[PATCH 5.004_60] Fix to MM_VMS.PM
[p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git] / INSTALL
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8e07c86e 1=head1 NAME
2
3Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
4
5=head1 SYNOPSIS
6
7f678428 7The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system are:
8e07c86e 8
9 rm -f config.sh
10 sh Configure
11 make
12 make test
13 make install
36477c24 14
aa689395 15 # You may also wish to add these:
16 (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
3e3baf6d 17 (installhtml --help)
aa689395 18 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
8e07c86e 19
20Each of these is explained in further detail below.
21
7beaa944 22For information on non-Unix systems, see the section on
23L<"Porting information"> below.
7f678428 24
7beaa944 25For information on what's new in this release, see the
26pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
27changes, see the Changes file.
c3edaffb 28
1ec51d55 29=head1 DESCRIPTION
edb1cbcb 30
c3edaffb 31This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
32structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
1ec51d55 33read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
34by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
35
36 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
37 C<code> literal code
38 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
39
40You should probably at least skim through this entire document before
41proceeding.
c3edaffb 42
eed2e782 43If you're building Perl on a non-Unix system, you should also read
44the README file specific to your operating system, since this may
45provide additional or different instructions for building Perl.
46
203c3eec 47If there is a hint file for your system (in the hints/ directory) you
48should also read that hint file for specific information for your
49system. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh hint file.)
50
aa689395 51=head1 Space Requirements
eed2e782 52
1ec51d55 53The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 7 MB of disk space. The
54complete tree after completing make takes roughly 15 MB, though the
55actual total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
56directories need something on the order of 7 MB, though again that
57value is system-dependent.
8e07c86e 58
aa689395 59=head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
8e07c86e 60
edb1cbcb 61If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
62with the command
63
64 make realclean
c3edaffb 65
8e07c86e 66The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh file. If
67you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you change
68systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if you are
1ec51d55 69experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably not
8e07c86e 70re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or rename it, e.g.
71
72 mv config.sh config.sh.old
4633a7c4 73
e57fd563 74If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
75version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
76the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
77includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
78name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
79Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
80probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't, presently.
81Similarly, if you used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version
82numbers, you will probably want to adjust them as well.
83
84Also, be careful to check your architecture name. Some Linux systems
1ec51d55 85(such as Debian) use i386, while others may use i486 or i586. If you
86pick up a precompiled binary, it might not use the same name.
e57fd563 87
88In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
89Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
8e07c86e 90
aa689395 91=head1 Run Configure
8e07c86e 92
93Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
94things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
1ec51d55 95you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default
203c3eec 96is almost always ok. At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d
97and Configure will use the defaults from then on.
8e07c86e 98
99After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
1ec51d55 100*.SH files and offer to run make depend.
8e07c86e 101
fb73857a 102Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h> to
103get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
104Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
105
106To compile with gcc, for example, you should run
8e07c86e 107
108 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
109
110This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
111compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
112
4633a7c4 113If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
114with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
115
8e07c86e 116By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
117/usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. You can specify a different 'prefix' for
118the default installation directory, when Configure prompts you or by
119using the Configure command line option -Dprefix='/some/directory',
120e.g.
121
25f94b33 122 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
4633a7c4 123
124If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the directories
125are simplified. For example, if you use prefix=/opt/perl,
126then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
4fdae800 127/opt/perl/lib/perl5/.
8e07c86e 128
84902520 129NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is below
130your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will attempt
131infinite recursion.
132
aa689395 133By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
8e07c86e 134your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
56c6f531 135statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
136you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
8e07c86e 137
203c3eec 138If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
139output, you can run
140
141 sh Configure -des
142
143For my Solaris system, I usually use
144
145 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
146
46bb10fb 147=head2 GNU-style configure
148
1ec51d55 149If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
150use the supplied configure command, e.g.
46bb10fb 151
152 CC=gcc ./configure
153
1ec51d55 154The configure script emulates a few of the more common configure
46bb10fb 155options. Try
156
157 ./configure --help
158
159for a listing.
160
aa689395 161Cross compiling is not supported.
46bb10fb 162
163For systems that do not distinguish the files "Configure" and
1ec51d55 164"configure", Perl includes a copy of configure named
165configure.gnu.
46bb10fb 166
24b3df7f 167=head2 Extensions
168
edb1cbcb 169By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
170to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
171only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
5f05dabc 172DynaLoader, Fcntl, and IO are always built by default. Configure does
173not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX is always built
174by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can set the
175Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from the
176Configure command line. Similarly, the Opcode extension is always built
177by default, but you can skip it by setting the Configure variable
c3edaffb 178useopcode=false either in a hint file for from the command line.
24b3df7f 179
1ec51d55 180You can learn more about each of these extensions by consulting the
181documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
182ext/ subdirectory.
