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 50 MB of disk space.
190 After completing make, it takes up roughly 100 MB, though the actual
191 total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
192 directories need something on the order of 45 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
331 for more details. Do not include a trailing slash, (i.e. /opt/perl/)
332 or you may experience odd test failures.
334 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
335 as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
336 attempt infinite recursion.
340 It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
341 find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
342 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
343 careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
344 vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing.
346 By default, Configure will arrange for /usr/bin/perl to be linked to
347 the current version of perl. You can turn off that behavior by running
349 Configure -Uinstallusrbinperl
351 or by answering 'no' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
353 In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to
354 put (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
355 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
356 obvious and convenient place.
358 =item Overriding an old config.sh
360 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
361 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
365 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
370 Note: for development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.7, as opposed
371 to maintenance releases which have even subreleases, like 5.6)
372 if you want to use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel
373 to Configure, because the default answer to the question "do you really
374 want to Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel
375 skips that sanity check.
377 For example for my Solaris system, I usually use
379 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
381 =head2 GNU-style configure
383 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
384 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
386 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
388 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
391 ./configure.gnu --help
395 Cross compiling and compiling in a different directory are not supported.
397 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
398 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
400 =head2 Installation Directories
402 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
403 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
404 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
405 Further, there are a number of additions to the installation
406 directories since 5.005, so reusing your old config.sh may not
407 be sufficient to put everything where you want it. Do not include
408 trailing slashes on directory names.
410 I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
411 everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
412 process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use
413 the defaults from then on.
415 The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
416 people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
417 distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
418 need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
419 you can safely skip the next section.
421 The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
425 =item Directories for the perl distribution
427 By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.6.0.
428 $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
429 5.6.0 or 5.6.1, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
430 determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
431 variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
433 Configure variable Default value
436 $scriptdir $prefix/bin
437 $privlib $prefix/lib/perl5/$version
438 $archlib $prefix/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
439 $man1dir $prefix/man/man1
440 $man3dir $prefix/man/man3
444 Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
445 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
446 instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
447 directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
448 the common style is shown here.
450 =item Directories for site-specific add-on files
452 After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
453 CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
454 be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
456 Configure variable Default value
458 $sitebin $siteprefix/bin
459 $sitescript $siteprefix/bin
460 $sitelib $siteprefix/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
461 $sitearch $siteprefix/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
462 $siteman1 $siteprefix/man/man1
463 $siteman3 $siteprefix/man/man3
467 By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
468 modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
470 NOTE: As of 5.6.0, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will use $sitelib and $sitearch,
471 but will not use the other site-specific directories. Volunteers to
474 =item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
476 Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
477 distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
478 for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
480 Configure variable Default value
482 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
483 $vendorbin $vendorprefix/bin
484 $vendorscript $vendorprefix/bin
485 $vendorlib $vendorprefix/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
486 $vendorarch $vendorprefix/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
487 $vendorman1 $vendorprefix/man/man1
488 $vendorman3 $vendorprefix/man/man3
492 These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
493 a vendor might choose the following settings:
496 $siteprefix /usr/local
499 This would have the effect of setting the following:
503 $privlib /usr/lib/perl5/$version
504 $archlib /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
505 $man1dir /usr/man/man1
506 $man3dir /usr/man/man3
508 $sitebin /usr/local/bin
509 $sitescript /usr/local/bin
510 $sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
511 $sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
512 $siteman1 /usr/local/man/man1
513 $siteman3 /usr/local/man/man3
516 $vendorscript /usr/bin
517 $vendorlib /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
518 $vendorarch /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
519 $vendorman1 /usr/man/man1
520 $vendorman3 /usr/man/man3
522 Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
523 /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
524 the /usr/local hierarchy.
526 NOTE: As of 5.6.0, ExtUtils::MakeMaker does not use these directories.
527 Volunteers to fix this are needed.
529 The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
530 version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
531 However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
532 installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
533 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for more details
534 on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
536 Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
537 example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
538 are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
539 site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
540 network. One way to do that would be something like
542 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
546 As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
547 variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
548 directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
549 Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
550 version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
554 There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
555 that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
556 separated list of directories, like this
558 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
560 The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
561 ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
562 modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
563 touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
564 version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
565 present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
566 directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
567 run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
571 In versions 5.005_57 and earlier, the default was to store module man
572 pages in a version-specific directory, such as
573 /usr/local/lib/perl5/$version/man/man3. The default for 5.005_58 and
574 after is /usr/local/man/man3 so that most users can find the man pages
575 without resetting MANPATH.
