1 If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you see.
2 It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is specially
3 designed to be readable as is.
7 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl 5.
11 First, make sure you have an up-to-date version of Perl. If you
12 didn't get your Perl source from CPAN, check the latest version at
13 http://www.cpan.org/src/. Perl uses a version scheme where even-numbered
14 subreleases (like 5.8.x and 5.10.x) are stable maintenance releases and
15 odd-numbered subreleases (like 5.7.x and 5.9.x) are unstable
16 development releases. Development releases should not be used in
17 production environments. Fixes and new features are first carefully
18 tested in development releases and only if they prove themselves to be
19 worthy will they be migrated to the maintenance releases.
21 The basic steps to build and install perl 5 on a Unix system with all
22 the defaults are to run, from a freshly unpacked source tree:
29 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
31 The above commands will install Perl to /usr/local (or some other
32 platform-specific directory -- see the appropriate file in hints/.)
33 If that's not okay with you, you can run Configure interactively, by
34 just typing "sh Configure" (without the -de args). You can also specify
35 any prefix location by adding "-Dprefix='/some/dir'" to Configure's args.
36 To explicitly name the perl binary, use the command
37 "make install PERLNAME=myperl".
39 These options, and many more, are explained in further detail below.
41 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
42 L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
44 For information on what's new in this release, see the
45 pod/perl5100delta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
46 changes, see the Changes file.
50 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
51 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
52 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
53 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
55 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
57 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
60 Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
61 you should probably at least skim through this document before
64 In addition to this file, check if there is a README file specific to
65 your operating system, since it may provide additional or different
66 instructions for building Perl. If there is a hint file for your
67 system (in the hints/ directory) you might also want to read it
68 for even more information.
70 For additional information about porting Perl, see the section on
71 L<"Porting information"> below, and look at the files in the Porting/
76 =head2 Changes and Incompatibilities
78 Please see pod/perl5100delta.pod for a description of the changes and
79 potential incompatibilities introduced with this release. A few of
80 the most important issues are listed below, but you should refer
81 to pod/perl5100delta.pod for more detailed information.
83 B<WARNING:> This version is not binary compatible with prior releases of Perl.
84 If you have built extensions (i.e. modules that include C code)
85 using an earlier version of Perl, you will need to rebuild and reinstall
88 Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
89 without reinstallation. See the discussion below on
90 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> for more details.
92 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
94 On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the changes
95 in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
96 pod/perl5100delta.pod for a description of what's changed. See your
97 installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly incomplete)
98 list of locally installed modules. Also see CPAN::autobundle for one
99 way to make a "bundle" of your currently installed modules.
103 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
104 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
105 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
106 almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
107 since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
110 At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
111 defaults from then on.
113 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
114 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
116 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
119 =head2 Common Configure options
121 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run
125 to get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
126 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
132 To compile with gcc, if it's not the default compiler on your
133 system, you should run
135 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
137 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or any another alternative
138 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
140 =item Installation prefix
142 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
143 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
144 and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below for
147 You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
148 directory when Configure prompts you, or by using the Configure command
149 line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
151 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
153 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
154 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
155 prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
156 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
157 for more details. Do not include a trailing slash, (i.e. /opt/perl/)
158 or you may experience odd test failures.
160 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
161 as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
162 attempt infinite recursion.
166 It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
167 find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
168 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
169 careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
170 vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing. If you insist
171 on replacing your vendor's perl, useful information on how it was
172 configured may be found with
176 (Check the output carefully, however, since this doesn't preserve
177 spaces in arguments to Configure. For that, you have to look carefully
178 at config_arg1, config_arg2, etc.)
180 By default, Configure will not try to link /usr/bin/perl to the current
181 version of perl. You can turn on that behavior by running
183 Configure -Dinstallusrbinperl
185 or by answering 'yes' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
187 In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to put
188 (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
189 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
190 obvious and convenient place.
192 =item Building a development release
194 For development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.9.x) if you want to
195 use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel to Configure,
196 because the default answer to the question "do you really want to
197 Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel skips that
202 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
207 =head2 Altering Configure variables for C compiler switches etc.
209 For most users, most of the Configure defaults are fine, or can easily
210 be set on the Configure command line. However, if Configure doesn't
211 have an option to do what you want, you can change Configure variables
212 after the platform hints have been run by using Configure's -A switch.
213 For example, here's how to add a couple of extra flags to C compiler
216 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_EXTERNAL_GLOB -DNO_HASH_SEED"
218 To clarify, those ccflags values are not Configure options; if passed to
219 Configure directly, they won't do anything useful (they will define a
220 variable in config.sh, but without taking any action based upon it).
221 But when passed to the compiler, those flags will activate #ifdefd code.
223 For more help on Configure switches, run
227 =head2 Major Configure-time Build Options
229 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
230 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
231 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
232 some of the main things you can change.
236 On some platforms, perl can be compiled with support for threads. To
239 sh Configure -Dusethreads
241 The default is to compile without thread support.
243 Perl used to have two different internal threads implementations. The current
244 model (available internally since 5.6, and as a user-level module since 5.8) is
245 called interpreter-based implementation (ithreads), with one interpreter per
246 thread, and explicit sharing of data. The (deprecated) 5.005 version
247 (5005threads) has been removed for release 5.10.
249 The 'threads' module is for use with the ithreads implementation. The
250 'Thread' module emulates the old 5005threads interface on top of the current
253 When using threads, perl uses a dynamically-sized buffer for some of
254 the thread-safe library calls, such as those in the getpw*() family.
255 This buffer starts small, but it will keep growing until the result
256 fits. To get a fixed upper limit, you should compile Perl with
257 PERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE defined to be the number of bytes you want. One
258 way to do this is to run Configure with
259 C<-Accflags=-DPERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE=65536>.
261 =head3 Large file support
263 Since Perl 5.6.0, Perl has supported large files (files larger than
264 2 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
265 support is on by default.
267 This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files,
268 seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad in that if you are interfacing Perl
269 using some extension, the components you are connecting to must also
270 be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
271 parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
274 There's also one known limitation with the current large files
275 implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
276 section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer formats
277 like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
279 If you want to compile perl without large file support, use
281 sh Configure -Uuselargefiles
283 =head3 64 bit support
285 If your platform does not run natively at 64 bits, but can simulate
286 them with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>,
287 you can build a perl that uses 64 bits.
