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20d11268 1If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you see.
2It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is specially
3designed to be readable as is.
4
5=head1 NAME
6
7README.aix - Perl version 5 on IBM Unix (AIX) systems
8
9=head1 DESCRIPTION
10
a318903f 11This document describes various features of IBM's Unix operating
12system (AIX) that will affect how Perl version 5 (hereafter just Perl)
13is compiled and/or runs.
20d11268 14
15=head2 Compiling Perl 5 on AIX
16
d5d9880c 17When compiling Perl, you must use an ANSI C compiler. AIX does not ship
20d11268 18an ANSI compliant C-compiler with AIX by default, but binary builds of
19gcc for AIX are widely available.
20
21At the moment of writing, AIX supports two different native C compilers,
4951a6f9 22for which you have to pay: B<xlC> and B<vac>. If you decide to use either
20d11268 23of these two (which is quite a lot easier than using gcc), be sure to
24upgrade to the latest available patch level. Currently:
25
64cb7701 26 xlC.C 3.1.4.10 or 3.6.6.0 or 5.0.2.6
27 vac.C 4.4.0.3 or 5.0.2.4
20d11268 28
a318903f 29Perl can be compiled with either IBM's ANSI C compiler or with gcc.
30The former is recommended, as not only can it compile Perl with no
20d11268 31difficulty, but also can take advantage of features listed later that
32require the use of IBM compiler-specific command-line flags.
33
12f54d27 34The IBM's compiler patch levels 5.0.0.0 and 5.0.1.0 have compiler
35optimization bugs that affect compiling perl.c and regcomp.c,
36respectively. If Perl's configuration detects those compiler patch
37levels, optimization is turned off for the said source code files.
38Upgrading to at least 5.0.2.0 is recommended.
39
20d11268 40If you decide to use gcc, make sure your installation is recent and
41complete, and be sure to read the Perl README file for more gcc-specific
60ecc970 42details. Please report any hoops you had to jump through to the development
43team.
20d11268 44
45=head2 OS level
46
47Before installing the patches to the IBM C-compiler you need to know the
48level of patching for the Operating System. IBM's command 'oslevel' will
64cb7701 49show the base, but is not always complete (in this example oslevel shows
504.3.NULL, whereas the system might run most of 4.3.THREE):
1a3e4d88 51
20d11268 52 # oslevel
53 4.3.0.0
54 # lslpp -l | grep 'bos.rte '
e41d30bc 55 bos.rte 4.3.3.75 COMMITTED Base Operating System Runtime
56 bos.rte 4.3.2.0 COMMITTED Base Operating System Runtime
57 #
58
64cb7701 59The same might happen to AIX 5.1 or other OS levels. As a side note, perl
60cannot be built without bos.adt.syscalls and bos.adt.libm installed
1a3e4d88 61
62 # lslpp -l | egrep "syscalls|libm"
63 bos.adt.libm 5.1.0.25 COMMITTED Base Application Development
64 bos.adt.syscalls 5.1.0.25 COMMITTED System Calls Application
64cb7701 65 #
20d11268 66
67=head2 Building Dynamic Extensions on AIX
68
8218ea5d 69AIX supports dynamically loadable objects as well as shared libraries.
70Shared libraries by convention end with the suffix .a, which is a bit
71misleading, as an archive can contain static as well as dynamic members.
72For perl dynamically loaded objects we use the .so suffix also used on
73many other platforms.
74
75Note that starting from Perl 5.7.2 (and consequently 5.8.0) and AIX 4.3
76or newer Perl uses the AIX native dynamic loading interface in the so
77called runtime linking mode instead of the emulated interface that was
78used in Perl releases 5.6.1 and earlier or, for AIX releases 4.2 and
79earlier. This change does break backward compatibility with compiled
80modules from earlier perl releases. The change was made to make Perl
efc3b6b5 81more compliant with other applications like Apache/mod_perl which are
8218ea5d 82using the AIX native interface. This change also enables the use of C++
83code with static constructors and destructors in perl extensions, which
84was not possible using the emulated interface.
12f54d27 85
20d11268 86=head2 The IBM ANSI C Compiler
87
88All defaults for Configure can be used.
89
90If you've chosen to use vac 4, be sure to run 4.4.0.3. Older versions
4951a6f9 91will turn up nasty later on. For vac 5 be sure to run at least 5.0.1.0,
64cb7701 92but vac 5.0.2.3 or up is highly recommended. Note that since IBM has
93removed vac 5.0.2.1 and 5.0.2.2 from the software depot, these versions
94should be considered obsolete.
20d11268 95
a318903f 96Here's a brief lead of how to upgrade the compiler to the latest
97level. Of course this is subject to changes. You can only upgrade
98versions from ftp-available updates if the first three digit groups
99are the same (in where you can skip intermediate unlike the patches
100in the developer snapshots of perl), or to one version up where the
101`base' is available. In other words, the AIX compiler patches are
102cumulative.
