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're building perl from a git repository, you should also consult
47 the documentation in pod/perlgit.pod for information on that special
50 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
51 L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
53 For information on what's new in this release, see the
54 pod/perldelta.pod file. For more information about how to find more
55 specific detail about changes, see the Changes file.
59 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
60 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
61 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
62 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
64 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
66 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
69 Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
70 you should probably at least skim through this document before
73 In addition to this file, check if there is a README file specific to
74 your operating system, since it may provide additional or different
75 instructions for building Perl. If there is a hint file for your
76 system (in the hints/ directory) you might also want to read it
77 for even more information.
79 For additional information about porting Perl, see the section on
80 L<"Porting information"> below, and look at the files in the Porting/
85 =head2 Changes and Incompatibilities
87 Please see pod/perldelta.pod for a description of the changes and
88 potential incompatibilities introduced with this release. A few of
89 the most important issues are listed below, but you should refer
90 to pod/perldelta.pod for more detailed information.
92 B<WARNING:> This version is not binary compatible with prior releases of Perl.
93 If you have built extensions (i.e. modules that include C code)
94 using an earlier version of Perl, you will need to rebuild and reinstall
97 Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
98 without reinstallation. See the discussion below on
99 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> for more details.
101 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
103 On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the changes
104 in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
105 pod/perldelta.pod for a description of what's changed. See your
106 installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly incomplete)
107 list of locally installed modules. Also see CPAN::autobundle for one
108 way to make a "bundle" of your currently installed modules.
112 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
113 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
114 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
115 almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
116 since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
119 At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
120 defaults from then on.
122 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
123 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
125 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
128 =head2 Common Configure options
130 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run
134 to get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
135 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
141 To compile with gcc, if it's not the default compiler on your
142 system, you should run
144 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
146 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or any another alternative
147 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
149 =item Installation prefix
151 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
152 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
153 and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below for
156 You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
157 directory when Configure prompts you, or by using the Configure command
158 line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
160 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
162 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
163 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
164 prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
165 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
166 for more details. Do not include a trailing slash, (i.e. /opt/perl/)
167 or you may experience odd test failures.
169 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
170 as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
171 attempt infinite recursion.
175 It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
176 find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
177 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
178 careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
179 vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing. If you insist
180 on replacing your vendor's perl, useful information on how it was
181 configured may be found with
185 (Check the output carefully, however, since this doesn't preserve
186 spaces in arguments to Configure. For that, you have to look carefully
187 at config_arg1, config_arg2, etc.)
189 By default, Configure will not try to link /usr/bin/perl to the current
190 version of perl. You can turn on that behavior by running
192 Configure -Dinstallusrbinperl
194 or by answering 'yes' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
196 In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to put
197 (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
198 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
199 obvious and convenient place.
201 =item Building a development release
203 For development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.9.x) if you want to
204 use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel to Configure,
205 because the default answer to the question "do you really want to
206 Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel skips that
211 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
216 =head2 Altering Configure variables for C compiler switches etc.
218 For most users, most of the Configure defaults are fine, or can easily
219 be set on the Configure command line. However, if Configure doesn't
220 have an option to do what you want, you can change Configure variables
221 after the platform hints have been run by using Configure's -A switch.
222 For example, here's how to add a couple of extra flags to C compiler
225 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_EXTERNAL_GLOB -DNO_HASH_SEED"
227 To clarify, those ccflags values are not Configure options; if passed to
228 Configure directly, they won't do anything useful (they will define a
229 variable in config.sh, but without taking any action based upon it).
230 But when passed to the compiler, those flags will activate #ifdefd code.
232 For more help on Configure switches, run
236 =head2 Major Configure-time Build Options
238 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
239 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
240 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
241 some of the main things you can change.
245 On some platforms, perl can be compiled with support for threads. To
248 sh Configure -Dusethreads
250 The default is to compile without thread support.
252 Perl used to have two different internal threads implementations. The current
253 model (available internally since 5.6, and as a user-level module since 5.8) is
254 called interpreter-based implementation (ithreads), with one interpreter per
255 thread, and explicit sharing of data. The (deprecated) 5.005 version
256 (5005threads) was removed for release 5.10.
258 The 'threads' module is for use with the ithreads implementation. The
259 'Thread' module emulates the old 5005threads interface on top of the current
262 When using threads, perl uses a dynamically-sized buffer for some of
263 the thread-safe library calls, such as those in the getpw*() family.
264 This buffer starts small, but it will keep growing until the result
265 fits. To get a fixed upper limit, you should compile Perl with
266 PERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE defined to be the number of bytes you want. One
267 way to do this is to run Configure with
268 C<-Accflags=-DPERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE=65536>.
270 =head3 Large file support
272 Since Perl 5.6.0, Perl has supported large files (files larger than
273 2 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
274 support is on by default.
276 This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files,
277 seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad in that if you are interfacing Perl
278 using some extension, the components you are connecting to must also
279 be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
280 parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
283 There's also one known limitation with the current large files
284 implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
285 section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer formats
286 like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
288 If you want to compile perl without large file support, use
290 sh Configure -Uuselargefiles
292 =head3 64 bit support
294 If your platform does not run natively at 64 bits, but can simulate
295 them with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>,
296 you can build a perl that uses 64 bits.
298 There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
299 using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
300 -Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
301 the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
303 The C<use64bitint> option does only as much as is required to get
304 64-bit integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long
305 longs") while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because
306 your pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint>
307 does not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it
308 might, but it doesn't have to). The C<use64bitint> simply means that
309 you will be able to have 64 bit-wide scalar values.
311 The C<use64bitall> option goes all the way by attempting to switch
312 integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
313 create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
314 resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
315 have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
318 Natively 64-bit systems need neither -Duse64bitint nor -Duse64bitall.
319 On these systems, it might be the default compilation mode, and there
320 is currently no guarantee that passing no use64bitall option to the
321 Configure process will build a 32bit perl. Implementing -Duse32bit*
322 options is planned for a future release of perl.
326 In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
327 range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
328 (that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
329 this support (if it is available).
333 You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
334 and the long double support.
336 =head3 Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Hashes
338 In Perls 5.8.0 and earlier it was easy to create degenerate hashes.
339 Processing such hashes would consume large amounts of CPU time,
340 enabling a "Denial of Service" attack against Perl. Such hashes may be
341 a problem for example for mod_perl sites, sites with Perl CGI scripts
342 and web services, that process data originating from external sources.
344 In Perl 5.8.1 a security feature was introduced to make it harder to
345 create such degenerate hashes. A visible side effect of this was that
346 the keys(), values(), and each() functions may return the hash elements
347 in different order between different runs of Perl even with the same
348 data. It also had unintended binary incompatibility issues with
349 certain modules compiled against Perl 5.8.0.
