If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you see. It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is specially designed to be readable as is. =head1 NAME README.machten - Perl version 5 on Power MachTen systems =head1 DESCRIPTION This document describes how to build Perl 5 on Power MachTen systems, and discusses a few wrinkles in the implementation. =head2 Compiling Perl 5 on MachTen To compile perl under MachTen 4.1.4 (and probably earlier versions): ./Configure -de make make test make install This builds and installs a statically-linked perl; MachTen's dynamic linking facilities are not adequate to support Perl's use of dynamically linked libraries. (See F for more information.) You should have at least 32 megabytes of free memory on your system before running the C command. For much more information on building perl -- for example, on how to change the default installation directory -- see F. =head2 Failures during C on MachTen =over 4 =item op/lexassign.t This test may fail when first run after building perl. It does not fail subsequently. The cause is unknown. =item pragma/warnings.t Test 257 fails due to a failure to warn about attempts to read from a filehandle which is a duplicate of stdout when stdout is attached to a pipe. The output of the test contains a block comment which discusses a different failure, not applicable to MachTen. The root of the problem is that Machten does not assign a file type to either end of a pipe (see L), resulting, among other things in Perl's C<-p> test failing on file descriptors belonging to pipes. As a result, perl becomes confused, and the test for reading from a write-only file fails. I am reluctant to patch perl to get around this, as it's clearly an OS bug (about which Tenon has been informed), and limited in its effect on practical Perl programs. =back =head2 Building external modules on MachTen To add an external module to perl, build in the normal way, which is documented in L, or which can be driven automatically by the CPAN module (see L), which is part of the standard distribution. If you want to install a module which contains XS code (C or C++ source which compiles to object code for linking with perl), you will have to replace your perl binary with a new version containing the new statically-linked object module. The build process tells you how to do this. There is a gotcha, however, which users usually encounter immediately they respond to CPAN's invitation to C. When installing a I -- a group of modules which together achieve some particular purpose, the installation process for later modules in the bundle tends to assume that earlier modules have been fully installed and are available for use. This is not true on a statically-linked system for earlier modules which contain XS code. As a result the installation of the bundle fails. The work-around is not to install the bundle as a one-shot operation, but instead to see what modules it contains, and install these one-at-a-time by hand in the order given. =head1 AUTHOR Dominic Dunlop =head1 DATE Version 1.0.1 2000-03-27