289 There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
290 using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
291 -Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
292 the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
294 The C<use64bitint> option does only as much as is required to get
295 64-bit integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long
296 longs") while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because
297 your pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint>
298 does not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it
299 might, but it doesn't have to). The C<use64bitint> simply means that
300 you will be able to have 64 bit-wide scalar values.
302 The C<use64bitall> option goes all the way by attempting to switch
303 integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
304 create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
305 resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
306 have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
309 Natively 64-bit systems need neither -Duse64bitint nor -Duse64bitall.
310 On these systems, it might be the default compilation mode, and there
311 is currently no guarantee that passing no use64bitall option to the
312 Configure process will build a 32bit perl. Implementing -Duse32bit*
313 options is planned for perl 5.12.
317 In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
318 range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
319 (that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
320 this support (if it is available).
324 You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
325 and the long double support.
327 =head3 Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Hashes
329 In Perls 5.8.0 and earlier it was easy to create degenerate hashes.
330 Processing such hashes would consume large amounts of CPU time,
331 enabling a "Denial of Service" attack against Perl. Such hashes may be
332 a problem for example for mod_perl sites, sites with Perl CGI scripts
333 and web services, that process data originating from external sources.
335 In Perl 5.8.1 a security feature was introduced to make it harder to
336 create such degenerate hashes. A visible side effect of this was that
337 the keys(), values(), and each() functions may return the hash elements
338 in different order between different runs of Perl even with the same
339 data. It also had unintended binary incompatibility issues with
340 certain modules compiled against Perl 5.8.0.
342 In Perl 5.8.2 an improved scheme was introduced. Hashes will return
343 elements in the same order as Perl 5.8.0 by default. On a hash by hash
344 basis, if pathological data is detected during a hash key insertion,
345 then that hash will switch to an alternative random hash seed. As
346 adding keys can always dramatically change returned hash element order,
347 existing programs will not be affected by this, unless they
348 specifically test for pre-recorded hash return order for contrived
349 data. (eg the list of keys generated by C<map {"\0"x$_} 0..15> trigger
350 randomisation) In effect the new implementation means that 5.8.1 scheme
351 is only being used on hashes which are under attack.
353 One can still revert to the old guaranteed repeatable order (and be
354 vulnerable to attack by wily crackers) by setting the environment
355 variable PERL_HASH_SEED, see L<perlrun/PERL_HASH_SEED>. Another option
356 is to add -DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT to the compilation flags (for
357 example by using C<Configure -Accflags=-DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT>), in
358 which case one has to explicitly set the PERL_HASH_SEED environment
359 variable to enable the security feature, or by adding -DNO_HASH_SEED to
360 the compilation flags to completely disable the randomisation feature.
362 B<Perl has never guaranteed any ordering of the hash keys>, and the
363 ordering has already changed several times during the lifetime of Perl
364 5. Also, the ordering of hash keys has always been, and continues to
365 be, affected by the insertion order. Note that because of this
366 randomisation for example the Data::Dumper results will be different
367 between different runs of Perl, since Data::Dumper by default dumps
368 hashes "unordered". The use of the Data::Dumper C<Sortkeys> option is
373 Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
374 TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
375 access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
376 Version 5. The corresponding Configure option is -Dusesocks.
377 You can find more about SOCKS from wikipedia at
378 L<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOCKS>.
380 =head3 Dynamic Loading
382 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading.
383 If you want to force perl to be compiled completely
384 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
385 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
386 With this option, you won't be able to use any new extension
387 (XS) module without recompiling perl itself.
389 =head3 Building a shared Perl library
391 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
392 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
393 extensions, and various extra libraries, such as -lm.
395 On systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
396 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
397 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
398 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
399 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
400 can share the same library.
402 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
403 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
404 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
407 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
408 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
409 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
412 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
413 libperl.so.5.8.8 (for Perl 5.8.8), or libperl.so.588, or simply
414 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
415 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
416 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
417 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
419 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
421 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
423 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
424 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
425 NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
426 for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
427 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
428 be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
429 library search settings. You can find the name of the environment
430 variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
432 grep ldlibpthname config.sh
434 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
435 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
436 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
439 cd t; ./perl -MTestInit misc/failing_test.t
443 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
445 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
448 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
450 for Bourne-style shells, or
452 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
454 for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
455 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And
456 again, it may be something other than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
458 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
459 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
462 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
464 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
465 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
466 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
467 install a standard Perl 5.10.0 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
468 try to build Perl 5.10.0 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
469 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
470 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
471 libperl.so.8 rather with the installed libperl.so.8? The answer is
472 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
473 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
474 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
475 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux, you can only override at runtime via
476 LD_PRELOAD, specifying the exact filename you wish to be used; and on
477 Digital Unix, you can override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the
478 _RLD_ROOT environment variable to point to the perl build directory.
480 In other words, it is generally not a good idea to try to build a perl
481 with a shared library if $archlib/CORE/$libperl already exists from a
484 A good workaround is to specify a different directory for the
485 architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING version of perl.
486 You can do this by changing all the *archlib* variables in config.sh to
487 point to your new architecture-dependent library.
489 =head3 Environment access
491 Perl often needs to write to the program's environment, such as when C<%ENV>
492 is assigned to. Many implementations of the C library function C<putenv()>
493 leak memory, so where possible perl will manipulate the environment directly
494 to avoid these leaks. The default is now to perform direct manipulation
495 whenever perl is running as a stand alone interpreter, and to call the safe
496 but potentially leaky C<putenv()> function when the perl interpreter is
497 embedded in another application. You can force perl to always use C<putenv()>
498 by compiling with -DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV. You can force an embedded perl to
499 use direct manipulation by setting C<PL_use_safe_putenv = 0;> after the
500 C<perl_construct()> call.
502 =head2 Installation Directories
504 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
505 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the installation
506 questions are near the beginning of Configure. Do not include trailing
507 slashes on directory names. At any point during the Configure process,
508 you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use the defaults
509 from then on. Alternatively, you can
511 grep '^install' config.sh
513 after Configure has run to verify the installation paths.