351 In Perl 5.8.2 an improved scheme was introduced. Hashes will return
352 elements in the same order as Perl 5.8.0 by default. On a hash by hash
353 basis, if pathological data is detected during a hash key insertion,
354 then that hash will switch to an alternative random hash seed. As
355 adding keys can always dramatically change returned hash element order,
356 existing programs will not be affected by this, unless they
357 specifically test for pre-recorded hash return order for contrived
358 data. (eg the list of keys generated by C<map {"\0"x$_} 0..15> trigger
359 randomisation) In effect the new implementation means that 5.8.1 scheme
360 is only being used on hashes which are under attack.
362 One can still revert to the old guaranteed repeatable order (and be
363 vulnerable to attack by wily crackers) by setting the environment
364 variable PERL_HASH_SEED, see L<perlrun/PERL_HASH_SEED>. Another option
365 is to add -DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT to the compilation flags (for
366 example by using C<Configure -Accflags=-DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT>), in
367 which case one has to explicitly set the PERL_HASH_SEED environment
368 variable to enable the security feature, or by adding -DNO_HASH_SEED to
369 the compilation flags to completely disable the randomisation feature.
371 B<Perl has never guaranteed any ordering of the hash keys>, and the
372 ordering has already changed several times during the lifetime of Perl
373 5. Also, the ordering of hash keys has always been, and continues to
374 be, affected by the insertion order. Note that because of this
375 randomisation for example the Data::Dumper results will be different
376 between different runs of Perl, since Data::Dumper by default dumps
377 hashes "unordered". The use of the Data::Dumper C<Sortkeys> option is
382 Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
383 TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
384 access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
385 Version 5. The corresponding Configure option is -Dusesocks.
386 You can find more about SOCKS from wikipedia at
387 L<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOCKS>.
389 =head3 Dynamic Loading
391 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading.
392 If you want to force perl to be compiled completely
393 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
394 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
395 With this option, you won't be able to use any new extension
396 (XS) module without recompiling perl itself.
398 =head3 Building a shared Perl library
400 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
401 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
402 extensions, and various extra libraries, such as -lm.
404 On systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
405 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
406 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
407 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
408 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
409 can share the same library.
411 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
412 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
413 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
416 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
417 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
418 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
421 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
422 libperl.so.5.8.8 (for Perl 5.8.8), or libperl.so.588, or simply
423 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
424 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
425 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
426 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
428 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
430 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
432 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
433 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
434 NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
435 for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
436 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
437 be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
438 library search settings. You can find the name of the environment
439 variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
441 grep ldlibpthname config.sh
443 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
444 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
445 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
448 ./perl -MTestInit t/misc/failing_test.t
452 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
454 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
457 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
459 for Bourne-style shells, or
461 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
463 for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
464 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And
465 again, it may be something other than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
467 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
468 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
471 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
473 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
474 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
475 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
476 install a standard Perl 5.10.0 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
477 try to build Perl 5.10.0 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
478 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
479 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
480 libperl.so.8 rather with the installed libperl.so.8? The answer is
481 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
482 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
483 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
484 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux, you can only override at runtime via
485 LD_PRELOAD, specifying the exact filename you wish to be used; and on
486 Digital Unix, you can override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the
487 _RLD_ROOT environment variable to point to the perl build directory.
489 In other words, it is generally not a good idea to try to build a perl
490 with a shared library if $archlib/CORE/$libperl already exists from a
493 A good workaround is to specify a different directory for the
494 architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING version of perl.
495 You can do this by changing all the *archlib* variables in config.sh to
496 point to your new architecture-dependent library.
498 =head3 Environment access
500 Perl often needs to write to the program's environment, such as when C<%ENV>
501 is assigned to. Many implementations of the C library function C<putenv()>
502 leak memory, so where possible perl will manipulate the environment directly
503 to avoid these leaks. The default is now to perform direct manipulation
504 whenever perl is running as a stand alone interpreter, and to call the safe
505 but potentially leaky C<putenv()> function when the perl interpreter is
506 embedded in another application. You can force perl to always use C<putenv()>
507 by compiling with C<-Accflags="-DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV">, see section
508 L</"Altering Configure variables for C compiler switches etc.">.
509 You can force an embedded perl to use direct manipulation by setting
510 C<PL_use_safe_putenv = 0;> after the C<perl_construct()> call.
512 =head2 Installation Directories
514 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
515 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the installation
516 questions are near the beginning of Configure. Do not include trailing
517 slashes on directory names. At any point during the Configure process,
518 you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use the defaults
519 from then on. Alternatively, you can
521 grep '^install' config.sh
523 after Configure has run to verify the installation paths.
525 The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
526 people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
527 distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
528 need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
529 you can safely skip the next section.
531 The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
535 =item Directories for the perl distribution
537 By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.17.2.
538 $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
539 5.12.3, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
540 determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
541 variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
543 Configure variable Default value
544 $prefixexp /usr/local
545 $binexp $prefixexp/bin
546 $scriptdirexp $prefixexp/bin
547 $privlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version
548 $archlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
549 $man1direxp $prefixexp/man/man1
550 $man3direxp $prefixexp/man/man3
554 $prefixexp is generated from $prefix, with ~ expansion done to convert home
555 directories into absolute paths. Similarly for the other variables listed. As
556 file system calls do not do this, you should always reference the ...exp
557 variables, to support users who build perl in their home directory.
559 Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
560 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
561 instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
562 directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
563 the common style is shown here.
565 =item Directories for site-specific add-on files
567 After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
568 CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
569 be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
571 Configure variable Default value
572 $siteprefixexp $prefixexp
573 $sitebinexp $siteprefixexp/bin
574 $sitescriptexp $siteprefixexp/bin
575 $sitelibexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
576 $sitearchexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
577 $siteman1direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man1
578 $siteman3direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man3
579 $sitehtml1direxp (none)
580 $sitehtml3direxp (none)
582 By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
583 modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
585 =item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
587 Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
588 distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
589 for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
591 Configure variable Default value
592 $vendorprefixexp (none)
593 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
594 $vendorbinexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
595 $vendorscriptexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
597 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
599 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
600 $vendorman1direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man1
601 $vendorman3direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man3
602 $vendorhtml1direxp (none)
603 $vendorhtml3direxp (none)
605 These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
606 a vendor might choose the following settings:
609 $siteprefix /usr/local
612 This would have the effect of setting the following:
615 $scriptdirexp /usr/bin
616 $privlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version
617 $archlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
618 $man1direxp /usr/man/man1
619 $man3direxp /usr/man/man3
621 $sitebinexp /usr/local/bin
622 $sitescriptexp /usr/local/bin
623 $sitelibexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
624 $sitearchexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
625 $siteman1direxp /usr/local/man/man1
626 $siteman3direxp /usr/local/man/man3
628 $vendorbinexp /usr/bin
629 $vendorscriptexp /usr/bin
630 $vendorlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
631 $vendorarchexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
632 $vendorman1direxp /usr/man/man1
633 $vendorman3direxp /usr/man/man3
635 Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
636 /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end user are in
637 the /usr/local hierarchy.