577 You can continue to use the old default from the command line with
579 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/man/man3
581 Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
583 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
585 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
590 As of perl5.005_57, the standard perl installation does not do
591 anything with HTML documentation, but that may change in the future.
592 Further, some add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The
593 html Configure variables listed above are provided if you wish to
594 specify where such documents should be placed. The default is "none",
595 but will likely eventually change to something useful based on user
600 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
601 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
604 Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
605 directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
608 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
609 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
610 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below.
612 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
613 library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
614 suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
616 Thus, for example, if you Configure with
617 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.6.0 are
619 Configure variable Default value
620 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.6.0
621 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.6.0/$archname
622 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.0
623 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
625 =head2 Changing the installation directory
627 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
628 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
629 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
630 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
631 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
632 packages, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
633 wish to install perl into a different directory and use that
634 management software to move perl to its final destination. This
635 section describes how to do that.
637 Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You
638 could edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to
639 /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local, or you could simply use the
640 following command line:
642 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
644 (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
646 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
647 modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
648 follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with
651 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
653 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
654 convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
655 installed on multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to
656 create an archive that can be installed in /opt/perl.
657 Here's one way to do that:
659 # Set up to install perl into a different directory,
660 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
661 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5 -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
664 make install # This will install everything into /tmp/perl5.
666 # Edit $archlib/Config.pm and $archlib/.packlist to change all the
667 # install* variables back to reflect where everything will
668 # really be installed. (That is, change /tmp/perl5 to /opt/perl
669 # everywhere in those files.)
670 # Check the scripts in $scriptdir to make sure they have the correct
671 # #!/wherever/perl line.
672 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
673 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
674 cd /opt/perl # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
675 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
677 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
679 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
680 answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact
681 person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another
682 system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file
683 to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate
684 hint file for your system.
686 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
691 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
693 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
695 If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
696 to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
697 platform-specific hints files.
699 Note: Since the directory hierarchy for 5.6.0 contains a number of
700 new vendor* and site* entries, your Policy.sh file will probably not
701 set them to your desired values. I encourage you to run Configure
702 interactively to be sure it puts things where you want them.
704 =head2 Configure-time Options
706 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
707 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
708 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
709 some of the main things you can change.
713 On some platforms, perl5.005 and later can be compiled with
714 experimental support for threads. To enable this, read the file
715 README.threads, and then try:
717 sh Configure -Dusethreads
719 Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command
720 line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
722 The default is to compile without thread support.
724 Perl has two different internal threads implementations. The current
725 model (available internally since 5.6, and as a user-level module
726 since 5.8) is called interpreter-based implementation (ithreads),
727 with one interpreter per thread, and explicit sharing of data.
729 The 5.005 version (5005threads) is considered obsolete, buggy, and
732 By default, Configure selects ithreads if -Dusethreads is specified.
734 However, you can select the old 5005threads behavior
736 sh Configure -Dusethreads -Duse5005threads
738 If you decide to use ithreads, the 'threads' module allows their use,
739 and the 'Thread' module offers an interface to both 5005threads and
740 ithreads (whichever has been configured).
742 =head2 Large file support.
744 Since Perl 5.6.0 Perl has supported large files (files larger than
745 2 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
746 support is on by default.
748 This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files,
749 seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad if you are interfacing Perl
750 using some extension, also the components you are connecting to must
751 be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
752 parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
753 will happen. One popular extension suffering from this ailment is the
754 Apache extension mod_perl.
756 There's also one known limitation with the current large files
757 implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
758 section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer
759 formats like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
761 =head2 64 bit support.
763 If your platform does not have 64 bits natively, but can simulate them
764 with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>, you can build a
765 perl that uses 64 bits.
767 There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
768 using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
769 -Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
770 the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
772 The C<use64bitint> does only as much as is required to get 64-bit
773 integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long longs")
774 while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because your
775 pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint> does
776 not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it might,
777 but it doesn't have to): the C<use64bitint> means that you will be
778 able to have 64 bits wide scalar values.
780 The C<use64bitall> goes all the way by attempting to switch also
781 integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
782 create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
783 resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
784 have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
787 Natively 64-bit systems like Alpha and Cray need neither -Duse64bitint
790 NOTE: 64-bit support is still experimental on most platforms.
791 Existing support only covers the LP64 data model. In particular, the
792 LLP64 data model is not yet supported. 64-bit libraries and system
793 APIs on many platforms have not stabilized--your mileage may vary.
797 In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
798 range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
799 (that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
800 this support (if it is available).
804 You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
805 and the long double support.
807 =head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
809 Previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in
810 stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl allowed alternate IO
811 mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but the stdio mechanism is still
812 the default and is the only supported mechanism.