183
56c6f531 184Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
185DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
186version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
187
24b3df7f 188In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
189to turn off each extension:
190
191 DB_File i_db
56c6f531 192 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
24b3df7f 193 Fcntl (Always included by default)
194 GDBM_File i_gdbm
9d67150a 195 IO (Always included by default)
24b3df7f 196 NDBM_File i_ndbm
197 ODBM_File i_dbm
198 POSIX useposix
199 SDBM_File (Always included by default)
c3edaffb 200 Opcode useopcode
24b3df7f 201 Socket d_socket
202
203Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
204
205 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
206
207Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
208library.
209
210Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
aa689395 211the extensions you want.
24b3df7f 212
1ec51d55 213Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of
214Berkeley DB. Once Berkeley DB version 2 is released, DB_File will be
215upgraded to work with it. Configure will automatically detect this
216for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with version 2.
217
24b3df7f 218Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern Unix systems do)
219remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
220executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
221well build all the ones that will work on your system.
222
8e07c86e 223=head2 Including locally-installed libraries
224
4633a7c4 225Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
226dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
227Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
228automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
1ec51d55 229are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
4633a7c4 230how to obtain the libraries.
8e07c86e 231
1ec51d55 232Note: If your database header (.h) files are not in a
8e07c86e 233directory normally searched by your C compiler, then you will need to
1ec51d55 234include the appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by
8e07c86e 235Configure. If your database library (.a) files are not in a directory
236normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to
1ec51d55 237include the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by
8e07c86e 238Configure. See the examples below.
239
240=head2 Examples
241
242=over 4
243
aa689395 244=item gdbm in /usr/local
8e07c86e 245
246Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
1ec51d55 247GDBM_File extension. This examples assumes you have gdbm.h
248installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
249/usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
8e07c86e 250necessary steps out automatically.
251
252Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1ec51d55 253your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
8e07c86e 254
255When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
1ec51d55 256-L/usr/local/lib.
8e07c86e 257
258If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
259linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1ec51d55 260-L/usr/local/lib.
8e07c86e 261
262Again, this should all happen automatically. If you want to accept the
263defaults for all the questions and have Configure print out only terse
264messages, then you can just run
265
266 sh Configure -des
267
268and Configure should include the GDBM_File extension automatically.
269
270This should actually work if you have gdbm installed in any of
271(/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu, /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
272
273=item gdbm in /usr/you
274
275Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
276but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
1ec51d55 277have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
278still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
279an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
8e07c86e 280Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
1ec51d55 281/usr/you/lib to the list.
8e07c86e 282
283It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
284line):
285
286 sh Configure -des \
287 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
288 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
289
1ec51d55 290locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
291Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
8e07c86e 292
1ec51d55 293loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
294Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
295you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
296/usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
8e07c86e 297
298 sh Configure -des \
299 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
300 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
301
302=back
303
aa689395 304=head2 Installation Directories
4633a7c4 305
306The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
307appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
308installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
309
7beaa944 310I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
311everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
312process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure
313will use the defaults from then on.
1ec51d55 314
4633a7c4 315By default, Configure uses the following directories for
316library files (archname is a string like sun4-sunos, determined
317by Configure)
318
46bb10fb 319 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.004
4633a7c4 320 /usr/local/lib/perl5/
24b3df7f 321 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/archname
322 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl
4633a7c4 323
324and the following directories for manual pages:
325
326 /usr/local/man/man1
327 /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3
328
329(Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
330/usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
fb73857a 331instead.)
332
333The module man pages are stuck in that strange spot so that
4633a7c4 334they don't collide with other man pages stored in /usr/local/man/man3,
335and so that Perl's man pages don't hide system man pages. On some
336systems, B<man less> would end up calling up Perl's less.pm module man
fb73857a 337page, rather than the less program. (This default location will likely
338change to /usr/local/man/man3 in a future release of perl.)
1ec51d55 339
340Note: Many users prefer to store the module man pages in
341/usr/local/man/man3. You can do this from the command line with
342
343 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/man/man3
344
345Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
346
347 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
4633a7c4 348
349If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
aa689395 350directory structure is simplified. For example, if you Configure with
351-Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the defaults are
4633a7c4 352
46bb10fb 353 /opt/perl/lib/archname/5.004
4633a7c4 354 /opt/perl/lib
355 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/archname
356 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl
357
358 /opt/perl/man/man1
359 /opt/perl/man/man3
360
361The perl executable will search the libraries in the order given
362above.
363
364The directories site_perl and site_perl/archname are empty, but are
365intended to be used for installing local or site-wide extensions. Perl
dfe9444c 366will automatically look in these directories.
4633a7c4 367
46bb10fb 368In order to support using things like #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.004 after
4633a7c4 369a later version is released, architecture-dependent libraries are
370stored in a version-specific directory, such as
dfe9444c 371/usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.004/.
4633a7c4 372
373Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
374Configure.
375
aa689395 376=head2 Changing the installation directory
377
378Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
379associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
380will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
381sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
1ec51d55 382However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
aa689395 383packages may also wish to install perl into a different directory and
384use that management software to move perl to its final destination.
