compile without thread support.
248 Perl used to have two different internal threads implementations. The current
249 model (available internally since 5.6, and as a user-level module since 5.8) is
250 called interpreter-based implementation (ithreads), with one interpreter per
251 thread, and explicit sharing of data. The (deprecated) 5.005 version
252 (5005threads) was removed for release 5.10.
254 The 'threads' module is for use with the ithreads implementation. The
255 'Thread' module emulates the old 5005threads interface on top of the current
258 When using threads, perl uses a dynamically-sized buffer for some of
259 the thread-safe library calls, such as those in the getpw*() family.
260 This buffer starts small, but it will keep growing until the result
261 fits. To get a fixed upper limit, you should compile Perl with
262 PERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE defined to be the number of bytes you want. One
263 way to do this is to run Configure with
264 C<-Accflags=-DPERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE=65536>.
266 =head3 Large file support
268 Since Perl 5.6.0, Perl has supported large files (files larger than
269 2 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
270 support is on by default.
272 This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files,
273 seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad in that if you are interfacing Perl
274 using some extension, the components you are connecting to must also
275 be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
276 parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
279 There's also one known limitation with the current large files
280 implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
281 section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer formats
282 like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
284 If you want to compile perl without large file support, use
286 sh Configure -Uuselargefiles
288 =head3 64 bit support
290 If your platform does not run natively at 64 bits, but can simulate
291 them with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>,
292 you can build a perl that uses 64 bits.
294 There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
295 using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
296 -Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
297 the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
299 The C<use64bitint> option does only as much as is required to get
300 64-bit integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long
301 longs") while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because
302 your pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint>
303 does not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it
304 might, but it doesn't have to). The C<use64bitint> simply means that
305 you will be able to have 64 bit-wide scalar values.
307 The C<use64bitall> option goes all the way by attempting to switch
308 integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
309 create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
310 resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
311 have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
314 Natively 64-bit systems need neither -Duse64bitint nor -Duse64bitall.
315 On these systems, it might be the default compilation mode, and there
316 is currently no guarantee that passing no use64bitall option to the
317 Configure process will build a 32bit perl. Implementing -Duse32bit*
318 options is planned for a future release of perl.
322 In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
323 range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
324 (that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
325 this support (if it is available).
329 You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
330 and the long double support.
332 =head3 Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Hashes
334 In Perls 5.8.0 and earlier it was easy to create degenerate hashes.
335 Processing such hashes would consume large amounts of CPU time,
336 enabling a "Denial of Service" attack against Perl. Such hashes may be
337 a problem for example for mod_perl sites, sites with Perl CGI scripts
338 and web services, that process data originating from external sources.
340 In Perl 5.8.1 a security feature was introduced to make it harder to
341 create such degenerate hashes. A visible side effect of this was that
342 the keys(), values(), and each() functions may return the hash elements
343 in different order between different runs of Perl even with the same
344 data. It also had unintended binary incompatibility issues with
345 certain modules compiled against Perl 5.8.0.
347 In Perl 5.8.2 an improved scheme was introduced. Hashes will return
348 elements in the same order as Perl 5.8.0 by default. On a hash by hash
349 basis, if pathological data is detected during a hash key insertion,
350 then that hash will switch to an alternative random hash seed. As
351 adding keys can always dramatically change returned hash element order,
352 existing programs will not be affected by this, unless they
353 specifically test for pre-recorded hash return order for contrived
354 data. (eg the list of keys generated by C<map {"\0"x$_} 0..15> trigger
355 randomisation) In effect the new implementation means that 5.8.1 scheme
356 is only being used on hashes which are under attack.
358 One can still revert to the old guaranteed repeatable order (and be
359 vulnerable to attack by wily crackers) by setting the environment
360 variable PERL_HASH_SEED, see L<perlrun/PERL_HASH_SEED>. Another option
361 is to add -DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT to the compilation flags (for
362 example by using C<Configure -Accflags=-DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT>), in
363 which case one has to explicitly set the PERL_HASH_SEED environment
364 variable to enable the security feature, or by adding -DNO_HASH_SEED to
365 the compilation flags to completely disable the randomisation feature.
367 B<Perl has never guaranteed any ordering of the hash keys>, and the
368 ordering has already changed several times during the lifetime of Perl
369 5. Also, the ordering of hash keys has always been, and continues to
370 be, affected by the insertion order. Note that because of this
371 randomisation for example the Data::Dumper results will be different
372 between different runs of Perl, since Data::Dumper by default dumps
373 hashes "unordered". The use of the Data::Dumper C<Sortkeys> option is
378 Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
379 TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
380 access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
381 Version 5. The corresponding Configure option is -Dusesocks.
382 You can find more about SOCKS from wikipedia at
383 L<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOCKS>.
385 =head3 Dynamic Loading
387 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading.
388 If you want to force perl to be compiled completely
389 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
390 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
391 With this option, you won't be able to use any new extension
392 (XS) module without recompiling perl itself.
394 =head3 Building a shared Perl library
396 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
397 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
398 extensions, and various extra libraries, such as -lm.
400 On systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
401 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
402 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
403 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
404 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
405 can share the same library.
407 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
408 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
409 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
412 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
413 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
414 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
417 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
418 libperl.so.5.8.8 (for Perl 5.8.8), or libperl.so.588, or simply
419 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
420 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
421 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
422 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
424 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
426 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
428 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
429 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
430 NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
431 for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
432 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
433 be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
434 library search settings. You can find the name of the environment
435 variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
437 grep ldlibpthname config.sh
439 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
440 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
441 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
444 cd t; ./perl -MTestInit misc/failing_test.t
448 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
450 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
453 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
455 for Bourne-style shells, or
457 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
459 for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
460 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And
461 again, it may be something other than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
463 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
464 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
467 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
469 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
470 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
471 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
472 install a standard Perl 5.10.0 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
473 try to build Perl 5.10.0 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
474 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
475 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
476 libperl.so.8 rather with the installed libperl.so.8? The answer is
477 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
478 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
479 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
480 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux, you can only override at runtime via
481 LD_PRELOAD, specifying the exact filename you wish to be used; and on
482 Digital Unix, you can override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the
483 _RLD_ROOT environment variable to point to the perl build directory.
