3 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
7 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system are:
9 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
15 # You may also wish to add these:
16 (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
18 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
20 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
22 For information on non-Unix systems, see the section on
23 L<"Porting information"> below.
25 For information on what's new in this release, see the
26 pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
27 changes, see the Changes file.
31 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
32 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
33 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
34 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
36 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
38 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
40 You should probably at least skim through this entire document before
43 If you're building Perl on a non-Unix system, you should also read
44 the README file specific to your operating system, since this may
45 provide additional or different instructions for building Perl.
47 If there is a hint file for your system (in the hints/ directory) you
48 should also read that hint file for specific information for your
49 system. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh hint file.)
51 =head1 NOTE: This version is not binary compatible with Perl 5.004.
53 For Perl 5.004 it was possible to be binary compatible with 5.003.
54 Starting from Perl 5.004_50 this is no longer possible because there were
55 many deep and far-reaching changes to the language internals.
57 If you have dynamically loaded extensions that you built under perl
58 5.003 or 5.004 and the so-called 'bincompat3' mode (the default mode)
59 and that you wish to continue to use with perl 5.005, you may need to
60 reinstall the extensions. If you wish to continue to support both 5.004
61 and 5.005 on your system, you will have to move the 5.004 extensions
62 over to the 5.004 architecture-dependent library. See the discussion
63 below on L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5.">
65 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
67 In a related issue, old extensions may possibly be affected by the
68 changes in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
69 pod/perldelta.pod for a description of what's changed.
71 =head1 Space Requirements
73 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 10 MB of disk space. The
74 complete tree after completing make takes roughly 20 MB, though the
75 actual total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
76 directories need something on the order of 10 MB, though again that
77 value is system-dependent.
79 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
81 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
90 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
91 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
93 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
94 files. If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
95 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
96 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
97 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or rename it, e.g.
99 mv config.sh config.sh.old
101 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
102 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
103 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
104 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
105 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
106 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
107 probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't, presently.
108 Similarly, if you used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version
109 numbers, you will probably want to adjust them as well.
111 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. Some Linux systems
112 (such as Debian) use i386, while others may use i486 or i586. If you
113 pick up a precompiled binary, it might not use the same name.
115 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
116 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
118 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your
119 particular installation choices, then you can probably achieve the
120 same effect by using the new Policy.sh file. See the section on
121 L<"Site-wide Policy settings"> below.
125 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
126 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
127 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default
128 is almost always ok. At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d
129 and Configure will use the defaults from then on.
131 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
132 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
134 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h> to
135 get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
136 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
138 To compile with gcc, for example, you should run
140 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
142 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
143 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
145 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
146 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
148 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
149 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. You can specify a different 'prefix' for
150 the default installation directory, when Configure prompts you or by
151 using the Configure command line option -Dprefix='/some/directory',
154 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
156 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the directories
157 are simplified. For example, if you use prefix=/opt/perl,
158 then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
159 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/.
161 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is below
162 your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will attempt
165 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
166 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
167 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
168 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
170 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
175 For my Solaris system, I usually use
177 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
179 =head2 GNU-style configure
181 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
182 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
184 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
186 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
189 ./configure.gnu --help
193 Cross compiling is not supported.
195 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
196 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
200 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
201 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
202 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
203 B, DynaLoader, Fcntl, IO, and attrs are always built by default.
204 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
205 is always built by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
206 set the Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from
207 the Configure command line. Similarly, the Opcode extension is always
208 built by default, but you can skip it by setting the Configure variable
209 useopcode=false either in a hint file for from the command line.
211 You can learn more about each of these extensions by consulting the
212 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
215 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
216 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
217 version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
219 In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
220 to turn off each extension:
222 B (Always included by default)
224 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
225 Fcntl (Always included by default)
227 IO (Always included by default)
231 SDBM_File (Always included by default)
235 attrs (Always included by default)
237 Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
239 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
241 Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
244 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
245 the extensions you want.
247 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley
248 DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect
249 this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with version 2.