515 The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
516 people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
517 distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
518 need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
519 you can safely skip the next section.
521 The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
525 =item Directories for the perl distribution
527 By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.10.0.
528 $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
529 5.10.0 or 5.9.5, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
530 determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
531 variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
533 Configure variable Default value
534 $prefixexp /usr/local
535 $binexp $prefixexp/bin
536 $scriptdirexp $prefixexp/bin
537 $privlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version
538 $archlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
539 $man1direxp $prefixexp/man/man1
540 $man3direxp $prefixexp/man/man3
544 $prefixexp is generated from $prefix, with ~ expansion done to convert home
545 directories into absolute paths. Similarly for the other variables listed. As
546 file system calls do not do this, you should always reference the ...exp
547 variables, to support users who build perl in their home directory.
549 Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
550 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
551 instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
552 directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
553 the common style is shown here.
555 =item Directories for site-specific add-on files
557 After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
558 CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
559 be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
561 Configure variable Default value
562 $siteprefixexp $prefixexp
563 $sitebinexp $siteprefixexp/bin
564 $sitescriptexp $siteprefixexp/bin
565 $sitelibexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
566 $sitearchexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
567 $siteman1direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man1
568 $siteman3direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man3
569 $sitehtml1direxp (none)
570 $sitehtml3direxp (none)
572 By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
573 modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
575 =item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
577 Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
578 distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
579 for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
581 Configure variable Default value
582 $vendorprefixexp (none)
583 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
584 $vendorbinexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
585 $vendorscriptexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
587 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
589 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
590 $vendorman1direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man1
591 $vendorman3direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man3
592 $vendorhtml1direxp (none)
593 $vendorhtml3direxp (none)
595 These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
596 a vendor might choose the following settings:
599 $siteprefix /usr/local
602 This would have the effect of setting the following:
605 $scriptdirexp /usr/bin
606 $privlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version
607 $archlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
608 $man1direxp /usr/man/man1
609 $man3direxp /usr/man/man3
611 $sitebinexp /usr/local/bin
612 $sitescriptexp /usr/local/bin
613 $sitelibexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
614 $sitearchexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
615 $siteman1direxp /usr/local/man/man1
616 $siteman3direxp /usr/local/man/man3
618 $vendorbinexp /usr/bin
619 $vendorscriptexp /usr/bin
620 $vendorlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
621 $vendorarchexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
622 $vendorman1direxp /usr/man/man1
623 $vendorman3direxp /usr/man/man3
625 Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
626 /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
627 the /usr/local hierarchy.
629 The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
630 version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
631 However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
632 installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
633 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below for more details
634 on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
636 Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
637 example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
638 are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
639 site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
640 network. One way to do that would be something like
642 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
646 As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
647 variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
648 directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
649 Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
650 version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
652 For example, if you have a bundle of perl libraries from a previous
653 installation, perhaps in a strange place:
655 Configure -Dotherlibdirs=/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1
659 There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
660 that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
661 separated list of directories, like this
663 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
665 The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
666 ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
667 modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
668 touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
669 version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
670 present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
671 directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
672 run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
674 =item USE_SITECUSTOMIZE
676 Run-time customization of @INC can be enabled with:
678 sh Configure -Dusesitecustomize
680 Which will define USE_SITECUSTOMIZE and $Config{usesitecustomize}.
681 When enabled, make perl run F<$sitelibexp/sitecustomize.pl> before
682 anything else. This script can then be set up to add additional
687 By default, man pages will be installed in $man1dir and $man3dir, which
688 are normally /usr/local/man/man1 and /usr/local/man/man3. If you
689 want to use a .3pm suffix for perl man pages, you can do that with
691 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
695 Currently, the standard perl installation does not do anything with
696 HTML documentation, but that may change in the future. Further, some
697 add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The html Configure
698 variables listed above are provided if you wish to specify where such
699 documents should be placed. The default is "none", but will likely
700 eventually change to something useful based on user feedback.
704 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
705 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
708 Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
709 directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
712 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
713 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
714 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below.
716 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
717 library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
718 suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
720 Thus, for example, if you Configure with
721 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.9.0 are
723 Configure variable Default value
724 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0
725 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0/$archname
726 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0
727 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0/$archname
729 =head2 Changing the installation directory
731 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
732 associated files) should be installed, and the directory in which it
733 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
734 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
735 However, sites that use package management software such as rpm or
736 dpkg, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
737 wish to install perl into a different directory before moving perl
738 to its final destination. There are two ways to do that:
744 To install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory, use the following
747 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
749 (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
751 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
752 modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
753 follow this example. That's why it's usually better to use DESTDIR,
754 as shown in the next section.
758 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is convenient
759 to compile it once and create an archive that can be installed on
760 multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to create an
761 archive that can be installed in /opt/perl. One way to do that is by
762 using the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>. The DESTDIR is
763 automatically prepended to all the installation paths. Thus you
766 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
769 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
770 cd /tmp/perl5/opt/perl
771 tar cvf /tmp/perl5-archive.tar .
775 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
777 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
778 answers (such as installation directories) in the Policy.sh file.
779 If you want to build perl on another system using the same policy
780 defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file to the new system's perl build
781 directory, and Configure will use it. This will work even if Policy.sh was
782 generated for another version of Perl, or on a system with a
783 different architecture and/or operating system. However, in such cases,
784 you should review the contents of the file before using it: for
785 example, your new target may not keep its man pages in the same place
786 as the system on which the file was generated.
788 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
793 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
795 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
797 If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
798 to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
799 platform-specific hints files.
801 =head2 Disabling older versions of Perl
803 Configure will search for binary compatible versions of previously
804 installed perl binaries in the tree that is specified as target tree,
805 and these will be used as locations to search for modules by the perl
806 being built. The list of perl versions found will be put in the Configure
807 variable inc_version_list.
809 To disable this use of older perl modules, even completely valid pure perl
810 modules, you can specify to not include the paths found:
812 sh Configure -Dinc_version_list=none ...
814 When using the newer perl, you can add these paths again in the
815 $PERL5LIB environment variable or with perl's -I runtime option.