485 In other words, it is generally not a good idea to try to build a perl
486 with a shared library if $archlib/CORE/$libperl already exists from a
489 A good workaround is to specify a different directory for the
490 architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING version of perl.
491 You can do this by changing all the *archlib* variables in config.sh to
492 point to your new architecture-dependent library.
494 =head3 Environment access
496 Perl often needs to write to the program's environment, such as when C<%ENV>
497 is assigned to. Many implementations of the C library function C<putenv()>
498 leak memory, so where possible perl will manipulate the environment directly
499 to avoid these leaks. The default is now to perform direct manipulation
500 whenever perl is running as a stand alone interpreter, and to call the safe
501 but potentially leaky C<putenv()> function when the perl interpreter is
502 embedded in another application. You can force perl to always use C<putenv()>
503 by compiling with C<-Accflags="-DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV">, see section
504 L</"Altering Configure variables for C compiler switches etc.">.
505 You can force an embedded perl to use direct manipulation by setting
506 C<PL_use_safe_putenv = 0;> after the C<perl_construct()> call.
508 =head2 Installation Directories
510 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
511 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the installation
512 questions are near the beginning of Configure. Do not include trailing
513 slashes on directory names. At any point during the Configure process,
514 you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use the defaults
515 from then on. Alternatively, you can
517 grep '^install' config.sh
519 after Configure has run to verify the installation paths.
521 The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
522 people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
523 distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
524 need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
525 you can safely skip the next section.
527 The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
531 =item Directories for the perl distribution
533 By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.13.4.
534 $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
535 5.13.4 or 5.9.5, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
536 determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
537 variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
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
550 $prefixexp is generated from $prefix, with ~ expansion done to convert home
551 directories into absolute paths. Similarly for the other variables listed. As
552 file system calls do not do this, you should always reference the ...exp
553 variables, to support users who build perl in their home directory.
555 Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
556 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
557 instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
558 directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
559 the common style is shown here.
561 =item Directories for site-specific add-on files
563 After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
564 CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
565 be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
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)
578 By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
579 modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
581 =item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
583 Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
584 distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
585 for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
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
593 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
595 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
596 $vendorman1direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man1
597 $vendorman3direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man3
598 $vendorhtml1direxp (none)
599 $vendorhtml3direxp (none)
601 These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
602 a vendor might choose the following settings:
605 $siteprefix /usr/local
608 This would have the effect of setting the following:
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
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
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
631 Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
632 /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
633 the /usr/local hierarchy.
635 The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
636 version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
637 However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
638 installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
639 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below for more details
640 on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
642 Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
643 example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
644 are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
645 site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
646 network. One way to do that would be something like
648 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
652 As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
653 variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
654 directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
655 Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
656 version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
658 For example, if you have a bundle of perl libraries from a previous
659 installation, perhaps in a strange place:
661 Configure -Dotherlibdirs=/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1
665 There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
666 that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
667 separated list of directories, like this
669 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
671 The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
672 ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
673 modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
674 touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
675 version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
676 present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
677 directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
678 run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
680 =item usesitecustomize
682 Run-time customization of @INC can be enabled with:
684 sh Configure -Dusesitecustomize
686 which will define USE_SITECUSTOMIZE and $Config{usesitecustomize}.
687 When enabled, this makes perl run F<$sitelibexp/sitecustomize.pl> before
688 anything else. This script can then be set up to add additional
693 By default, man pages will be installed in $man1dir and $man3dir, which
694 are normally /usr/local/man/man1 and /usr/local/man/man3. If you
695 want to use a .3pm suffix for perl man pages, you can do that with
697 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
701 Currently, the standard perl installation does not do anything with
702 HTML documentation, but that may change in the future. Further, some
703 add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The html Configure
704 variables listed above are provided if you wish to specify where such
705 documents should be placed. The default is "none", but will likely
706 eventually change to something useful based on user feedback.
710 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
711 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
714 Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
715 directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
718 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
719 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
720 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below.
722 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
723 library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
724 suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
726 Thus, for example, if you Configure with
727 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.9.0 are
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
735 =head2 Changing the installation directory
737 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
738 associated files) should be installed, and the directory in which it
739 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
740 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
741 However, sites that use package management software such as rpm or
742 dpkg, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
743 wish to install perl into a different directory before moving perl
744 to its final destination. There are two ways to do that:
750 To install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory, use the following
753 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
755 (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
757 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
758 modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
759 follow this example. That's why it's usually better to use DESTDIR,
760 as shown in the next section.
764 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is convenient
765 to compile it once and create an archive that can be installed on
766 multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to create an
767 archive that can be installed in /opt/perl. One way to do that is by
768 using the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>. The DESTDIR is
769 automatically prepended to all the installation paths. Thus you
772 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
775 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
776 cd /tmp/perl5/opt/perl
777 tar cvf /tmp/perl5-archive.tar .
781 =head2 Relocatable @INC
783 To create a relocatable perl tree, use the following command line:
785 sh Configure -Duserelocatableinc
787 Then the paths in @INC (and everything else in %Config) can be
788 optionally located via the path of the perl executable.
790 That means that, if the string ".../" is found at the start of any
791 path, it's substituted with the directory of $^X. So, the relocation
792 can be configured on a per-directory basis, although the default with
793 "-Duserelocatableinc" is that everything is relocated. The initial
794 install is done to the original configured prefix.
796 This option is not compatible with the building of a shared libperl
797 ("-Duseshrplib"), because in that case perl is linked with an hard-coded
798 rpath that points at the libperl.so, that cannot be relocated.
