Run embed.pl and keywords.pl to complete RESTART -> INIT change
[p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git] / INSTALL
CommitLineData
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)
17 (cd pod && make html && mv *.html <www home dir>)
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
102Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h>
103to get a listing. To compile with gcc, for example, you can run
104
105 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
106
107This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
108compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
109
4633a7c4 110If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
111with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
112
8e07c86e 113By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
114/usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. You can specify a different 'prefix' for
115the default installation directory, when Configure prompts you or by
116using the Configure command line option -Dprefix='/some/directory',
117e.g.
118
25f94b33 119 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
4633a7c4 120
121If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the directories
122are simplified. For example, if you use prefix=/opt/perl,
123then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
4fdae800 124/opt/perl/lib/perl5/.
8e07c86e 125
aa689395 126By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
8e07c86e 127your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
56c6f531 128statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
129you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
8e07c86e 130
203c3eec 131If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
132output, you can run
133
134 sh Configure -des
135
136For my Solaris system, I usually use
137
138 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
139
46bb10fb 140=head2 GNU-style configure
141
1ec51d55 142If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
143use the supplied configure command, e.g.
46bb10fb 144
145 CC=gcc ./configure
146
1ec51d55 147The configure script emulates a few of the more common configure
46bb10fb 148options. Try
149
150 ./configure --help
151
152for a listing.
153
aa689395 154Cross compiling is not supported.
46bb10fb 155
156For systems that do not distinguish the files "Configure" and
1ec51d55 157"configure", Perl includes a copy of configure named
158configure.gnu.
46bb10fb 159
24b3df7f 160=head2 Extensions
161
edb1cbcb 162By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
163to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
164only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
5f05dabc 165DynaLoader, Fcntl, and IO are always built by default. Configure does
166not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX is always built
167by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can set the
168Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from the
169Configure command line. Similarly, the Opcode extension is always built
170by default, but you can skip it by setting the Configure variable
c3edaffb 171useopcode=false either in a hint file for from the command line.
24b3df7f 172
1ec51d55 173You can learn more about each of these extensions by consulting the
174documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
175ext/ subdirectory.
176
56c6f531 177Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
178DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
179version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
180
24b3df7f 181In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
182to turn off each extension:
183
184 DB_File i_db
56c6f531 185 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
24b3df7f 186 Fcntl (Always included by default)
187 GDBM_File i_gdbm
9d67150a 188 IO (Always included by default)
24b3df7f 189 NDBM_File i_ndbm
190 ODBM_File i_dbm
191 POSIX useposix
192 SDBM_File (Always included by default)
c3edaffb 193 Opcode useopcode
24b3df7f 194 Socket d_socket
195
196Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
197
198 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
199
200Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
201library.
202
203Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
aa689395 204the extensions you want.
24b3df7f 205
1ec51d55 206Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of
207Berkeley DB. Once Berkeley DB version 2 is released, DB_File will be
208upgraded to work with it. Configure will automatically detect this
209for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with version 2.
210
24b3df7f 211Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern Unix systems do)
212remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
213executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
214well build all the ones that will work on your system.
215
8e07c86e 216=head2 Including locally-installed libraries
217
4633a7c4 218Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
219dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
220Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
221automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
1ec51d55 222are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
4633a7c4 223how to obtain the libraries.
8e07c86e 224
1ec51d55 225Note: If your database header (.h) files are not in a
8e07c86e 226directory normally searched by your C compiler, then you will need to
1ec51d55 227include the appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by
8e07c86e 228Configure. If your database library (.a) files are not in a directory
229normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to
1ec51d55 230include the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by
8e07c86e 231Configure. See the examples below.
232
233=head2 Examples
234
235=over 4
236
aa689395 237=item gdbm in /usr/local
8e07c86e 238
239Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
1ec51d55 240GDBM_File extension. This examples assumes you have gdbm.h
241installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
242/usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
8e07c86e 243necessary steps out automatically.
244
245Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1ec51d55 246your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
8e07c86e 247
248When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
1ec51d55 249-L/usr/local/lib.
8e07c86e 250
251If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
252linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1ec51d55 253-L/usr/local/lib.
8e07c86e 254
255Again, this should all happen automatically. If you want to accept the
256defaults for all the questions and have Configure print out only terse
257messages, then you can just run
258
259 sh Configure -des
260
261and Configure should include the GDBM_File extension automatically.
262
263This should actually work if you have gdbm installed in any of
264(/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu, /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
265
266=item gdbm in /usr/you
267
268Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
269but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
1ec51d55 270have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
271still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
272an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
8e07c86e 273Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
1ec51d55 274/usr/you/lib to the list.
