3 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
7 First, make sure you are installing an up-to-date version of Perl. If
8 you didn't get your Perl source from CPAN, check the latest version at
9 <URL:http://www.cpan.org/src/>.
11 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system
12 with all the defaults are:
14 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
20 # You may also wish to add these:
21 (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
23 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
25 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
27 B<NOTE>: starting from the release 5.6.0 Perl will use a version
28 scheme where even-numbered subreleases (like 5.6) are stable
29 maintenance releases and odd-numbered subreleases (like 5.7) are
30 unstable development releases. Development releases should not be
31 used in production environments. Fixes and new features are first
32 carefully tested in development releases and only if they prove
33 themselves to be worthy will they be migrated to the maintenance
36 The above commands will install Perl to /usr/local or /opt, depending
37 on the platform. If that's not okay with you, use
39 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
45 For information on non-Unix systems, see the section on L<"Porting
48 If "make install" just says "`install' is up to date" or something
49 similar, you may be on case-preserving filesystems such as Mac's HFS+
50 and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion brought to you
51 by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
53 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
54 L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
56 For information on what's new in this release, see the
57 pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
58 changes, see the Changes file.
62 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
63 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
64 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
65 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
67 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
69 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
71 Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
72 you should probably at least skim through this entire document before
75 If you're building Perl on a non-Unix system, you should also read
76 the README file specific to your operating system, since this may
77 provide additional or different instructions for building Perl. There
78 are also README files for several flavors of Unix systems, such as
79 Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX; if you have one of those systems, you should
80 also read the README file specific to that system.
82 If there is a hint file for your system (in the hints/ directory) you
83 should also read that hint file for specific information for your
84 system. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh hint file.) If
85 there is a README file for your platform, then you should read
86 that too. Additional information is in the Porting/ directory.
88 =head1 WARNING: This version requires an extra step to build old extensions.
90 5.005_53 and later releases do not export unadorned
91 global symbols anymore. This means you may need to build older
92 extensions that have not been updated for the new naming convention
95 perl Makefile.PL POLLUTE=1
97 Alternatively, you can enable CPP symbol pollution wholesale by
98 building perl itself with:
100 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_POLLUTE
102 pod/perldelta.pod contains more details about this.
104 =head1 WARNING: This version may not be binary compatible with Perl 5.005.
106 Using the default Configure options for building perl should get you
107 a perl that will be binary compatible with the 5.005 release.
109 However, if you run Configure with any custom options, such as
110 -Dusethreads, -Dusemultiplicity, -Dusemymalloc, -Ubincompat5005 etc.,
111 the resulting perl will not be binary compatible. Under these
112 circumstances, if you have dynamically loaded extensions that were
113 built under perl 5.005, you will need to rebuild and reinstall all
114 those extensions to use them with 5.6.
116 Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
117 without reinstallation. See the discussions below on
118 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> and
119 L<"Upgrading from 5.005 to 5.6"> for more details.
121 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
123 On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the
124 changes in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
125 pod/perldelta.pod (and pod/perl500Xdelta.pod) for a description of
126 what's changed. See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod
127 file for a (possibly incomplete) list of locally installed modules.
128 Also see CPAN::autobundle for one way to make a "bundle" of your
129 currently installed modules.
131 =head1 WARNING: This version requires a compiler that supports ANSI C.
133 Most C compilers are now ANSI-compliant. However, a few current
134 computers are delivered with an older C compiler expressly for
135 rebuilding the system kernel, or for some other historical reason.
136 Alternatively, you may have an old machine which was shipped before
137 ANSI compliance became widespread. Such compilers are not suitable
140 If you find that your default C compiler is not ANSI-capable, but you
141 know that an ANSI-capable compiler is installed on your system, you
142 can tell F<Configure> to use the correct compiler by means of the
143 C<-Dcc=> command-line option -- see L<"gcc">.
145 If do not have an ANSI-capable compiler there are several avenues open
152 You may try obtaining GCC, available from GNU mirrors worldwide,
153 listed at <URL:http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html>. If, rather than
154 building gcc from source code, you locate a binary version configured
155 for your platform, be sure that it is compiled for the version of the
156 operating system that you are using.
160 You may purchase a commercial ANSI C compiler from your system
161 supplier or elsewhere. (Or your organization may already have
162 licensed such software -- ask your colleagues to find out how to
163 access it.) If there is a README file for your system in the Perl
164 distribution (for example, F<README.hpux>), it may contain advice on
169 Another alternative may be to use a tool like ansi2knr to convert the
170 sources back to K&R style, but there is no guarantee this route will get
171 you anywhere, since the prototypes are not the only ANSI features used
172 in the Perl sources. ansi2knr is usually found as part of the freely
173 available Ghostscript distribution. Another similar tool is
174 unprotoize, distributed with GCC. Since unprotoize requires GCC to
175 run, you may have to run it on a platform where GCC is available, and move
176 the sources back to the platform without GCC.
178 If you succeed in automatically converting the sources to a K&R compatible
179 form, be sure to email perlbug@perl.org to let us know the steps you
180 followed. This will enable us to officially support this option.
184 Although Perl can be compiled using a C++ compiler, the Configure script
185 does not work with some C++ compilers.
187 =head1 Space Requirements
189 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 35 MB of disk space.
190 After completing make, it takes up roughly 50 MB, though the actual
191 total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
192 directories need something on the order of 30 MB, though again that
193 value is system-dependent.