800 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
802 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
803 answers (such as installation directories) in the Policy.sh file.
804 If you want to build perl on another system using the same policy
805 defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file to the new system's perl build
806 directory, and Configure will use it. This will work even if Policy.sh was
807 generated for another version of Perl, or on a system with a
808 different architecture and/or operating system. However, in such cases,
809 you should review the contents of the file before using it: for
810 example, your new target may not keep its man pages in the same place
811 as the system on which the file was generated.
813 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
818 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
820 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
822 If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
823 to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
824 platform-specific hints files.
826 =head2 Disabling older versions of Perl
828 Configure will search for binary compatible versions of previously
829 installed perl binaries in the tree that is specified as target tree,
830 and these will be used as locations to search for modules by the perl
831 being built. The list of perl versions found will be put in the Configure
832 variable inc_version_list.
834 To disable this use of older perl modules, even completely valid pure perl
835 modules, you can specify to not include the paths found:
837 sh Configure -Dinc_version_list=none ...
839 When using the newer perl, you can add these paths again in the
840 $PERL5LIB environment variable or with perl's -I runtime option.
842 =head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
844 Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
845 where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
846 read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
847 architectures. You can do this (if your file system supports symbolic
850 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
851 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
852 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
854 This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
855 pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
856 unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
862 as usual, and Perl will be built in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
864 =head2 Building a debugging perl
866 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
867 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
868 you probably want to have support for perl internal debugging code
869 (activated by adding -DDEBUGGING to ccflags), and/or support for the
870 system debugger by adding -g to the optimisation flags. For that,
873 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING
877 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING=<mode>
879 For a more eye appealing call, -DEBUGGING is defined to be an alias
880 for -DDEBUGGING. For both, the -U calls are also supported, in order
881 to be able to overrule the hints or Policy.sh settings.
883 Here are the DEBUGGING modes:
891 =item -DEBUGGING=both
893 Sets both -DDEBUGGING in the ccflags, and adds -g to optimize.
895 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently (see below),
896 but usually it's convenient to have both.
902 Adds -g to optimize, but does not set -DDEBUGGING.
904 (Note: Your system may actually require something like cc -g2.
905 Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for your system.)
907 =item -DEBUGGING=none
911 Removes -g from optimize, and -DDEBUGGING from ccflags.
915 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
916 versions of perl under L<Building a shared Perl library>.
918 Note that a perl built with -DDEBUGGING will be bigger and will run more
919 slowly than a standard perl.
921 =head2 DTrace support
923 On platforms where DTrace is available, it may be enabled by
924 using the -Dusedtrace option to Configure. DTrace probes are available for
925 subroutine entry (sub-entry) and subroutine exit (sub-exit). Here's a
926 simple D script that uses them:
928 perl$target:::sub-entry, perl$target:::sub-return {
929 printf("%s %s (%s:%d)\n", probename == "sub-entry" ? "->" : "<-",
930 copyinstr(arg0), copyinstr(arg1), arg2);
936 Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
937 in the ext/ subdirectory.
939 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
940 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
941 only if it is able to find the gdbm library.
943 To disable certain extensions so that they are not built, use the
944 -Dnoextensions=... and -Donlyextensions=... options. They both accept
945 a space-separated list of extensions, such as C<IPC/SysV>. The extensions
947 C<noextensions> are removed from the list of extensions to build, while
948 the C<onlyextensions> is rather more severe and builds only the listed
949 extensions. The latter should be used with extreme caution since
950 certain extensions are used by many other extensions and modules:
951 examples of such modules include Fcntl and IO. The order of processing
952 these options is first C<only> (if present), then C<no> (if present).
954 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
955 the extensions you want.
957 If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
958 running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
959 extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
960 it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
961 has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
962 extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
963 convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
964 you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
965 dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
966 Another way of specifying extra modules is described in
967 L<"Adding extra modules to the build"> below.
969 If you re-use an old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
970 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
971 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
974 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
976 Perl comes with interfaces to number of libraries, including threads,
977 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For the *db* extension, if
978 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
979 automatically include that extension. The threading extension needs
980 to be specified explicitely (see L<Threads>).
982 Those libraries are not distributed with perl. If your header (.h) files
983 for those libraries are not in a directory normally searched by your C
984 compiler, then you will need to include the appropriate -I/your/directory
985 option when prompted by Configure. If your libraries are not in a
986 directory normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will
987 need to include the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted
988 by Configure. See the examples below.
994 =item gdbm in /usr/local
996 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
997 GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
998 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
999 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
1000 necessary steps out automatically.
1002 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1003 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include, if it's
1004 not here yet. Similarly, when Configure prompts you for linker flags,
1005 you should include -L/usr/local/lib.
1007 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
1008 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1011 Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1012 you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1013 /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
1015 =item BerkeleyDB in /usr/local/BerkeleyDB
1017 The version of BerkeleyDB distributed by sleepycat.com installs in a
1018 version-specific directory by default, typically something like
1019 /usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7. To have Configure find that, you need to add
1020 -I/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/include to cc flags, as in the previous example,
1021 and you will also have to take extra steps to help Configure find -ldb.
1022 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for library directories,
1023 add /usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib to the list. Also, you will need to
1024 add appropriate linker flags to tell the runtime linker where to find the
1025 BerkeleyDB shared libraries.
1027 It is possible to specify this from the command line (all on one
1031 -Dlocincpth='/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/include /usr/local/include' \
1032 -Dloclibpth='/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib /usr/local/lib' \
1033 -Aldflags='-R/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib'
1035 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1036 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1038 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
1039 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives.
1041 The addition to ldflags is so that the dynamic linker knows where to find
1042 the BerkeleyDB libraries. For Linux and Solaris, the -R option does that.
1043 Other systems may use different flags. Use the appropriate flag for your
1048 =head2 Overriding an old config.sh
1050 If you want to use an old config.sh produced by a previous run of
1051 Configure, but override some of the items with command line options, you
1052 need to use B<Configure -O>.