8e07c86e 275
276It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
277line):
278
279 sh Configure -des \
280 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
281 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
282
1ec51d55 283locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
284Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
8e07c86e 285
1ec51d55 286loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
287Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
288you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
289/usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
8e07c86e 290
291 sh Configure -des \
292 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
293 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
294
295=back
296
aa689395 297=head2 Installation Directories
4633a7c4 298
299The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
300appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
301installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
302
7beaa944 303I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
304everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
305process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure
306will use the defaults from then on.
1ec51d55 307
4633a7c4 308By default, Configure uses the following directories for
309library files (archname is a string like sun4-sunos, determined
310by Configure)
311
46bb10fb 312 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.004
4633a7c4 313 /usr/local/lib/perl5/
24b3df7f 314 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/archname
315 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl
4633a7c4 316
317and the following directories for manual pages:
318
319 /usr/local/man/man1
320 /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3
321
322(Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
323/usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
324instead.) The module man pages are stuck in that strange spot so that
325they don't collide with other man pages stored in /usr/local/man/man3,
326and so that Perl's man pages don't hide system man pages. On some
327systems, B<man less> would end up calling up Perl's less.pm module man
1ec51d55 328page, rather than the less program. (This location may change in a
329future release of perl.)
330
331Note: Many users prefer to store the module man pages in
332/usr/local/man/man3. You can do this from the command line with
333
334 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/man/man3
335
336Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
337
338 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
4633a7c4 339
340If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
aa689395 341directory structure is simplified. For example, if you Configure with
342-Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the defaults are
4633a7c4 343
46bb10fb 344 /opt/perl/lib/archname/5.004
4633a7c4 345 /opt/perl/lib
346 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/archname
347 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl
348
349 /opt/perl/man/man1
350 /opt/perl/man/man3
351
352The perl executable will search the libraries in the order given
353above.
354
355The directories site_perl and site_perl/archname are empty, but are
356intended to be used for installing local or site-wide extensions. Perl
357will automatically look in these directories. Previously, most sites
358just put their local extensions in with the standard distribution.
359
46bb10fb 360In order to support using things like #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.004 after
4633a7c4 361a later version is released, architecture-dependent libraries are
362stored in a version-specific directory, such as
46bb10fb 363/usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.004/. In Perl 5.000 and 5.001, these
a6006777 364files were just stored in /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/. If you will
365not be using 5.001 binaries, you can delete the standard extensions from
366the /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/ directory. Locally-added extensions
367can be moved to the site_perl and site_perl/archname directories.
4633a7c4 368
369Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
370Configure.
371
aa689395 372=head2 Changing the installation directory
373
374Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
375associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
376will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
377sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
1ec51d55 378However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
aa689395 379packages may also wish to install perl into a different directory and
380use that management software to move perl to its final destination.
381This section describes how to do this. Someday, Configure may support
382an option -Dinstallprefix=/foo to simplify this.
383
1ec51d55 384Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory.
385You can edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to
386point to /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local/wherever. You could
aa689395 387also set them all from the Configure command line. Or, you can
388automate this process by placing the following lines in a file
1ec51d55 389config.over before you run Configure (replace /tmp/perl5 by a
aa689395 390directory of your choice):
391
392 installprefix=/tmp/perl5
393 test -d $installprefix || mkdir $installprefix
394 test -d $installprefix/bin || mkdir $installprefix/bin
395 installarchlib=`echo $installarchlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
396 installbin=`echo $installbin | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
397 installman1dir=`echo $installman1dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
398 installman3dir=`echo $installman3dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
399 installprivlib=`echo $installprivlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
400 installscript=`echo $installscript | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
401 installsitelib=`echo $installsitelib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
402 installsitearch=`echo $installsitearch | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
403
404Then, you can Configure and install in the usual way:
405
406 sh Configure -des
407 make
408 make test
409 make install
410
411=head2 Creating an installable tar archive
412
413If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
414convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
415installed on multiple systems. Here's one way to do that:
416
417 # Set up config.over to install perl into a different directory,
418 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
419 sh Configure -des
420 make
421 make test
422 make install
423 cd /tmp/perl5
424 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
425 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
426 cd /usr/local # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
427 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
428
429=head2 Configure-time Options
430
431There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
432system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
433Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
434some of the main things you can change.
435
436=head2 Binary Compatibility With Earlier Versions of Perl 5
437
438If you have dynamically loaded extensions that you built under
439perl 5.003 and that you wish to continue to use with perl 5.004, then you
440need to ensure that 5.004 remains binary compatible with 5.003.