385This section describes how to do this. Someday, Configure may support
386an option -Dinstallprefix=/foo to simplify this.
387
0dcb58f4 388Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You
389can edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to
390/tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local/wherever. Or, you can automate this
391process by placing the following lines in a file config.over before you
392run Configure (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice):
aa689395 393
394 installprefix=/tmp/perl5
395 test -d $installprefix || mkdir $installprefix
396 test -d $installprefix/bin || mkdir $installprefix/bin
397 installarchlib=`echo $installarchlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
398 installbin=`echo $installbin | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
399 installman1dir=`echo $installman1dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
400 installman3dir=`echo $installman3dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
401 installprivlib=`echo $installprivlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
402 installscript=`echo $installscript | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
403 installsitelib=`echo $installsitelib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
404 installsitearch=`echo $installsitearch | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
405
406Then, you can Configure and install in the usual way:
407
408 sh Configure -des
409 make
410 make test
411 make install
412
413=head2 Creating an installable tar archive
414
415If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
416convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
417installed on multiple systems. Here's one way to do that:
418
419 # Set up config.over to install perl into a different directory,
420 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
421 sh Configure -des
422 make
423 make test
424 make install
425 cd /tmp/perl5
fb73857a 426 # Edit lib/<archname>/<version>/Config.pm to change all the
427 # install* variables back to reflect where everything will
428 # really be installed.
aa689395 429 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
430 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
431 cd /usr/local # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
432 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
433
434=head2 Configure-time Options
435
436There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
437system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
438Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
439some of the main things you can change.
440
441=head2 Binary Compatibility With Earlier Versions of Perl 5
442
f7542a9d 443For Perl 5.004 it was possible to be binary compatible with 5.003.
444Starting from Perl 5.005 this is no more possible because there were
445many deep and far-reaching changes to the language internals.
446
447If you have dynamically loaded extensions that you built under perl
4485.003 or 5.004 and the so-called 'bincompat3' mode (the default mode)
449and that you wish to continue to use with perl 5.005, you may need to
450reinstall the extensions.
451
452Background: starting with Perl 5.003, all functions in the Perl C
453source code have been protected by default by the prefix Perl_ (or
454perl_) so that you may link with third-party libraries without fear of
455namespace collisions. This change broke compatibility with version
4565.002, so installing 5.003 or 5.004 over 5.002 or earlier will force
457you to re-build and install all of your dynamically loadable
458extensions. (The standard extensions supplied with Perl are handled
aa689395 459automatically). You can turn off this namespace protection by adding
460-DNO_EMBED to your ccflags variable in config.sh.
461
fb73857a 462In a related issue, old extensions may possibly be affected by the
463changes in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
464pod/perldelta.pod for a description of what's changed.
3fe9a6f1 465
46bb10fb 466=head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
467
468Previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in
1ec51d55 469stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl allow alternate IO
46bb10fb 470mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but the stdio mechanism is still
471the default and is the only supported mechanism.
472
473This PerlIO abstraction can be enabled either on the Configure command
474line with
475
476 sh Configure -Duseperlio
477
478or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
479
480If you choose to use the PerlIO abstraction layer, there are two
481(experimental) possibilities for the underlying IO calls. These have been
482tested to some extent on some platforms, but are not guaranteed to work
483everywhere.
484
485=over 4
486
487=item 1.
488
1ec51d55 489AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance to stdio.h in many
aa689395 490cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline" modules. Sfio
46bb10fb 491currently only builds on a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports.
492Because the data structures are completely different from stdio, perl
493extension modules or external libraries may not work. This
494configuration exists to allow these issues to be worked on.
495
496This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
497A (fairly old) version of sfio is in CPAN, and work is in progress to make
498it more easily buildable by adding Configure support.
499
500You select this option by
501
502 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
503
504If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
505that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
506Configure.
507
1ec51d55 508Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails
509to detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent).
33e6ee5f 510Apparently, this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux
511and SunOS 4.
512
513You can test if you have this problem by trying the following shell
514script. (You may have to add some extra cflags and libraries. A
515portable version of this may eventually make its way into Configure.)
516
517 #!/bin/sh
518 cat > try.c <<'EOCP'
519 #include <stdio.h>
520 main() { printf("42\n"); }
521 EOCP
522 cc -o try try.c -lsfio
523 val=`./try`
524 if test X$val = X42; then
525 echo "Your sfio looks ok"
526 else
527 echo "Your sfio has the exit problem."
528 fi
529
530If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to your sfio sources
531and correct iffe's guess about atexit (or whatever is appropriate for
532your platform.)
533
534There also might be a more recent release of Sfio that fixes your
535problem.
536
46bb10fb 537=item 2.
538
539Normal stdio IO, but with all IO going through calls to the PerlIO
540abstraction layer. This configuration can be used to check that perl and
541extension modules have been correctly converted to use the PerlIO
542abstraction.