814 Starting from Perl 5.8 the default mechanism is to use the PerlIO
815 abstraction, because it allows better control of I/O mechanisms,
816 instead of having to work with (often, work around) vendors' I/O
819 This PerlIO abstraction can be disabled either on the Configure
822 sh Configure -Uuseperlio
824 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
826 With the PerlIO abstraction layer, there is another possibility for
827 the underlying IO calls, AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance
828 to stdio.h in many cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline"
829 modules ("Native" PerlIO has them too). Sfio currently only builds on
830 a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports. Because the data
831 structures are completely different from stdio, perl extension modules
832 or external libraries may not work. This configuration exists to
833 allow these issues to be worked on.
835 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
836 The latest sfio is available from http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/sfio/
838 You select this option by
840 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
842 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
843 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
846 Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails to
847 detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent). Apparently,
848 this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux and SunOS 4.
849 Configure should detect this problem and warn you about problems with
850 _exit vs. exit. If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to
851 your sfio sources and correct iffe's guess about atexit.
855 Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
856 TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
857 access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
858 Version 5. You can find more about SOCKS from http://www.socks.nec.com/
860 =head2 Dynamic Loading
862 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
863 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
864 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
865 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
867 =head2 Building a shared Perl library
869 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
870 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
871 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
874 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
875 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
876 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
877 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
878 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
879 can share the same library.
881 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
882 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
883 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
886 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
887 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
888 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
891 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
892 libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
893 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
894 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
895 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
896 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
898 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
899 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
901 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
903 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
905 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
906 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
907 NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
908 for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
909 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
910 be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
911 library search settings. You can find the name of the environment
912 variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
914 grep ldlibpthname config.sh
916 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
917 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
918 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
921 cd t; ./perl misc/failing_test.t
923 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
925 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
928 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
930 for Bourne-style shells, or
932 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
934 for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
935 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And
936 again, it may be something else than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
938 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
939 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
941 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
943 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
944 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
945 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
946 install a standard Perl 5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
947 try to build Perl 5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
948 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
949 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
950 libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is
951 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
952 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
953 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
954 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't. On Digital Unix, you can
955 override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the _RLD_ROOT environment variable
956 to point to the perl build directory.
958 The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different
959 directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING
960 version of perl. You can do this by changing all the *archlib*
961 variables in config.sh to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
965 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
966 so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
967 the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
968 version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
969 perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
970 than your system malloc.
972 However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
973 experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
974 that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
975 (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
979 =item Using the system malloc
981 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
983 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
985 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
987 =item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
989 NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you
990 asked for binary compatibility with version 5.005, or if you just
991 run Configure to accept all the defaults on those platforms. You
992 can refuse the automatic binary compatibility flags wholesale by
995 sh Configure -Ubincompat5005
997 or by answering 'n' at the appropriate prompt.
999 Perl's malloc family of functions are called Perl_malloc(),
1000 Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree(). When this flag is
1001 not enabled, the names do not clash with the system versions of
1004 If enabled, Perl's malloc family of functions will have the same
1005 names as the system versions. This may be sometimes required when you
1006 have libraries that like to free() data that may have been allocated
1007 by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1009 Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1010 from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1011 does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1016 =head2 Building a debugging perl
1018 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
1019 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
1020 you probably want to do
1022 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
1024 This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
1025 to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
1026 executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
1027 cc -g2. Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for
1028 your system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags
1029 variable in config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's
1030 internal state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by default
1031 if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to reuse your
1032 old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the optimize and
1033 ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes as shown in
1034 L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
1036 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
1037 it's convenient to have both.
1039 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
1040 versions of perl under L<Building a shared libperl.so Perl library>.
1044 Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
1045 in the ext/ subdirectory.
1047 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
1048 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
1049 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
1050 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
1051 is always built by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
1052 set the Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from
1053 the Configure command line.
1055 If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
1056 running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
1057 extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
1058 it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
1059 has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
1060 extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
1061 convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
1062 you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
1063 dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
1065 You can learn more about each of the supplied extensions by consulting the
1066 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
1069 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
1070 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
1071 version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
1073 In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
1074 to turn off various extensions. All others are included by default.
1077 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
1084 Threads use5005threads
1086 Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
1088 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
1090 Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
1093 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
1094 the extensions you want.
1096 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley
1097 DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect
1098 this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with earlier
1099 releases of version 2.
1101 If you re-use your old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
1102 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
1103 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
1106 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern systems do)
1107 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
1108 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
1109 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
1111 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
1113 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
1114 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
1115 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
1116 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
1117 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
1118 how to obtain the libraries.