441
442Starting with Perl 5.003, all functions in the Perl C source code have
443been protected by default by the prefix Perl_ (or perl_) so that you
444may link with third-party libraries without fear of namespace
445collisions. This change broke compatibility with version 5.002, so
446installing 5.003 or 5.004 over 5.002 or earlier will force you to
447re-build and install all of your dynamically loadable extensions.
448(The standard extensions supplied with Perl are handled
449automatically). You can turn off this namespace protection by adding
450-DNO_EMBED to your ccflags variable in config.sh.
451
452Perl 5.003's namespace protection was incomplete, but this has
453been fixed in 5.004. However, some sites may need to maintain
454complete binary compatibility with Perl 5.003. If you are building
1ec51d55 455Perl for such a site, then when Configure asks if you want binary
aa689395 456compatibility, answer "y".
457
458On the other hand, if you are embedding perl into another application
459and want the maximum namespace protection, then you probably ought to
1ec51d55 460answer "n" when Configure asks if you want binary compatibility.
aa689395 461
462The default answer of "y" to maintain binary compatibility is probably
463appropriate for almost everyone.
464
1ec51d55 465In a related issue, old extensions may possibly be affected by the changes
466in the Perl language in the current release. Please see pod/perldelta for
3fe9a6f1 467a description of what's changed.
468
46bb10fb 469=head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
470
471Previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in
1ec51d55 472stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl allow alternate IO
46bb10fb 473mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but the stdio mechanism is still
474the default and is the only supported mechanism.
475
476This PerlIO abstraction can be enabled either on the Configure command
477line with
478
479 sh Configure -Duseperlio
480
481or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
482
483If you choose to use the PerlIO abstraction layer, there are two
484(experimental) possibilities for the underlying IO calls. These have been
485tested to some extent on some platforms, but are not guaranteed to work
486everywhere.
487
488=over 4
489
490=item 1.
491
1ec51d55 492AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance to stdio.h in many
aa689395 493cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline" modules. Sfio
46bb10fb 494currently only builds on a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports.
495Because the data structures are completely different from stdio, perl
496extension modules or external libraries may not work. This
497configuration exists to allow these issues to be worked on.
498
499This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
500A (fairly old) version of sfio is in CPAN, and work is in progress to make
501it more easily buildable by adding Configure support.
502
503You select this option by
504
505 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
506
507If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
508that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
509Configure.
510
1ec51d55 511Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails
512to detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent).
33e6ee5f 513Apparently, this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux
514and SunOS 4.
515
516You can test if you have this problem by trying the following shell
517script. (You may have to add some extra cflags and libraries. A
518portable version of this may eventually make its way into Configure.)
519
520 #!/bin/sh
521 cat > try.c <<'EOCP'
522 #include <stdio.h>
523 main() { printf("42\n"); }
524 EOCP
525 cc -o try try.c -lsfio
526 val=`./try`
527 if test X$val = X42; then
528 echo "Your sfio looks ok"
529 else
530 echo "Your sfio has the exit problem."
531 fi
532
533If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to your sfio sources
534and correct iffe's guess about atexit (or whatever is appropriate for
535your platform.)
536
537There also might be a more recent release of Sfio that fixes your
538problem.
539
46bb10fb 540=item 2.
541
542Normal stdio IO, but with all IO going through calls to the PerlIO
543abstraction layer. This configuration can be used to check that perl and
544extension modules have been correctly converted to use the PerlIO
545abstraction.
546
547This configuration should work on all platforms (but might not).
548
aa689395 549You select this option via:
46bb10fb 550
551 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Uusesfio
552
553If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure does not
554detect sfio, then this will be the default suggested by Configure.
555
556=back
557
aa689395 558=head2 Building a shared libperl.so Perl library
c3edaffb 559
560Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
561linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
562extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
563such as -lm.
564
9d67150a 565On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
566replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
c3edaffb 567several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
568different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
9d67150a 569you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
c3edaffb 570can share the same library.
571
572The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
9d67150a 573penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
aa689395 574mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
c3edaffb 575and upgrades.
576
577In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
9d67150a 578test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
c3edaffb 579Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
580results.
581
582The default name for the shared library is typically something like
a6006777 583libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
9d67150a 584libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
c3edaffb 585based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
586version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
587isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
588
589For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
590for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
591
592You can elect to build a shared libperl by
593
594 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
595
596To actually build perl, you must add the current working directory to your
aa689395 597LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable before running make. You can do
c3edaffb 598this with
599
600 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
601
602for Bourne-style shells, or
603
604 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
605
606for Csh-style shells. You *MUST* do this before running make.