195 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
197 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
206 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
207 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
209 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
210 files. If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
211 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
212 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
213 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it
217 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
218 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
219 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
220 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
221 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
222 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
223 probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't, presently.
224 Similarly, if you used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version
225 numbers, you will probably want to adjust them as well.
227 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. For example, some
228 Linux distributions use i386, while others may use i486. If you build
229 it yourself, Configure uses the output of the arch command, which
230 might be i586 or i686 instead. If you pick up a precompiled binary, or
231 compile extensions on different systems, they might not all agree on
232 the architecture name.
234 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
235 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
237 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
238 installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
239 using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
240 settings"> below. If you wish to start with a fresh distribution, you
241 also need to remove any old Policy.sh files you may have with
247 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
248 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
249 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
250 almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
251 since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
254 At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
255 defaults from then on.
257 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
258 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
260 =head2 Altering config.sh variables for C compiler switches etc.
262 For most users, all of the Configure defaults are fine. Configure
263 also has several convenient options which are all described below.
264 However, if Configure doesn't have an option to do what you want,
265 you can change Configure variables after the platform hints have been
266 run, by using Configure's -A switch. For example, here's how to add
267 a couple of extra flags to C compiler invocations:
269 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_Y2KWARN -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC"
271 For more help on Configure switches, run:
275 =head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
277 Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
278 where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
279 read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
282 Starting from Perl 5.6.1 you can do this (if your file system supports
285 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
286 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
287 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
289 This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
290 pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
291 unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
295 and Perl will be built and tested, all in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
297 =head2 Common Configure options
299 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h> to
300 get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
301 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
307 To compile with gcc you should run
309 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
311 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
312 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
314 =item Installation prefix
316 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
317 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
318 and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for
321 You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
322 directory, when Configure prompts you or by using the Configure command
323 line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
325 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
327 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
328 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
329 prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
330 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
333 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
334 as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
335 attempt infinite recursion.
339 It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
340 find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
341 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
342 careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
343 vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing.
345 By default, Configure will arrange for /usr/bin/perl to be linked to
346 the current version of perl. You can turn off that behavior by running
348 Configure -Uinstallusrbinperl
350 or by answering 'no' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
352 In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to
353 put (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
354 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
355 obvious and convenient place.
357 =item Overriding an old config.sh
359 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
360 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
364 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
369 Note: for development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.7, as opposed
370 to maintenance releases which have even subreleases, like 5.6)
371 if you want to use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel
372 to Configure, because the default answer to the question "do you really
373 want to Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel
374 skips that sanity check.
376 For example for my Solaris system, I usually use
378 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
380 =head2 GNU-style configure
382 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
383 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
385 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
387 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
390 ./configure.gnu --help
394 Cross compiling and compiling in a different directory are not supported.
396 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
397 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
399 =head2 Installation Directories
401 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
402 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
403 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
404 Further, there are a number of additions to the installation
405 directories since 5.005, so reusing your old config.sh may not
406 be sufficient to put everything where you want it.
408 I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
409 everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
410 process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use
411 the defaults from then on.
413 The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
414 people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
415 distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
416 need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
417 you can safely skip the next section.
419 The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
423 =item Directories for the perl distribution
425 By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.6.0.
426 $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
427 5.6.0 or 5.6.1, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
428 determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
429 variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
431 Configure variable Default value
434 $scriptdir $prefix/bin
435 $privlib $prefix/lib/perl5/$version
436 $archlib $prefix/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
437 $man1dir $prefix/man/man1
438 $man3dir $prefix/man/man3
442 Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
443 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
444 instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
445 directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
446 the common style is shown here.
448 =item Directories for site-specific add-on files
450 After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
451 CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
452 be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
454 Configure variable Default value
456 $sitebin $siteprefix/bin
457 $sitescript $siteprefix/bin
458 $sitelib $siteprefix/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
459 $sitearch $siteprefix/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
460 $siteman1 $siteprefix/man/man1
461 $siteman3 $siteprefix/man/man3
465 By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
466 modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
468 NOTE: As of 5.6.0, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will use $sitelib and $sitearch,
469 but will not use the other site-specific directories. Volunteers to
472 =item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
474 Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
475 distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
476 for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
478 Configure variable Default value
480 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
481 $vendorbin $vendorprefix/bin
482 $vendorscript $vendorprefix/bin
483 $vendorlib $vendorprefix/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
484 $vendorarch $vendorprefix/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
485 $vendorman1 $vendorprefix/man/man1
486 $vendorman3 $vendorprefix/man/man3
490 These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
491 a vendor might choose the following settings:
494 $siteprefix /usr/local/bin
495 $vendorprefix /usr/bin
497 This would have the effect of setting the following:
501 $privlib /usr/lib/perl5/$version
502 $archlib /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
503 $man1dir /usr/man/man1
504 $man3dir /usr/man/man3
506 $sitebin /usr/local/bin
507 $sitescript /usr/local/bin
508 $sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
509 $sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
510 $siteman1 /usr/local/man/man1
511 $siteman3 /usr/local/man/man3
514 $vendorscript /usr/bin
515 $vendorlib /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
516 $vendorarch /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
517 $vendorman1 /usr/man/man1
518 $vendorman3 /usr/man/man3
520 Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
521 /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
522 the /usr/local hierarchy.