1054 =head2 GNU-style configure
1056 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
1057 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
1059 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
1061 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
1064 ./configure.gnu --help
1068 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
1069 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
1071 =head2 Malloc Issues
1073 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
1074 so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
1075 the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
1076 version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
1077 perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
1078 than your system malloc.
1080 However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
1081 experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
1082 that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
1083 (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
1087 =item Using the system malloc
1089 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
1091 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
1093 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
1095 Note that Perl's malloc isn't always used by default; that actually
1096 depends on your system. For example, on Linux and FreeBSD (and many more
1097 systems), Configure chooses to use the system's malloc by default.
1098 See the appropriate file in the F<hints/> directory to see how the
1101 =item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
1103 NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you just
1104 run Configure to accept all the defaults.
1106 Perl's malloc family of functions are normally called Perl_malloc(),
1107 Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree().
1108 These names do not clash with the system versions of these functions.
1110 If this flag is enabled, however, Perl's malloc family of functions
1111 will have the same names as the system versions. This may be required
1112 sometimes if you have libraries that like to free() data that may have
1113 been allocated by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1115 Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1116 from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1117 does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1120 =item -DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS
1122 This flag enables debugging mstats, which is required to use the
1123 Devel::Peek::mstat() function. You cannot enable this unless you are
1124 using Perl's malloc, so a typical Configure command would be
1126 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS -Dusemymalloc
1128 to enable this option.
1132 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1134 If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1135 If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1139 =item Running Configure Interactively
1141 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1142 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1145 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1146 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1147 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1148 will use the defaults from then on.
1150 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1151 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1152 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1156 Hint files tell Configure about a number of things:
1162 The peculiarities or conventions of particular platforms -- non-standard
1163 library locations and names, default installation locations for binaries,
1168 The deficiencies of the platform -- for example, library functions that,
1169 although present, are too badly broken to be usable; or limits on
1170 resources that are generously available on most platforms.
1174 How best to optimize for the platform, both in terms of binary size and/or
1175 speed, and for Perl feature support. Because of wide variations in the
1176 implementation of shared libraries and of threading, for example, Configure
1177 often needs hints in order to be able to use these features.
1181 The perl distribution includes many system-specific hints files
1182 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1183 will offer to use that hint file. Unless you have a very good reason
1184 not to, you should accept its offer.
1186 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1187 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1188 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1189 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
1190 file, which also explains hint files known as callback-units.
1192 Note that any hint file is read before any Policy file, meaning that
1193 Policy overrides hints -- see L</Site-wide Policy settings>.
1197 If you are re-using an old config.sh, it's possible that Configure detects
1198 different values from the ones specified in this file. You will almost
1199 always want to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something
1202 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1203 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1204 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1205 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1208 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1209 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1210 Keep the previous value? [y]
1212 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1213 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1214 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1216 =item Changing Compilers
1218 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1219 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1220 rename it, then rerun Configure with the options you want to use.
1222 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1224 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1225 them to all the .SH files by running
1229 You will then have to rebuild by running
1234 =item config.over and config.arch
1236 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride
1237 Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1238 before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1239 however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1240 This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1242 There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1243 config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1244 architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1245 hints file that creates the config.arch.
1249 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1250 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1251 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1253 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1254 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1259 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1260 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1261 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1262 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1263 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1264 lost the next time you run Configure.
1266 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1267 see the file hints/README.hints.
1269 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1270 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1277 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1278 Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1279 system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1280 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1283 =item Porting information
1285 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan 9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1286 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1287 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1288 subdirectory. Porting/Glossary should especially come in handy.
1290 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1291 http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
1292 various other operating systems.
1294 If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture, study carefully the
1295 section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1296 in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file pod/perlrepository.pod.
1297 Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1301 =head2 Adding extra modules to the build
1303 You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1304 CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1305 command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1307 Configure -Dextras="Bundle::LWP DBI"
1309 or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
1310 then answer "Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
1311 The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
1312 This will only work if those modules are to be built as dynamic
1313 extensions. If you wish to include those extra modules as static
1314 extensions, see L<"Extensions"> above.
1316 Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1317 modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1318 or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1319 do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1321 Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1322 dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
1323 For example: you will need to have the Foo database specific
1324 headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1325 process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1329 suidperl was an optional component of earlier releases of perl. It is no
1330 longer available. Instead, use a tool specifically designed to handle
1331 changes in privileges, such as B<sudo>.
1335 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1336 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1337 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1338 makefile, not Makefile, since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1339 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1340 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1342 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1347 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1349 =head2 Expected errors
1351 These error reports are normal, and can be ignored:
1354 make: [extra.pods] Error 1 (ignored)
1356 make: [extras.make] Error 1 (ignored)
1358 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1360 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1361 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1362 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1363 then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1369 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1370 for further tips and information.
1374 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1375 during the building of extensions, run
1379 to test your version of miniperl.
1383 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1384 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1385 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1386 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1387 whole L<perllocale/"LOCALE PROBLEMS"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1388 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1390 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1391 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1394 are supported and installed on your system.
1395 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1399 =item other environment variables
1401 Configure does not check for environment variables that can sometimes
1402 have a major influence on how perl is built or tested. For example,
1403 OBJECT_MODE on AIX determines the way the compiler and linker deal with
1404 their objects, but this is a variable that only influences build-time
1405 behaviour, and should not affect the perl scripts that are eventually
1406 executed by the perl binary. Other variables, like PERL_UNICODE,
1407 PERL5LIB, and PERL5OPT will influence the behaviour of the test suite.
1408 So if you are getting strange test failures, you may want to try
1409 retesting with the various PERL variables unset.
1413 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1414 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1415 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1416 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by installing gcc
1417 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1418 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1419 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1423 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1424 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1426 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1427 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1428 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1430 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1431 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1433 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1435 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1436 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1437 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1438 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1439 of your local set-up.