639 The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
640 version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
641 However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
642 installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
643 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below for more details
644 on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
646 Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
647 example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
648 are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
649 site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
650 network. One way to do that would be something like
652 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
656 As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
657 variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
658 directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
659 Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
660 version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
662 For example, if you have a bundle of perl libraries from a previous
663 installation, perhaps in a strange place:
665 Configure -Dotherlibdirs=/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1
669 There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
670 that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
671 separated list of directories, like this
673 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
675 The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
676 ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
677 modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
678 touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
679 version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
680 present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
681 directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
682 run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
684 =item usesitecustomize
686 Run-time customization of @INC can be enabled with:
688 sh Configure -Dusesitecustomize
690 which will define USE_SITECUSTOMIZE and $Config{usesitecustomize}.
691 When enabled, this makes perl run F<$sitelibexp/sitecustomize.pl> before
692 anything else. This script can then be set up to add additional
697 By default, man pages will be installed in $man1dir and $man3dir, which
698 are normally /usr/local/man/man1 and /usr/local/man/man3. If you
699 want to use a .3pm suffix for perl man pages, you can do that with
701 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
705 Currently, the standard perl installation does not do anything with
706 HTML documentation, but that may change in the future. Further, some
707 add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The html Configure
708 variables listed above are provided if you wish to specify where such
709 documents should be placed. The default is "none", but will likely
710 eventually change to something useful based on user feedback.
714 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
715 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
718 Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
719 directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
722 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
723 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
724 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below.
726 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
727 library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
728 suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
730 Thus, for example, if you Configure with
731 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.9.0 are
733 Configure variable Default value
734 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0
735 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0/$archname
736 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0
737 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0/$archname
739 =head2 Changing the installation directory
741 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
742 associated files) should be installed, and the directory in which it
743 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
744 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
745 However, sites that use package management software such as rpm or
746 dpkg, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
747 wish to install perl into a different directory before moving perl
748 to its final destination. There are two ways to do that:
754 To install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory, use the following
757 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
759 (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
761 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
762 modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
763 follow this example. That's why it's usually better to use DESTDIR,
764 as shown in the next section.
768 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is convenient
769 to compile it once and create an archive that can be installed on
770 multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to create an
771 archive that can be installed in /opt/perl. One way to do that is by
772 using the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>. The DESTDIR is
773 automatically prepended to all the installation paths. Thus you
776 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
779 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
780 cd /tmp/perl5/opt/perl
781 tar cvf /tmp/perl5-archive.tar .
785 =head2 Relocatable @INC
787 To create a relocatable perl tree, use the following command line:
789 sh Configure -Duserelocatableinc
791 Then the paths in @INC (and everything else in %Config) can be
792 optionally located via the path of the perl executable.
794 That means that, if the string ".../" is found at the start of any
795 path, it's substituted with the directory of $^X. So, the relocation
796 can be configured on a per-directory basis, although the default with
797 "-Duserelocatableinc" is that everything is relocated. The initial
798 install is done to the original configured prefix.
800 This option is not compatible with the building of a shared libperl
801 ("-Duseshrplib"), because in that case perl is linked with an hard-coded
802 rpath that points at the libperl.so, that cannot be relocated.
804 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
806 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
807 answers (such as installation directories) in the Policy.sh file.
808 If you want to build perl on another system using the same policy
809 defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file to the new system's perl build
810 directory, and Configure will use it. This will work even if Policy.sh was
811 generated for another version of Perl, or on a system with a
812 different architecture and/or operating system. However, in such cases,
813 you should review the contents of the file before using it: for
814 example, your new target may not keep its man pages in the same place
815 as the system on which the file was generated.
817 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
822 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
824 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
826 If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
827 to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
828 platform-specific hints files.
830 =head2 Disabling older versions of Perl
832 Configure will search for binary compatible versions of previously
833 installed perl binaries in the tree that is specified as target tree,
834 and these will be used as locations to search for modules by the perl
835 being built. The list of perl versions found will be put in the Configure
836 variable inc_version_list.
838 To disable this use of older perl modules, even completely valid pure perl
839 modules, you can specify to not include the paths found:
841 sh Configure -Dinc_version_list=none ...
843 If you do want to use modules from some previous perl versions, the variable
844 must contain a space separated list of directories under the site_perl
845 directory, and has to include architecture-dependent directories separately,
848 sh Configure -Dinc_version_list="5.16.0/x86_64-linux 5.16.0" ...
850 When using the newer perl, you can add these paths again in the
851 PERL5LIB environment variable or with perl's -I runtime option.
853 =head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
855 Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
856 where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
857 read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
858 architectures. You can do this (if your file system supports symbolic
861 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
862 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
863 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
865 This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
866 pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
867 unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
873 as usual, and Perl will be built in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
875 =head2 Building a debugging perl
877 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
878 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
879 you probably want to have support for perl internal debugging code
880 (activated by adding -DDEBUGGING to ccflags), and/or support for the
881 system debugger by adding -g to the optimisation flags. For that,
884 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING
888 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING=<mode>
890 For a more eye appealing call, -DEBUGGING is defined to be an alias
891 for -DDEBUGGING. For both, the -U calls are also supported, in order
892 to be able to overrule the hints or Policy.sh settings.
894 Here are the DEBUGGING modes:
902 =item -DEBUGGING=both
904 Sets both -DDEBUGGING in the ccflags, and adds -g to optimize.
906 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently (see below),
907 but usually it's convenient to have both.
913 Adds -g to optimize, but does not set -DDEBUGGING.
915 (Note: Your system may actually require something like cc -g2.
916 Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for your system.)
918 =item -DEBUGGING=none
922 Removes -g from optimize, and -DDEBUGGING from ccflags.
926 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
927 versions of perl under L<Building a shared Perl library>.
929 Note that a perl built with -DDEBUGGING will be much bigger and will run
930 much, much more slowly than a standard perl.
932 =head2 DTrace support
934 On platforms where DTrace is available, it may be enabled by
935 using the -Dusedtrace option to Configure. DTrace probes are available for
936 subroutine entry (sub-entry) and subroutine exit (sub-exit). Here's a
937 simple D script that uses them:
939 perl$target:::sub-entry, perl$target:::sub-return {
940 printf("%s %s (%s:%d)\n", probename == "sub-entry" ? "->" : "<-",
941 copyinstr(arg0), copyinstr(arg1), arg2);
947 Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
948 in the ext/ subdirectory.