524 NOTE: As of 5.6.0, ExtUtils::MakeMaker does not use these directories.
525 Volunteers to fix this are needed.
527 The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
528 version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
529 However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
530 installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
531 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for more details
532 on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
534 Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
535 example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
536 are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
537 site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
538 network. One way to do that would be something like
540 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
544 As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
545 variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
546 directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
547 Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
548 version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
552 There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
553 that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
554 separated list of directories, like this
556 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
558 The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
559 ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
560 modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
561 touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
562 version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
563 present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
564 directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
565 run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
569 In versions 5.005_57 and earlier, the default was to store module man
570 pages in a version-specific directory, such as
571 /usr/local/lib/perl5/$version/man/man3. The default for 5.005_58 and
572 after is /usr/local/man/man3 so that most users can find the man pages
573 without resetting MANPATH.
575 You can continue to use the old default from the command line with
577 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/man/man3
579 Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
581 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
583 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
588 As of perl5.005_57, the standard perl installation does not do
589 anything with HTML documentation, but that may change in the future.
590 Further, some add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The
591 html Configure variables listed above are provided if you wish to
592 specify where such documents should be placed. The default is "none",
593 but will likely eventually change to something useful based on user
598 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
599 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
602 Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
603 directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
606 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
607 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
608 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below.
610 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
611 library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
612 suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
614 Thus, for example, if you Configure with
615 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.6.0 are
617 Configure variable Default value
618 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.6.0
619 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.6.0/$archname
620 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.0
621 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
623 =head2 Changing the installation directory
625 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
626 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
627 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
628 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
629 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
630 packages, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
631 wish to install perl into a different directory and use that
632 management software to move perl to its final destination. This
633 section describes how to do that.
635 Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You
636 could edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to
637 /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local, or you could simply use the
638 following command line:
640 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
642 (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
644 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
645 modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
646 follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with
649 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
651 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
652 convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
653 installed on multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to
654 create an archive that can be installed in /opt/perl.
655 Here's one way to do that:
657 # Set up to install perl into a different directory,
658 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
659 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5 -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
662 make install # This will install everything into /tmp/perl5.
664 # Edit $archlib/Config.pm and $archlib/.packlist to change all the
665 # install* variables back to reflect where everything will
666 # really be installed. (That is, change /tmp/perl5 to /opt/perl
667 # everywhere in those files.)
668 # Check the scripts in $scriptdir to make sure they have the correct
669 # #!/wherever/perl line.
670 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
671 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
672 cd /opt/perl # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
673 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
675 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
677 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
678 answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact
679 person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another
680 system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file
681 to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate
682 hint file for your system.
684 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
689 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
691 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
693 If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
694 to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
695 platform-specific hints files.
697 Note: Since the directory hierarchy for 5.6.0 contains a number of
698 new vendor* and site* entries, your Policy.sh file will probably not
699 set them to your desired values. I encourage you to run Configure
700 interactively to be sure it puts things where you want them.
702 =head2 Configure-time Options
704 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
705 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
706 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
707 some of the main things you can change.
711 On some platforms, perl5.005 and later can be compiled with
712 experimental support for threads. To enable this, read the file
713 README.threads, and then try:
715 sh Configure -Dusethreads
717 Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command
718 line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
720 The default is to compile without thread support.
722 As of v5.5.64, perl has two different internal threads implementations.
723 The 5.005 version (5005threads) and an interpreter-based implementation
724 (ithreads) with one interpreter per thread. By default, Configure selects
725 ithreads if -Dusethreads is specified. However, you can select the old
726 5005threads behavior instead by either
728 sh Configure -Dusethreads -Duse5005threads
731 sh Configure -Dusethreads -Uuseithreads
733 Eventually (by perl v5.6.0) this internal confusion ought to disappear,
734 and these options may disappear as well.
736 =head2 Large file support.
738 Since Perl 5.6.0 Perl has supported large files (files larger than
739 2 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
740 support is on by default.
742 This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files,
743 seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad if you are interfacing Perl
744 using some extension, also the components you are connecting to must
745 be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
746 parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
747 will happen. One popular extension suffering from this ailment is the
748 Apache extension mod_perl.
750 There's also one known limitation with the current large files
751 implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
752 section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer
753 formats like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
755 =head2 64 bit support.
757 If your platform does not have 64 bits natively, but can simulate them
758 with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>, you can build a
759 perl that uses 64 bits.
761 There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
762 using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
763 -Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
764 the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
766 The C<use64bitint> does only as much as is required to get 64-bit
767 integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long longs")
768 while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because your
769 pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint> does
770 not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it might,
771 but it doesn't have to): the C<use64bitint> means that you will be
772 able to have 64 bits wide scalar values.
774 The C<use64bitall> goes all the way by attempting to switch also
775 integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
776 create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
777 resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
778 have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
781 Natively 64-bit systems like Alpha and Cray need neither -Duse64bitint
784 NOTE: 64-bit support is still experimental on most platforms.
785 Existing support only covers the LP64 data model. In particular, the
786 LLP64 data model is not yet supported. 64-bit libraries and system
787 APIs on many platforms have not stabilized--your mileage may vary.
791 In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
792 range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
793 (that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
794 this support (if it is available).
798 You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
799 and the long double support.
801 =head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
803 Previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in
804 stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl allow alternate IO
805 mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but the stdio mechanism is still
806 the default and is the only supported mechanism.