1443 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1444 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1447 sh Configure -Uusenm
1449 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1450 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1453 =item umask not found
1455 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1456 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1457 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1458 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1459 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1463 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1464 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1465 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1466 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1467 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1471 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1472 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1473 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1477 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1478 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1479 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1480 on L<"nm extraction">.
1482 =item __inet_* errors
1484 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1485 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1486 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1487 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1488 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1489 newer version of BIND (and remove the files the old one left behind).
1490 If you can't, you can either link with the updated resolver library provided
1491 with BIND 8.1 or rename /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and
1492 test process to avoid the problem.
1494 =item .*_r() prototype NOT found
1496 On a related note, if you see a bunch of complaints like the above about
1497 reentrant functions - specifically networking-related ones - being present
1498 but without prototypes available, check to see if BIND 8.1 (or possibly
1499 other BIND 8 versions) is (or has been) installed. They install
1500 header files such as netdb.h into places such as /usr/local/include (or into
1501 another directory as specified at build/install time), at least optionally.
1502 Remove them or put them in someplace that isn't in the C preprocessor's
1503 header file include search path (determined by -I options plus defaults,
1504 normally /usr/include).
1506 =item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1508 This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1509 gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1510 changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1511 rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1512 update your gcc installation.
1516 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1517 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1525 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1526 with B<make depend; make>.
1528 =item Missing functions and Undefined symbols
1530 If the build of miniperl fails with a long list of missing functions or
1531 undefined symbols, check the libs variable in the config.sh file. It
1532 should look something like
1534 libs='-lsocket -lnsl -ldl -lm -lc'
1536 The exact libraries will vary from system to system, but you typically
1537 need to include at least the math library -lm. Normally, Configure
1538 will suggest the correct defaults. If the libs variable is empty, you
1539 need to start all over again. Run
1543 and start from the very beginning. This time, unless you are sure of
1544 what you are doing, accept the default list of libraries suggested by
1547 If the libs variable looks correct, you might have the
1548 L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1550 If you stil have missing routines or undefined symbols, you probably
1551 need to add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature
1552 that Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete. If
1553 you used a hint file, see if it has any relevant advice. You can also
1554 look through through config.h for likely suspects.
1558 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1559 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1560 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1561 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1562 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1565 =item Missing dbmclose
1567 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1568 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1570 =item error: too few arguments to function 'dbmclose'
1572 Building ODBM_File on some (Open)SUSE distributions might run into this
1573 error, as the header file is broken. There are two ways to deal with this
1575 1. Disable the use of ODBM_FILE
1577 Configure ... -Dnoextensions=ODBM_File
1579 2. Fix the header file, somewhat like this:
1581 --- a/usr/include/dbm.h 2010-03-24 08:54:59.000000000 +0100
1582 +++ b/usr/include/dbm.h 2010-03-24 08:55:15.000000000 +0100
1583 @@ -59,4 +59,4 @@ extern datum firstkey __P((void));
1585 extern datum nextkey __P((datum key));
1587 -extern int dbmclose __P((DBM *));
1588 +extern int dbmclose __P((void));
1590 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1592 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1593 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1594 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1595 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1596 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1597 Most users will see warnings for the ones they don't have. The
1598 phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to reassure you that nothing
1599 unusual is happening, and the build process is continuing.
1601 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1604 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1606 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1607 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1608 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1610 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1611 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1612 quite that tightly coordinated.
1614 =item sh: ar: not found
1616 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1617 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1618 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1619 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1622 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1624 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1625 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1626 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1628 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1630 If you get this error message from the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem test, your System
1631 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1632 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1633 to include the System V semaphores.
1635 =item ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem........semget: No space left on device
1637 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1638 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1639 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1640 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1645 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1646 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1647 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1648 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1649 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1650 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1651 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1652 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1654 =item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1656 The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1657 make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1658 archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1659 C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1660 archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1661 incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1662 official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1663 that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1664 archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1666 =item invalid token: ##
1668 You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. To compile Perl, you
1669 need to use a compiler that supports ANSI C. If there is a README
1670 file for your system, it may have further details on your compiler
1675 Some additional things that have been reported:
1677 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1679 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1681 UTS may need one or more of -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1683 FreeBSD can fail the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1684 configured in the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1685 you will get a message telling you what to do.
1687 Building Perl on a system that has also BIND (headers and libraries)
1688 installed may run into troubles because BIND installs its own netdb.h
1689 and socket.h, which may not agree with the operating system's ideas of
1690 the same files. Similarly, including -lbind may conflict with libc's
1691 view of the world. You may have to tweak -Dlocincpth and -Dloclibpth
1696 =head2 Cross-compilation
1698 Perl can be cross-compiled. It is just not trivial, cross-compilation
1699 rarely is. Perl is routinely cross-compiled for many platforms (as of
1700 June 2005 at least PocketPC aka WinCE, Open Zaurus, EPOC, Symbian, and
1701 the IBM OS/400). These platforms are known as the B<target> platforms,
1702 while the systems where the compilation takes place are the B<host>
1705 What makes the situation difficult is that first of all,
1706 cross-compilation environments vary significantly in how they are set
1707 up and used, and secondly because the primary way of configuring Perl
1708 (using the rather large Unix-tool-dependent Configure script) is not
1709 awfully well suited for cross-compilation. However, starting from
1710 version 5.8.0, the Configure script also knows one way of supporting
1711 cross-compilation support, please keep reading.
1713 See the following files for more information about compiling Perl for
1714 the particular platforms:
1718 =item WinCE/PocketPC
1740 Packaging and transferring either the core Perl modules or CPAN
1741 modules to the target platform is also left up to the each
1742 cross-compilation environment. Often the cross-compilation target
1743 platforms are somewhat limited in diskspace: see the section
1744 L<Minimizing the Perl installation> to learn more of the minimal set
1745 of files required for a functional Perl installation.