1120 If your database header (.h) files are not in a directory normally
1121 searched by your C compiler, then you will need to include the
1122 appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by Configure. If
1123 your database library (.a) files are not in a directory normally
1124 searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to include
1125 the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by Configure.
1126 See the examples below.
1132 =item gdbm in /usr/local
1134 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
1135 GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
1136 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
1137 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
1138 necessary steps out automatically.
1140 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1141 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
1143 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
1146 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
1147 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1150 Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1151 you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1152 /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
1154 =item gdbm in /usr/you
1156 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
1157 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
1158 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
1159 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
1160 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
1161 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
1162 /usr/you/lib to the list.
1164 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
1168 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
1169 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
1171 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1172 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1174 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
1175 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
1176 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
1177 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
1180 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
1181 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
1185 =head2 Building DB, NDBM, and ODBM interfaces with Berkeley DB 3
1187 Perl interface for DB3 is part of Berkeley DB, but if you want to
1188 compile standard Perl DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you must follow
1189 following instructions.
1191 Berkeley DB3 from Sleepycat Software is by default installed without
1192 DB1 compatibility code (needed for DB_File interface) and without
1193 links to compatibility files. So if you want to use packages written
1194 for DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you need to configure DB3 with
1195 --enable-compat185 (and optionally with --enable-dump185) and create
1196 additional references (suppose you are installing DB3 with
1199 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdbm.so
1200 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libndbm.so
1201 echo '#define DB_DBM_HSEARCH 1' >dbm.h
1202 echo '#include <db.h>' >>dbm.h
1203 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/dbm.h
1204 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/ndbm.h
1206 Optionally, if you have compiled with --enable-compat185 (not needed
1209 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb1.so
1210 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb.so
1212 ODBM emulation seems not to be perfect, but is quite usable,
1215 lib/odbm.............FAILED at test 9
1216 Failed 1/64 tests, 98.44% okay
1218 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1220 If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1221 If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1225 =item Running Configure Interactively
1227 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1228 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1231 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1232 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1233 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1234 will use the defaults from then on.
1236 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1237 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1238 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1242 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
1243 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1244 will offer to use that hint file.
1246 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1247 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1248 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1249 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
1252 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1254 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
1255 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
1256 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
1259 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1260 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
1261 Keep the recommended value? [y]
1263 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
1264 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
1267 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
1268 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
1269 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
1272 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1273 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1274 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1275 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1278 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1279 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1280 Keep the previous value? [y]
1282 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1283 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1284 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1286 =item Changing Compilers
1288 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1289 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1290 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
1291 with the options you want to use.
1293 This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
1294 gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
1296 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1298 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1299 them to all the .SH files by running
1303 You will then have to rebuild by running
1308 =item config.over and config.arch
1310 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride
1311 Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1312 before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1313 however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1314 This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1316 There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1317 config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1318 architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1319 hints file that creates the config.arch.
1323 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1324 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1325 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1327 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1328 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1333 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1334 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1335 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1336 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1337 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1338 lost the next time you run Configure.
1340 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1341 see the file hints/README.hints.
1343 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1344 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1351 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1352 Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1353 system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1354 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1357 =item Environment variable clashes
1359 Configure uses a CONFIG variable that is reported to cause trouble on
1360 ReliantUnix 5.44. If your system sets this variable, you can try
1361 unsetting it before you run Configure. Configure should eventually
1362 be fixed to avoid polluting the namespace of the environment.
1364 =item Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX and BIN_SH
1366 In Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX, Configure might abort with
1368 Build a threading Perl? [n]
1369 Configure[2437]: Syntax error at line 1 : `config.sh' is not expected.
1371 This indicates that Configure is being run with a broken Korn shell
1372 (even though you think you are using a Bourne shell by using
1373 "sh Configure" or "./Configure"). The Korn shell bug has been reported
1374 to Compaq as of February 1999 but in the meanwhile, the reason ksh is
1375 being used is that you have the environment variable BIN_SH set to
1376 'xpg4'. This causes /bin/sh to delegate its duties to /bin/posix/sh
1377 (a ksh). Unset the environment variable and rerun Configure.
1379 =item HP-UX 11, pthreads, and libgdbm
1381 If you are running Configure with -Dusethreads in HP-UX 11, be warned
1382 that POSIX threads and libgdbm (the GNU dbm library) compiled before
1383 HP-UX 11 do not mix. This will cause a basic test run by Configure to
1386 Pthread internal error: message: __libc_reinit() failed, file: ../pthreads/pthread.c, line: 1096
1387 Return Pointer is 0xc082bf33
1388 sh: 5345 Quit(coredump)
1390 and Configure will give up. The cure is to recompile and install
1391 libgdbm under HP-UX 11.