543
544This configuration should work on all platforms (but might not).
545
aa689395 546You select this option via:
46bb10fb 547
548 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Uusesfio
549
550If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure does not
551detect sfio, then this will be the default suggested by Configure.
552
553=back
554
aa689395 555=head2 Building a shared libperl.so Perl library
c3edaffb 556
557Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
558linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
559extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
560such as -lm.
561
9d67150a 562On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
563replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
c3edaffb 564several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
565different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
9d67150a 566you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
c3edaffb 567can share the same library.
568
569The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
9d67150a 570penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
aa689395 571mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
c3edaffb 572and upgrades.
573
574In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
9d67150a 575test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
c3edaffb 576Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
577results.
578
579The default name for the shared library is typically something like
a6006777 580libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
9d67150a 581libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
c3edaffb 582based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
583version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
584isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
585
586For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
587for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
588
589You can elect to build a shared libperl by
590
591 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
592
593To actually build perl, you must add the current working directory to your
aa689395 594LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable before running make. You can do
c3edaffb 595this with
596
597 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
598
599for Bourne-style shells, or
600
601 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
602
603for Csh-style shells. You *MUST* do this before running make.
604Folks running NeXT OPENSTEP must substitute DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
605LD_LIBRARY_PATH above.
606
9d67150a 607There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
608want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
609with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
a6006777 610install a standard Perl 5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
611try to build Perl 5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
9d67150a 612the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
613ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
7f678428 614libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is
9d67150a 615that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
56c6f531 616in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
617equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
7beaa944 618with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't. On Digital Unix, you can
0dcb58f4 619override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the _RLD_ROOT environment variable
7beaa944 620to point to the perl build directory.
9d67150a 621
622The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different
623directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING
fb73857a 624version of perl. You can do this by changing all the *archlib*
9d67150a 625variables in config.sh, namely archlib, archlib_exp, and
626installarchlib, to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
627
55479bb6 628=head2 Malloc Issues
629
630Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed, so
631perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
632the malloc function on your system.
633
634The perl source is shipped with a version of malloc that is very fast
635but somewhat wasteful of space. On the other hand, your system's
636malloc() function is probably a bit slower but also a bit more frugal.
637
638For many uses, speed is probably the most important consideration, so
639the default behavior (for most systems) is to use the malloc supplied
640with perl. However, if you will be running very large applications
641(e.g. Tk or PDL) or if your system already has an excellent malloc, or
642if you are experiencing difficulties with extensions that use
643third-party libraries that call malloc, then you might wish to use
644your system's malloc. (Or, you might wish to explore the experimental
645malloc flags discussed below.)
646
647To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
648
649 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
650
651or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
652
aa689395 653=head2 Malloc Performance Flags
c3edaffb 654
55479bb6 655If you are using Perl's malloc, you may add one or
1ec51d55 656more of the following items to your cflags config.sh variable
55479bb6 657to change its behavior in potentially useful ways. You can find out
1ec51d55 658more about these flags by reading the malloc.c source.
55479bb6 659In a future version of perl, these might be enabled by default.
c3edaffb 660
aa689395 661=over 4
662
84902520 663=item -DPERL_EMERGENCY_SBRK
2ae324a7 664
84902520 665If PERL_EMERGENCY_SBRK is defined, running out of memory need not be a
2ae324a7 666fatal error: a memory pool can allocated by assigning to the special
1ec51d55 667variable $^M. See perlvar(1) for more details.
aa689395 668
669=item -DPACK_MALLOC
670
1ec51d55 671If PACK_MALLOC is defined, malloc.c uses a slightly different
55479bb6 672algorithm for small allocations (up to 64 bytes long). Such small
673allocations are quite common in typical Perl scripts.
aa689395 674
1ec51d55 675The expected memory savings (with 8-byte alignment in $alignbytes) is
55479bb6 676about 20% for typical Perl usage. The expected slowdown due to the
677additional malloc overhead is in fractions of a percent. (It is hard
678to measure because of the effect of the saved memory on speed).
aa689395 679
680=item -DTWO_POT_OPTIMIZE
681
1ec51d55 682If TWO_POT_OPTIMIZE is defined, malloc.c uses a slightly different
55479bb6 683algorithm for large allocations that are close to a power of two
684(starting with 16K). Such allocations are typical for big hashes and
685special-purpose scripts, especially image processing. If you will be
686manipulating very large blocks with sizes close to powers of two, it
687might be wise to define this macro.
aa689395 688
55479bb6 689The expected saving of memory is 0-100% (100% in applications which
690require most memory in such 2**n chunks). The expected slowdown is
aa689395 691negligible.