950 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
951 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
952 only if it is able to find the gdbm library.
954 To disable certain extensions so that they are not built, use the
955 -Dnoextensions=... and -Donlyextensions=... options. They both accept
956 a space-separated list of extensions, such as C<IPC/SysV>. The extensions
958 C<noextensions> are removed from the list of extensions to build, while
959 the C<onlyextensions> is rather more severe and builds only the listed
960 extensions. The latter should be used with extreme caution since
961 certain extensions are used by many other extensions and modules:
962 examples of such modules include Fcntl and IO. The order of processing
963 these options is first C<only> (if present), then C<no> (if present).
965 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
966 the extensions you want.
968 If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
969 running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
970 extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
971 it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
972 has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
973 extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
974 convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
975 you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
976 dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
977 Another way of specifying extra modules is described in
978 L<"Adding extra modules to the build"> below.
980 If you re-use an old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
981 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
982 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
985 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
987 Perl comes with interfaces to number of libraries, including threads,
988 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For the *db* extension, if
989 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
990 automatically include that extension. The threading extension needs
991 to be specified explicitly (see L</Threads>).
993 Those libraries are not distributed with perl. If your header (.h) files
994 for those libraries are not in a directory normally searched by your C
995 compiler, then you will need to include the appropriate -I/your/directory
996 option when prompted by Configure. If your libraries are not in a
997 directory normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will
998 need to include the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted
999 by Configure. See the examples below.
1005 =item gdbm in /usr/local
1007 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
1008 GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
1009 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
1010 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
1011 necessary steps out automatically.
1013 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1014 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include, if it's
1015 not here yet. Similarly, when Configure prompts you for linker flags,
1016 you should include -L/usr/local/lib.
1018 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
1019 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1022 Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1023 you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1024 /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
1026 =item BerkeleyDB in /usr/local/BerkeleyDB
1028 The version of BerkeleyDB distributed by Oracle installs in a
1029 version-specific directory by default, typically something like
1030 /usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7. To have Configure find that, you need to add
1031 -I/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/include to cc flags, as in the previous example,
1032 and you will also have to take extra steps to help Configure find -ldb.
1033 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for library directories,
1034 add /usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib to the list. Also, you will need to
1035 add appropriate linker flags to tell the runtime linker where to find the
1036 BerkeleyDB shared libraries.
1038 It is possible to specify this from the command line (all on one
1042 -Dlocincpth='/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/include /usr/local/include' \
1043 -Dloclibpth='/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib /usr/local/lib' \
1044 -Aldflags='-R/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib'
1046 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1047 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1049 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
1050 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives.
1052 The addition to ldflags is so that the dynamic linker knows where to find
1053 the BerkeleyDB libraries. For Linux and Solaris, the -R option does that.
1054 Other systems may use different flags. Use the appropriate flag for your
1059 =head2 Overriding an old config.sh
1061 If you want to use an old config.sh produced by a previous run of
1062 Configure, but override some of the items with command line options, you
1063 need to use B<Configure -O>.
1065 =head2 GNU-style configure
1067 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
1068 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
1070 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
1072 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
1075 ./configure.gnu --help
1079 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
1080 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
1082 =head2 Malloc Issues
1084 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
1085 so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
1086 the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
1087 version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
1088 perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
1089 than your system malloc.
1091 However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
1092 experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
1093 that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
1094 (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
1098 =item Using the system malloc
1100 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
1102 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
1104 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
1106 Note that Perl's malloc isn't always used by default; that actually
1107 depends on your system. For example, on Linux and FreeBSD (and many more
1108 systems), Configure chooses to use the system's malloc by default.
1109 See the appropriate file in the F<hints/> directory to see how the
1112 =item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
1114 NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you just
1115 run Configure to accept all the defaults.
1117 Perl's malloc family of functions are normally called Perl_malloc(),
1118 Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree().
1119 These names do not clash with the system versions of these functions.
1121 If this flag is enabled, however, Perl's malloc family of functions
1122 will have the same names as the system versions. This may be required
1123 sometimes if you have libraries that like to free() data that may have
1124 been allocated by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1126 Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1127 from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1128 does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1131 =item -DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS
1133 This flag enables debugging mstats, which is required to use the
1134 Devel::Peek::mstat() function. You cannot enable this unless you are
1135 using Perl's malloc, so a typical Configure command would be
1137 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS -Dusemymalloc
1139 to enable this option.
1143 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1145 If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1146 If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1150 =item Running Configure Interactively
1152 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1153 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1156 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1157 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1158 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1159 will use the defaults from then on.
1161 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1162 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1163 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1167 Hint files tell Configure about a number of things:
1173 The peculiarities or conventions of particular platforms -- non-standard
1174 library locations and names, default installation locations for binaries,
1179 The deficiencies of the platform -- for example, library functions that,
1180 although present, are too badly broken to be usable; or limits on
1181 resources that are generously available on most platforms.
1185 How best to optimize for the platform, both in terms of binary size and/or
1186 speed, and for Perl feature support. Because of wide variations in the
1187 implementation of shared libraries and of threading, for example, Configure
1188 often needs hints in order to be able to use these features.
1192 The perl distribution includes many system-specific hints files
1193 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1194 will offer to use that hint file. Unless you have a very good reason
1195 not to, you should accept its offer.
1197 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1198 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1199 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1200 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
1201 file, which also explains hint files known as callback-units.
1203 Note that any hint file is read before any Policy file, meaning that
1204 Policy overrides hints -- see L</Site-wide Policy settings>.
1208 If you are re-using an old config.sh, it's possible that Configure detects
1209 different values from the ones specified in this file. You will almost
1210 always want to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something
1213 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1214 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1215 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1216 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1219 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1220 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1221 Keep the previous value? [y]
1223 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1224 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1225 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1227 =item Changing Compilers
1229 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1230 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1231 rename it, then rerun Configure with the options you want to use.
1233 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1235 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1236 them to all the .SH files by running
1240 You will then have to rebuild by running
1245 =item config.over and config.arch
1247 You can also supply a shell script config.over to override
1248 Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1249 before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1250 however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1251 This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1253 There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1254 config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1255 architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1256 hints file that creates the config.arch.
1260 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1261 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1262 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1264 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1265 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1270 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1271 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1272 optimizer on toke.c, find the switch structure marked 'or customize here',
1273 and add a line for toke.c ahead of the catch-all *) so that it now reads:
1278 toke) optimize='-g' ;;
1281 You should not edit the generated file cflags directly, as your changes will
1282 be lost the next time you run Configure, or if you edit config.sh.
1284 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1285 see the file hints/README.hints.
1287 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1288 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1295 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1296 Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1297 system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1298 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1301 =item Porting information
1303 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan 9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1304 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1305 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1306 subdirectory. Porting/Glossary should especially come in handy.