1747 For some cross-compilation environments the Configure option
1748 C<-Dinstallprefix=...> might be handy, see L<Changing the installation
1751 About the cross-compilation support of Configure: what is known to
1752 work is running Configure in a cross-compilation environment and
1753 building the miniperl executable. What is known not to work is
1754 building the perl executable because that would require building
1755 extensions: Dynaloader statically and File::Glob dynamically, for
1756 extensions one needs MakeMaker and MakeMaker is not yet
1757 cross-compilation aware, and neither is the main Makefile.
1759 The cross-compilation setup of Configure has successfully been used in
1760 at least two Linux cross-compilation environments. The setups were
1761 both such that the host system was Intel Linux with a gcc built for
1762 cross-compiling into ARM Linux, and there was a SSH connection to the
1765 To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch that
1766 has to be used is C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
1768 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1770 This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
1771 symbol C<usecrosscompile> available, and C<xconfig.h> will be used
1772 for cross-compilation.
1774 During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1775 into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1776 cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1777 target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1778 transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1779 the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1780 methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1781 F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1783 To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1784 the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1785 happens), supply Configure with
1787 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1789 The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
1790 must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1791 You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
1795 but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
1797 Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
1798 which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
1799 This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
1800 In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
1803 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
1805 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1806 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1807 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
1809 If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
1810 compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
1811 C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
1812 (The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
1813 as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
1814 will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
1815 in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
1817 In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
1818 choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
1821 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
1823 Putting it all together:
1825 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1826 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1827 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
1829 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
1830 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1831 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1832 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1833 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
1836 or if you are happy with the defaults:
1838 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1839 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1840 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1843 Another example where the cross-compiler has been installed under
1844 F</usr/local/arm/2.95.5>:
1846 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1847 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1848 -Dcc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/bin/arm-linux-gcc \
1849 -Dincpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
1850 -Dusrinc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
1851 -Dlibpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/lib
1855 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
1856 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
1857 wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1859 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1860 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1861 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1863 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1865 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1866 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1867 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1869 ./perl -MTestInit t/op/groups.t
1871 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1872 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1874 cd t ; ./perl harness <list of tests>
1876 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1877 complicated constructs). If no list of tests is provided, harness
1880 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1881 comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
1882 shared library path if you get errors like:
1884 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
1886 See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
1892 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1893 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1894 'make test' exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1895 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1896 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1897 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1899 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1905 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1907 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1908 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1909 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1910 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1911 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1912 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1915 =item Timing problems
1917 Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
1918 sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
1919 If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough,
1920 these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again
1921 with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive
1922 and load-sensitive tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
1923 F<ext/Time-HiRes/t/HiRes.t>, F<ext/threads-shared/t/waithires.t>,
1924 F<ext/threads-shared/t/stress.t>, F<lib/Benchmark.t>,
1925 F<lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t>, and F<lib/Memoize/t/speed.t>.
1927 You might also experience some failures in F<t/op/stat.t> if you build
1928 perl on an NFS filesystem, if the remote clock and the system clock are
1933 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1934 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
1935 For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
1936 test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
1938 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1940 cd t; ./perl -MTestInit op/pat.t
1942 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1943 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1944 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1945 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1947 =item libgcc_s.so.1: cannot open shared object file
1949 This message has been reported on gcc-3.2.3 and earlier installed with
1950 a non-standard prefix. Setting the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable
1951 (or equivalent) to include gcc's lib/ directory with the libgcc_s.so.1
1952 shared library should fix the problem.
1954 =item Failures from lib/File/Temp/t/security saying "system possibly insecure"
1956 First, such warnings are not necessarily serious or indicative of a
1957 real security threat. That being said, they bear investigating.
1959 Note that each of the tests is run twice. The first time is in the
1960 directory returned by File::Spec->tmpdir() (often /tmp on Unix
1961 systems), and the second time in the directory from which the test was
1962 run (usually the 't' directory, if the test was run as part of 'make
1965 The tests may fail for the following reasons:
1967 (1) If the directory the tests are being run in is owned by somebody
1968 other than the user running the tests, or by root (uid 0).
1970 This failure can happen if the Perl source code distribution is
1971 unpacked in such a way that the user ids in the distribution package
1972 are used as-is. Some tar programs do this.
1974 (2) If the directory the tests are being run in is writable by group or
1975 by others, and there is no sticky bit set for the directory. (With
1976 UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to a directory means the right to
1977 add or remove files in that directory. The 'sticky bit' is a feature
1978 used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if the bit is
1979 set for a directory, no one but the owner (or root) can remove that
1980 file even if the permissions would otherwise allow file removal by
1983 This failure may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the
1984 permissions policy used on this particular system. This failure can
1985 also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit (this
1986 is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle File::Temp
1987 should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or if the system
1988 supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons it is not being
1989 used. This is, for example, the case with HP-UX: as of HP-UX release
1990 11.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX doesn't use it
1991 on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also, as with the permissions, some
1992 local policy might dictate that the stickiness is not used.
1994 (3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
1995 any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
1996 directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
1997 (2). For Unix systems, this is usually not an issue if you are
1998 building on a local disk. See the documentation for the File::Temp
1999 module for more information about 'chown giveaway'.
2001 See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
2002 about the various security aspects of temporary files.
2006 The core distribution can now run its regression tests in parallel on
2007 Unix-like platforms. Instead of running C<make test>, set C<TEST_JOBS> in
2008 your environment to the number of tests to run in parallel, and run
2009 C<make test_harness>. On a Bourne-like shell, this can be done as
2011 TEST_JOBS=3 make test_harness # Run 3 tests in parallel
2013 An environment variable is used, rather than parallel make itself, because
2014 L<TAP::Harness> needs to be able to schedule individual non-conflicting test
2015 scripts itself, and there is no standard interface to C<make> utilities to
2016 interact with their job schedulers.
2020 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
2021 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
2022 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
2023 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
2024 are not root, you must still have permission to install into the directories
2025 in question and you should ignore any messages about chown not working.