251 If you re-use your old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
252 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
253 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
256 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern Unix systems do)
257 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
258 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
259 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
261 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
263 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
264 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
265 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
266 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
267 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
268 how to obtain the libraries.
270 Note: If your database header (.h) files are not in a
271 directory normally searched by your C compiler, then you will need to
272 include the appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by
273 Configure. If your database library (.a) files are not in a directory
274 normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to
275 include the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by
276 Configure. See the examples below.
282 =item gdbm in /usr/local
284 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
285 GDBM_File extension. This examples assumes you have gdbm.h
286 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
287 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
288 necessary steps out automatically.
290 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
291 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
293 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
296 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
297 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
300 Again, this should all happen automatically. If you want to accept the
301 defaults for all the questions and have Configure print out only terse
302 messages, then you can just run
306 and Configure should include the GDBM_File extension automatically.
308 This should actually work if you have gdbm installed in any of
309 (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu, /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
311 =item gdbm in /usr/you
313 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
314 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
315 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
316 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
317 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
318 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
319 /usr/you/lib to the list.
321 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
325 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
326 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
328 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
329 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
331 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
332 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
333 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
334 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
337 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
338 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
342 =head2 Installation Directories
344 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
345 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
346 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
348 I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
349 everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
350 process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure
351 will use the defaults from then on.
353 By default, Configure uses the following directories for
354 library files (archname is a string like sun4-sunos, determined
357 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.004
358 /usr/local/lib/perl5/
359 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/archname
360 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl
362 and the following directories for manual pages:
365 /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3
367 (Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
368 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
371 The module man pages are stuck in that strange spot so that
372 they don't collide with other man pages stored in /usr/local/man/man3,
373 and so that Perl's man pages don't hide system man pages. On some
374 systems, B<man less> would end up calling up Perl's less.pm module man
375 page, rather than the less program. (This default location will likely
376 change to /usr/local/man/man3 in a future release of perl.)
378 Note: Many users prefer to store the module man pages in
379 /usr/local/man/man3. You can do this from the command line with
381 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/man/man3
383 Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
385 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
387 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
388 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you Configure with
389 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the defaults are
391 /opt/perl/lib/archname/5.004
393 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/archname
394 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl
399 The perl executable will search the libraries in the order given
402 The directories site_perl and site_perl/archname are empty, but are
403 intended to be used for installing local or site-wide extensions. Perl
404 will automatically look in these directories.
406 In order to support using things like #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.004 after
407 a later version is released, architecture-dependent libraries are
408 stored in a version-specific directory, such as
409 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.004/.
411 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
414 =head2 Changing the installation directory
416 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
417 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
418 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
419 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
420 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
421 packages may also wish to install perl into a different directory and
422 use that management software to move perl to its final destination.
423 This section describes how to do this. Someday, Configure may support
424 an option -Dinstallprefix=/foo to simplify this.
426 Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You
427 can edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to
428 /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local/wherever. Or, you can automate this
429 process by placing the following lines in a file config.over before you
430 run Configure (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice):
432 installprefix=/tmp/perl5
433 test -d $installprefix || mkdir $installprefix
434 test -d $installprefix/bin || mkdir $installprefix/bin
435 installarchlib=`echo $installarchlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
436 installbin=`echo $installbin | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
437 installman1dir=`echo $installman1dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
438 installman3dir=`echo $installman3dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
439 installprivlib=`echo $installprivlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
440 installscript=`echo $installscript | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
441 installsitelib=`echo $installsitelib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
442 installsitearch=`echo $installsitearch | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
444 Then, you can Configure and install in the usual way:
451 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
452 extensions, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
453 follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with
456 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
458 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
459 convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
460 installed on multiple systems. Here's one way to do that:
462 # Set up config.over to install perl into a different directory,
463 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
469 # Edit lib/<archname>/<version>/Config.pm to change all the
470 # install* variables back to reflect where everything will
471 # really be installed.