1308 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1309 http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
1310 various other operating systems.
1312 If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture, study carefully the
1313 section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1314 in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file pod/perlgit.pod.
1315 Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1319 =head2 Adding extra modules to the build
1321 You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1322 CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1323 command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1325 Configure -Dextras="Bundle::LWP DBI"
1327 or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
1328 then answer "Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
1329 The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
1330 This will only work if those modules are to be built as dynamic
1331 extensions. If you wish to include those extra modules as static
1332 extensions, see L<"Extensions"> above.
1334 Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1335 modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1336 or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1337 do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1339 Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1340 dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
1341 For example: you will need to have the Foo database specific
1342 headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1343 process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1347 suidperl was an optional component of earlier releases of perl. It is no
1348 longer available. Instead, use a tool specifically designed to handle
1349 changes in privileges, such as B<sudo>.
1353 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1354 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1355 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1356 makefile, not Makefile, since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1357 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1358 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1360 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1365 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1367 =head2 Expected errors
1369 These error reports are normal, and can be ignored:
1372 make: [extra.pods] Error 1 (ignored)
1374 make: [extras.make] Error 1 (ignored)
1376 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1378 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1379 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1380 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1381 then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1387 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1388 for further tips and information.
1392 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1393 during the building of extensions, run
1397 to test your version of miniperl.
1401 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1402 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1403 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1404 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1405 whole L<perllocale/"LOCALE PROBLEMS"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1406 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1408 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1409 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1412 are supported and installed on your system.
1413 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1417 =item other environment variables
1419 Configure does not check for environment variables that can sometimes
1420 have a major influence on how perl is built or tested. For example,
1421 OBJECT_MODE on AIX determines the way the compiler and linker deal with
1422 their objects, but this is a variable that only influences build-time
1423 behaviour, and should not affect the perl scripts that are eventually
1424 executed by the perl binary. Other variables, like PERL_UNICODE,
1425 PERL5LIB, and PERL5OPT will influence the behaviour of the test suite.
1426 So if you are getting strange test failures, you may want to try
1427 retesting with the various PERL variables unset.
1431 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1432 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1433 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1434 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by installing gcc
1435 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1436 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1437 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1441 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1442 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1444 util.c: In function 'Perl_form':
1445 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1446 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1448 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1449 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1451 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1453 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1454 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1455 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1456 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1457 of your local setup.
1461 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1462 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1465 sh Configure -Uusenm
1467 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1468 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1471 =item umask not found
1473 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1474 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1475 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1476 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1477 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1481 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1482 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1483 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1484 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1485 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1489 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1490 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1491 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1495 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1496 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1497 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1498 on L<"nm extraction">.
1500 =item __inet_* errors
1502 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1503 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1504 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1505 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1506 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1507 newer version of BIND (and remove the files the old one left behind).
1508 If you can't, you can either link with the updated resolver library provided
1509 with BIND 8.1 or rename /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and
1510 test process to avoid the problem.
1512 =item .*_r() prototype NOT found
1514 On a related note, if you see a bunch of complaints like the above about
1515 reentrant functions -- specifically networking-related ones -- being present
1516 but without prototypes available, check to see if BIND 8.1 (or possibly
1517 other BIND 8 versions) is (or has been) installed. They install
1518 header files such as netdb.h into places such as /usr/local/include (or into
1519 another directory as specified at build/install time), at least optionally.
1520 Remove them or put them in someplace that isn't in the C preprocessor's
1521 header file include search path (determined by -I options plus defaults,
1522 normally /usr/include).
1524 =item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1526 This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1527 gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1528 changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1529 rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1530 update your gcc installation.
1534 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1535 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1543 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1544 with B<make depend; make>.
1546 =item Missing functions and Undefined symbols
1548 If the build of miniperl fails with a long list of missing functions or
1549 undefined symbols, check the libs variable in the config.sh file. It
1550 should look something like
1552 libs='-lsocket -lnsl -ldl -lm -lc'
1554 The exact libraries will vary from system to system, but you typically
1555 need to include at least the math library -lm. Normally, Configure
1556 will suggest the correct defaults. If the libs variable is empty, you
1557 need to start all over again. Run
1561 and start from the very beginning. This time, unless you are sure of
1562 what you are doing, accept the default list of libraries suggested by
1565 If the libs variable looks correct, you might have the
1566 L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1568 If you still have missing routines or undefined symbols, you probably
1569 need to add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature
1570 that Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete. If
1571 you used a hint file, see if it has any relevant advice. You can also
1572 look through through config.h for likely suspects.
1576 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1577 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1578 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1579 each file in cflags.SH. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1580 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1583 =item Missing dbmclose
1585 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1586 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1588 =item error: too few arguments to function 'dbmclose'
1590 Building ODBM_File on some (Open)SUSE distributions might run into this
1591 error, as the header file is broken. There are two ways to deal with this
1593 1. Disable the use of ODBM_FILE
1595 Configure ... -Dnoextensions=ODBM_File
1597 2. Fix the header file, somewhat like this:
1599 --- a/usr/include/dbm.h 2010-03-24 08:54:59.000000000 +0100
1600 +++ b/usr/include/dbm.h 2010-03-24 08:55:15.000000000 +0100
1601 @@ -59,4 +59,4 @@ extern datum firstkey __P((void));
1603 extern datum nextkey __P((datum key));
1605 -extern int dbmclose __P((DBM *));
1606 +extern int dbmclose __P((void));
1608 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1610 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1611 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1612 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1613 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1614 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1615 Most users will see warnings for the ones they don't have. The
1616 phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to reassure you that nothing
1617 unusual is happening, and the build process is continuing.
1619 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1622 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1624 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1625 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1626 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1628 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1629 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1630 quite that tightly coordinated.
1632 =item sh: ar: not found
1634 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1635 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1636 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1637 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1640 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1642 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1643 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1644 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1646 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1648 If you get this error message from the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem test, your System
1649 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1650 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1651 to include the System V semaphores.
1653 =item ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem........semget: No space left on device
1655 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1656 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1657 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1658 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1663 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1664 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1665 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1666 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1667 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1668 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1669 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1670 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1672 =item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1674 The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1675 make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1676 archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1677 C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1678 archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1679 incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1680 official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1681 that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1682 archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1684 =item invalid token: ##
1686 You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. To compile Perl, you
1687 need to use a compiler that supports ANSI C. If there is a README
1688 file for your system, it may have further details on your compiler
1693 Some additional things that have been reported:
1695 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1697 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1699 UTS may need one or more of -K or -g, and #undef LSTAT.
1701 FreeBSD can fail the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1702 configured in the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1703 you will get a message telling you what to do.