2027 If "make install" just says "`install' is up to date" or something
2028 similar, you may be on a case-insensitive filesystems such as Mac's HFS+,
2029 and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion is brought to you
2030 by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
2032 =head2 Installing perl under different names
2034 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
2035 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
2036 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
2038 make install PERLNAME=myperl
2040 You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
2041 "perl5.8.9") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
2043 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
2045 This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (e.g. to
2046 avoid conflicts with an ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor).
2047 Without this the versioned binary would be called "perl55.8.8".
2049 =head2 Installing perl under a different directory
2051 You can install perl under a different destination directory by using
2052 the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>, with a command like
2054 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
2056 DESTDIR is automatically prepended to all the installation paths. See
2057 the example in L<"DESTDIR"> above.
2059 =head2 Installed files
2061 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
2062 anything, you can run
2064 ./perl installperl -n
2065 ./perl installman -n
2067 make install will install the following:
2072 perl5.n.n where 5.n.n is the current release number. This
2073 will be a link to perl.
2075 sperl5.n.n If you requested setuid emulation.
2076 a2p awk-to-perl translator
2080 cppstdin This is used by the deprecated switch perl -P, if
2081 your cc -E can't read from stdin.
2082 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
2083 config_data Manage Module::Build-like module configuration
2084 corelist Shows versions of modules that come with different
2087 cpan2dist The CPANPLUS distribution creator
2088 cpanp The CPANPLUS shell
2089 cpanp-run-perl An helper for cpanp
2090 dprofpp Perl code profiler post-processor
2091 enc2xs Encoding module generator
2092 find2perl find-to-perl translator
2093 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
2094 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
2095 instmodsh A shell to examine installed modules.
2096 libnetcfg Configure libnet.
2097 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
2098 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
2099 perlivp Perl Installation Verification Procedure
2100 piconv A Perl implementation of the encoding conversion
2102 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
2103 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
2104 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
2108 podchecker POD syntax checker
2109 podselect Prints sections of POD documentation
2110 prove A command-line tool for running tests
2111 psed A Perl implementation of sed
2112 ptar A Perl implementation of tar
2113 ptardiff A diff for tar archives
2114 s2p sed-to-perl translator
2115 shasum A tool to print or check SHA checksums
2116 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
2117 xsubpp Compiler to convert Perl XS code into C code
2121 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
2122 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
2126 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2128 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
2129 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2131 installperl will also create the directories listed above
2132 in L<"Installation Directories">.
2134 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
2135 under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
2136 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2137 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
2139 =head2 Installing only version-specific parts
2141 Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2142 installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
2143 perl alongside an already installed production version without
2144 disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2145 To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2147 Configure -Dversiononly
2149 or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2150 you can just manually run
2152 ./perl installperl -v
2154 and skip installman altogether.
2156 See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2159 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2161 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2162 system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2163 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2164 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2165 library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2167 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2168 of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2169 hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2170 For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2173 =head1 installhtml --help
2175 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2176 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2177 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2179 Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2180 html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2182 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2187 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2189 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2190 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2191 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2192 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2193 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
2196 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2197 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2198 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2199 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2200 (and would welcome patches for them).
2202 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2203 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2205 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2207 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2208 available in TeX format. Type
2210 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2212 =head1 Starting all over again
2214 If you wish to re-build perl from the same build directory, you should
2215 clean it out with the command
2223 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
2224 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
2226 If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
2227 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
2228 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should not re-use
2231 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
2232 installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
2233 using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
2236 =head1 Reporting Problems
2238 Wherever possible please use the perlbug tool supplied with this Perl
2239 to report problems, as it automatically includes summary configuration
2240 information about your perl, which may help us track down problems far
2241 more quickly. But first you should read the advice in this file,
2242 carefully re-read the error message and check the relevant manual pages
2243 on your system, as these may help you find an immediate solution. If
2244 you are not sure whether what you are seeing is a bug, you can send a
2245 message describing the problem to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup to
2248 The perlbug tool is installed along with perl, so after you have
2249 completed C<make install> it should be possible to run it with plain
2250 C<perlbug>. If the install fails, or you want to report problems with
2251 C<make test> without installing perl, then you can use C<make nok> to
2252 run perlbug to report the problem, or run it by hand from this source
2253 directory with C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug>
2255 If the build fails too early to run perlbug uninstalled, then please
2256 B<run> the C<./myconfig> shell script, and mail its output along with
2257 an accurate description of your problem to perlbug@perl.org
2259 If Configure itself fails, and does not generate a config.sh file
2260 (needed to run C<./myconfig>), then please mail perlbug@perl.org the
2261 description of how Configure fails along with details of your system
2262 - for example the output from running C<uname -a>
2264 Please try to make your message brief but clear. Brief, clear bug
2265 reports tend to get answered more quickly. Please don't worry if your
2266 written English is not great - what matters is how well you describe
2267 the important technical details of the problem you have encountered,
2268 not whether your grammar and spelling is flawless.
2270 Trim out unnecessary information. Do not include large files (such as
2271 config.sh or a complete Configure or make log) unless absolutely
2272 necessary. Do not include a complete transcript of your build
2273 session. Just include the failing commands, the relevant error
2274 messages, and whatever preceding commands are necessary to give the
2275 appropriate context. Plain text should usually be sufficient--fancy
2276 attachments or encodings may actually reduce the number of people who
2277 read your message. Your message will get relayed to over 400
2278 subscribers around the world so please try to keep it brief but clear.
2280 If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
2281 inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send
2282 it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription
2283 unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who be able
2284 to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help
2285 co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all
2286 platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for security
2287 issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently distributed on CPAN.