817 =head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
819 Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
820 where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
821 read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
822 architectures. You can do this (if your file system supports symbolic
825 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
826 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
827 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
829 This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
830 pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
831 unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
837 as usual, and Perl will be built in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
839 =head2 Building a debugging perl
841 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
842 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
843 you probably want to have support for perl internal debugging code
844 (activated by adding -DDEBUGGING to ccflags), and/or support for the
845 system debugger by adding -g to the optimisation flags. For that,
848 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING
852 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING=<mode>
854 For a more eye appealing call, -DEBUGGING is defined to be an alias
855 for -DDEBUGGING. For both, the -U calls are also supported, in order
856 to be able to overrule the hints or Policy.sh settings.
858 Here are the DEBUGGING modes:
866 =item -DEBUGGING=both
868 Sets both -DDEBUGGING in the ccflags, and adds -g to optimize.
870 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently (see below),
871 but usually it's convenient to have both.
877 Adds -g to optimize, but does not set -DDEBUGGING.
879 (Note: Your system may actually require something like cc -g2.
880 Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for your system.)
882 =item -DEBUGGING=none
886 Removes -g from optimize, and -DDEBUGGING from ccflags.
890 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
891 versions of perl under L<Building a shared Perl library>.
895 Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
896 in the ext/ subdirectory.
898 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
899 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
900 only if it is able to find the gdbm library.
902 To disable certain extensions so that they are not built, use the
903 -Dnoextensions=... and -Donlyextensions=... options. They both accept
904 a space-separated list of extensions. The extensions listed in
905 C<noextensions> are removed from the list of extensions to build, while
906 the C<onlyextensions> is rather more severe and builds only the listed
907 extensions. The latter should be used with extreme caution since
908 certain extensions are used by many other extensions and modules:
909 examples of such modules include Fcntl and IO. The order of processing
910 these options is first C<only> (if present), then C<no> (if present).
912 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
913 the extensions you want.
915 If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
916 running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
917 extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
918 it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
919 has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
920 extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
921 convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
922 you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
923 dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
924 Another way of specifying extra modules is described in
925 L<"Adding extra modules to the build"> below.
927 If you re-use an old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
928 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
929 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
932 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
934 Perl comes with interfaces to number of libraries, including threads,
935 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For the *db* extension, if
936 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
937 automatically include that extension. The threading extension needs
938 to be specified explicitely (see L<Threads>).
940 Those libraries are not distributed with perl. If your header (.h) files
941 for those libraries are not in a directory normally searched by your C
942 compiler, then you will need to include the appropriate -I/your/directory
943 option when prompted by Configure. If your libraries are not in a
944 directory normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will
945 need to include the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted
946 by Configure. See the examples below.
952 =item gdbm in /usr/local
954 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
955 GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
956 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
957 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
958 necessary steps out automatically.
960 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
961 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include, if it's
962 not here yet. Similarly, when Configure prompts you for linker flags,
963 you should include -L/usr/local/lib.
965 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
966 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
969 Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
970 you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
971 /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
973 =item gdbm in /usr/you
975 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local,
976 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
977 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
978 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
979 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
980 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
981 /usr/you/lib to the list.
983 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
987 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
988 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
990 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
991 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
993 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
994 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
995 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
996 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
999 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
1000 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
1004 =head2 Overriding an old config.sh
1006 If you want to use an old config.sh produced by a previous run of
1007 Configure, but override some of the items with command line options, you
1008 need to use B<Configure -O>.
1010 =head2 GNU-style configure
1012 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
1013 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
1015 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
1017 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
1020 ./configure.gnu --help
1024 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
1025 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
1027 =head2 Malloc Issues
1029 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
1030 so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
1031 the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
1032 version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
1033 perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
1034 than your system malloc.
1036 However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
1037 experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
1038 that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
1039 (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
1043 =item Using the system malloc
1045 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
1047 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
1049 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
1051 =item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
1053 NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you just
1054 run Configure to accept all the defaults.
1056 Perl's malloc family of functions are normally called Perl_malloc(),
1057 Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree().
1058 These names do not clash with the system versions of these functions.
1060 If this flag is enabled, however, Perl's malloc family of functions
1061 will have the same names as the system versions. This may be required
1062 sometimes if you have libraries that like to free() data that may have
1063 been allocated by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1065 Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1066 from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1067 does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1070 =item -DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS
1072 This flag enables debugging mstats, which is required to use the
1073 Devel::Peek::mstat() function. You cannot enable this unless you are
1074 using Perl's malloc, so a typical Configure command would be
1076 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS -Dusemymalloc
1078 to enable this option.
1082 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1084 If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1085 If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1089 =item Running Configure Interactively
1091 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1092 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1095 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1096 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1097 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1098 will use the defaults from then on.
1100 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1101 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1102 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1106 Hint files tell Configure about a number of things:
1112 The peculiarities or conventions of particular platforms -- non-standard
1113 library locations and names, default installation locations for binaries,
1118 The deficiencies of the platform -- for example, library functions that,
1119 although present, are too badly broken to be usable; or limits on
1120 resources that are generously available on most platforms.
1124 How best to optimize for the platform, both in terms of binary size and/or
1125 speed, and for Perl feature support. Because of wide variations in the
1126 implementation of shared libraries and of threading, for example, Configure
1127 often needs hints in order to be able to use these features.
1131 The perl distribution includes many system-specific hints files
1132 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1133 will offer to use that hint file. Unless you have a very good reason
1134 not to, you should accept its offer.
1136 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1137 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1138 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1139 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
1140 file, which also explains hint files known as callback-units.
1142 Note that any hint file is read before any Policy file, meaning that
1143 Policy overrides hints -- see L</Site-wide Policy settings>.
1145 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1147 If you are re-using an old config.sh, it's possible that Configure detects
1148 different values from the ones specified in this file. You will almost
1149 always want to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something
1152 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1153 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1154 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1155 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1158 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1159 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1160 Keep the previous value? [y]
1162 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1163 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1164 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1166 =item Changing Compilers
1168 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1169 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1170 rename it, then rerun Configure with the options you want to use.