1705 Building Perl on a system that has also BIND (headers and libraries)
1706 installed may run into troubles because BIND installs its own netdb.h
1707 and socket.h, which may not agree with the operating system's ideas of
1708 the same files. Similarly, including -lbind may conflict with libc's
1709 view of the world. You may have to tweak -Dlocincpth and -Dloclibpth
1714 =head2 Cross-compilation
1716 Perl can be cross-compiled. It is just not trivial, cross-compilation
1717 rarely is. Perl is routinely cross-compiled for many platforms (as of
1718 June 2005 at least PocketPC aka WinCE, Open Zaurus, EPOC, Symbian, and
1719 the IBM OS/400). These platforms are known as the B<target> platforms,
1720 while the systems where the compilation takes place are the B<host>
1723 What makes the situation difficult is that first of all,
1724 cross-compilation environments vary significantly in how they are set
1725 up and used, and secondly because the primary way of configuring Perl
1726 (using the rather large Unix-tool-dependent Configure script) is not
1727 awfully well suited for cross-compilation. However, starting from
1728 version 5.8.0, the Configure script also knows one way of supporting
1729 cross-compilation support, so please keep reading.
1731 See the following files for more information about compiling Perl for
1732 the particular platforms:
1736 =item WinCE/PocketPC
1758 Packaging and transferring either the core Perl modules or CPAN
1759 modules to the target platform is also left up to the each
1760 cross-compilation environment. Often the cross-compilation target
1761 platforms are somewhat limited in diskspace: see the section
1762 L<Minimizing the Perl installation> to learn more of the minimal set
1763 of files required for a functional Perl installation.
1765 For some cross-compilation environments the Configure option
1766 C<-Dinstallprefix=...> might be handy, see L<Changing the installation
1769 About the cross-compilation support of Configure: what is known to
1770 work is running Configure in a cross-compilation environment and
1771 building the miniperl executable. What is known not to work is
1772 building the perl executable because that would require building
1773 extensions: Dynaloader statically and File::Glob dynamically, for
1774 extensions one needs MakeMaker and MakeMaker is not yet
1775 cross-compilation aware, and neither is the main Makefile.
1777 The cross-compilation setup of Configure has successfully been used in
1778 at least two Linux cross-compilation environments. The setups were
1779 both such that the host system was Intel Linux with a gcc built for
1780 cross-compiling into ARM Linux, and there was a SSH connection to the
1783 To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch that
1784 has to be used is C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
1786 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1788 This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
1789 symbol C<usecrosscompile> available, and C<xconfig.h> will be used
1790 for cross-compilation.
1792 During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1793 into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1794 cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1795 target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1796 transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1797 the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1798 methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1799 F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1801 To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1802 the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1803 happens), supply Configure with
1805 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1807 The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
1808 must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1809 You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
1813 but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
1815 Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
1816 which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
1817 This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
1818 In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
1821 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
1823 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1824 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1825 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
1827 If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
1828 compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
1829 C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
1830 (The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
1831 as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
1832 will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
1833 in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
1835 In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
1836 choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
1839 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
1841 Putting it all together:
1843 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1844 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1845 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
1847 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
1848 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1849 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1850 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1851 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
1854 or if you are happy with the defaults:
1856 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1857 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1858 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1861 Another example where the cross-compiler has been installed under
1862 F</usr/local/arm/2.95.5>:
1864 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1865 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1866 -Dcc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/bin/arm-linux-gcc \
1867 -Dincpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
1868 -Dusrinc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
1869 -Dlibpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/lib
1873 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
1874 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
1877 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1878 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1879 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1881 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1883 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1884 by hand to see if it makes any difference.
1886 One way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1887 individual subtests is to run the harness from the t directory:
1889 cd t ; ./perl harness <list of tests>
1891 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1892 complicated constructs). If no list of tests is provided, harness
1895 If individual tests fail, you can often run them by hand (from the main
1896 perl directory), e.g.,
1898 ./perl -MTestInit t/op/groups.t
1900 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1901 comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
1902 shared library path if you get errors like:
1904 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
1906 The file t/README in the t subdirectory contains more information about
1907 running and modifying tests.
1909 See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
1915 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1916 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1917 'make test' exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1918 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1919 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1920 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1922 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1928 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1930 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1931 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1932 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1933 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1934 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1935 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1938 =item Timing problems
1940 Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
1941 sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
1942 If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough,
1943 these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again
1944 with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive
1945 and load-sensitive tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
1946 F<ext/Time-HiRes/t/HiRes.t>, F<ext/threads-shared/t/waithires.t>,
1947 F<ext/threads-shared/t/stress.t>, F<lib/Benchmark.t>,
1948 F<lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t>, and F<lib/Memoize/t/speed.t>.
1950 You might also experience some failures in F<t/op/stat.t> if you build
1951 perl on an NFS filesystem, if the remote clock and the system clock are
1956 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1957 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
1958 For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
1959 test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
1961 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1963 ./perl -MTestInit t/op/pat.t
1965 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1966 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1967 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1968 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1970 =item libgcc_s.so.1: cannot open shared object file
1972 This message has been reported on gcc-3.2.3 and earlier installed with
1973 a non-standard prefix. Setting the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable
1974 (or equivalent) to include gcc's lib/ directory with the libgcc_s.so.1
1975 shared library should fix the problem.
1977 =item Failures from lib/File/Temp/t/security saying "system possibly insecure"
1979 First, such warnings are not necessarily serious or indicative of a
1980 real security threat. That being said, they bear investigating.
1982 Note that each of the tests is run twice. The first time is in the
1983 directory returned by File::Spec->tmpdir() (often /tmp on Unix
1984 systems), and the second time in the directory from which the test was
1985 run (usually the 't' directory, if the test was run as part of 'make
1988 The tests may fail for the following reasons:
1990 (1) If the directory the tests are being run in is owned by somebody
1991 other than the user running the tests, or by root (uid 0).
1993 This failure can happen if the Perl source code distribution is
1994 unpacked in such a way that the user IDs in the distribution package
1995 are used as-is. Some tar programs do this.
1997 (2) If the directory the tests are being run in is writable by group or
1998 by others, and there is no sticky bit set for the directory. (With
1999 UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to a directory means the right to
2000 add or remove files in that directory. The 'sticky bit' is a feature
2001 used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if the bit is
2002 set for a directory, no one but the owner (or root) can remove that
2003 file even if the permissions would otherwise allow file removal by
2006 This failure may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the
2007 permissions policy used on this particular system. This failure can
2008 also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit (this
2009 is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle File::Temp
2010 should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or if the system
2011 supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons it is not being
2012 used. This is, for example, the case with HP-UX: as of HP-UX release
2013 11.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX doesn't use it
2014 on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also, as with the permissions, some
2015 local policy might dictate that the stickiness is not used.