2289 If you are unsure what makes a good bug report please read "How to
2290 report Bugs Effectively" by Simon Tatham:
2291 http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html
2293 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5
2295 Perl 5.12 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
2296 In other words, you will have to recompile your XS modules.
2298 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
2299 5.X.Y) to another similar minor version (e.g. 5.X.(Y+1))) without
2300 re-compiling all of your extensions. You can also safely leave the old
2301 version around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
2303 Usually, most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to be
2304 used with a newer version of Perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
2305 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
2307 Suppose you already have version 5.8.7 installed. The directories
2308 searched by 5.8.7 are typically like:
2310 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.7/$archname
2311 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.7
2312 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7/$archname
2313 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
2315 Now, suppose you install version 5.8.8. The directories
2316 searched by version 5.8.8 will be:
2318 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.8/$archname
2319 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.8
2320 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/$archname
2321 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8
2323 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7/$archname
2324 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
2325 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2327 Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
2328 of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
2329 directories. This way, modules installed under 5.8.7 will continue
2330 to be usable by 5.8.7 but will also accessible to 5.8.8. Further,
2331 suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
2332 present only in 5.8.8. That new module will get installed into
2333 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8 and will be available to 5.8.8,
2334 but will not interfere with the 5.8.7 version.
2336 The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
2337 5.6.0 and above will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
2339 Lastly, suppose you now install 5.10.0, which is not binary compatible
2340 with 5.8.x. The directories searched by 5.10.0 (if you don't change the
2341 Configure defaults) will be:
2343 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.10.0/$archname
2344 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.10.0
2345 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0/$archname
2346 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0
2348 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8
2350 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
2352 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2354 Note that the earlier $archname entries are now gone, but pure perl
2355 modules from earlier versions will still be found.
2357 This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2358 to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2359 versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
2361 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
2363 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
2364 separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
2365 won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2366 libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2367 way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
2369 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.13.4
2371 and adding /opt/perl5.13.4/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
2372 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2373 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2375 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
2376 (e.g. 5.10 for all 5.10.x versions), but change directory with
2379 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2380 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2381 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2384 =head2 Upgrading from 5.13.3 or earlier
2386 B<Perl 5.13.4 is binary incompatible with Perl 5.13.3 and any earlier
2387 Perl release.> Perl modules having binary parts
2388 (meaning that a C compiler is used) will have to be recompiled to be
2389 used with 5.13.4. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with
2390 5.13.4, you may safely do so without disturbing the older
2391 installations. (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5">
2394 See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2395 incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
2396 perllocal.pod, not perllocale.pod, for installed module information.
2398 =head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2400 The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2401 Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2402 operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2404 Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way:
2405 Encode, with its big conversion tables, consumes a lot of
2406 space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything. The
2407 Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network
2408 programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all
2409 depends on what do you need to do.
2411 In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2412 recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2413 depends on what you need.
2415 Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2419 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2423 in Linux is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
2426 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/strict.pm
2427 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/warnings.pm
2428 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/File/Glob.pm
2429 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/XSLoader.pm
2430 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2432 Secondly, Debian perl-base package contains the following files,
2433 size about 1.9MB in its i386 version:
2438 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B.pm
2439 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B/Deparse.pm
2440 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Config.pm
2441 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Cwd.pm
2442 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Data/Dumper.pm
2443 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/DynaLoader.pm
2444 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Errno.pm
2445 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Fcntl.pm
2446 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/File/Glob.pm
2447 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO.pm
2448 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/File.pm
2449 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Handle.pm
2450 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Pipe.pm
2451 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Seekable.pm
2452 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Select.pm
2453 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket.pm
2454 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/POSIX.pm
2455 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Socket.pm
2456 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/XSLoader.pm
2457 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.bs
2458 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.so
2459 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.bs
2460 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.so
2461 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a
2462 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2463 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2464 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2465 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2466 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/extralibs.ld
2467 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs
2468 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2469 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.bs
2470 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2471 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.bs
2472 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.so
2473 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.bs
2474 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2475 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2476 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2477 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.bs
2478 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2479 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/lib.pm
2480 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/re.pm
2481 /usr/share/doc/perl-base
2482 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
2483 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2484 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian.gz
2485 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
2486 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
2487 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
2489 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/AutoLoader.pm
2490 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp.pm
2491 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp/Heavy.pm
2492 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter.pm
2493 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2494 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec.pm
2495 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2496 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/FileHandle.pm
2497 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Getopt/Long.pm
2498 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2499 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2500 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open2.pm
2501 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open3.pm
2502 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/List/Util.pm
2503 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Scalar/Util.pm
2504 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/SelectSaver.pm
2505 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Symbol.pm
2506 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/ParseWords.pm
2507 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Tabs.pm
2508 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Wrap.pm
2509 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/attributes.pm
2510 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/base.pm
2511 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes.pm
2512 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes_heavy.pl
2513 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/constant.pm
2514 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/fields.pm
2515 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/integer.pm
2516 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/locale.pm
2517 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/overload.pm
2518 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/strict.pm
2519 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8.pm
2520 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8_heavy.pl
2521 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/vars.pm
2522 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings.pm
2523 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings/register.pm
2525 A nice trick to find out the minimal set of Perl library files you will
2526 need to run a Perl program is
2528 perl -e 'do "prog.pl"; END { print "$_\n" for sort keys %INC }'
2530 (this will not find libraries required in runtime, unfortunately, but
2531 it's a minimal set) and if you want to find out all the files you can
2532 use something like the below
2534 strace perl -le 'do "x.pl"' 2>&1 | perl -nle '/^open\(\"(.+?)"/ && print $1'
2536 (The 'strace' is Linux-specific, other similar utilities include 'truss'
2539 =head2 C<-DNO_MATHOMS>
2541 If you configure perl with C<-Accflags=-DNO_MATHOMS>, the functions from
2542 F<mathoms.c> will not be compiled in. Those functions are no longer used
2543 by perl itself; for source compatibility reasons, though, they weren't
2546 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
2548 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2549 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
2550 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
2551 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2552 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
2556 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2557 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2558 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
2560 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2561 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2563 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2565 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2566 the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2567 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2568 a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2569 and the contact information to match your distribution.