692
693=back
694
3bf462b8 695=head2 Building a debugging perl
696
697You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
3fe9a6f1 698B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
3bf462b8 699you probably want to do
700
701 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
702
203c3eec 703This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
704to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
705executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
706cc -g2. Check you man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for your
707system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags variable in
1ec51d55 708config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's internal
203c3eec 709state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by
1ec51d55 710default if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to
711reuse your old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the
3fe9a6f1 712optimize and ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes
203c3eec 713as shown in L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
714
715You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
716it's convenient to have both.
3bf462b8 717
718If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
719versions of perl under L<Building a shared libperl.so Perl library>.
720
aa689395 721=head2 Other Compiler Flags
722
723For most users, all of the Configure defaults are fine. However,
724you can change a number of factors in the way perl is built
1ec51d55 725by adding appropriate -D directives to your ccflags variable in
aa689395 726config.sh.
727
728For example, you can replace the rand() and srand() functions in the
729perl source by any other random number generator by a trick such as the
730following:
731
732 sh Configure -Dccflags='-Drand=random -Dsrand=srandom'
733
203c3eec 734or by adding -Drand=random and -Dsrand=srandom to your ccflags
735at the appropriate Configure prompt. (Note: Although this worked for
736me, it might not work for you if your system's header files give
737different prototypes for rand() and random() or srand() and srandom().)
738
739You should also run Configure interactively to verify that a hint file
740doesn't inadvertently override your ccflags setting. (Hints files
741shouldn't do that, but some might.)
c3edaffb 742
8e07c86e 743=head2 What if it doesn't work?
744
745=over 4
746
25f94b33 747=item Running Configure Interactively
748
749If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
750Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
751guesses.
752
753All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
aa689395 754have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1ec51d55 755flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
25f94b33 756will use the defaults from then on.
757
758If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
759config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
760instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
761
aa689395 762=item Hint files
8e07c86e 763
764The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
765in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
766will offer to use that hint file.
767
768Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
769If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint
1ec51d55 770file for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an
8e07c86e 771extensive example.
772
edb1cbcb 773=item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
774
775Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
7764.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
777standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
778will see a message:
779
780 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
781 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
782 Keep the recommended value? [y]
783
784You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
785relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
786overriding it.
787
788If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
789used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
790to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
791system.
792
793For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
794and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
795Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
796Now, Configure will find your gdbm library and will issue a message:
797
798 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
799 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
800 Keep the previous value? [y]
801
1ec51d55 802In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
c3edaffb 803should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
edb1cbcb 804the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
805
8e07c86e 806=item Changing Compilers
807
808If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1ec51d55 809probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
8e07c86e 810rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
811with the options you want to use.
812
1ec51d55 813This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
814gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
8e07c86e 815
c3edaffb 816=item Propagating your changes to config.sh
8e07c86e 817
1ec51d55 818If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
819them to all the .SH files by running
820
821 sh Configure -S
822
823You will then have to rebuild by running
9d67150a 824
825 make depend
826 make
8e07c86e 827
828=item config.over
829
830You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride Configure's
831guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just before config.sh
832is created. You have to be careful with this, however, as Configure
d52d4e46 833does no checking that your changes make sense. See the section on
7f678428 834L<"Changing the installation directory"> for an example.
8e07c86e 835
836=item config.h
837
1ec51d55 838Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
839Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
840The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
8e07c86e 841
1ec51d55 842If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
843though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
8e07c86e 844lost.
845
846=item cflags
847
848If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1ec51d55 849line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
850optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
851toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
852can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
853lost the next time you run Configure.
8e07c86e 854
1ec51d55 855To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh
856and change either $ccflags or $optimize,
857and then re-run
858
859 sh Configure -S
860 make depend
8e07c86e 861
aa689395 862=item No sh
8e07c86e 863
dfe9444c 864If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file Porting/config_H
865to config.h and edit the config.h to reflect your system's peculiarities.
8e07c86e 866You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
867mechanism.
868
c3edaffb 869=item Porting information
870
2ae324a7 871Specific information for the OS/2, Plan9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1ec51d55 872corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
873including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
c3edaffb 874subdirectory.
875
7f678428 876Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1ec51d55 877http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports for current information on ports to
7f678428 878various other operating systems.
879
8e07c86e 880=back
881
882=head1 make depend
883
884This will look for all the includes.
1ec51d55 885The output is stored in makefile. The only difference between
886Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at the bottom of
887makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
888makefile, not Makefile since the Unix make command reads
889makefile first. (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in
c3edaffb 890a different file. Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh
891if in doubt.)
8e07c86e 892
893Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
894explicitly above.
895
896=head1 make
897
898This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
899
900If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
7f678428 901If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
902the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help, you can
903send a message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
904perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
aa689395 905See L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
8e07c86e 906
907=over 4
908
1ec51d55 909=item hints
8e07c86e 910
911If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
912for further tips and information.
913
1ec51d55 914=item extensions
8e07c86e 915
1ec51d55 916If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
c3edaffb 917during the building of extensions, you should run
918
919 make minitest
920
921to test your version of miniperl.