1393 =item Porting information
1395 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1396 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1397 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1398 subdirectory. Especially Porting/Glossary should come in handy.
1400 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1401 http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
1402 various other operating systems.
1404 If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture study carefully the
1405 section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1406 in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file Porting/patching.pod.
1407 Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1411 =head1 Adding extra modules to the build
1413 You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1414 CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1415 command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1417 Configure -Dextras="Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI"
1419 or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
1420 then answer "Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
1421 The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
1423 Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1424 modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1425 or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1426 do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1428 Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1429 dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
1430 For example: you will need to have the zlib.h header and the libz
1431 library installed for the Compress::Zlib, or the Foo database specific
1432 headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1433 process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1437 suidperl is an optional component, which is built or installed by default.
1440 On some systems, setuid and setgid scripts (scripts written
1441 in the C shell, Bourne shell, or Perl, for example, with the
1442 set user or group ID permissions enabled) are insecure due to
1443 a race condition in the kernel. For those systems, Perl versions
1444 5 and 4 attempt to work around this vulnerability with an optional
1445 component, a special program named suidperl, also known as sperl.
1446 This program attempts to emulate the set-user-ID and set-group-ID
1447 features of the kernel.
1449 Because of the buggy history of suidperl, and the difficulty
1450 of properly security auditing as large and complex piece of
1451 software as Perl, we cannot recommend using suidperl and the feature
1452 should be considered deprecated.
1453 Instead use for example 'sudo': http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/
1457 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1458 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1459 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1460 makefile, not Makefile since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1461 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1462 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1464 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1469 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1471 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1473 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1474 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1475 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1476 then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1482 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1483 for further tips and information.
1487 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1488 during the building of extensions, you should run
1492 to test your version of miniperl.
1496 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1497 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1498 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1499 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1500 whole L<"Locale problems"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1501 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1503 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1504 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1507 are supported and installed on your system.
1508 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1514 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1515 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1516 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1517 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by running fixincludes
1518 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1519 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1520 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1524 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1525 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1527 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1528 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1529 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1531 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1532 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1534 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1536 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1537 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1538 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1539 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1540 of your local set-up.
1544 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1545 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1548 sh Configure -Uusenm
1550 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1551 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1554 =item umask not found
1556 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1557 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1558 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1559 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1560 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1564 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1565 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1566 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1567 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1568 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1572 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1573 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1574 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1578 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1579 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1580 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1581 on L<"nm extraction">.
1583 =item __inet_* errors
1585 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1586 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1587 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1588 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1589 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1590 newer version of BIND. If you can't, you can either link with the
1591 updated resolver library provided with BIND 8.1 or rename
1592 /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and test process to
1595 =item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1597 This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1598 gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1599 changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1600 rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1601 update your gcc installation.
1605 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1606 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1614 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1615 with B<make depend; make>.
1617 =item Missing functions
1619 If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
1620 other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
1621 there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
1622 likely suspects. If Configure guessed wrong on a number of functions,
1623 you might have the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1627 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1628 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1629 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1630 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1631 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1634 =item Missing dbmclose
1636 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1637 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1639 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1641 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1642 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1643 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1644 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1645 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1646 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1647 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1648 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1649 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1650 process is continuing.
1652 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1655 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1657 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1658 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1659 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1661 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1662 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1663 quite that tightly coordinated.
1665 =item sh: ar: not found
1667 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1668 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1669 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1670 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1673 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1675 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1676 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1677 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1679 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1681 If you get this error message from the lib/ipc_sysv test, your System
1682 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1683 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1684 to include the System V semaphores.
1686 =item lib/ipc_sysv........semget: No space left on device
1688 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1689 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1690 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1691 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1696 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1697 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1698 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1699 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1700 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1701 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1702 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1703 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1705 =item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1707 The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1708 make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1709 archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1710 C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1711 archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1712 incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1713 official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1714 that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1715 archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1717 =item invalid token: ##
1719 You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. See L<WARNING: This
1720 version requires a compiler that supports ANSI C>.
1724 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1726 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1728 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1730 UTS may need one or more of -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1732 FreeBSD can fail the lib/ipc_sysv.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1733 configured to the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1734 you will get a message telling what to do.
1736 Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
1738 HP-UX 11 Y2K patch "Y2K-1100 B.11.00.B0125 HP-UX Core OS Year 2000
1739 Patch Bundle" has been reported to break the io/fs test #18 which
1740 tests whether utime() can change timestamps. The Y2K patch seems to
1741 break utime() so that over NFS the timestamps do not get changed
1742 (on local filesystems utime() still works).