607Folks running NeXT OPENSTEP must substitute DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
608LD_LIBRARY_PATH above.
609
9d67150a 610There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
611want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
612with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
a6006777 613install a standard Perl 5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
614try to build Perl 5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
9d67150a 615the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
616ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
7f678428 617libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is
9d67150a 618that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
56c6f531 619in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
620equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
7beaa944 621with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't. On Digital Unix, you can
622ovveride LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the _RLD_ROOT environment variable
623to point to the perl build directory.
9d67150a 624
625The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different
626directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING
627version of perl. You can do this with by changing all the *archlib*
628variables in config.sh, namely archlib, archlib_exp, and
629installarchlib, to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
630
55479bb6 631=head2 Malloc Issues
632
633Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed, so
634perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
635the malloc function on your system.
636
637The perl source is shipped with a version of malloc that is very fast
638but somewhat wasteful of space. On the other hand, your system's
639malloc() function is probably a bit slower but also a bit more frugal.
640
641For many uses, speed is probably the most important consideration, so
642the default behavior (for most systems) is to use the malloc supplied
643with perl. However, if you will be running very large applications
644(e.g. Tk or PDL) or if your system already has an excellent malloc, or
645if you are experiencing difficulties with extensions that use
646third-party libraries that call malloc, then you might wish to use
647your system's malloc. (Or, you might wish to explore the experimental
648malloc flags discussed below.)
649
650To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
651
652 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
653
654or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
655
aa689395 656=head2 Malloc Performance Flags
c3edaffb 657
55479bb6 658If you are using Perl's malloc, you may add one or
1ec51d55 659more of the following items to your cflags config.sh variable
55479bb6 660to change its behavior in potentially useful ways. You can find out
1ec51d55 661more about these flags by reading the malloc.c source.
55479bb6 662In a future version of perl, these might be enabled by default.
c3edaffb 663
aa689395 664=over 4
665
2ae324a7 666=item -DDEBUGGING_MSTATS
667
1ec51d55 668If DEBUGGING_MSTATS is defined, you can extract malloc
2ae324a7 669statistics from the Perl interpreter. The overhead this imposes is not
670large (perl just twiddles integers at malloc/free/sbrk time). When you
1ec51d55 671run perl with the environment variable PERL_DEBUG_MSTATS set to
2ae324a7 672either 1 or 2, the interpreter will dump statistics to stderr at exit
673time and (with a value of 2) after compilation. If you install the
674Devel::Peek module you can get the statistics whenever you like by
675invoking its mstat() function.
676
aa689395 677=item -DEMERGENCY_SBRK
678
1ec51d55 679If EMERGENCY_SBRK is defined, running out of memory need not be a
2ae324a7 680fatal error: a memory pool can allocated by assigning to the special
1ec51d55 681variable $^M. See perlvar(1) for more details.
aa689395 682
683=item -DPACK_MALLOC
684
1ec51d55 685If PACK_MALLOC is defined, malloc.c uses a slightly different
55479bb6 686algorithm for small allocations (up to 64 bytes long). Such small
687allocations are quite common in typical Perl scripts.
aa689395 688
1ec51d55 689The expected memory savings (with 8-byte alignment in $alignbytes) is
55479bb6 690about 20% for typical Perl usage. The expected slowdown due to the
691additional malloc overhead is in fractions of a percent. (It is hard
692to measure because of the effect of the saved memory on speed).
aa689395 693
694=item -DTWO_POT_OPTIMIZE
695
1ec51d55 696If TWO_POT_OPTIMIZE is defined, malloc.c uses a slightly different
55479bb6 697algorithm for large allocations that are close to a power of two
698(starting with 16K). Such allocations are typical for big hashes and
699special-purpose scripts, especially image processing. If you will be
700manipulating very large blocks with sizes close to powers of two, it
701might be wise to define this macro.
aa689395 702
55479bb6 703The expected saving of memory is 0-100% (100% in applications which
704require most memory in such 2**n chunks). The expected slowdown is
aa689395 705negligible.
706
707=back
708
3bf462b8 709=head2 Building a debugging perl
710
711You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
3fe9a6f1 712B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
3bf462b8 713you probably want to do
714
715 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
716
203c3eec 717This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
718to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
719executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
720cc -g2. Check you man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for your
721system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags variable in
1ec51d55 722config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's internal
203c3eec 723state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by
1ec51d55 724default if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to
725reuse your old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the
3fe9a6f1 726optimize and ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes
203c3eec 727as shown in L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
728
729You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
730it's convenient to have both.