2017 (3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
2018 any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
2019 directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
2020 (2). For Unix systems, this is usually not an issue if you are
2021 building on a local disk. See the documentation for the File::Temp
2022 module for more information about 'chown giveaway'.
2024 See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
2025 about the various security aspects of temporary files.
2029 The core distribution can now run its regression tests in parallel on
2030 Unix-like platforms. Instead of running C<make test>, set C<TEST_JOBS> in
2031 your environment to the number of tests to run in parallel, and run
2032 C<make test_harness>. On a Bourne-like shell, this can be done as
2034 TEST_JOBS=3 make test_harness # Run 3 tests in parallel
2036 An environment variable is used, rather than parallel make itself, because
2037 L<TAP::Harness> needs to be able to schedule individual non-conflicting test
2038 scripts itself, and there is no standard interface to C<make> utilities to
2039 interact with their job schedulers.
2043 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
2044 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
2045 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
2046 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
2047 are not root, you must still have permission to install into the directories
2048 in question and you should ignore any messages about chown not working.
2050 If "make install" just says "'install' is up to date" or something
2051 similar, you may be on a case-insensitive filesystems such as Mac's HFS+,
2052 and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion is brought to you
2053 by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
2055 =head2 Installing perl under different names
2057 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
2058 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
2059 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
2061 make install PERLNAME=myperl
2063 You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
2064 "perl5.8.9") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
2066 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
2068 This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (e.g. to
2069 avoid conflicts with an ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor).
2070 Without this the versioned binary would be called "perl55.8.8".
2072 =head2 Installing perl under a different directory
2074 You can install perl under a different destination directory by using
2075 the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>, with a command like
2077 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
2079 DESTDIR is automatically prepended to all the installation paths. See
2080 the example in L<"DESTDIR"> above.
2082 =head2 Installed files
2084 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
2085 anything, you can run
2087 ./perl installperl -n
2088 ./perl installman -n
2090 make install will install the following:
2095 perl5.n.n where 5.n.n is the current release number. This
2096 will be a link to perl.
2097 a2p awk-to-perl translator.
2101 cppstdin This is used by the deprecated switch perl -P, if
2102 your cc -E can't read from stdin.
2103 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
2104 config_data Manage Module::Build-like module configuration.
2105 corelist Shows versions of modules that come with different
2107 cpan The CPAN shell.
2108 cpan2dist The CPANPLUS distribution creator.
2109 cpanp The CPANPLUS shell.
2110 cpanp-run-perl A helper for cpanp.
2111 enc2xs Encoding module generator.
2112 find2perl find-to-perl translator.
2113 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers.
2114 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
2115 instmodsh A shell to examine installed modules.
2116 libnetcfg Configure libnet.
2117 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
2118 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
2119 perlivp Perl Installation Verification Procedure.
2120 piconv A Perl implementation of the encoding conversion
2122 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules.
2123 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
2124 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
2128 podchecker POD syntax checker.
2129 podselect Prints sections of POD documentation.
2130 prove A command-line tool for running tests.
2131 psed A Perl implementation of sed.
2132 ptar A Perl implementation of tar.
2133 ptardiff A diff for tar archives.
2134 ptargrep A grep for tar archives.
2135 s2p sed-to-perl translator.
2136 shasum A tool to print or check SHA checksums.
2137 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors.
2138 xsubpp Compiler to convert Perl XS code into C code.
2139 zipdetails display the internal structure of zip files
2143 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
2144 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
2148 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2150 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
2151 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2153 installperl will also create the directories listed above
2154 in L<"Installation Directories">.
2156 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
2157 under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
2158 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2159 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
2161 =head2 Installing only version-specific parts
2163 Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2164 installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
2165 perl alongside an already installed production version without
2166 disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2167 To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2169 Configure -Dversiononly
2171 or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2172 you can just manually run
2174 ./perl installperl -v
2176 and skip installman altogether.
2178 See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2181 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2183 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2184 system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2185 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2186 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2187 library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2189 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2190 of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2191 hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2192 For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2195 =head1 installhtml --help
2197 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2198 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2199 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2201 Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2202 html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2204 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2209 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2211 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2212 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2213 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2214 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2217 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2218 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2219 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2220 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2221 (and would welcome patches for them).
2223 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2224 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2226 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2228 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2229 available in TeX format. Type
2231 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2233 =head1 Starting all over again
2235 If you wish to rebuild perl from the same build directory, you should
2236 clean it out with the command
2244 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
2245 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
2247 If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
2248 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
2249 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should not reuse
2252 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
2253 installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
2254 using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
2257 =head1 Reporting Problems
2259 Wherever possible please use the perlbug tool supplied with this Perl
2260 to report problems, as it automatically includes summary configuration
2261 information about your perl, which may help us track down problems far
2262 more quickly. But first you should read the advice in this file,
2263 carefully re-read the error message and check the relevant manual pages
2264 on your system, as these may help you find an immediate solution. If
2265 you are not sure whether what you are seeing is a bug, you can send a
2266 message describing the problem to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup to
2269 The perlbug tool is installed along with perl, so after you have
2270 completed C<make install> it should be possible to run it with plain
2271 C<perlbug>. If the install fails, or you want to report problems with
2272 C<make test> without installing perl, then you can use C<make nok> to
2273 run perlbug to report the problem, or run it by hand from this source
2274 directory with C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug>
2276 If the build fails too early to run perlbug uninstalled, then please
2277 B<run> the C<./myconfig> shell script, and mail its output along with
2278 an accurate description of your problem to perlbug@perl.org
2280 If Configure itself fails, and does not generate a config.sh file
2281 (needed to run C<./myconfig>), then please mail perlbug@perl.org the
2282 description of how Configure fails along with details of your system
2283 -- for example the output from running C<uname -a>
2285 Please try to make your message brief but clear. Brief, clear bug
2286 reports tend to get answered more quickly. Please don't worry if your
2287 written English is not great -- what matters is how well you describe
2288 the important technical details of the problem you have encountered,
2289 not whether your grammar and spelling is flawless.
2291 Trim out unnecessary information. Do not include large files (such as
2292 config.sh or a complete Configure or make log) unless absolutely
2293 necessary. Do not include a complete transcript of your build
2294 session. Just include the failing commands, the relevant error
2295 messages, and whatever preceding commands are necessary to give the
2296 appropriate context. Plain text should usually be sufficient -- fancy
2297 attachments or encodings may actually reduce the number of people who
2298 read your message. Your message will get relayed to over 400
2299 subscribers around the world so please try to keep it brief but clear.
2301 If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
2302 inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send
2303 it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription
2304 unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who be able
2305 to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help
2306 co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all
2307 platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for security
2308 issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently distributed on CPAN.