922
e57fd563 923=item locale
924
925If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try
926unsetting them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang
927while running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C
3e6e419a 928locale. See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales
929and the whole L<Locale problems> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
930The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
931
932 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
933 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
934 LC_ALL = "En_US",
935 LANG = (unset)
936 are supported and installed on your system.
937 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
938
939at Perl startup.
e57fd563 940
1ec51d55 941=item malloc duplicates
c3edaffb 942
aa689395 943If you get duplicates upon linking for malloc et al, add -DHIDEMYMALLOC
944or -DEMBEDMYMALLOC to your ccflags variable in config.sh.
c3edaffb 945
7f678428 946=item varargs
c3edaffb 947
948If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
949correctly. When using gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define'
950and i_varargs='undef' in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by
951running fixincludes correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't
7f678428 952forget to propagate your changes (see
953L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
954See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
c3edaffb 955
1ec51d55 956=item croak
c3edaffb 957
958If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
959numbers will vary in different versions of perl):
960
961 util.c: In function `Perl_croak':
962 util.c:962: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
963 proto.h:45: prototype declaration
964
965it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
7f678428 966previous L<"varargs"> item.
c3edaffb 967
9d67150a 968=item Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading
c3edaffb 969
970If you have problems with dynamic loading using gcc on SunOS or
971Solaris, and you are using GNU as and GNU ld, you may need to add
1ec51d55 972-B/bin/ (for SunOS) or -B/usr/ccs/bin/ (for Solaris) to your
c3edaffb 973$ccflags, $ldflags, and $lddlflags so that the system's versions of as
6877a1cf 974and ld are used. Note that the trailing '/' is required.
975Alternatively, you can use the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX
c3edaffb 976environment variable to ensure that Sun's as and ld are used. Consult
1ec51d55 977your gcc documentation for further information on the -B option and
c3edaffb 978the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX variable.
979
7beaa944 980One convenient way to ensure you are not using GNU as and ld is to
981invoke Configure with
982
983 sh Configure -Dcc='gcc -B/usr/ccs/bin/'
984
985for Solaris systems. For a SunOS system, you must use -B/bin/
986instead.
987
84902520 988Alternatively, recent versions of GNU ld reportedly work if you
989include C<-Wl,-export-dynamic> in the ccdlflags variable in
990config.sh.
991
9d67150a 992=item ld.so.1: ./perl: fatal: relocation error:
993
994If you get this message on SunOS or Solaris, and you're using gcc,
7f678428 995it's probably the GNU as or GNU ld problem in the previous item
996L<"Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading">.
9d67150a 997
1ec51d55 998=item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
c3edaffb 999
1000If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
aa689395 1001the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1002Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
c3edaffb 1003fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1004of your local set-up.
1005
1006=item dlopen: stub interception failed
1007
1008The primary cause of the 'dlopen: stub interception failed' message is
1009that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable includes a directory
1010which is a symlink to /usr/lib (such as /lib).
1011
aa689395 1012The reason this causes a problem is quite subtle. The file libdl.so.1.0
c3edaffb 1013actually *only* contains functions which generate 'stub interception
1014failed' errors! The runtime linker intercepts links to
1015"/usr/lib/libdl.so.1.0" and links in internal implementation of those
1016functions instead. [Thanks to Tim Bunce for this explanation.]
1017
aa689395 1018=item nm extraction
c3edaffb 1019
1020If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1021try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1022with
1023
1024 sh Configure -Uusenm
1025
1026or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1ec51d55 1027If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
c3edaffb 1028config.sh.
1029
7f678428 1030=item vsprintf
c3edaffb 1031
1032If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1033problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1034version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1035(Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1036d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1037
1038 d_vprintf='define'
1039
1040If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1041on a number of other common functions too. You are probably better off
1042re-running Configure without using nm extraction (see previous item).
1043
3fe9a6f1 1044=item do_aspawn
1045
1046If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1047problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1048fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous items
1049on L<"vsprintf"> and L<"nm extraction">.
1050
84902520 1051=item __inet_* errors
1052
1053If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1054referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1055installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1056these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1057in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1058newer version of BIND. If you can't, you can either link with the
1059updated resolver library provided with BIND 8.1 or rename
1060/usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and test process to
1061avoid the problem.
1062
aa689395 1063=item Optimizer
c3edaffb 1064
9d67150a 1065If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
aa689395 1066optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
9d67150a 1067
1068 optimize='-O'
1069
1070to something like
1071
1072 optimize=' '
1073
1074then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1075with B<make depend; make>.
1076
1ec51d55 1077=item CRIPPLED_CC
9d67150a 1078
1ec51d55 1079If you still can't compile successfully, try adding a -DCRIPPLED_CC
56c6f531 1080flag. (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it compiled right!)
1081This simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that get
1082indigestion easily.
9d67150a 1083
1084=item Missing functions
1085
1086If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
1087other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
1088there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
1089likely suspects.