3bf462b8 731
732If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
733versions of perl under L<Building a shared libperl.so Perl library>.
734
aa689395 735=head2 Other Compiler Flags
736
737For most users, all of the Configure defaults are fine. However,
738you can change a number of factors in the way perl is built
1ec51d55 739by adding appropriate -D directives to your ccflags variable in
aa689395 740config.sh.
741
742For example, you can replace the rand() and srand() functions in the
743perl source by any other random number generator by a trick such as the
744following:
745
746 sh Configure -Dccflags='-Drand=random -Dsrand=srandom'
747
203c3eec 748or by adding -Drand=random and -Dsrand=srandom to your ccflags
749at the appropriate Configure prompt. (Note: Although this worked for
750me, it might not work for you if your system's header files give
751different prototypes for rand() and random() or srand() and srandom().)
752
753You should also run Configure interactively to verify that a hint file
754doesn't inadvertently override your ccflags setting. (Hints files
755shouldn't do that, but some might.)
c3edaffb 756
8e07c86e 757=head2 What if it doesn't work?
758
759=over 4
760
25f94b33 761=item Running Configure Interactively
762
763If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
764Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
765guesses.
766
767All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
aa689395 768have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1ec51d55 769flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
25f94b33 770will use the defaults from then on.
771
772If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
773config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
774instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
775
aa689395 776=item Hint files
8e07c86e 777
778The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
779in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
780will offer to use that hint file.
781
782Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
783If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint
1ec51d55 784file for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an
8e07c86e 785extensive example.
786
edb1cbcb 787=item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
788
789Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
7904.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
791standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
792will see a message:
793
794 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
795 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
796 Keep the recommended value? [y]
797
798You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
799relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
800overriding it.
801
802If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
803used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
804to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
805system.
806
807For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
808and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
809Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
810Now, Configure will find your gdbm library and will issue a message:
811
812 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
813 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
814 Keep the previous value? [y]
815
1ec51d55 816In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
c3edaffb 817should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
edb1cbcb 818the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
819
8e07c86e 820=item Changing Compilers
821
822If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1ec51d55 823probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
8e07c86e 824rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
825with the options you want to use.
826
1ec51d55 827This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
828gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
8e07c86e 829
c3edaffb 830=item Propagating your changes to config.sh
8e07c86e 831
1ec51d55 832If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
833them to all the .SH files by running
834
835 sh Configure -S
836
837You will then have to rebuild by running
9d67150a 838
839 make depend
840 make
8e07c86e 841
842=item config.over
843
844You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride Configure's
845guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just before config.sh
846is created. You have to be careful with this, however, as Configure
d52d4e46 847does no checking that your changes make sense. See the section on
7f678428 848L<"Changing the installation directory"> for an example.
8e07c86e 849
850=item config.h
851
1ec51d55 852Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
853Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
854The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
8e07c86e 855
1ec51d55 856If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
857though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
8e07c86e 858lost.
859
860=item cflags
861
862If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1ec51d55 863line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
864optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
865toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
866can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
867lost the next time you run Configure.
8e07c86e 868
1ec51d55 869To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh
870and change either $ccflags or $optimize,
871and then re-run
872
873 sh Configure -S
874 make depend
8e07c86e 875
aa689395 876=item No sh
8e07c86e 877
878If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file config_H to
879config.h and edit the config.h to reflect your system's peculiarities.
880You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
881mechanism.
882
c3edaffb 883=item Porting information
884
2ae324a7 885Specific information for the OS/2, Plan9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1ec51d55 886corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
887including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
c3edaffb 888subdirectory.
889
7f678428 890Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1ec51d55 891http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports for current information on ports to
7f678428 892various other operating systems.
893
8e07c86e 894=back
895
896=head1 make depend
897
898This will look for all the includes.
1ec51d55 899The output is stored in makefile. The only difference between
900Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at the bottom of
901makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
902makefile, not Makefile since the Unix make command reads
903makefile first. (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in
c3edaffb 904a different file. Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh
905if in doubt.)
8e07c86e 906
907Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
908explicitly above.
909
910=head1 make
911
912This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
913
914If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
7f678428 915If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
916the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help, you can
917send a message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
918perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
aa689395 919See L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
8e07c86e 920
921=over 4
922
1ec51d55 923=item hints
8e07c86e 924
925If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
926for further tips and information.
927
1ec51d55 928=item extensions
8e07c86e 929
1ec51d55 930If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
c3edaffb 931during the building of extensions, you should run
932
933 make minitest
934
935to test your version of miniperl.