472 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
473 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
474 cd /usr/local # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
475 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
477 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
479 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
480 answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact
481 person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another
482 system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file
483 to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate
484 hint file for your system.
486 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
491 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
493 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
495 =head2 Configure-time Options
497 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
498 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
499 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
500 some of the main things you can change.
502 =head2 Installing perl under different names
504 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
505 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
506 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
508 make install PERLNAME=myperl
512 On some platforms, perl5.005 can be compiled to use threads. To
513 enable this, read the file README.threads, and then try
515 sh Configure -Dusethreads
517 Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command
518 line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
520 The default is to compile without thread support.
522 =head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
524 Previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in
525 stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl allow alternate IO
526 mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but the stdio mechanism is still
527 the default and is the only supported mechanism.
529 This PerlIO abstraction can be enabled either on the Configure command
532 sh Configure -Duseperlio
534 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
536 If you choose to use the PerlIO abstraction layer, there are two
537 (experimental) possibilities for the underlying IO calls. These have been
538 tested to some extent on some platforms, but are not guaranteed to work
545 AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance to stdio.h in many
546 cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline" modules. Sfio
547 currently only builds on a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports.
548 Because the data structures are completely different from stdio, perl
549 extension modules or external libraries may not work. This
550 configuration exists to allow these issues to be worked on.
552 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
553 A (fairly old) version of sfio is in CPAN, and work is in progress to make
554 it more easily buildable by adding Configure support.
556 You select this option by
558 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
560 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
561 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
564 Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails
565 to detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent).
566 Apparently, this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux
569 You can test if you have this problem by trying the following shell
570 script. (You may have to add some extra cflags and libraries. A
571 portable version of this may eventually make its way into Configure.)
576 main() { printf("42\n"); }
578 cc -o try try.c -lsfio
580 if test X$val = X42; then
581 echo "Your sfio looks ok"
583 echo "Your sfio has the exit problem."
586 If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to your sfio sources
587 and correct iffe's guess about atexit (or whatever is appropriate for
590 There also might be a more recent release of Sfio that fixes your
595 Normal stdio IO, but with all IO going through calls to the PerlIO
596 abstraction layer. This configuration can be used to check that perl and
597 extension modules have been correctly converted to use the PerlIO
600 This configuration should work on all platforms (but might not).
602 You select this option via:
604 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Uusesfio
606 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure does not
607 detect sfio, then this will be the default suggested by Configure.
611 =head2 Building a shared libperl.so Perl library
613 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
614 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
615 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
618 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
619 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
620 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
621 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
622 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
623 can share the same library.
625 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
626 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
627 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
630 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
631 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
632 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
635 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
636 libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
637 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
638 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
639 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
640 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
642 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
643 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
645 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
647 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
649 To actually build perl, you must add the current working directory to your
650 LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable before running make. You can do
653 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
655 for Bourne-style shells, or
657 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
659 for Csh-style shells. You *MUST* do this before running make.
660 Folks running NeXT OPENSTEP must substitute DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
661 LD_LIBRARY_PATH above.
663 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
664 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
665 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
666 install a standard Perl 5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
667 try to build Perl 5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
668 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
669 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
670 libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is
671 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
672 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
673 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
674 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't. On Digital Unix, you can
675 override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the _RLD_ROOT environment variable
676 to point to the perl build directory.
678 The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different
679 directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING
680 version of perl. You can do this by changing all the *archlib*
681 variables in config.sh, namely archlib, archlib_exp, and
682 installarchlib, to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
686 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed, so
687 perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
688 the malloc function on your system.
690 The perl source is shipped with a version of malloc that is very fast
691 but somewhat wasteful of space. On the other hand, your system's
692 malloc() function may be a bit slower but also a bit more frugal.