808 This PerlIO abstraction can be enabled either on the Configure command
811 sh Configure -Duseperlio
813 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
815 If you choose to use the PerlIO abstraction layer, there are two
816 (experimental) possibilities for the underlying IO calls. These have been
817 tested to some extent on some platforms, but are not guaranteed to work
824 AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance to stdio.h in many
825 cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline" modules. Sfio
826 currently only builds on a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports.
827 Because the data structures are completely different from stdio, perl
828 extension modules or external libraries may not work. This
829 configuration exists to allow these issues to be worked on.
831 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
832 The latest sfio is available from http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/sfio/
834 You select this option by
836 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
838 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
839 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
842 Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails to
843 detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent). Apparently,
844 this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux and SunOS 4.
845 Configure should detect this problem and warn you about problems with
846 _exit vs. exit. If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to
847 your sfio sources and correct iffe's guess about atexit.
851 Normal stdio IO, but with all IO going through calls to the PerlIO
852 abstraction layer. This configuration can be used to check that perl and
853 extension modules have been correctly converted to use the PerlIO
856 This configuration should work on all platforms (but might not).
858 You select this option via:
860 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Uusesfio
862 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure does not
863 detect sfio, then this will be the default suggested by Configure.
869 Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
870 TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
871 access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
872 Version 5. You can find more about SOCKS from http://www.socks.nec.com/
874 =head2 Dynamic Loading
876 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
877 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
878 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
879 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
881 =head2 Building a shared libperl.so Perl library
883 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
884 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
885 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
888 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
889 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
890 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
891 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
892 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
893 can share the same library.
895 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
896 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
897 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
900 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
901 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
902 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
905 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
906 libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
907 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
908 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
909 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
910 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
912 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
913 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
915 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
917 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
919 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
920 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
921 NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
922 for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
923 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
924 be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
925 library search settings.
927 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
928 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
929 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
932 cd t; ./perl misc/failing_test.t
934 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
936 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
939 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
941 for Bourne-style shells, or
943 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
945 for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
946 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.)
948 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
949 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
951 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
953 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
954 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
955 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
956 install a standard Perl 5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
957 try to build Perl 5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
958 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
959 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
960 libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is
961 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
962 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
963 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
964 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't. On Digital Unix, you can
965 override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the _RLD_ROOT environment variable
966 to point to the perl build directory.
968 The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different
969 directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING
970 version of perl. You can do this by changing all the *archlib*
971 variables in config.sh to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
975 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
976 so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
977 the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
978 version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
979 perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
980 than your system malloc.
982 However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
983 experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
984 that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
985 (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
989 =item Using the system malloc
991 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
993 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
995 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
997 =item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
999 NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you
1000 asked for binary compatibility with version 5.005, or if you just
1001 run Configure to accept all the defaults on those platforms. You
1002 can refuse the automatic binary compatibility flags wholesale by
1005 sh Configure -Ubincompat5005
1007 or by answering 'n' at the appropriate prompt.
1009 Perl's malloc family of functions are called Perl_malloc(),
1010 Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree(). When this flag is
1011 not enabled, the names do not clash with the system versions of
1014 If enabled, Perl's malloc family of functions will have the same
1015 names as the system versions. This may be sometimes required when you
1016 have libraries that like to free() data that may have been allocated
1017 by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1019 Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1020 from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1021 does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1026 =head2 Building a debugging perl
1028 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
1029 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
1030 you probably want to do
1032 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
1034 This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
1035 to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
1036 executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
1037 cc -g2. Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for
1038 your system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags
1039 variable in config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's
1040 internal state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by default
1041 if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to reuse your
1042 old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the optimize and
1043 ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes as shown in
1044 L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
1046 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
1047 it's convenient to have both.
1049 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
1050 versions of perl under L<Building a shared libperl.so Perl library>.
1054 Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
1055 in the ext/ subdirectory.
1057 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
1058 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
1059 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
1060 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
1061 is always built by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
1062 set the Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from
1063 the Configure command line.
1065 If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
1066 running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
1067 extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
1068 it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
1069 has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
1070 extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
1071 convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
1072 you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
1073 dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
1075 You can learn more about each of the supplied extensions by consulting the
1076 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
1079 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
1080 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
1081 version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
1083 In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
1084 to turn off various extensions. All others are included by default.
1087 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
1094 Threads use5005threads
1096 Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
1098 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
1100 Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
1103 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
1104 the extensions you want.
1106 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley
1107 DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect
1108 this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with earlier
1109 releases of version 2.
1111 If you re-use your old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
1112 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
1113 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
1116 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern systems do)
1117 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
1118 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
1119 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
1121 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
1123 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
1124 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
1125 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
1126 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
1127 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
1128 how to obtain the libraries.
1130 If your database header (.h) files are not in a directory normally
1131 searched by your C compiler, then you will need to include the
1132 appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by Configure. If
1133 your database library (.a) files are not in a directory normally
1134 searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to include
1135 the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by Configure.
1136 See the examples below.
1142 =item gdbm in /usr/local
1144 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
1145 GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
1146 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
1147 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
1148 necessary steps out automatically.
1150 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1151 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
1153 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
1156 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
1157 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1160 Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1161 you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1162 /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
1164 =item gdbm in /usr/you
1166 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
1167 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
1168 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
1169 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
1170 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
1171 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
1172 /usr/you/lib to the list.