8e07c86e 1090
1ec51d55 1091=item toke.c
8e07c86e 1092
1ec51d55 1093Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1094toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1095allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1096each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1097makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
8e07c86e 1098specific rule.
1099
7f678428 1100=item Missing dbmclose
8e07c86e 1101
c3edaffb 1102SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1103that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
8e07c86e 1104
f3d9a6ba 1105=item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
7f678428 1106
1107If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1108the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1109then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1110Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
aa689395 1111systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
7f678428 1112For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1113unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
f3d9a6ba 1114they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1115reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1116process is continuing.
7f678428 1117
1118On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1119message
1120
f3d9a6ba 1121 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
7f678428 1122
1123then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1124the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1125extension without the -lgdbm library.
1126
1127It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1128this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1129quite that tightly coordinated.
1130
aa689395 1131=item sh: ar: not found
1132
1133This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1134was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1135make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1ec51d55 1136is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
aa689395 1137directory.
1138
1139=item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1140
1141Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1142with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1143bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1144
1ec51d55 1145=item Miscellaneous
8e07c86e 1146
1147Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1148
1149Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1150
1151NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1152
1ec51d55 1153UTS may need one or more of -DCRIPPLED_CC, -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
8e07c86e 1154
1155If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.
1156
1157Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
1158
8e07c86e 1159=back
1160
1161=head1 make test
1162
84902520 1163This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made (you
1164should run plain 'make' before 'make test' otherwise you won't have a
1165complete build). If 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful"
1166then something went wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1167
84902520 1168Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
fb73857a 1169opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1170a few tty tests will be skipped.
c3edaffb 1171
1ec51d55 1172If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1173by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
c3edaffb 1174bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
8e07c86e 1175
1176 ./perl op/groups.t
1177
aa689395 1178Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1ec51d55 1179individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
aa689395 1180
1181 ./perl harness
1182
fb73857a 1183(this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
aa689395 1184complicated constructs).
1185
fb73857a 1186You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
c3edaffb 1187comments that apply to your system.
1188
1ec51d55 1189Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
c07a80fd 1190may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
3fe9a6f1 1191B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1ec51d55 1192one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1193LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
e57fd563 1194are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1195
1196If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
aa689395 1197
1198 setenv LC_ALL C
1199
1200(for C shell) or
1201
1202 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1203
1ec51d55 1204for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1205make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
aa689395 1206is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
e57fd563 1207shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1ec51d55 1208things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1209open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
e57fd563 1210external program.
eed2e782 1211
8e07c86e 1212=head1 make install
1213
1214This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1ec51d55 1215Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
8e07c86e 1216to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
aa689395 1217pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
8e07c86e 1218are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
1219ignore any messages about chown not working.
1220
1221If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
1222anything, you can run
4633a7c4 1223
8e07c86e 1224 ./perl installperl -n
1225 ./perl installman -n
1226
1ec51d55 1227make install will install the following:
8e07c86e 1228
1229 perl,
1230 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
1231 will be a link to perl.
1232 suidperl,
1233 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
1234 a2p awk-to-perl translator
1235 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
1236 read from stdin.
1237 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
1238 s2p sed-to-perl translator
1239 find2perl find-to-perl translator
aa689395 1240 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
8e07c86e 1241 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
24b3df7f 1242 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
8e07c86e 1243 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
aa689395 1244 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
8e07c86e 1245 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
aa689395 1246 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
1247 pod2man, and
1248 pod2text
1249 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
8e07c86e 1250
1251 library files in $privlib and $archlib specified to
1252 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
1253 man pages in the location specified to Configure, usually
1254 something like /usr/local/man/man1.
1255 module in the location specified to Configure, usually
1256 man pages under /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3.
1257 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
1258
4633a7c4 1259Installperl will also create the library directories $siteperl and
1260$sitearch listed in config.sh. Usually, these are something like
24b3df7f 1261 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
1262 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$archname
4633a7c4 1263where $archname is something like sun4-sunos. These directories
1264will be used for installing extensions.
1265
56c6f531 1266Perl's *.h header files and the libperl.a library are also installed
1267under $archlib so that any user may later build new extensions, run the
1268optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
1269program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
8e07c86e 1270
aa689395 1271=head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
4633a7c4 1272
eed2e782 1273You can safely install the current version of perl5 and still run scripts
56c6f531 1274under the old binaries for versions 5.003 and later ONLY. Instead of
eed2e782 1275starting your script with #!/usr/local/bin/perl, just start it with
56c6f531 1276#!/usr/local/bin/perl5.003 (or whatever version you want to run.)
a6006777 1277If you want to retain a version of Perl 5 prior to 5.003, you'll
eed2e782 1278need to install the current version in a separate directory tree,
1279since some of the architecture-independent library files have changed
1280in incompatible ways.
