=head1 NAME
-README.macosx - Perl under Mac OS X
+perlmacosx - Perl under Mac OS X
=head1 SYNOPSIS
This document briefly describes Perl under Mac OS X.
- curl http://www.cpan.org/src/perl-5.12.3.tar.gz > perl-5.12.3.tar.gz
- tar -xzf perl-5.12.3.tar.gz
- cd perl-5.12.3
+ curl -O http://www.cpan.org/src/perl-5.31.4.tar.gz
+ tar -xzf perl-5.31.4.tar.gz
+ cd perl-5.31.4
./Configure -des -Dprefix=/usr/local/
make
make test
=head1 DESCRIPTION
-The latest Perl release (5.12.3 as of this writing) builds without changes
+The latest Perl release (5.31.4 as of this writing) builds without changes
under all versions of Mac OS X from 10.3 "Panther" onwards.
+In order to build your own version of Perl you will need 'make',
+which is part of Apple's developer tools - also known as Xcode. From
+Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion" onwards, it can be downloaded separately as the
+'Command Line Tools' bundle directly from L<https://developer.apple.com/downloads/>
+(you will need a free account to log in), or as a part of the Xcode suite,
+freely available at the App Store. Xcode is a pretty big app, so
+unless you already have it or really want it, you are advised to get the
+'Command Line Tools' bundle separately from the link above. If you want
+to do it from within Xcode, go to Xcode -> Preferences -> Downloads and
+select the 'Command Line Tools' option.
+
+Between Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther" and 10.6 "Snow Leopard", the 'Command
+Line Tools' bundle was called 'unix tools', and was usually supplied
+with Mac OS install DVDs.
+
Earlier Mac OS X releases (10.2 "Jaguar" and older) did not include a
completely thread-safe libc, so threading is not fully supported. Also,
earlier releases included a buggy libdb, so some of the DB_File tests
First, export the path to the SDK into the build environment:
- export SDK=/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.3.9.sdk
+ export SDK=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.8.sdk
+
+Please make sure the SDK version (i.e. the numbers right before '.sdk')
+matches your system's (in this case, Mac OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion"), as it is
+possible to have more than one SDK installed. Also make sure the path exists
+in your system, and if it doesn't please make sure the SDK is properly
+installed, as it should come with the 'Command Line Tools' bundle mentioned
+above. Finally, if you have an older Mac OS X (10.6 "Snow Leopard" and below)
+running Xcode 4.2 or lower, the SDK path might be something like
+C<'/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.3.9.sdk'>.
-Use an SDK by exporting some additions to Perl's 'ccflags' and '..flags'
+You can use the SDK by exporting some additions to Perl's 'ccflags' and '..flags'
config variables:
./Configure -Accflags="-nostdinc -B$SDK/usr/include/gcc \
=head2 Universal Binary support
-To compile perl as a universal binary (built for both ppc and intel), export
-the SDK variable as above, selecting the 10.4u SDK:
+Note: From Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" onwards, Apple only supports
+Intel-based hardware. This means you can safely skip this section unless
+you have an older Apple computer running on ppc or wish to create a perl
+binary with backwards compatibility.
+
+You can compile perl as a universal binary (built for both ppc and intel).
+In Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger", you must export the 'u' variant of the SDK:
export SDK=/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk
+Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" and above do not require the 'u' variant.
+
In addition to the compiler flags used to select the SDK, also add the flags
for creating a universal binary:
- ./Configure -Accflags="-arch i686 -arch ppc -nostdinc -B$SDK/usr/include/gcc \
- -B$SDK/usr/lib/gcc -isystem$SDK/usr/include \
- -F$SDK/System/Library/Frameworks" \
- -Aldflags="-arch i686 -arch ppc -Wl,-syslibroot,$SDK" \
- -de
-
-In Leopard (MacOSX 10.5.6 at the time of this writing) you must use the 10.5 SDK:
-
- export SDK=/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.5.sdk
-
-You can use the same compiler flags you would use with the 10.4u SDK.
+ ./Configure -Accflags="-arch i686 -arch ppc -nostdinc \
+ -B$SDK/usr/include/gcc \
+ -B$SDK/usr/lib/gcc -isystem$SDK/usr/include \
+ -F$SDK/System/Library/Frameworks" \
+ -Aldflags="-arch i686 -arch ppc -Wl,-syslibroot,$SDK" \
+ -de
Keep in mind that these compiler and linker settings will also be used when
building CPAN modules. For XS modules to be compiled as a universal binary, any
for pre-binding.
You can override the default and build a shared libperl if you wish
-(S<Configure ... -Duseshrlib>), but the load time on pre-10.4 OS
-releases will be greater than either the static library, or Apple's
-pre-bound dynamic library.
-
-With 10.4 "Tiger" and newer, Apple has all but eliminated the performance
-penalty for non-prebound libraries.
+(S<Configure ... -Duseshrplib>).
+With Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" and newer, there is almost no performance
+penalty for non-prebound libraries. Earlier releases will suffer a greater
+load time than either the static library, or Apple's pre-bound dynamic library.
=head2 Updating Apple's Perl
-In a word - don't, at least without a *very* good reason. Your scripts
+In a word - don't, at least not without a *very* good reason. Your scripts
can just as easily begin with "#!/usr/local/bin/perl" as with
"#!/usr/bin/perl". Scripts supplied by Apple and other third parties as
part of installation packages and such have generally only been tested
Starting with Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4), Apple shipped broken locale files for
the eu_ES locale (Basque-Spain). In previous releases of Perl, this resulted in
-failures in the C<lib/locale> test. These failures have been suppressed
+failures in the F<lib/locale> test. These failures have been suppressed
in the current release of Perl by making the test ignore the broken locale.
If you need to use the eu_ES locale, you should contact Apple support.
After this you can either copy Perl from your operating system media
(you will need at least the /System/Library/Perl and /usr/bin/perl),
or rebuild Perl from the source code with C<Configure -Dprefix=/usr
--Dusershrplib> NOTE: the C<-Dprefix=/usr> to replace the system Perl
+-Duseshrplib> NOTE: the C<-Dprefix=/usr> to replace the system Perl
works much better with Perl 5.8.1 and later, in Perl 5.8.0 the
settings were not quite right.
=head1 AUTHOR
This README was written by Sherm Pendley E<lt>sherm@dot-app.orgE<gt>,
-and subsequently updated by Dominic Dunlop E<lt>domo@computer.orgE<gt>.
-The "Starting From Scratch" recipe was contributed by John Montbriand
-E<lt>montbriand@apple.comE<gt>.
+and subsequently updated by Dominic Dunlop E<lt>domo@computer.orgE<gt>
+and Breno G. de Oliveira E<lt>garu@cpan.orgE<gt>. The "Starting From Scratch"
+recipe was contributed by John Montbriand E<lt>montbriand@apple.comE<gt>.
=head1 DATE
-Last modified 2006-02-24.
+Last modified 2013-04-29.