1174 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
1178 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
1179 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
1181 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1182 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1184 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
1185 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
1186 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
1187 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
1190 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
1191 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
1195 =head2 Building DB, NDBM, and ODBM interfaces with Berkeley DB 3
1197 Perl interface for DB3 is part of Berkeley DB, but if you want to
1198 compile standard Perl DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you must follow
1199 following instructions.
1201 Berkeley DB3 from Sleepycat Software is by default installed without
1202 DB1 compatibility code (needed for DB_File interface) and without
1203 links to compatibility files. So if you want to use packages written
1204 for DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you need to configure DB3 with
1205 --enable-compat185 (and optionally with --enable-dump185) and create
1206 additional references (suppose you are installing DB3 with
1209 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdbm.so
1210 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libndbm.so
1211 echo '#define DB_DBM_HSEARCH 1' >dbm.h
1212 echo '#include <db.h>' >>dbm.h
1213 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/dbm.h
1214 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/ndbm.h
1216 Optionally, if you have compiled with --enable-compat185 (not needed
1219 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb1.so
1220 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb.so
1222 ODBM emulation seems not to be perfect, but is quite usable,
1225 lib/odbm.............FAILED at test 9
1226 Failed 1/64 tests, 98.44% okay
1228 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1230 If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1231 If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1235 =item Running Configure Interactively
1237 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1238 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1241 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1242 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1243 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1244 will use the defaults from then on.
1246 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1247 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1248 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1252 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
1253 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1254 will offer to use that hint file.
1256 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1257 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1258 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1259 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
1262 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1264 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
1265 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
1266 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
1269 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1270 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
1271 Keep the recommended value? [y]
1273 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
1274 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
1277 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
1278 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
1279 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
1282 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1283 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1284 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1285 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1288 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1289 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1290 Keep the previous value? [y]
1292 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1293 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1294 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1296 =item Changing Compilers
1298 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1299 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1300 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
1301 with the options you want to use.
1303 This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
1304 gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
1306 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1308 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1309 them to all the .SH files by running
1313 You will then have to rebuild by running
1318 =item config.over and config.arch
1320 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride
1321 Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1322 before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1323 however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1324 This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1326 There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1327 config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1328 architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1329 hints file that creates the config.arch.
1333 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1334 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1335 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1337 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1338 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1343 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1344 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1345 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1346 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1347 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1348 lost the next time you run Configure.
1350 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1351 see the file hints/README.hints.
1353 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1354 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1361 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1362 Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1363 system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1364 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1367 =item Environment variable clashes
1369 Configure uses a CONFIG variable that is reported to cause trouble on
1370 ReliantUnix 5.44. If your system sets this variable, you can try
1371 unsetting it before you run Configure. Configure should eventually
1372 be fixed to avoid polluting the namespace of the environment.
1374 =item Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX and BIN_SH
1376 In Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX, Configure might abort with
1378 Build a threading Perl? [n]
1379 Configure[2437]: Syntax error at line 1 : `config.sh' is not expected.
1381 This indicates that Configure is being run with a broken Korn shell
1382 (even though you think you are using a Bourne shell by using
1383 "sh Configure" or "./Configure"). The Korn shell bug has been reported
1384 to Compaq as of February 1999 but in the meanwhile, the reason ksh is
1385 being used is that you have the environment variable BIN_SH set to
1386 'xpg4'. This causes /bin/sh to delegate its duties to /bin/posix/sh
1387 (a ksh). Unset the environment variable and rerun Configure.
1389 =item HP-UX 11, pthreads, and libgdbm
1391 If you are running Configure with -Dusethreads in HP-UX 11, be warned
1392 that POSIX threads and libgdbm (the GNU dbm library) compiled before
1393 HP-UX 11 do not mix. This will cause a basic test run by Configure to
1396 Pthread internal error: message: __libc_reinit() failed, file: ../pthreads/pthread.c, line: 1096
1397 Return Pointer is 0xc082bf33
1398 sh: 5345 Quit(coredump)
1400 and Configure will give up. The cure is to recompile and install
1401 libgdbm under HP-UX 11.
1403 =item Porting information
1405 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1406 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1407 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1408 subdirectory. Especially Porting/Glossary should come in handy.
1410 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1411 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports for current information on ports to
1412 various other operating systems.
1414 If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture study carefully the
1415 section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1416 in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file Porting/patching.pod.
1417 Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1421 =head1 Adding extra modules to the build
1423 You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1424 CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1425 command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1427 Configure -Dextras="Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI"
1429 or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
1430 then answer "Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
1431 The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
1433 Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1434 modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1435 or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1436 do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1438 Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1439 dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
1440 For example: you will need to have the zlib.h header and the libz
1441 library installed for the Compress::Zlib, or the Foo database specific
1442 headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1443 process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1447 suidperl is an optional component, which is built or installed by default.
1450 On some systems, setuid and setgid scripts (scripts written
1451 in the C shell, Bourne shell, or Perl, for example, with the
1452 set user or group ID permissions enabled) are insecure due to
1453 a race condition in the kernel. For those systems, Perl versions
1454 5 and 4 attempt to work around this vulnerability with an optional
1455 component, a special program named suidperl, also known as sperl.
1456 This program attempts to emulate the set-user-ID and set-group-ID
1457 features of the kernel.
1459 Because of the buggy history of suidperl, and the difficulty
1460 of properly security auditing as large and complex piece of
1461 software as Perl, we cannot recommend using suidperl and the feature
1462 should be considered deprecated.