694 For many uses, speed is probably the most important consideration, so
695 the default behavior (for most systems) is to use the malloc supplied
696 with perl. However, if you will be running very large applications
697 (e.g. Tk or PDL) or if your system already has an excellent malloc, or
698 if you are experiencing difficulties with extensions that use
699 third-party libraries that call malloc, then you might wish to use
700 your system's malloc. (Or, you might wish to explore the experimental
701 malloc flags discussed below.)
703 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
705 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
707 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
709 =head2 Malloc Performance Flags
711 If you are using Perl's malloc, you may add one or
712 more of the following items to your cflags config.sh variable
713 to change its behavior in potentially useful ways. You can find out
714 more about these flags by reading the malloc.c source.
715 In a future version of perl, these might be enabled by default.
719 =item -DPERL_EMERGENCY_SBRK
721 If PERL_EMERGENCY_SBRK is defined, running out of memory need not be a
722 fatal error: a memory pool can allocated by assigning to the special
723 variable $^M. See perlvar(1) for more details.
727 If PACK_MALLOC is defined, malloc.c uses a slightly different
728 algorithm for small allocations (up to 64 bytes long). Such small
729 allocations are quite common in typical Perl scripts.
731 The expected memory savings (with 8-byte alignment in $alignbytes) is
732 about 20% for typical Perl usage. The expected slowdown due to the
733 additional malloc overhead is in fractions of a percent. (It is hard
734 to measure because of the effect of the saved memory on speed).
736 =item -DTWO_POT_OPTIMIZE
738 If TWO_POT_OPTIMIZE is defined, malloc.c uses a slightly different
739 algorithm for large allocations that are close to a power of two
740 (starting with 16K). Such allocations are typical for big hashes and
741 special-purpose scripts, especially image processing. If you will be
742 manipulating very large blocks with sizes close to powers of two, it
743 might be wise to define this macro.
745 The expected saving of memory is 0-100% (100% in applications which
746 require most memory in such 2**n chunks). The expected slowdown is
751 =head2 Building a debugging perl
753 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
754 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
755 you probably want to do
757 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
759 This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
760 to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
761 executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
762 cc -g2. Check you man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for your
763 system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags variable in
764 config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's internal
765 state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by
766 default if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to
767 reuse your old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the
768 optimize and ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes
769 as shown in L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
771 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
772 it's convenient to have both.
774 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
775 versions of perl under L<Building a shared libperl.so Perl library>.
777 =head2 Other Compiler Flags
779 For most users, all of the Configure defaults are fine. However,
780 you can change a number of factors in the way perl is built
781 by adding appropriate -D directives to your ccflags variable in
784 For example, you can replace the rand() and srand() functions in the
785 perl source by any other random number generator by a trick such as the
788 sh Configure -Dccflags='-Drand=random -Dsrand=srandom'
790 or by adding -Drand=random and -Dsrand=srandom to your ccflags
791 at the appropriate Configure prompt. (Note: Although this worked for
792 me, it might not work for you if your system's header files give
793 different prototypes for rand() and random() or srand() and srandom().)
795 You should also run Configure interactively to verify that a hint file
796 doesn't inadvertently override your ccflags setting. (Hints files
797 shouldn't do that, but some might.)
799 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
803 =item Running Configure Interactively
805 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
806 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
809 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
810 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
811 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
812 will use the defaults from then on.
814 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
815 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
816 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
820 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
821 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
822 will offer to use that hint file.
824 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
825 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint
826 file for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an
829 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
831 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
832 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
833 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
836 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
837 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
838 Keep the recommended value? [y]
840 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
841 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
844 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
845 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
846 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
849 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
850 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
851 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
852 Now, Configure will find your gdbm library and will issue a message:
854 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
855 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
856 Keep the previous value? [y]
858 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
859 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
860 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
862 =item Changing Compilers
864 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
865 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
866 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
867 with the options you want to use.
869 This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
870 gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
872 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
874 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
875 them to all the .SH files by running
879 You will then have to rebuild by running
886 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride Configure's
887 guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just before config.sh
888 is created. You have to be careful with this, however, as Configure
889 does no checking that your changes make sense. See the section on
890 L<"Changing the installation directory"> for an example.
894 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
895 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
896 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
898 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
899 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
904 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
905 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
906 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
907 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
908 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
909 lost the next time you run Configure.