936
e57fd563 937=item locale
938
939If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try
940unsetting them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang
941while running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C
942locale. See the discussion under L<make test> below about locales.
943
1ec51d55 944=item malloc duplicates
c3edaffb 945
aa689395 946If you get duplicates upon linking for malloc et al, add -DHIDEMYMALLOC
947or -DEMBEDMYMALLOC to your ccflags variable in config.sh.
c3edaffb 948
7f678428 949=item varargs
c3edaffb 950
951If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
952correctly. When using gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define'
953and i_varargs='undef' in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by
954running fixincludes correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't
7f678428 955forget to propagate your changes (see
956L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
957See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
c3edaffb 958
1ec51d55 959=item croak
c3edaffb 960
961If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
962numbers will vary in different versions of perl):
963
964 util.c: In function `Perl_croak':
965 util.c:962: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
966 proto.h:45: prototype declaration
967
968it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
7f678428 969previous L<"varargs"> item.
c3edaffb 970
9d67150a 971=item Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading
c3edaffb 972
973If you have problems with dynamic loading using gcc on SunOS or
974Solaris, and you are using GNU as and GNU ld, you may need to add
1ec51d55 975-B/bin/ (for SunOS) or -B/usr/ccs/bin/ (for Solaris) to your
c3edaffb 976$ccflags, $ldflags, and $lddlflags so that the system's versions of as
6877a1cf 977and ld are used. Note that the trailing '/' is required.
978Alternatively, you can use the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX
c3edaffb 979environment variable to ensure that Sun's as and ld are used. Consult
1ec51d55 980your gcc documentation for further information on the -B option and
c3edaffb 981the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX variable.
982
7beaa944 983One convenient way to ensure you are not using GNU as and ld is to
984invoke Configure with
985
986 sh Configure -Dcc='gcc -B/usr/ccs/bin/'
987
988for Solaris systems. For a SunOS system, you must use -B/bin/
989instead.
990
9d67150a 991=item ld.so.1: ./perl: fatal: relocation error:
992
993If you get this message on SunOS or Solaris, and you're using gcc,
7f678428 994it's probably the GNU as or GNU ld problem in the previous item
995L<"Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading">.
9d67150a 996
1ec51d55 997=item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
c3edaffb 998
999If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
aa689395 1000the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1001Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
c3edaffb 1002fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1003of your local set-up.
1004
1005=item dlopen: stub interception failed
1006
1007The primary cause of the 'dlopen: stub interception failed' message is
1008that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable includes a directory
1009which is a symlink to /usr/lib (such as /lib).
1010
aa689395 1011The reason this causes a problem is quite subtle. The file libdl.so.1.0
c3edaffb 1012actually *only* contains functions which generate 'stub interception
1013failed' errors! The runtime linker intercepts links to
1014"/usr/lib/libdl.so.1.0" and links in internal implementation of those
1015functions instead. [Thanks to Tim Bunce for this explanation.]
1016
aa689395 1017=item nm extraction
c3edaffb 1018
1019If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1020try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1021with
1022
1023 sh Configure -Uusenm
1024
1025or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1ec51d55 1026If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
c3edaffb 1027config.sh.
1028
7f678428 1029=item vsprintf
c3edaffb 1030
1031If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1032problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1033version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1034(Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1035d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1036
1037 d_vprintf='define'
1038
1039If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1040on a number of other common functions too. You are probably better off
1041re-running Configure without using nm extraction (see previous item).
1042
3fe9a6f1 1043=item do_aspawn
1044
1045If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1046problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1047fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous items
1048on L<"vsprintf"> and L<"nm extraction">.
1049
aa689395 1050=item Optimizer
c3edaffb 1051
9d67150a 1052If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
aa689395 1053optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
9d67150a 1054
1055 optimize='-O'
1056
1057to something like
1058
1059 optimize=' '
1060
1061then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1062with B<make depend; make>.
1063
1ec51d55 1064=item CRIPPLED_CC
9d67150a 1065
1ec51d55 1066If you still can't compile successfully, try adding a -DCRIPPLED_CC
56c6f531 1067flag. (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it compiled right!)
1068This simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that get
1069indigestion easily.
9d67150a 1070
1071=item Missing functions
1072
1073If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
1074other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
1075there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
1076likely suspects.
8e07c86e 1077
1ec51d55 1078=item toke.c
8e07c86e 1079
1ec51d55 1080Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1081toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1082allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1083each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1084makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
8e07c86e 1085specific rule.