1746 =head2 Cross-compilation
1748 Starting from Perl 5.8 Perl has the beginnings of cross-compilation
1749 support. What is known to work is running Configure in a
1750 cross-compilation environment and building the miniperl executable.
1751 What is known not to work is building the perl executable because
1752 that would require building extensions: Dynaloader statically and
1753 File::Glob dynamically, for extensions one needs MakeMaker and
1754 MakeMaker is not yet cross-compilation aware, and neither is
1757 Since the functionality is so lacking, it must be considered
1758 highly experimental. It is so experimental that it is not even
1759 mentioned during an interactive Configure session, a direct command
1760 line invocation (detailed shortly) is required to access the
1763 NOTE: Perl is routinely built using cross-compilation
1764 in the EPOC environment but the solutions from there
1765 can't directly be used elsewhere.
1767 The one environment where cross-compilation has successfully been used
1768 as of this writing is the Compaq iPAQ running ARM Linux. The build
1769 host was Intel Linux, the networking setup was PPP + SSH. The exact
1770 setup details are beyond the scope of this document, see
1771 http://www.handhelds.org/ for more information.
1773 To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch is
1774 C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
1776 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1778 This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
1779 symbol C<usecrosscompile> available.
1781 During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1782 into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1783 cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1784 target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1785 transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1786 the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1787 methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1788 F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1790 To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1791 the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1792 happens), supply Configure with
1794 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1796 The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
1797 must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1798 You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
1802 but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
1804 Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
1805 which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
1806 This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
1807 In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
1810 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
1812 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1813 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1814 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
1816 If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
1817 compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
1818 C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
1819 (The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
1820 as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
1821 will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
1822 in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
1824 In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
1825 choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
1828 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
1830 Putting it all together:
1832 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1833 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1834 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
1836 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
1837 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1838 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1839 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1840 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
1843 or if you are happy with the defaults
1845 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1846 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1847 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1852 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
1853 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
1854 wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1856 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1857 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1858 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1860 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1862 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1863 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1864 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1868 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1869 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1873 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1874 complicated constructs). For extension and library tests you
1875 need a little bit more: you need to setup your environment variable
1876 PERL_CORE to a true value (like "1"), and you need to supply the
1877 right Perl library path:
1880 ./perl -I../lib ../ext/Socket/Socket.t
1881 ./perl -I../lib ../lib/less.t
1883 (For csh-like shells on UNIX, adjust appropriately for other platforms.)
1884 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1885 comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
1886 shared library path if you get errors like:
1888 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
1890 See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
1896 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1897 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1898 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1899 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1900 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1901 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1903 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1909 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1911 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1912 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1913 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1914 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1915 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1916 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1919 =item Timing problems
1921 Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
1922 sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
1923 If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough,
1924 these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again
1925 with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive
1926 and load-sensitive tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
1927 F<ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t>, F<lib/Benchmark.t>,
1928 F<lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t>, and F<lib/Memoize/t/speed.t>.
1932 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1933 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
1934 For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
1935 test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
1937 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1939 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
1941 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1942 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1943 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1944 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1946 =item Test failures from lib/ftmp-security saying "system possibly insecure"
1948 Firstly, test failures from the ftmp-security are not necessarily
1949 serious or indicative of a real security threat. That being said,
1950 they bear investigating.
1952 The tests may fail for the following reasons. Note that each of the
1953 tests is run both in the building directory and the temporary
1954 directory, as returned by File::Spec->tmpdir().
1956 (1) If the directory the tests are being run is owned by somebody else
1957 than the user running the tests, or root (uid 0). This failure can
1958 happen if the Perl source code distribution is unpacked in a way that
1959 the user ids in the distribution package are used as-is. Some tar
1962 (2) If the directory the test are being run in is writable by group
1963 or by other (remember: with UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to
1964 a directory means the right to add/remove files in that directory),
1965 and there is no sticky bit set in the directory. 'Sticky bit' is
1966 a feature used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if
1967 the bit is on a directory, no one but the owner (or the root) can remove
1968 that file even if the permissions of the directory would allow file
1969 removal by others. This failure can happen if the permissions in the
1970 directory simply are a bit too liberal for the tests' liking. This
1971 may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the permissions policy
1972 used on this particular directory/project/system/site. This failure
1973 can also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit
1974 (this is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle the
1975 File::Temp should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or
1976 if the system supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons
1977 it is not being used. This is for example the case with HP-UX: as of
1978 HP-UX release 11.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX
1979 doesn't use it on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also as with the
1980 permissions, some local policy might dictate that the stickiness is
1983 (3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
1984 any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
1985 directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
1988 See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
1989 about the various security aspects.