911 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh
912 and change either $ccflags or $optimize,
920 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file Porting/config_H
921 to config.h and edit the config.h to reflect your system's peculiarities.
922 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
925 =item Porting information
927 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
928 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
929 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
932 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
933 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports for current information on ports to
934 various other operating systems.
940 This will look for all the includes.
941 The output is stored in makefile. The only difference between
942 Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at the bottom of
943 makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
944 makefile, not Makefile since the Unix make command reads
945 makefile first. (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in
946 a different file. Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh
949 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
954 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
956 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
957 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
958 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help, you can
959 send a message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
960 perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
961 See L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
967 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
968 for further tips and information.
972 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
973 during the building of extensions, you should run
977 to test your version of miniperl.
981 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try
982 unsetting them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang
983 while running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C
984 locale. See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales
985 and the whole L<Locale problems> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
986 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
988 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
989 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
992 are supported and installed on your system.
993 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
997 =item malloc duplicates
999 If you get duplicates upon linking for malloc et al, add -DEMBEDMYMALLOC
1000 to your ccflags variable in config.sh.
1004 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1005 correctly. When using gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define'
1006 and i_varargs='undef' in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by
1007 running fixincludes correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't
1008 forget to propagate your changes (see
1009 L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1010 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1014 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1015 numbers will vary in different versions of perl):
1017 util.c: In function `Perl_croak':
1018 util.c:962: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1019 proto.h:45: prototype declaration
1021 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1022 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1024 =item Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading
1026 If you have problems with dynamic loading using gcc on SunOS or
1027 Solaris, and you are using GNU as and GNU ld, you may need to add
1028 -B/bin/ (for SunOS) or -B/usr/ccs/bin/ (for Solaris) to your
1029 $ccflags, $ldflags, and $lddlflags so that the system's versions of as
1030 and ld are used. Note that the trailing '/' is required.
1031 Alternatively, you can use the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX
1032 environment variable to ensure that Sun's as and ld are used. Consult
1033 your gcc documentation for further information on the -B option and
1034 the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX variable.
1036 One convenient way to ensure you are not using GNU as and ld is to
1037 invoke Configure with
1039 sh Configure -Dcc='gcc -B/usr/ccs/bin/'
1041 for Solaris systems. For a SunOS system, you must use -B/bin/
1044 Alternatively, recent versions of GNU ld reportedly work if you
1045 include C<-Wl,-export-dynamic> in the ccdlflags variable in
1048 =item ld.so.1: ./perl: fatal: relocation error:
1050 If you get this message on SunOS or Solaris, and you're using gcc,
1051 it's probably the GNU as or GNU ld problem in the previous item
1052 L<"Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading">.
1054 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1056 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1057 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1058 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1059 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1060 of your local set-up.
1062 =item dlopen: stub interception failed
1064 The primary cause of the 'dlopen: stub interception failed' message is
1065 that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable includes a directory
1066 which is a symlink to /usr/lib (such as /lib).
1068 The reason this causes a problem is quite subtle. The file libdl.so.1.0
1069 actually *only* contains functions which generate 'stub interception
1070 failed' errors! The runtime linker intercepts links to
1071 "/usr/lib/libdl.so.1.0" and links in internal implementation of those
1072 functions instead. [Thanks to Tim Bunce for this explanation.]
1076 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1077 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1080 sh Configure -Uusenm
1082 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1083 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1088 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1089 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1090 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1091 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1092 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1096 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1097 on a number of other common functions too. You are probably better off
1098 re-running Configure without using nm extraction (see previous item).
1102 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1103 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1104 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous items
1105 on L<"vsprintf"> and L<"nm extraction">.