1172 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1174 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1175 them to all the .SH files by running
1179 You will then have to rebuild by running
1184 =item config.over and config.arch
1186 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride
1187 Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1188 before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1189 however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1190 This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1192 There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1193 config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1194 architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1195 hints file that creates the config.arch.
1199 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1200 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1201 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1203 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1204 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1209 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1210 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1211 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1212 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1213 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1214 lost the next time you run Configure.
1216 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1217 see the file hints/README.hints.
1219 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1220 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1227 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1228 Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1229 system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1230 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1233 =item Porting information
1235 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan 9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1236 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1237 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1238 subdirectory. Porting/Glossary should especially come in handy.
1240 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1241 http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
1242 various other operating systems.
1244 If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture, study carefully the
1245 section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1246 in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file Porting/patching.pod.
1247 Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1251 =head2 Adding extra modules to the build
1253 You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1254 CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1255 command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1257 Configure -Dextras="Bundle::LWP DBI"
1259 or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
1260 then answer "Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
1261 The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
1262 This will only work if those modules are to be built as dynamic
1263 extensions. If you wish to include those extra modules as static
1264 extensions, see L<"Extensions"> above.
1266 Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1267 modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1268 or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1269 do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1271 Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1272 dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
1273 For example: you will need to have the Foo database specific
1274 headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1275 process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1279 suidperl is an optional component, which is normally neither built
1280 nor installed by default. From perlfaq1:
1282 On some systems, setuid and setgid scripts (scripts written
1283 in the C shell, Bourne shell, or Perl, for example, with the
1284 set user or group ID permissions enabled) are insecure due to
1285 a race condition in the kernel. For those systems, Perl versions
1286 5 and 4 attempt to work around this vulnerability with an optional
1287 component, a special program named suidperl, also known as sperl.
1288 This program attempts to emulate the set-user-ID and set-group-ID
1289 features of the kernel.
1291 Because of the buggy history of suidperl, and the difficulty
1292 of properly security auditing as large and complex piece of
1293 software as Perl, we cannot recommend using suidperl and the feature
1294 should be considered deprecated.
1296 Instead, use a tool specifically designed to handle changes in
1297 privileges, such as B<sudo>.
1301 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1302 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1303 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1304 makefile, not Makefile, since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1305 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1306 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1308 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1313 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1315 =head2 Expected errors
1317 These errors are normal, and can be ignored:
1320 make: [extra.pods] Error 1 (ignored)
1322 make: [extras.make] Error 1 (ignored)
1324 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1326 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1327 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1328 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1329 then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1335 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1336 for further tips and information.
1340 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1341 during the building of extensions, run
1345 to test your version of miniperl.
1349 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1350 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1351 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1352 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1353 whole L<perllocale/"LOCALE PROBLEMS"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1354 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1356 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1357 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1360 are supported and installed on your system.
1361 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1367 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1368 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1369 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1370 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by installing gcc
1371 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1372 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1373 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1377 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1378 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1380 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1381 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1382 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1384 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1385 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1387 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1389 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1390 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1391 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1392 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1393 of your local set-up.
1397 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1398 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1401 sh Configure -Uusenm
1403 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1404 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1407 =item umask not found
1409 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1410 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1411 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1412 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1413 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1417 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1418 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1419 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1420 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1421 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1425 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1426 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1427 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1431 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1432 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1433 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1434 on L<"nm extraction">.
1436 =item __inet_* errors
1438 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1439 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1440 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1441 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1442 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1443 newer version of BIND (and remove the files the old one left behind).
1444 If you can't, you can either link with the updated resolver library provided
1445 with BIND 8.1 or rename /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and
1446 test process to avoid the problem.
1448 =item *_r() prototype NOT found
1450 On a related note, if you see a bunch of complaints like the above about
1451 reentrant functions - specifically networking-related ones - being present
1452 but without prototypes available, check to see if BIND 8.1 (or possibly
1453 other BIND 8 versions) is (or has been) installed. They install
1454 header files such as netdb.h into places such as /usr/local/include (or into
1455 another directory as specified at build/install time), at least optionally.
1456 Remove them or put them in someplace that isn't in the C preprocessor's
1457 header file include search path (determined by -I options plus defaults,
1458 normally /usr/include).
1460 =item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1462 This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1463 gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1464 changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1465 rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1466 update your gcc installation.
1470 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1471 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1479 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1480 with B<make depend; make>.
1482 =item Missing functions and Undefined symbols
1484 If the build of miniperl fails with a long list of missing functions or
1485 undefined symbols, check the libs variable in the config.sh file. It
1486 should look something like
1488 libs='-lsocket -lnsl -ldl -lm -lc'
1490 The exact libraries will vary from system to system, but you typically
1491 need to include at least the math library -lm. Normally, Configure
1492 will suggest the correct defaults. If the libs variable is empty, you
1493 need to start all over again. Run
1497 and start from the very beginning. This time, unless you are sure of
1498 what you are doing, accept the default list of libraries suggested by
1501 If the libs variable looks correct, you might have the
1502 L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1504 If you stil have missing routines or undefined symbols, you probably
1505 need to add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature
1506 that Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete. If
1507 you used a hint file, see if it has any relevant advice. You can also
1508 look through through config.h for likely suspects.
1512 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1513 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1514 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1515 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1516 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1519 =item Missing dbmclose
1521 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1522 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1524 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1526 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1527 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1528 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1529 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1530 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1531 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1532 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1533 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1534 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1535 process is continuing.
1537 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1540 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1542 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1543 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1544 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1546 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1547 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1548 quite that tightly coordinated.
1550 =item sh: ar: not found
1552 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1553 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1554 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1555 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1558 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1560 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1561 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1562 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1564 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1566 If you get this error message from the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem test, your System
1567 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1568 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1569 to include the System V semaphores.
1571 =item ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem........semget: No space left on device
1573 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1574 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1575 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1576 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1581 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1582 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1583 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1584 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1585 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1586 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1587 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1588 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1590 =item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1592 The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1593 make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1594 archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1595 C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1596 archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1597 incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1598 official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1599 that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1600 archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1602 =item invalid token: ##
1604 You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. To compile Perl, you
1605 need to use a compiler that supports ANSI C. If there is a README
1606 file for your system, it may have further details on your compiler
1611 Some additional things that have been reported:
1613 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1615 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1617 UTS may need one or more of -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1619 FreeBSD can fail the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1620 configured in the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1621 you will get a message telling you what to do.
