gcc for AIX are widely available.
At the moment of writing, AIX supports two different native C compilers,
-for which you have to pay: B<xlc> and B<VAC>. If you decide to use eiter
+for which you have to pay: B<xlc> and B<VAC>. If you decide to use either
of these two (which is quite a lot easier than using gcc), be sure to
upgrade to the latest available patch level. Currently:
xlC.C 3.1.4.0
- vac.C 4.4.0.3 (5.0 is already available)
+ vac.C 4.4.0.3 or 5.0.2.0
Perl can be compiled with either IBM's ANSI C compiler or with gcc.
The former is recommended, as not only can it compile Perl with no
difficulty, but also can take advantage of features listed later that
require the use of IBM compiler-specific command-line flags.
+The IBM's compiler patch levels 5.0.0.0 and 5.0.1.0 have compiler
+optimization bugs that affect compiling perl.c and regcomp.c,
+respectively. If Perl's configuration detects those compiler patch
+levels, optimization is turned off for the said source code files.
+Upgrading to at least 5.0.2.0 is recommended.
+
If you decide to use gcc, make sure your installation is recent and
complete, and be sure to read the Perl README file for more gcc-specific
-details.
+details. Please report any hoops you had to jump through to the development
+team.
=head2 OS level
=head2 Building Dynamic Extensions on AIX
-AIX supports dynamically loadable libraries (shared libraries).
-Shared libraries end with the suffix .a, which is a bit misleading,
-because *all* libraries are shared ;-).
+AIX supports dynamically loadable objects as well as shared libraries.
+Shared libraries by convention end with the suffix .a, which is a bit
+misleading, as an archive can contain static as well as dynamic members.
+For perl dynamically loaded objects we use the .so suffix also used on
+many other platforms.
+
+Note that starting from Perl 5.7.2 (and consequently 5.8.0) and AIX 4.3
+or newer Perl uses the AIX native dynamic loading interface in the so
+called runtime linking mode instead of the emulated interface that was
+used in Perl releases 5.6.1 and earlier or, for AIX releases 4.2 and
+earlier. This change does break backward compatibility with compiled
+modules from earlier perl releases. The change was made to make Perl
+more compliant with other applications like Apache/modperl which are
+using the AIX native interface. This change also enables the use of C++
+code with static constructors and destructors in perl extensions, which
+was not possible using the emulated interface.
=head2 The IBM ANSI C Compiler
All defaults for Configure can be used.
If you've chosen to use vac 4, be sure to run 4.4.0.3. Older versions
-will turn up nasty later on.
+will turn up nasty later on. For vac 5 be sure to run at least 5.0.1.0.
Here's a brief lead of how to upgrade the compiler to the latest
level. Of course this is subject to changes. You can only upgrade
=head2 Using GNU's gcc for building perl
-... ?
+We're working on this using gcc-3.0 ... (any input highly appreciated)
=head2 Using Large Files with Perl
-... ?
+Should yield no problems.
=head2 Threaded Perl
-... ?
+Threads seem to work OK, though at the moment not all tests pass when
+threads are used in combination with 64bit configurations.
=head2 64-bit Perl
-... ?
-
-=head2 GDBM and Threads
-
-... ?
+If your AIX is installed with 64-bit support, you can expect 64bit
+configurations to work. In combination with threads some tests might
+still fail.
-=head2 NFS filesystems and utime(2)
+=head2 AIX 4.2 and extensions using C++ with statics
-... ?
+In AIX 4.2 Perl extensions that use C++ functions that use statics
+may have problems in that the statics are not getting initialized.
+In newer AIX releases this has been solved by linking Perl with
+the libC_r library, but unfortunately in AIX 4.2 the said library
+has an obscure bug where the various functions related to time
+(such as time() and gettimeofday()) return broken values, and
+therefore in AIX 4.2 Perl is not linked against the libC_r.
=head1 AUTHOR
=head1 DATE
-Version 0.0.1: 16-10-2000
+Version 0.0.3: 12 Jul 2001
=cut
https://perl5.git.perl.org / perl5.git / blobdiff