1463 Instead use for example 'sudo': http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/
1467 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1468 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1469 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1470 makefile, not Makefile since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1471 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1472 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1474 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1479 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1481 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1483 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1484 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1485 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1486 then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1492 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1493 for further tips and information.
1497 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1498 during the building of extensions, you should run
1502 to test your version of miniperl.
1506 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1507 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1508 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1509 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1510 whole L<"Locale problems"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1511 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1513 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1514 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1517 are supported and installed on your system.
1518 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1524 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1525 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1526 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1527 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by running fixincludes
1528 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1529 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1530 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1534 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1535 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1537 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1538 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1539 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1541 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1542 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1544 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1546 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1547 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1548 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1549 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1550 of your local set-up.
1554 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1555 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1558 sh Configure -Uusenm
1560 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1561 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1564 =item umask not found
1566 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1567 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1568 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1569 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1570 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1574 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1575 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1576 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1577 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1578 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1582 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1583 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1584 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1588 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1589 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1590 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1591 on L<"nm extraction">.
1593 =item __inet_* errors
1595 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1596 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1597 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1598 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1599 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1600 newer version of BIND. If you can't, you can either link with the
1601 updated resolver library provided with BIND 8.1 or rename
1602 /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and test process to
1605 =item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1607 This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1608 gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1609 changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1610 rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1611 update your gcc installation.
1615 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1616 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1624 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1625 with B<make depend; make>.
1629 If you still can't compile successfully, try:
1631 sh Configure -Accflags=-DCRIPPLED_CC
1633 This flag simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that get
1634 indigestion easily. (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it
1637 =item Missing functions
1639 If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
1640 other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
1641 there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
1642 likely suspects. If Configure guessed wrong on a number of functions,
1643 you might have the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1647 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1648 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1649 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1650 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1651 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1654 =item Missing dbmclose
1656 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1657 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1659 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1661 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1662 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1663 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1664 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1665 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1666 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1667 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1668 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1669 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1670 process is continuing.
1672 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1675 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1677 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1678 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1679 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1681 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1682 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1683 quite that tightly coordinated.
1685 =item sh: ar: not found
1687 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1688 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1689 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1690 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1693 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1695 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1696 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1697 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1699 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1701 If you get this error message from the lib/ipc_sysv test, your System
1702 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1703 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1704 to include the System V semaphores.
1706 =item lib/ipc_sysv........semget: No space left on device
1708 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1709 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1710 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1711 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1716 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1717 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1718 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1719 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1720 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1721 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1722 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1723 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1725 =item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1727 The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1728 make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1729 archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1730 C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1731 archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1732 incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1733 official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1734 that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1735 archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1737 =item invalid token: ##
1739 You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. See L<WARNING: This
1740 version requires a compiler that supports ANSI C>.
1744 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1746 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1748 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1750 UTS may need one or more of -DCRIPPLED_CC, -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1752 FreeBSD can fail the lib/ipc_sysv.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1753 configured to the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1754 you will get a message telling what to do.
1756 If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.
1758 Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
1760 HP-UX 11 Y2K patch "Y2K-1100 B.11.00.B0125 HP-UX Core OS Year 2000
1761 Patch Bundle" has been reported to break the io/fs test #18 which
1762 tests whether utime() can change timestamps. The Y2K patch seems to
1763 break utime() so that over NFS the timestamps do not get changed
1764 (on local filesystems utime() still works).
1768 =head2 Cross-compilation
1770 Starting from Perl 5.8 Perl has the beginnings of cross-compilation
1771 support. What is known to work is running Configure in a
1772 cross-compilation environment and building the miniperl executable.
1773 What is known not to work is building the perl executable because
1774 that would require building extensions: Dynaloader statically and
1775 File::Glob dynamically, for extensions one needs MakeMaker and
1776 MakeMaker is not yet cross-compilation aware, and neither is
1779 Since the functionality is so lacking, it must be considered
1780 highly experimental. It is so experimental that it is not even
1781 mentioned during an interactive Configure session, a direct command
1782 line invocation (detailed shortly) is required to access the
1785 NOTE: Perl is routinely built using cross-compilation
1786 in the EPOC environment but the solutions from there
1787 can't directly be used elsewhere.
1789 The one environment where cross-compilation has successfully been used
1790 as of this writing is the Compaq iPAQ running ARM Linux. The build
1791 host was Intel Linux, the networking setup was PPP + SSH. The exact
1792 setup details are beyond the scope of this document, see
1793 http://www.handhelds.org/ for more information.
1795 To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch is
1796 C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
1798 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1800 This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
1801 symbol C<usecrosscompile> available.
1803 During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1804 into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1805 cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1806 target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1807 transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1808 the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1809 methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1810 F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1812 To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1813 the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1814 happens), supply Configure with
1816 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1818 The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
1819 must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1820 You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
1824 but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
1826 Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
1827 which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
1828 This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
1829 In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
1832 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
1834 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1835 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1836 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
1838 If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
1839 compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
1840 C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
1841 (The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
1842 as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
1843 will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
1844 in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
1846 In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
1847 choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
1850 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
1852 Putting it all together:
1854 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1855 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1856 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
1858 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
1859 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1860 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1861 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1862 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
1865 or if you are happy with the defaults
1867 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1868 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1869 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1874 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
1875 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
1876 wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1878 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1879 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1880 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1882 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1884 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1885 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1886 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1890 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1891 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1895 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1896 complicated constructs).