1623 Building Perl on a system that has also BIND (headers and libraries)
1624 installed may run into troubles because BIND installs its own netdb.h
1625 and socket.h, which may not agree with the operating system's ideas of
1626 the same files. Similarly, including -lbind may conflict with libc's
1627 view of the world. You may have to tweak -Dlocincpth and -Dloclibpth
1632 =head2 Cross-compilation
1634 Perl can be cross-compiled. It is just not trivial, cross-compilation
1635 rarely is. Perl is routinely cross-compiled for many platforms (as of
1636 June 2005 at least PocketPC aka WinCE, Open Zaurus, EPOC, Symbian, and
1637 the IBM OS/400). These platforms are known as the B<target> platforms,
1638 while the systems where the compilation takes place are the B<host>
1641 What makes the situation difficult is that first of all,
1642 cross-compilation environments vary significantly in how they are set
1643 up and used, and secondly because the primary way of configuring Perl
1644 (using the rather large Unix-tool-dependent Configure script) is not
1645 awfully well suited for cross-compilation. However, starting from
1646 version 5.8.0, the Configure script also knows one way of supporting
1647 cross-compilation support, please keep reading.
1649 See the following files for more information about compiling Perl for
1650 the particular platforms:
1654 =item WinCE/PocketPC
1676 Packaging and transferring either the core Perl modules or CPAN
1677 modules to the target platform is also left up to the each
1678 cross-compilation environment. Often the cross-compilation target
1679 platforms are somewhat limited in diskspace: see the section
1680 L<Minimizing the Perl installation> to learn more of the minimal set
1681 of files required for a functional Perl installation.
1683 For some cross-compilation environments the Configure option
1684 C<-Dinstallprefix=...> might be handy, see L<Changing the installation
1687 About the cross-compilation support of Configure: what is known to
1688 work is running Configure in a cross-compilation environment and
1689 building the miniperl executable. What is known not to work is
1690 building the perl executable because that would require building
1691 extensions: Dynaloader statically and File::Glob dynamically, for
1692 extensions one needs MakeMaker and MakeMaker is not yet
1693 cross-compilation aware, and neither is the main Makefile.
1695 The cross-compilation setup of Configure has successfully been used in
1696 at least two Linux cross-compilation environments. The setups were
1697 both such that the host system was Intel Linux with a gcc built for
1698 cross-compiling into ARM Linux, and there was a SSH connection to the
1701 To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch that
1702 has to be used is C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
1704 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1706 This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
1707 symbol C<usecrosscompile> available, and C<xconfig.h> will be used
1708 for cross-compilation.
1710 During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1711 into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1712 cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1713 target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1714 transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1715 the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1716 methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1717 F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1719 To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1720 the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1721 happens), supply Configure with
1723 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1725 The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
1726 must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1727 You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
1731 but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
1733 Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
1734 which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
1735 This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
1736 In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
1739 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
1741 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1742 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1743 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
1745 If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
1746 compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
1747 C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
1748 (The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
1749 as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
1750 will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
1751 in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
1753 In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
1754 choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
1757 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
1759 Putting it all together:
1761 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1762 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1763 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
1765 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
1766 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1767 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1768 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1769 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
1772 or if you are happy with the defaults:
1774 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1775 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1776 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1779 Another example where the cross-compiler has been installed under
1780 F</usr/local/arm/2.95.5>:
1782 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1783 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1784 -Dcc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/bin/arm-linux-gcc \
1785 -Dincpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
1786 -Dusrinc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
1787 -Dlibpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/lib
1791 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
1792 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
1793 wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1795 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1796 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1797 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1799 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1801 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1802 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1803 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1807 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1808 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1812 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1813 complicated constructs). For extension and library tests you
1814 need a little bit more: you need to setup your environment variable
1815 PERL_CORE to a true value (like "1"), and you need to supply the
1816 right Perl library path:
1819 ./perl -I../lib ../ext/Socket/Socket.t
1820 ./perl -I../lib ../lib/less.t
1822 (For csh-like shells on UNIX; adjust appropriately for other platforms.)
1823 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1824 comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
1825 shared library path if you get errors like:
1827 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
1829 See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
1835 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1836 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1837 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1838 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1839 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1840 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1842 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1848 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1850 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1851 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1852 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1853 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1854 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1855 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1858 =item Timing problems
1860 Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
1861 sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
1862 If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough,
1863 these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again
1864 with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive
1865 and load-sensitive tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
1866 F<ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t>, F<lib/Benchmark.t>,
1867 F<lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t>, and F<lib/Memoize/t/speed.t>.
1871 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1872 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
1873 For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
1874 test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
1876 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1878 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
1880 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1881 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1882 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1883 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1885 =item Failures from lib/File/Temp/t/security saying "system possibly insecure"
1887 First, such warnings are not necessarily serious or indicative of a
1888 real security threat. That being said, they bear investigating.
1890 Note that each of the tests is run twice. The first time is in the
1891 directory returned by File::Spec->tmpdir() (often /tmp on Unix
1892 systems), and the second time in the directory from which the test was
1893 run (usually the 't' directory, if the test was run as part of 'make
1896 The tests may fail for the following reasons:
1898 (1) If the directory the tests are being run in is owned by somebody
1899 other than the user running the tests, or by root (uid 0).
1901 This failure can happen if the Perl source code distribution is
1902 unpacked in such a way that the user ids in the distribution package
1903 are used as-is. Some tar programs do this.
1905 (2) If the directory the tests are being run in is writable by group or
1906 by others, and there is no sticky bit set for the directory. (With
1907 UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to a directory means the right to
1908 add or remove files in that directory. The 'sticky bit' is a feature
1909 used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if the bit is
1910 set for a directory, no one but the owner (or root) can remove that
1911 file even if the permissions would otherwise allow file removal by
1914 This failure may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the
1915 permissions policy used on this particular system. This failure can
1916 also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit (this
1917 is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle File::Temp
1918 should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or if the system
1919 supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons it is not being
1920 used. This is, for example, the case with HP-UX: as of HP-UX release
1921 11.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX doesn't use it
1922 on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also, as with the permissions, some
1923 local policy might dictate that the stickiness is not used.