1107 =item __inet_* errors
1109 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1110 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1111 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1112 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1113 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1114 newer version of BIND. If you can't, you can either link with the
1115 updated resolver library provided with BIND 8.1 or rename
1116 /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and test process to
1121 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1122 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1130 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1131 with B<make depend; make>.
1135 If you still can't compile successfully, try adding a -DCRIPPLED_CC
1136 flag. (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it compiled right!)
1137 This simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that get
1140 =item Missing functions
1142 If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
1143 other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
1144 there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
1149 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1150 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1151 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1152 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1153 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1156 =item Missing dbmclose
1158 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1159 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1161 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1163 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1164 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1165 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1166 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1167 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1168 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1169 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1170 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1171 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1172 process is continuing.
1174 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1177 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1179 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1180 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1181 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1183 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1184 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1185 quite that tightly coordinated.
1187 =item sh: ar: not found
1189 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1190 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1191 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1192 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1195 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1197 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1198 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1199 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1203 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1205 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1207 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1209 UTS may need one or more of -DCRIPPLED_CC, -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1211 If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.
1213 Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
1219 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made (you
1220 should run plain 'make' before 'make test' otherwise you won't have a
1221 complete build). If 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful"
1222 then something went wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1224 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1225 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1226 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1228 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1230 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1231 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1232 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1236 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1237 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1241 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1242 complicated constructs).
1244 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1245 comments that apply to your system.
1251 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1252 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1253 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1254 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1255 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1256 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1258 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1264 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1266 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1267 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1268 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1269 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1270 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1271 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1276 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1277 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
1278 Specifically, in perl5.004_64, tests 74 and 78 have been reported to
1279 fail on some systems. On my SparcStation IPC with 8 MB of RAM, test 78
1280 will fail if the system is running any other significant tasks at the
1283 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1285 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
1287 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1288 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1289 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1290 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1292 You may also be able to reduce perl's memory usage by using some of
1293 the ideas described above in L<"Malloc Performance Flags">.
1299 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1300 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
1301 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
1302 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
1303 are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
1304 ignore any messages about chown not working.
1306 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
1307 anything, you can run
1309 ./perl installperl -n
1310 ./perl installman -n
1312 make install will install the following:
1315 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
1316 will be a link to perl.
1318 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
1319 a2p awk-to-perl translator
1320 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
1322 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
1323 s2p sed-to-perl translator
1324 find2perl find-to-perl translator
1325 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
1326 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
1327 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
1328 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
1329 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
1330 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
1331 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
1334 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
1336 library files in $privlib and $archlib specified to
1337 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
1338 man pages in the location specified to Configure, usually
1339 something like /usr/local/man/man1.
1340 module in the location specified to Configure, usually
1341 man pages under /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3.
1342 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
1344 Installperl will also create the library directories $siteperl and
1345 $sitearch listed in config.sh. Usually, these are something like
1346 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
1347 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$archname
1348 where $archname is something like sun4-sunos. These directories
1349 will be used for installing extensions.
1351 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl.a library are also installed
1352 under $archlib so that any user may later build new extensions, run the
1353 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
1354 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
1356 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
1358 WARNING: The upgrade from 5.004_0x to 5.005 is going to be a bit
1359 tricky. See L<"Upgrading from 5.004 to 5.005"> below.
1361 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
1362 5.004_04) to another similar version (e.g. 5.004_05) without re-compiling
1363 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
1364 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
1365 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
1366 with 5.004_04, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
1367 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
1368 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.00404.
1370 (If you are upgrading from 5.002 or earlier, beware that some of the
1371 standard library files have changed in incompatible ways, so you are
1372 probably better off starting with a fresh installation.)