1898 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1899 comments that apply to your system.
1905 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1906 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1907 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1908 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1909 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1910 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1912 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1918 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1920 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1921 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1922 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1923 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1924 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1925 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1930 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1931 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
1932 For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
1933 test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
1935 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1937 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
1939 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1940 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1941 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1942 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1944 =item Test failures from lib/ftmp-security saying "system possibly insecure"
1946 Firstly, test failures from the ftmp-security are not necessarily
1947 serious or indicative of a real security threat. That being said,
1948 they bear investigating.
1950 The tests may fail for the following reasons. Note that each of the
1951 tests is run both in the building directory and the temporary
1952 directory, as returned by File::Spec->tmpdir().
1954 (1) If the directory the tests are being run is owned by somebody else
1955 than the user running the tests, or root (uid 0). This failure can
1956 happen if the Perl source code distribution is unpacked in a way that
1957 the user ids in the distribution package are used as-is. Some tar
1960 (2) If the directory the test are being run in is writable by group
1961 or by other (remember: with UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to
1962 a directory means the right to add/remove files in that directory),
1963 and there is no sticky bit set in the directory. 'Sticky bit' is
1964 a feature used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if
1965 the bit is on a directory, no one but the owner (or the root) can remove
1966 that file even if the permissions of the directory would allow file
1967 removal by others. This failure can happen if the permissions in the
1968 directory simply are a bit too liberal for the tests' liking. This
1969 may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the permissions policy
1970 used on this particular directory/project/system/site. This failure
1971 can also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit
1972 (this is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle the
1973 File::Temp should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or
1974 if the system supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons
1975 it is not being used. This is for example the case with HP-UX: as of
1976 HP-UX release 11.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX
1977 doesn't use it on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also as with the
1978 permissions, some local policy might dictate that the stickiness is
1981 (3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
1982 any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
1983 directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
1986 See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
1987 about the various security aspects.
1993 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1994 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
1995 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
1996 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
1997 are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
1998 ignore any messages about chown not working.
2000 =head2 Installing perl under different names
2002 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
2003 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
2004 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
2006 make install PERLNAME=myperl
2008 You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
2009 "perl5.005") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
2011 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
2013 This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (due to an
2014 ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor, eg). Without this
2015 the versioned binary would be called "perl55.005".
2017 =head2 Installed files
2019 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
2020 anything, you can run
2022 ./perl installperl -n
2023 ./perl installman -n
2025 make install will install the following:
2030 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
2031 will be a link to perl.
2033 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
2034 a2p awk-to-perl translator
2038 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
2040 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
2041 s2p sed-to-perl translator
2042 find2perl find-to-perl translator
2043 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
2044 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
2045 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
2046 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
2047 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
2048 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
2049 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
2055 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
2056 dprofpp Perl code profile post-processor
2060 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
2061 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
2065 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2067 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
2068 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2070 Installperl will also create the directories listed above
2071 in L<"Installation Directories">.
2073 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
2074 under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
2075 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2076 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
2078 Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2079 installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
2080 perl alongside an already installed production version of perl without
2081 disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2082 To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2084 Configure -Dversiononly
2086 or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2087 you can just manually run
2089 ./perl installperl -v
2091 and skip installman altogether.
2092 See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2095 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
2097 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
2098 5.004_04) to another similar version (e.g. 5.004_05) without re-compiling
2099 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
2100 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
2101 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
2102 with 5.004_04, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
2103 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
2104 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.00404.
2106 Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use
2107 with a newer version of perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
2108 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
2110 Suppose you already have version 5.005_03 installed. The directories
2111 searched by 5.005_03 are
2113 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503/$archname
2114 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503
2115 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2116 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2118 Beginning with 5.6.0 the version number in the site libraries are
2119 fully versioned. Now, suppose you install version 5.6.0. The directories
2120 searched by version 5.6.0 will be
2122 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/$archname
2123 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0
2124 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
2125 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2127 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2128 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2129 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2131 Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
2132 of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
2133 directories. This way, modules installed under 5.005_03 will continue
2134 to be usable by 5.005_03 but will also accessible to 5.6.0. Further,
2135 suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
2136 present only in 5.6.0. That new module will get installed into
2137 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0 and will be available to 5.6.0,
2138 but will not interfere with the 5.005_03 version.
2140 The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
2141 5.6.0 will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
2143 Lastly, suppose you now install version 5.6.1, which we'll assume is
2144 binary compatible with 5.6.0 and 5.005. The directories searched
2145 by 5.6.1 (if you don't change the Configure defaults) will be:
2147 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.1/$archname
2148 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.1
2149 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1/$archname
2150 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1
2152 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
2153 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2155 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2156 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2157 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2159 Assuming the users in your site are still actively using perl 5.6.0 and
2160 5.005 after you installed 5.6.1, you can continue to install add-on
2161 extensions using any of perl 5.6.1, 5.6.0, or 5.005. The installations
2162 of these different versions remain distinct, but remember that the newer
2163 versions of perl are automatically set up to search the site libraries of
2164 the older ones. This means that installing a new extension with 5.005
2165 will make it visible to all three versions. Later, if you install the
2166 same extension using, say, perl 5.6.1, it will override the 5.005-installed
2167 version, but only for perl 5.6.1.