1925 (3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
1926 any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
1927 directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
1928 (2). For Unix systems, this is usually not an issue if you are
1929 building on a local disk. See the documentation for the File::Temp
1930 module for more information about 'chown giveaway'.
1932 See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
1933 about the various security aspects of temporary files.
1939 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1940 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
1941 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
1942 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
1943 are not root, you must still have permission to install into the directories
1944 in question and you should ignore any messages about chown not working.
1946 If "make install" just says "`install' is up to date" or something
1947 similar, you may be on a case-insensitive filesystems such as Mac's HFS+,
1948 and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion is brought to you
1949 by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
1951 =head2 Installing perl under different names
1953 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
1954 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
1955 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
1957 make install PERLNAME=myperl
1959 You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
1960 "perl5.8.9") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
1962 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
1964 This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (e.g. to
1965 avoid conflicts with an ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor).
1966 Without this the versioned binary would be called "perl55.8.8".
1968 =head2 Installing perl under a different directory
1970 You can install perl under a different destination directory by using
1971 the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>, with a command like
1973 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
1975 DESTDIR is automatically prepended to all the installation paths. See
1976 the example in L<"DESTDIR"> above.
1978 =head2 Installed files
1980 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
1981 anything, you can run
1983 ./perl installperl -n
1984 ./perl installman -n
1986 make install will install the following:
1991 perl5.n.n where 5.n.n is the current release number. This
1992 will be a link to perl.
1994 sperl5.n.n If you requested setuid emulation.
1995 a2p awk-to-perl translator
1999 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
2001 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
2002 s2p sed-to-perl translator
2003 find2perl find-to-perl translator
2004 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
2005 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
2006 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
2007 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
2008 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
2009 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
2010 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
2016 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
2017 dprofpp Perl code profile post-processor
2021 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
2022 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
2026 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2028 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
2029 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2031 Installperl will also create the directories listed above
2032 in L<"Installation Directories">.
2034 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
2035 under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
2036 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2037 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
2039 Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2040 installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
2041 perl alongside an already installed production version of perl without
2042 disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2043 To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2045 Configure -Dversiononly
2047 or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2048 you can just manually run
2050 ./perl installperl -v
2052 and skip installman altogether.
2053 See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2056 =head1 Reporting Problems
2058 Wherever possible please use the perlbug tool supplied with this Perl
2059 to report problems, as it automatically includes summary configuration
2060 information about your perl, which may help us track down problems far
2061 more quickly. But first you should read the advice in this file,
2062 carefully re-read the error message and check the relevant manual pages
2063 on your system, as these may help you find an immediate solution. If
2064 you are not sure whether what you are seeing is a bug, you can send a
2065 message describing the problem to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup to
2068 The perlbug tool is installed along with perl, so after you have
2069 completed C<make install> it should be possible to run it with plain
2070 C<perlbug>. If the install fails, or you want to report problems with
2071 C<make test> without installing perl, then you can use C<make nok> to
2072 run perlbug to report the problem, or run it by hand from this source
2073 directory with C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug>
2075 If the build fails too early to run perlbug uninstalled, then please
2076 B<run> the C<./myconfig> shell script, and mail its output along with
2077 an accurate description of your problem to perlbug@perl.org
2079 If Configure itself fails, and does not generate a config.sh file
2080 (needed to run C<./myconfig>), then please mail perlbug@perl.org the
2081 description of how Configure fails along with details of your system
2082 - for example the output from running C<uname -a>
2084 Please try to make your message brief but clear. Brief, clear bug
2085 reports tend to get answered more quickly. Please don't worry if your
2086 written English is not great - what matters is how well you describe
2087 the important technical details of the problem you have encountered,
2088 not whether your grammar and spelling is flawless.
2090 Trim out unnecessary information. Do not include large files (such as
2091 config.sh or a complete Configure or make log) unless absolutely
2092 necessary. Do not include a complete transcript of your build
2093 session. Just include the failing commands, the relevant error
2094 messages, and whatever preceding commands are necessary to give the
2095 appropriate context. Plain text should usually be sufficient--fancy
2096 attachments or encodings may actually reduce the number of people who
2097 read your message. Your message will get relayed to over 400
2098 subscribers around the world so please try to keep it brief but clear.
2100 If you are unsure what makes a good bug report please read "How to
2101 report Bugs Effectively" by Simon Tatham:
2102 http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html
2104 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5
2106 Perl 5.10 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
2107 In other words, you will have to recompile your XS modules.
2109 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
2110 5.8.0) to another similar version (e.g. 5.8.2) without re-compiling
2111 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
2112 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
2113 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
2114 with 5.8.2, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
2115 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
2116 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.8.2.
2118 Usually, most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to be
2119 used with a newer version of Perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
2120 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
2122 Suppose you already have version 5.005_03 installed. The directories
2123 searched by 5.005_03 are
2125 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503/$archname
2126 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503
2127 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2128 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2130 Beginning with 5.6.0 the version number in the site libraries are
2131 fully versioned. Now, suppose you install version 5.6.0. The directories
2132 searched by version 5.6.0 will be
2134 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/$archname
2135 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0
2136 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
2137 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2139 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2140 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2141 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2143 Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
2144 of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
2145 directories. This way, modules installed under 5.005_03 will continue
2146 to be usable by 5.005_03 but will also accessible to 5.6.0. Further,
2147 suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
2148 present only in 5.6.0. That new module will get installed into
2149 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0 and will be available to 5.6.0,
2150 but will not interfere with the 5.005_03 version.
2152 The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
2153 5.6.0 and above will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
2155 Lastly, suppose you now install 5.8.0, which is not binary compatible
2156 with 5.6.0. The directories searched by 5.8.0 (if you don't change the
2157 Configure defaults) will be:
2159 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0/$archname
2160 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0
2161 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/$archname
2162 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0
2164 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2166 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2168 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2170 Note that the earlier $archname entries are now gone, but pure perl
2171 modules from earlier versions will still be found.