1995 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1996 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
1997 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
1998 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
1999 are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
2000 ignore any messages about chown not working.
2002 =head2 Installing perl under different names
2004 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
2005 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
2006 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
2008 make install PERLNAME=myperl
2010 You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
2011 "perl5.005") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
2013 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
2015 This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (due to an
2016 ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor, eg). Without this
2017 the versioned binary would be called "perl55.005".
2019 =head2 Installed files
2021 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
2022 anything, you can run
2024 ./perl installperl -n
2025 ./perl installman -n
2027 make install will install the following:
2032 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
2033 will be a link to perl.
2035 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
2036 a2p awk-to-perl translator
2040 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
2042 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
2043 s2p sed-to-perl translator
2044 find2perl find-to-perl translator
2045 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
2046 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
2047 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
2048 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
2049 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
2050 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
2051 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
2057 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
2058 dprofpp Perl code profile post-processor
2062 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
2063 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
2067 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2069 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
2070 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2072 Installperl will also create the directories listed above
2073 in L<"Installation Directories">.
2075 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
2076 under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
2077 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2078 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
2080 Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2081 installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
2082 perl alongside an already installed production version of perl without
2083 disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2084 To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2086 Configure -Dversiononly
2088 or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2089 you can just manually run
2091 ./perl installperl -v
2093 and skip installman altogether.
2094 See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2097 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
2099 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
2100 5.004_04) to another similar version (e.g. 5.004_05) without re-compiling
2101 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
2102 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
2103 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
2104 with 5.004_04, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
2105 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
2106 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.00404.
2108 Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use
2109 with a newer version of perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
2110 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
2112 Suppose you already have version 5.005_03 installed. The directories
2113 searched by 5.005_03 are
2115 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503/$archname
2116 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503
2117 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2118 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2120 Beginning with 5.6.0 the version number in the site libraries are
2121 fully versioned. Now, suppose you install version 5.6.0. The directories
2122 searched by version 5.6.0 will be
2124 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/$archname
2125 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0
2126 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
2127 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2129 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2130 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2131 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2133 Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
2134 of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
2135 directories. This way, modules installed under 5.005_03 will continue
2136 to be usable by 5.005_03 but will also accessible to 5.6.0. Further,
2137 suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
2138 present only in 5.6.0. That new module will get installed into
2139 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0 and will be available to 5.6.0,
2140 but will not interfere with the 5.005_03 version.
2142 The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
2143 5.6.0 will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
2145 Lastly, suppose you now install version 5.6.1, which we'll assume is
2146 binary compatible with 5.6.0 and 5.005. The directories searched
2147 by 5.6.1 (if you don't change the Configure defaults) will be:
2149 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.1/$archname
2150 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.1
2151 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1/$archname
2152 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1
2154 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
2155 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2157 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2158 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2159 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2161 Assuming the users in your site are still actively using perl 5.6.0 and
2162 5.005 after you installed 5.6.1, you can continue to install add-on
2163 extensions using any of perl 5.6.1, 5.6.0, or 5.005. The installations
2164 of these different versions remain distinct, but remember that the newer
2165 versions of perl are automatically set up to search the site libraries of
2166 the older ones. This means that installing a new extension with 5.005
2167 will make it visible to all three versions. Later, if you install the
2168 same extension using, say, perl 5.6.1, it will override the 5.005-installed
2169 version, but only for perl 5.6.1.
2171 This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2172 to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2173 versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
2175 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
2177 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
2178 separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
2179 won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2180 libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2181 way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
2183 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.004
2185 and adding /opt/perl5.004/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
2186 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2187 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2189 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
2190 (e.g. 5.004 for all 5.004_0x versions), but change directory with
2193 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2194 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2195 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2198 =head2 Upgrading from 5.005 to 5.6.0
2200 Most extensions built and installed with versions of perl
2201 prior to 5.005_50 will not need to be recompiled to be used with
2202 5.6.0. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with 5.6.0,
2203 you may safely do so without disturbing the 5.005 installation.
2204 (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> above.)
2206 See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2207 incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
2208 perllocal.pod not perllocale.pod for installed module information.
2210 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
2212 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
2214 By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
2215 they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
2217 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
2218 perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
2219 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
2220 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
2221 the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036 (or
2222 whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod for
2223 possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
2225 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2227 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2228 system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2229 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2230 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2231 library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2233 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2234 of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2235 hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2236 For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2239 =head1 installhtml --help
2241 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2242 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2243 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2245 Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2246 html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2248 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2253 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2255 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2256 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2257 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2258 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2259 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
2262 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2263 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2264 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2265 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2266 (and would welcome patches for them).