2169 This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2170 to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2171 versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
2173 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
2175 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
2176 separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
2177 won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2178 libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2179 way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
2181 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.004
2183 and adding /opt/perl5.004/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
2184 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2185 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2187 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
2188 (e.g. 5.004 for all 5.004_0x versions), but change directory with
2191 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2192 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2193 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2196 =head2 Upgrading from 5.005 to 5.6.0
2198 Most extensions built and installed with versions of perl
2199 prior to 5.005_50 will not need to be recompiled to be used with
2200 5.6.0. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with 5.6.0,
2201 you may safely do so without disturbing the 5.005 installation.
2202 (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> above.)
2204 See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2205 incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
2206 perllocal.pod not perllocale.pod for installed module information.
2208 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
2210 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
2212 By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
2213 they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
2215 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
2216 perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
2217 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
2218 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
2219 the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036 (or
2220 whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod for
2221 possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
2223 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2225 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2226 system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2227 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2228 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2229 library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2231 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2232 of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2233 hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2234 For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2237 =head1 installhtml --help
2239 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2240 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2241 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2243 Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2244 html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2246 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2251 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2253 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2254 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2255 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2256 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2257 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
2260 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2261 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2262 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2263 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2264 (and would welcome patches for them).
2266 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2267 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2269 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2271 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2272 available in TeX format. Type
2274 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2276 =head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2278 The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2279 Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2280 operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2282 In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2283 recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2284 depends on what you need.
2286 Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2290 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2294 in Solaris is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
2297 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2298 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2299 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2300 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2301 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2302 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/File/Glob/autosplit.ix
2303 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/Config.pm
2304 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/XSLoader.pm
2305 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/DynaLoader.pm
2306 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/CORE/libperl.so
2307 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/strict.pm
2308 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/warnings.pm
2309 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Carp.pm
2310 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Exporter.pm
2311 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/File/Glob.pm
2312 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/AutoLoader.pm
2313 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/vars.pm
2314 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/warnings/register.pm
2315 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Carp/Heavy.pm
2316 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2318 Secondly, Debian perl-base package contains the following files,
2319 size about 1.2MB in its i386 version:
2321 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2322 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian
2323 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
2324 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
2325 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
2326 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
2327 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/AutoLoader.pm
2328 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Carp.pm
2329 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Carp/Heavy.pm
2330 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Cwd.pm
2331 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Exporter.pm
2332 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2333 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/File/Spec.pm
2334 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2335 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/FileHandle.pm
2336 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Getopt/Long.pm
2337 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2338 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2339 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IPC/Open2.pm
2340 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IPC/Open3.pm
2341 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/SelectSaver.pm
2342 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Symbol.pm
2343 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Text/Tabs.pm
2344 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Text/Wrap.pm
2345 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/attributes.pm
2346 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/GetOptions.al
2347 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/FindOption.al
2348 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/Configure.al
2349 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/config.al
2350 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/Croak.al
2351 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/autosplit.ix
2352 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/base.pm
2353 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/constant.pm
2354 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/fields.pm
2355 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/integer.pm
2356 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/lib.pm
2357 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/locale.pm
2358 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/overload.pm
2359 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/strict.pm
2360 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/vars.pm
2361 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/warnings.pm
2362 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/warnings/register.pm
2364 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Config.pm
2365 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Data/Dumper.pm
2366 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/DynaLoader.pm
2367 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Errno.pm
2368 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Fcntl.pm
2369 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/File/Glob.pm
2370 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO.pm
2371 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/File.pm
2372 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Handle.pm
2373 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Pipe.pm
2374 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Seekable.pm
2375 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Select.pm
2376 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket.pm
2377 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/POSIX.pm
2378 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Socket.pm
2379 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/XSLoader.pm
2380 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.so
2381 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.bs
2382 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2383 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2384 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2385 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2386 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a
2387 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/extralibs.ld
2388 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2389 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs
2390 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/Glob.bs
2391 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2392 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/autosplit.ix
2393 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/IO/IO.so
2394 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/IO/IO.bs
2395 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/POSIX.bs
2396 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2397 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2398 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2399 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2400 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Socket/Socket.bs
2402 =head1 Reporting Problems
2404 If you have difficulty building perl, and none of the advice in this file
2405 helps, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant manual
2406 pages on your system doesn't help either, then you should send a message
2407 to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to perlbug@perl.org with
2408 an accurate description of your problem.
2410 Please include the output of the ./myconfig shell script that comes with
2411 the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the perlbug program that
2412 comes with the perl distribution, but you need to have perl compiled
2413 before you can use it. (If you have not installed it yet, you need to
2414 run C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug> instead of a plain C<perlbug>.)
2416 Please try to make your message brief but clear. Trim out unnecessary
2417 information. Do not include large files (such as config.sh or a complete
2418 Configure or make log) unless absolutely necessary. Do not include a
2419 complete transcript of your build session. Just include the failing
2420 commands, the relevant error messages, and whatever preceding commands
2421 are necessary to give the appropriate context. Plain text should
2422 usually be sufficient--fancy attachments or encodings may actually
2423 reduce the number of people who read your message. Your message
2424 will get relayed to over 400 subscribers around the world so please
2425 try to keep it brief but clear.
2427 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
2429 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2430 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
2431 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
2432 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2433 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
2435 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
2436 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and
2439 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
2440 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
2442 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
2443 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
2446 Note that you must have performed the installation already before running
2447 the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate
2452 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2453 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2454 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
2456 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2457 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2459 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2461 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2462 the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2463 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2464 a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2465 and the contact information to match your distribution.