2173 Assuming the users in your site are still actively using perl 5.6.0 and
2174 5.005 after you installed 5.8.0, you can continue to install add-on
2175 extensions using any of perl 5.8.0, 5.6.0, or 5.005. The installations
2176 of these different versions remain distinct, but remember that the
2177 newer versions of perl are automatically set up to search the
2178 compatible site libraries of the older ones. This means that
2179 installing a new XS extension with 5.005 will make it visible to both
2180 5.005 and 5.6.0, but not to 5.8.0. Installing a pure perl module with
2181 5.005 will make it visible to all three versions. Later, if you
2182 install the same extension using, say, perl 5.8.0, it will override the
2183 5.005-installed version, but only for perl 5.8.0.
2185 This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2186 to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2187 versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
2189 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
2191 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
2192 separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
2193 won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2194 libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2195 way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
2197 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.8.2
2199 and adding /opt/perl5.8.2/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
2200 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2201 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2203 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
2204 (e.g. 5.8 for all 5.8.x versions), but change directory with
2207 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2208 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2209 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2212 =head2 Upgrading from 5.8.x or earlier
2214 B<Perl 5.10.0 is binary incompatible with Perl 5.8.x and any earlier
2215 Perl release.> Perl modules having binary parts
2216 (meaning that a C compiler is used) will have to be recompiled to be
2217 used with 5.10.0. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with
2218 5.10.0, you may safely do so without disturbing the older
2219 installations. (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5">
2222 See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2223 incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
2224 perllocal.pod, not perllocale.pod, for installed module information.
2226 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2228 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2229 system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2230 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2231 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2232 library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2234 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2235 of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2236 hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2237 For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2240 =head1 installhtml --help
2242 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2243 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2244 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2246 Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2247 html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2249 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2254 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2256 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2257 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2258 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2259 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2260 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
2263 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2264 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2265 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2266 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2267 (and would welcome patches for them).
2269 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2270 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2272 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2274 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2275 available in TeX format. Type
2277 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2279 =head1 Starting all over again
2281 If you wish to re-build perl from the same build directory, you should
2282 clean it out with the command
2290 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
2291 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
2293 If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
2294 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
2295 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
2296 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it:
2300 If you wish to re-use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
2301 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
2302 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
2303 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
2304 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
2305 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Similarly, if you used
2306 a shared libperl.so (see below) with version numbers, you will probably
2307 want to adjust them as well.
2309 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. For example, some
2310 Linux distributions use i386, but Configure uses the output of the arch
2311 command, which might be i686 instead. If you pick up a precompiled
2312 binary, or compile extensions on different systems, they might not all
2313 agree on the architecture name.
2315 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
2316 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
2318 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
2319 installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
2320 using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
2321 settings"> above. If you wish to start with a fresh distribution, you
2322 also need to remove any old Policy.sh files you may have with
2326 =head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2328 The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2329 Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2330 operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2332 Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way:
2333 Encode, with its big conversion tables, consumes a lot of
2334 space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything. The
2335 Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network
2336 programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all
2337 depends on what do you need to do.
2339 In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2340 recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2341 depends on what you need.
2343 Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2347 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2351 in Linux is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
2354 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/strict.pm
2355 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/warnings.pm
2356 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/File/Glob.pm
2357 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/XSLoader.pm
2358 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2360 Secondly, Debian perl-base package contains the following files,
2361 size about 1.9MB in its i386 version:
2366 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B.pm
2367 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B/Deparse.pm
2368 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Config.pm
2369 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Cwd.pm
2370 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Data/Dumper.pm
2371 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/DynaLoader.pm
2372 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Errno.pm
2373 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Fcntl.pm
2374 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/File/Glob.pm
2375 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO.pm
2376 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/File.pm
2377 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Handle.pm
2378 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Pipe.pm
2379 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Seekable.pm
2380 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Select.pm
2381 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket.pm
2382 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/POSIX.pm
2383 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Socket.pm
2384 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/XSLoader.pm
2385 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.bs
2386 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.so
2387 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.bs
2388 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.so
2389 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a
2390 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2391 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2392 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2393 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2394 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/extralibs.ld
2395 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs
2396 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2397 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.bs
2398 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2399 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.bs
2400 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.so
2401 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.bs
2402 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2403 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2404 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2405 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.bs
2406 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2407 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/lib.pm
2408 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/re.pm
2409 /usr/share/doc/perl-base
2410 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
2411 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2412 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian.gz
2413 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
2414 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
2415 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
2417 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/AutoLoader.pm
2418 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp.pm
2419 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp/Heavy.pm
2420 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter.pm
2421 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2422 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec.pm
2423 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2424 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/FileHandle.pm
2425 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Getopt/Long.pm
2426 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2427 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2428 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open2.pm
2429 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open3.pm
2430 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/List/Util.pm
2431 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Scalar/Util.pm
2432 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/SelectSaver.pm
2433 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Symbol.pm
2434 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/ParseWords.pm
2435 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Tabs.pm
2436 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Wrap.pm
2437 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/attributes.pm
2438 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/base.pm
2439 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes.pm
2440 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes_heavy.pl
2441 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/constant.pm
2442 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/fields.pm
2443 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/integer.pm
2444 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/locale.pm
2445 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/overload.pm
2446 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/strict.pm
2447 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8.pm
2448 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8_heavy.pl
2449 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/vars.pm
2450 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings.pm
2451 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings/register.pm
2453 A nice trick to find out the minimal set of Perl library files you will
2454 need to run a Perl program is
2456 perl -e 'do "prog.pl"; END { print "$_\n" for sort keys %INC }'
2458 (this will not find libraries required in runtime, unfortunately, but
2459 it's a minimal set) and if you want to find out all the files you can
2460 use something like the below
2462 strace perl -le 'do "x.pl"' 2>&1 | perl -nle '/^open\(\"(.+?)"/ && print $1'
2464 (The 'strace' is Linux-specific, other similar utilities include 'truss'
2467 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
2469 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2470 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
2471 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
2472 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2473 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
2475 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
2476 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and
2479 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
2480 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
2482 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
2483 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
2486 Note that you must have performed the installation already before running
2487 the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate
2492 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2493 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2494 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
2496 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2497 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2499 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2501 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2502 the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2503 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2504 a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2505 and the contact information to match your distribution.