2268 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2269 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2271 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2273 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2274 available in TeX format. Type
2276 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2278 =head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2280 The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2281 Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2282 operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2284 Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way:
2285 especially the Encode with its big conversion tables consumes a lot of
2286 space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything, especially
2287 the Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network
2288 programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all
2289 depends on what do you need to do.
2291 In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2292 recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2293 depends on what you need.
2295 Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2299 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2303 in Solaris is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
2306 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2307 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2308 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2309 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2310 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2311 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/File/Glob/autosplit.ix
2312 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/Config.pm
2313 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/XSLoader.pm
2314 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/DynaLoader.pm
2315 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/CORE/libperl.so
2316 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/strict.pm
2317 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/warnings.pm
2318 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Carp.pm
2319 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Exporter.pm
2320 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/File/Glob.pm
2321 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/AutoLoader.pm
2322 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/vars.pm
2323 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/warnings/register.pm
2324 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Carp/Heavy.pm
2325 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2327 Secondly, Debian perl-base package contains the following files,
2328 size about 1.2MB in its i386 version:
2330 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2331 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian
2332 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
2333 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
2334 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
2335 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
2336 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/AutoLoader.pm
2337 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Carp.pm
2338 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Carp/Heavy.pm
2339 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Cwd.pm
2340 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Exporter.pm
2341 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2342 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/File/Spec.pm
2343 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2344 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/FileHandle.pm
2345 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Getopt/Long.pm
2346 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2347 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2348 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IPC/Open2.pm
2349 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IPC/Open3.pm
2350 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/SelectSaver.pm
2351 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Symbol.pm
2352 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Text/Tabs.pm
2353 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Text/Wrap.pm
2354 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/attributes.pm
2355 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/GetOptions.al
2356 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/FindOption.al
2357 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/Configure.al
2358 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/config.al
2359 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/Croak.al
2360 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/autosplit.ix
2361 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/base.pm
2362 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/constant.pm
2363 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/fields.pm
2364 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/integer.pm
2365 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/lib.pm
2366 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/locale.pm
2367 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/overload.pm
2368 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/strict.pm
2369 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/vars.pm
2370 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/warnings.pm
2371 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/warnings/register.pm
2373 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Config.pm
2374 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Data/Dumper.pm
2375 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/DynaLoader.pm
2376 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Errno.pm
2377 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Fcntl.pm
2378 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/File/Glob.pm
2379 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO.pm
2380 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/File.pm
2381 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Handle.pm
2382 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Pipe.pm
2383 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Seekable.pm
2384 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Select.pm
2385 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket.pm
2386 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/POSIX.pm
2387 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Socket.pm
2388 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/XSLoader.pm
2389 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.so
2390 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.bs
2391 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2392 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2393 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2394 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2395 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a
2396 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/extralibs.ld
2397 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2398 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs
2399 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/Glob.bs
2400 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2401 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/autosplit.ix
2402 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/IO/IO.so
2403 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/IO/IO.bs
2404 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/POSIX.bs
2405 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2406 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2407 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2408 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2409 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Socket/Socket.bs
2411 =head1 Reporting Problems
2413 If you have difficulty building perl, and none of the advice in this file
2414 helps, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant manual
2415 pages on your system doesn't help either, then you should send a message
2416 to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to perlbug@perl.org with
2417 an accurate description of your problem.
2419 Please include the output of the ./myconfig shell script that comes with
2420 the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the perlbug program that
2421 comes with the perl distribution, but you need to have perl compiled
2422 before you can use it. (If you have not installed it yet, you need to
2423 run C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug> instead of a plain C<perlbug>.)
2425 Please try to make your message brief but clear. Trim out unnecessary
2426 information. Do not include large files (such as config.sh or a complete
2427 Configure or make log) unless absolutely necessary. Do not include a
2428 complete transcript of your build session. Just include the failing
2429 commands, the relevant error messages, and whatever preceding commands
2430 are necessary to give the appropriate context. Plain text should
2431 usually be sufficient--fancy attachments or encodings may actually
2432 reduce the number of people who read your message. Your message
2433 will get relayed to over 400 subscribers around the world so please
2434 try to keep it brief but clear.
2436 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
2438 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2439 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
2440 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
2441 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2442 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
2444 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
2445 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and
2448 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
2449 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
2451 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
2452 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
2455 Note that you must have performed the installation already before running
2456 the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate
2461 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2462 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2463 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
2465 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2466 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2468 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2470 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2471 the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2472 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2473 a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2474 and the contact information to match your distribution.