4633a7c4 1281
1ec51d55 1282The old architecture-dependent files are stored in a version-specific
1283directory (such as /usr/local/lib/perl5/sun4-sunos/5.003) so that they
1284will still be accessible even after a later version is installed.
1285(Note: Perl 5.000 and 5.001 did not put their architecture-dependent
1286libraries in a version-specific directory. They are simply in
1287/usr/local/lib/perl5/$archname. If you will not be using 5.000 or
12885.001, you may safely remove those files.)
1289
1290In general, the standard library files in /usr/local/lib/perl5 should
1291be usable by all versions of perl5. However, the diagnostics.pm module
1292uses the /usr/local/lib/perl5/pod/perldiag.pod documentation file, so
1293the C<use diagnostics;> pragma and the splain script will only identify
1294and explain any warnings or errors that the most recently-installed
1295version of perl can generate.
4633a7c4 1296
d52d4e46 1297Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use with a newer
4633a7c4 1298version of perl. If you do run into problems, and you want to continue
1299to use the old version of perl along with your extension, simply move
1300those extension files to the appropriate version directory, such as
1ec51d55 1301/usr/local/lib/perl/archname/5.003. Then Perl 5.003 will find your
aa689395 1302files in the 5.003 directory, and newer versions of perl will find your
4633a7c4 1303newer extension in the site_perl directory.
1304
1ec51d55 1305Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
d52d4e46 1306separate directories. One convenient way to do this is by
1307using a separate prefix for each version, such as
1308
46bb10fb 1309 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.004
d52d4e46 1310
46bb10fb 1311and adding /opt/perl5.004/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
d52d4e46 1312may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
1313scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
1314
6877a1cf 1315If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
1316seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
1317subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
1318yet.
1319
8e07c86e 1320=head1 Coexistence with perl4
1321
1322You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
1323
1ec51d55 1324By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
1325they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
8e07c86e 1326
1327In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
1ec51d55 1328perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
8e07c86e 1329process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
1330However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
1ec51d55 1331the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036
edb1cbcb 1332(or whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod
1333for possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
8e07c86e 1334
aa689395 1335=head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
1336
1337Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from
1338the system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
1ec51d55 1339header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
aa689395 1340by perl. These files will be placed in the architectural library directory
1ec51d55 1341you specified to Configure; by default this is
1342/usr/local/lib/perl5/ARCH/VERSION, where ARCH is your architecture
1343(such as sun4-solaris) and VERSION is the version of perl you are
1344building (for example, 5.004).
aa689395 1345
1ec51d55 1346Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the
aa689395 1347conversion of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have
1348to hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse
1349correctly. For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and
1350certain structures.
1351
fb73857a 1352=head1 installhtml --help
aa689395 1353
3e3baf6d 1354Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
1355format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
fb73857a 1356documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
aa689395 1357
fb73857a 1358The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
3e3baf6d 1359perl documentation:
aa689395 1360
3e3baf6d 1361 ./installhtml \
1362 --podroot=. \
1363 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
1364 --recurse \
1365 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
1366 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
1367 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
1368 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
1369 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
1370 --verbose
1371
1372See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
1373many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
1374see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
1375resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
1376(and would welcome patches for them).
aa689395 1377
fb73857a 1378You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
1379the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
1380
aa689395 1381=head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
1382
1383Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
1384available in TeX format. Type
1385
1386 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
1387
1388=head1 Reporting Problems
1389
1390If you have difficulty building perl, and none of the advice in this
1391file helps, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant
1392manual pages on your system doesn't help either, then you should send a
1393message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
1394perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
1395
1ec51d55 1396Please include the output of the ./myconfig shell script
aa689395 1397that comes with the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the
1ec51d55 1398perlbug program that comes with the perl distribution,
aa689395 1399but you need to have perl compiled and installed before you can use it.
1400
1ec51d55 1401You might also find helpful information in the Porting
aa689395 1402directory of the perl distribution.
1403
8e07c86e 1404=head1 DOCUMENTATION
1405
1406Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation is
1407in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
1408build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
1ec51d55 1409can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This
8e07c86e 1410is sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
1411
1ec51d55 1412Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
1413along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory
34a2a22e 1414and running (either):
1415
1416 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
aa689395 1417 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
34a2a22e 1418
1419This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
aa689395 1420(You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
1421set-up.)
34a2a22e 1422
1423Note that you must have performed the installation already before
1424running the above, since the script collects the installed files to
1425generate the documentation.
1426
8e07c86e 1427=head1 AUTHOR
1428
fb73857a 1429Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu ,
1430borrowing very heavily from the original README by Larry Wall,
1431with lots of helpful feedback and additions from the
1432perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
1433
1434If you have problems or questions, please see L<"Reporting Problems">
1435above.
8e07c86e 1436
a5f75d66 1437=head1 LAST MODIFIED
24b3df7f 1438
fb73857a 1439$Id: INSTALL,v 1.28 1997/10/10 16:50:59 doughera Released $