2310 If you are unsure what makes a good bug report please read "How to
2311 report Bugs Effectively" by Simon Tatham:
2312 http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html
2314 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5
2316 Perl 5.17 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
2317 In other words, you will have to recompile your XS modules.
2319 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
2320 5.X.Y) to another similar minor version (e.g. 5.X.(Y+1))) without
2321 re-compiling all of your extensions. You can also safely leave the old
2322 version around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
2324 Usually, most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to be
2325 used with a newer version of Perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
2326 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
2328 Suppose you already have version 5.8.7 installed. The directories
2329 searched by 5.8.7 are typically like:
2331 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.7/$archname
2332 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.7
2333 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7/$archname
2334 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
2336 Now, suppose you install version 5.8.8. The directories
2337 searched by version 5.8.8 will be:
2339 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.8/$archname
2340 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.8
2341 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/$archname
2342 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8
2344 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7/$archname
2345 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
2346 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2348 Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
2349 of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
2350 directories. This way, modules installed under 5.8.7 will continue
2351 to be usable by 5.8.7 but will also accessible to 5.8.8. Further,
2352 suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
2353 present only in 5.8.8. That new module will get installed into
2354 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8 and will be available to 5.8.8,
2355 but will not interfere with the 5.8.7 version.
2357 The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
2358 5.6.0 and above will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
2360 Lastly, suppose you now install 5.10.0, which is not binary compatible
2361 with 5.8.x. The directories searched by 5.10.0 (if you don't change the
2362 Configure defaults) will be:
2364 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.10.0/$archname
2365 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.10.0
2366 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0/$archname
2367 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0
2369 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8
2371 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
2373 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2375 Note that the earlier $archname entries are now gone, but pure perl
2376 modules from earlier versions will still be found.
2378 This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2379 to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2380 versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
2382 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
2384 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
2385 separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
2386 won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2387 libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2388 way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
2390 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.17.2
2392 and adding /opt/perl5.17.2/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
2393 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2394 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2396 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
2397 (e.g. 5.10 for all 5.10.x versions), but change directory with
2400 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2401 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2402 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2405 =head2 Upgrading from 5.17.1 or earlier
2407 B<Perl 5.17.2 may not be binary compatible with Perl 5.17.1 or
2408 earlier Perl releases.> Perl modules having binary parts
2409 (meaning that a C compiler is used) will have to be recompiled to be
2410 used with 5.17.2. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with
2411 5.17.2, you may safely do so without disturbing the older
2412 installations. (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5">
2415 See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2416 incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
2417 perllocal.pod, not perllocale.pod, for installed module information.
2419 =head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2421 The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2422 Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2423 operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2425 Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way:
2426 Encode, with its big conversion tables, consumes a lot of
2427 space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything. The
2428 Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network
2429 programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all
2430 depends on what do you need to do.
2432 In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2433 recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2434 depends on what you need.
2436 Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2440 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2444 in Linux with perl-5.17.2 is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
2447 ./lib/perl5/5.17.2/strict.pm
2448 ./lib/perl5/5.17.2/warnings.pm
2449 ./lib/perl5/5.17.2/i686-linux/File/Glob.pm
2450 ./lib/perl5/5.17.2/feature.pm
2451 ./lib/perl5/5.17.2/XSLoader.pm
2452 ./lib/perl5/5.17.2/i686-linux/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2454 Secondly, for perl-5.10.1, the Debian perl-base package contains 591 files,
2455 (of which 510 are for lib/unicore) totaling about 3.5MB in its i386 version.
2456 Omitting the lib/unicore/* files for brevity, the remaining files are:
2460 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Config.pm
2461 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Config_git.pl
2462 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Config_heavy.pl
2463 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Cwd.pm
2464 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/DynaLoader.pm
2465 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Errno.pm
2466 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Fcntl.pm
2467 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/File/Glob.pm
2468 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Hash/Util.pm
2469 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO.pm
2470 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/File.pm
2471 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/Handle.pm
2472 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/Pipe.pm
2473 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/Seekable.pm
2474 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/Select.pm
2475 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/Socket.pm
2476 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2477 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2478 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/List/Util.pm
2479 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/POSIX.pm
2480 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Scalar/Util.pm
2481 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Socket.pm
2482 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/XSLoader.pm
2483 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/Cwd/Cwd.so
2484 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2485 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2486 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2487 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2488 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2489 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2490 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/Hash/Util/Util.so
2491 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/IO/IO.so
2492 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/List/Util/Util.so
2493 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2494 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2495 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2496 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2497 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/lib.pm
2498 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/re.pm
2499 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
2500 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2501 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian
2502 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
2503 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
2504 /usr/share/lintian/overrides/perl-base
2505 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
2506 /usr/share/man/man1/perl5.10.1.1.gz
2507 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/AutoLoader.pm
2508 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Carp.pm
2509 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Carp/Heavy.pm
2510 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Exporter.pm
2511 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2512 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/File/Spec.pm
2513 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2514 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/FileHandle.pm
2515 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Getopt/Long.pm
2516 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/IPC/Open2.pm
2517 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/IPC/Open3.pm
2518 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/SelectSaver.pm
2519 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Symbol.pm
2520 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Text/ParseWords.pm
2521 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Text/Tabs.pm
2522 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Text/Wrap.pm
2523 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Tie/Hash.pm
2524 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/attributes.pm
2525 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/base.pm
2526 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/bytes.pm
2527 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/bytes_heavy.pl
2528 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/constant.pm
2529 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/fields.pm
2530 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/integer.pm
2531 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/locale.pm
2532 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/overload.pm
2533 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/strict.pm
2534 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/unicore/*
2535 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/utf8.pm
2536 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/utf8_heavy.pl
2537 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/vars.pm
2538 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/warnings.pm
2539 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/warnings/register.pm
2541 A nice trick to find out the minimal set of Perl library files you will
2542 need to run a Perl program is
2544 perl -e 'do "prog.pl"; END { print "$_\n" for sort keys %INC }'
2546 (this will not find libraries required in runtime, unfortunately, but
2547 it's a minimal set) and if you want to find out all the files you can
2548 use something like the below
2550 strace perl -le 'do "x.pl"' 2>&1 | perl -nle '/^open\(\"(.+?)"/ && print $1'
2552 (The 'strace' is Linux-specific, other similar utilities include 'truss'
2555 =head2 C<-DNO_MATHOMS>
2557 If you configure perl with C<-Accflags=-DNO_MATHOMS>, the functions from
2558 F<mathoms.c> will not be compiled in. Those functions are no longer used
2559 by perl itself; for source compatibility reasons, though, they weren't
2562 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
2564 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2565 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
2566 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
2567 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2568 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
2572 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2573 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2574 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
2576 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2577 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2579 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2581 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2582 the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2583 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2584 a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2585 and the contact information to match your distribution.