1374 The standard library files in /usr/local/lib/perl5 should be usable by
1375 all versions of perl5 after 5.002. An exception is the diagnostics.pm
1376 module. Since that module uses the /usr/local/lib/perl5/pod/perldiag.pod
1377 documentation file, the C<use diagnostics;> pragma and the splain script
1378 will only identify and explain any warnings or errors that the most
1379 recently-installed version of perl can generate. Usually, this is not
1382 Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use
1383 with a newer version of perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
1384 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
1386 The directories searched by version 5.004_05 will be
1388 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.00405
1389 /usr/local/lib/perl5/
1390 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/archname
1391 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl
1393 while the directories searched by version 5.004_04 are
1395 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.00404
1396 /usr/local/lib/perl5/
1397 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/archname
1398 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl
1400 When you install an add-on extension, it gets installed into
1401 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/archname (if it is architecture-specific.)
1402 This directory is deliberately NOT version-specific so that both 5.004_04
1403 and 5.004_05 can use the extension.
1405 However, if you do run into problems, and you want to continue to
1406 use the old version of perl along with your extension, simply move
1407 those extension files to the appropriate version directory, such as
1408 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.00404. Then use your newer version of
1409 perl to rebuild and re-install the extension into site_perl. This way,
1410 Perl 5.004_04 will find your files in the 5.00404 directory, and
1411 newer versions of perl will find your newer extension in the site_perl
1414 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
1416 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
1417 separate directories. One convenient way to do this is by
1418 using a separate prefix for each version, such as
1420 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.004
1422 and adding /opt/perl5.004/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
1423 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
1424 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
1426 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
1427 (e.g. 5.004 for all 5.004_0x versions), but change directory with
1430 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
1431 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
1432 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
1435 =head2 Upgrading from 5.004 to 5.005
1437 Extensions compiled with versions of perl prior to 5.004_50 will need
1438 to be recompiled to be used with 5.004_50 and later.
1440 If you wish to continue using those extensions under 5.004_04, for
1441 example, then you need to move those extensions from their current
1442 directories, which are something like
1444 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
1445 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/archname
1447 to the version-specific directory such as
1449 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.00404
1453 Once you have moved the 5.00404 versions of the extensions out of the
1454 way, you may recompile and reinstall with 5.005.
1456 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
1458 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
1460 By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
1461 they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
1463 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
1464 perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
1465 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
1466 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
1467 the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036
1468 (or whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod
1469 for possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
1471 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
1473 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from
1474 the system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
1475 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
1476 by perl. These files will be placed in the architectural library directory
1477 you specified to Configure; by default this is
1478 /usr/local/lib/perl5/ARCH/VERSION, where ARCH is your architecture
1479 (such as sun4-solaris) and VERSION is the version of perl you are
1480 building (for example, 5.004).
1482 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the
1483 conversion of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have
1484 to hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse
1485 correctly. For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and
1488 =head1 installhtml --help
1490 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
1491 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
1492 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
1494 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
1499 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
1501 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
1502 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
1503 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
1504 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
1505 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
1508 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
1509 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
1510 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
1511 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
1512 (and would welcome patches for them).
1514 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
1515 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
1517 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
1519 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
1520 available in TeX format. Type
1522 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
1524 =head1 Reporting Problems
1526 If you have difficulty building perl, and none of the advice in this
1527 file helps, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant
1528 manual pages on your system doesn't help either, then you should send a
1529 message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
1530 perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
1532 Please include the output of the ./myconfig shell script
1533 that comes with the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the
1534 perlbug program that comes with the perl distribution,
1535 but you need to have perl compiled and installed before you can use it.
1537 You might also find helpful information in the Porting
1538 directory of the perl distribution.
1540 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
1542 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation is
1543 in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
1544 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
1545 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This
1546 is sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
1548 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
1549 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory
1550 and running (either):
1552 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
1553 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
1555 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
1556 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
1559 Note that you must have performed the installation already before
1560 running the above, since the script collects the installed files to
1561 generate the documentation.
1565 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu ,
1566 borrowing very heavily from the original README by Larry Wall,
1567 with lots of helpful feedback and additions from the
1568 perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
1570 If you have problems or questions, please see L<"Reporting Problems">
1573 =head1 LAST MODIFIED
1575 $Id: INSTALL,v 1.34 1998/04/23 18:19:41 doughera Released $