1086
7f678428 1087=item Missing dbmclose
8e07c86e 1088
c3edaffb 1089SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1090that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
8e07c86e 1091
f3d9a6ba 1092=item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
7f678428 1093
1094If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1095the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1096then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1097Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
aa689395 1098systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
7f678428 1099For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1100unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
f3d9a6ba 1101they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1102reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1103process is continuing.
7f678428 1104
1105On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1106message
1107
f3d9a6ba 1108 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
7f678428 1109
1110then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1111the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1112extension without the -lgdbm library.
1113
1114It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1115this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1116quite that tightly coordinated.
1117
aa689395 1118=item sh: ar: not found
1119
1120This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1121was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1122make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1ec51d55 1123is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
aa689395 1124directory.
1125
1126=item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1127
1128Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1129with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1130bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1131
1ec51d55 1132=item Miscellaneous
8e07c86e 1133
1134Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1135
1136Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1137
1138NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1139
1ec51d55 1140UTS may need one or more of -DCRIPPLED_CC, -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
8e07c86e 1141
1142If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.
1143
1144Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
1145
8e07c86e 1146=back
1147
1148=head1 make test
1149
1150This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If it
1151doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went wrong. See the
1ec51d55 1152file t/README in the t subdirectory. Note that you can't run the
aa689395 1153tests in background if this disables opening of /dev/tty.
c3edaffb 1154
1ec51d55 1155If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1156by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
c3edaffb 1157bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
8e07c86e 1158
1159 ./perl op/groups.t
1160
aa689395 1161Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1ec51d55 1162individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
aa689395 1163
1164 ./perl harness
1165
1ec51d55 1166(this assumes that most tests succeed, since harness uses
aa689395 1167complicated constructs).
1168
c3edaffb 1169You can also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1170comments that apply to your system.
1171
1ec51d55 1172Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
c07a80fd 1173may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
3fe9a6f1 1174B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1ec51d55 1175one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1176LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
e57fd563 1177are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1178
1179If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
aa689395 1180
1181 setenv LC_ALL C
1182
1183(for C shell) or
1184
1185 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1186
1ec51d55 1187for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1188make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
aa689395 1189is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
e57fd563 1190shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1ec51d55 1191things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1192open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
e57fd563 1193external program.
eed2e782 1194
8e07c86e 1195=head1 make install
1196
1197This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1ec51d55 1198Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
8e07c86e 1199to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
aa689395 1200pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
8e07c86e 1201are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
1202ignore any messages about chown not working.
1203
1204If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
1205anything, you can run
4633a7c4 1206
8e07c86e 1207 ./perl installperl -n
1208 ./perl installman -n
1209
1ec51d55 1210make install will install the following:
8e07c86e 1211
1212 perl,
1213 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
1214 will be a link to perl.
1215 suidperl,
1216 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
1217 a2p awk-to-perl translator
1218 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
1219 read from stdin.
1220 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
1221 s2p sed-to-perl translator
1222 find2perl find-to-perl translator
aa689395 1223 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
8e07c86e 1224 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
24b3df7f 1225 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
8e07c86e 1226 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
aa689395 1227 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
8e07c86e 1228 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
aa689395 1229 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
1230 pod2man, and
1231 pod2text
1232 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
8e07c86e 1233
1234 library files in $privlib and $archlib specified to
1235 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
1236 man pages in the location specified to Configure, usually
1237 something like /usr/local/man/man1.
1238 module in the location specified to Configure, usually
1239 man pages under /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3.
1240 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
1241
4633a7c4 1242Installperl will also create the library directories $siteperl and
1243$sitearch listed in config.sh. Usually, these are something like
24b3df7f 1244 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
1245 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$archname
4633a7c4 1246where $archname is something like sun4-sunos. These directories
1247will be used for installing extensions.
1248
56c6f531 1249Perl's *.h header files and the libperl.a library are also installed
1250under $archlib so that any user may later build new extensions, run the
1251optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
1252program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
8e07c86e 1253
aa689395 1254=head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
4633a7c4 1255
eed2e782 1256You can safely install the current version of perl5 and still run scripts
56c6f531 1257under the old binaries for versions 5.003 and later ONLY. Instead of
eed2e782 1258starting your script with #!/usr/local/bin/perl, just start it with
56c6f531 1259#!/usr/local/bin/perl5.003 (or whatever version you want to run.)
a6006777 1260If you want to retain a version of Perl 5 prior to 5.003, you'll
eed2e782 1261need to install the current version in a separate directory tree,
1262since some of the architecture-independent library files have changed
1263in incompatible ways.