103
104 vac.C.4.4.0.1 => vac.C.4.4.0.3 is OK (vac.C.4.4.0.2 not needed)
105 xlC.C.3.1.3.3 => xlC.C.3.1.4.10 is NOT OK (xlC.C.3.1.4.0 is not available)
106
107 # ftp ftp.software.ibm.com
108 Connected to service.boulder.ibm.com.
109 : welcome message ...
110 Name (ftp.software.ibm.com:merijn): anonymous
111 331 Guest login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password.
112 Password:
113 ... accepted login stuff
114 ftp> cd /aix/fixes/v4/
115 ftp> dir other other.ll
116 output to local-file: other.ll? y
117 200 PORT command successful.
118 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
119 226 Transfer complete.
120 ftp> dir xlc xlc.ll
121 output to local-file: xlc.ll? y
122 200 PORT command successful.
123 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
124 226 Transfer complete.
125 ftp> bye
126 ... goodbye messages
127 # ls -l *.ll
128 -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn system 1169432 Nov 2 17:29 other.ll
129 -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn system 29170 Nov 2 17:29 xlc.ll
130
131On AIX 4.2 using xlC, we continue:
132
133 # lslpp -l | fgrep 'xlC.C '
134 xlC.C 3.1.4.9 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler
135 xlC.C 3.1.4.0 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler
136 # grep 'xlC.C.3.1.4.*.bff' xlc.ll
137 -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6286336 Jul 22 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.1.bff
138 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6173696 Aug 24 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.10.bff
139 -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6319104 Aug 14 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.2.bff
140 -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6316032 Oct 21 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.3.bff
141 -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6315008 Dec 20 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.4.bff
142 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6178816 Mar 28 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.5.bff
143 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6188032 May 22 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.6.bff
144 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6191104 Sep 5 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.7.bff
145 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6185984 Jan 13 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.8.bff
146 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6169600 May 27 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.9.bff
147 # wget ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/fixes/v4/xlc/xlC.C.3.1.4.10.bff
148 #
149
150On AIX 4.3 using vac, we continue:
151
64cb7701 152 # lslpp -l | grep 'vac.C '
153 vac.C 5.0.2.2 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler
154 vac.C 5.0.2.0 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler
155 # grep 'vac.C.5.0.2.*.bff' other.ll
156 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 13592576 Apr 16 2001 vac.C.5.0.2.0.bff
157 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 14133248 Apr 9 2002 vac.C.5.0.2.3.bff
158 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 14173184 May 20 2002 vac.C.5.0.2.4.bff
159 # wget ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/fixes/v4/other/vac.C.5.0.2.4.bff
a318903f 160 #
161
64cb7701 162Likewise on all other OS levels. Then execute the following command, and
163fill in its choices
a318903f 164
165 # smit install_update
166 -> Install and Update from LATEST Available Software
64cb7701 167 * INPUT device / directory for software [ vac.C.5.0.2.4.bff ]
a318903f 168 [ OK ]
169 [ OK ]
170
171Follow the messages ... and you're done.
172
ed423f7a 173If you like a more web-like approach, a good start point can be
174http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/download/downloadaz.jsp and click
175"C for AIX", and follow the instructions.
176
20d11268 177=head2 Using GNU's gcc for building perl
178
4238f5a6 179Using gcc-3.0 (tested with 3.0.4) now works out of the box, as do
180recent gcc-2.9 builds available directly from IBM as part of their Linux
181compatibility packages, available here:
818c4caa 182
4238f5a6 183 http://www.ibm.com/servers/aix/products/aixos/linux/
20d11268 184
20d11268 185=head2 Using Large Files with Perl
186
60ecc970 187Should yield no problems.
20d11268 188
189=head2 Threaded Perl
190
60ecc970 191Threads seem to work OK, though at the moment not all tests pass when
192threads are used in combination with 64bit configurations.
20d11268 193
194=head2 64-bit Perl
195
60ecc970 196If your AIX is installed with 64-bit support, you can expect 64bit
12f54d27 197configurations to work. In combination with threads some tests might
198still fail.
20d11268 199
12f54d27 200=head2 AIX 4.2 and extensions using C++ with statics
20d11268 201
12f54d27 202In AIX 4.2 Perl extensions that use C++ functions that use statics
203may have problems in that the statics are not getting initialized.
204In newer AIX releases this has been solved by linking Perl with
205the libC_r library, but unfortunately in AIX 4.2 the said library
206has an obscure bug where the various functions related to time
207(such as time() and gettimeofday()) return broken values, and
208therefore in AIX 4.2 Perl is not linked against the libC_r.
20d11268 209
210=head1 AUTHOR
211
212H.Merijn Brand <h.m.brand@hccnet.nl>
213
20d11268 214=head1 DATE
215
64cb7701 216Version 0.0.5: 22 May 2002
20d11268 217
218=cut