4633a7c4 1264
1ec51d55 1265The old architecture-dependent files are stored in a version-specific
1266directory (such as /usr/local/lib/perl5/sun4-sunos/5.003) so that they
1267will still be accessible even after a later version is installed.
1268(Note: Perl 5.000 and 5.001 did not put their architecture-dependent
1269libraries in a version-specific directory. They are simply in
1270/usr/local/lib/perl5/$archname. If you will not be using 5.000 or
12715.001, you may safely remove those files.)
1272
1273In general, the standard library files in /usr/local/lib/perl5 should
1274be usable by all versions of perl5. However, the diagnostics.pm module
1275uses the /usr/local/lib/perl5/pod/perldiag.pod documentation file, so
1276the C<use diagnostics;> pragma and the splain script will only identify
1277and explain any warnings or errors that the most recently-installed
1278version of perl can generate.
4633a7c4 1279
d52d4e46 1280Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use with a newer
4633a7c4 1281version of perl. If you do run into problems, and you want to continue
1282to use the old version of perl along with your extension, simply move
1283those extension files to the appropriate version directory, such as
1ec51d55 1284/usr/local/lib/perl/archname/5.003. Then Perl 5.003 will find your
aa689395 1285files in the 5.003 directory, and newer versions of perl will find your
4633a7c4 1286newer extension in the site_perl directory.
1287
1ec51d55 1288Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
d52d4e46 1289separate directories. One convenient way to do this is by
1290using a separate prefix for each version, such as
1291
46bb10fb 1292 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.004
d52d4e46 1293
46bb10fb 1294and adding /opt/perl5.004/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
d52d4e46 1295may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
1296scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
1297
6877a1cf 1298If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
1299seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
1300subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
1301yet.
1302
8e07c86e 1303=head1 Coexistence with perl4
1304
1305You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
1306
1ec51d55 1307By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
1308they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
8e07c86e 1309
1310In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
1ec51d55 1311perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
8e07c86e 1312process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
1313However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
1ec51d55 1314the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036
edb1cbcb 1315(or whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod
1316for possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
8e07c86e 1317
aa689395 1318=head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
1319
1320Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from
1321the system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
1ec51d55 1322header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
aa689395 1323by perl. These files will be placed in the architectural library directory
1ec51d55 1324you specified to Configure; by default this is
1325/usr/local/lib/perl5/ARCH/VERSION, where ARCH is your architecture
1326(such as sun4-solaris) and VERSION is the version of perl you are
1327building (for example, 5.004).
aa689395 1328
1ec51d55 1329Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the
aa689395 1330conversion of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have
1331to hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse
1332correctly. For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and
1333certain structures.
1334
1335=head1 cd pod && make html && mv *.html (www home dir)
1336
1337Some sites may wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
1338available in HTML format. Type
1339
1340 cd pod && make html && mv *.html <www home dir>
1341
1342where F<www home dir> is wherever your site keeps HTML files.
1343
1344=head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
1345
1346Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
1347available in TeX format. Type
1348
1349 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
1350
1351=head1 Reporting Problems
1352
1353If you have difficulty building perl, and none of the advice in this
1354file helps, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant
1355manual pages on your system doesn't help either, then you should send a
1356message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
1357perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
1358
1ec51d55 1359Please include the output of the ./myconfig shell script
aa689395 1360that comes with the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the
1ec51d55 1361perlbug program that comes with the perl distribution,
aa689395 1362but you need to have perl compiled and installed before you can use it.
1363
1ec51d55 1364You might also find helpful information in the Porting
aa689395 1365directory of the perl distribution.
1366
8e07c86e 1367=head1 DOCUMENTATION
1368
1369Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation is
1370in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
1371build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
1ec51d55 1372can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This
8e07c86e 1373is sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
1374
1ec51d55 1375Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
1376along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory
34a2a22e 1377and running (either):
1378
1379 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
aa689395 1380 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
34a2a22e 1381
1382This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
aa689395 1383(You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
1384set-up.)
34a2a22e 1385
1386Note that you must have performed the installation already before
1387running the above, since the script collects the installed files to
1388generate the documentation.
1389
8e07c86e 1390=head1 AUTHOR
1391
1ec51d55 1392Andy Dougherty doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu , borrowing very heavily
1393from the original README by Larry Wall, and also with lots of helpful
1394feedback from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
8e07c86e 1395
a5f75d66 1396=head1 LAST MODIFIED
24b3df7f 1397
7beaa944 1398$Id: INSTALL,v 1.17 1997/05/08 21:08:15 doughera Released $