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 uses a version
28 scheme where even-numbered subreleases (like 5.6 and 5.8) 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 some other
37 platform-specific directory -- see the appropriate file in hints/.)
38 If that's not okay with you, use
40 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
46 For information on non-Unix systems, see the section on L<"Porting
49 If "make install" just says "`install' is up to date" or something
50 similar, you may be on a case-insensitive filesystems such as Mac's HFS+,
51 and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion is brought to you
52 by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
54 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
55 L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
57 For information on what's new in this release, see the
58 pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
59 changes, see the Changes file.
63 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
64 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
65 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
66 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
68 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
70 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
72 Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
73 you should probably at least skim through this entire document before
76 If you're building Perl on a non-Unix system, you should also read
77 the README file specific to your operating system, since this may
78 provide additional or different instructions for building Perl. There
79 are also README files for several flavors of Unix systems, such as
80 Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX; if you have one of those systems, you should
81 also read the README file specific to that system.
83 If there is a hint file for your system (in the hints/ directory) you
84 should also read that hint file for specific information for your
85 system. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh hint file.)
86 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 rather old
92 extensions that have not been updated for the current 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/perl56delta.pod contains more details about this.
104 =head1 WARNING: This version is not binary compatible with releases of
107 If you have built extensions (i.e. modules that include C code)
108 using an earlier version of Perl, you will need to rebuild and reinstall
111 Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
112 without reinstallation. See the discussions below on
113 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> and
114 L<"Upgrading from 5.005 or 5.6 to 5.8.0"> for more details.
116 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
118 On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the
119 changes in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
120 pod/perldelta.pod (and the earlier pod/perl5Xdelta.pod) for a description of
121 what's changed. See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod
122 file for a (possibly incomplete) list of locally installed modules.
123 Also see CPAN::autobundle for one way to make a "bundle" of your
124 currently installed modules.
126 =head1 WARNING: This version requires a compiler that supports ANSI C.
128 Most C compilers are now ANSI-compliant. However, a few current
129 computers are delivered with an older C compiler expressly for
130 rebuilding the system kernel, or for some other historical reason.
131 Alternatively, you may have an old machine which was shipped before
132 ANSI compliance became widespread. Such compilers are not suitable
135 If you find that your default C compiler is not ANSI-capable, but you
136 know that an ANSI-capable compiler is installed on your system, you
137 can tell F<Configure> to use the correct compiler by means of the
138 C<-Dcc=> command-line option -- see L<"gcc">.
140 If do not have an ANSI-capable compiler there are a couple of avenues
147 You may try obtaining GCC, available from GNU mirrors worldwide,
148 listed at <URL:http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html>. If, rather than
149 building gcc from source code, you locate a binary version configured
150 for your platform, be sure that it is compiled for the version of the
151 operating system that you are using.
155 You may purchase a commercial ANSI C compiler from your system
156 supplier or elsewhere. (Or your organization may already have
157 licensed such software -- ask your colleagues to find out how to
158 access it.) If there is a README file for your system in the Perl
159 distribution (for example, F<README.hpux>), it may contain advice on
164 Although Perl can be compiled using a C++ compiler, the Configure script
165 does not work with some C++ compilers.
167 =head1 Space Requirements
169 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 50 MB of disk space.
170 After completing make, it takes up roughly 100 MB, though the actual
171 total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
172 directories need something on the order of 45 MB, though again that
173 value is system-dependent.
175 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
177 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
186 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
187 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
189 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
190 files. If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
191 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
192 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
193 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it
197 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
198 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
199 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
200 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
201 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
202 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
203 probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't.
204 Similarly, if you used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version
205 numbers, you will probably want to adjust them as well.
207 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. For example, some
208 Linux distributions use i386, while others may use i486. If you build
209 it yourself, Configure uses the output of the arch command, which
210 might be i586 or i686 instead. If you pick up a precompiled binary, or
211 compile extensions on different systems, they might not all agree on
212 the architecture name.
214 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
215 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
217 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
218 installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
219 using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
220 settings"> below. If you wish to start with a fresh distribution, you
221 also need to remove any old Policy.sh files you may have with
227 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
228 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
229 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
230 almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
231 since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
234 At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
235 defaults from then on.
237 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
238 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
240 =head2 Altering config.sh variables for C compiler switches etc.
242 For most users, all of the Configure defaults are fine. Configure
243 also has several convenient options which are described below.
244 However, if Configure doesn't have an option to do what you want,
245 you can change Configure variables after the platform hints have been
246 run, by using Configure's -A switch. For example, here's how to add
247 a couple of extra flags to C compiler invocations:
249 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_Y2KWARN -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC"
251 For more help on Configure switches, run:
255 =head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
257 Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
258 where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
259 read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
260 architectures. You can do this (if your file system supports symbolic
263 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
264 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
265 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
267 This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
268 pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
269 unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
273 and Perl will be built and tested, all in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
275 =head2 Common Configure options
277 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h> to
278 get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
279 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
285 To compile with gcc you should run
287 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
289 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
290 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
292 =item Installation prefix
294 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
295 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
296 and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for
299 You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
300 directory, when Configure prompts you or by using the Configure command
301 line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
303 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
305 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
306 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
307 prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
308 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
309 for more details. Do not include a trailing slash, (i.e. /opt/perl/)
310 or you may experience odd test failures.
312 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
313 as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
314 attempt infinite recursion.
318 It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
319 find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
320 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
321 careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
322 vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing.
324 By default, Configure will arrange for /usr/bin/perl to be linked to
325 the current version of perl. You can turn off that behavior by running
327 Configure -Uinstallusrbinperl
329 or by answering 'no' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
331 In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to
332 put (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
333 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
334 obvious and convenient place.
336 =item Overriding an old config.sh
338 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
339 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
343 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
348 Note: for development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.9, as opposed
349 to maintenance releases which have even subreleases, like 5.6 and 5.8)
350 if you want to use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel
351 to Configure, because the default answer to the question "do you really
352 want to Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel
353 skips that sanity check.
355 For example for my Solaris system, I usually use
357 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
359 =head2 GNU-style configure
361 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
362 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
364 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
366 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
369 ./configure.gnu --help
373 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
374 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
376 See L<Cross-compilation> below for information on cross-compiling.
378 =head2 Installation Directories
380 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
381 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
382 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
383 Do not include trailing slashes on directory names.
385 I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
386 everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
387 process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use
388 the defaults from then on. Alternatively, you can
390 grep '^install' config.sh
392 after Configure has run to verify the installation paths.
394 The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
395 people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
396 distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
397 need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
398 you can safely skip the next section.
400 The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
404 =item Directories for the perl distribution
406 By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.8.0.
407 $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
408 5.8.0 or 5.8.1, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
409 determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
410 variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
412 Configure variable Default value
415 $scriptdir $prefix/bin
416 $privlib $prefix/lib/perl5/$version
417 $archlib $prefix/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
418 $man1dir $prefix/man/man1
419 $man3dir $prefix/man/man3
423 Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
424 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
425 instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
426 directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
427 the common style is shown here.
429 =item Directories for site-specific add-on files
431 After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
432 CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
433 be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
435 Configure variable Default value
437 $sitebin $siteprefix/bin
438 $sitescript $siteprefix/bin
439 $sitelib $siteprefix/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
440 $sitearch $siteprefix/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
441 $siteman1 $siteprefix/man/man1
442 $siteman3 $siteprefix/man/man3
446 By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
447 modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
449 =item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
451 Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
452 distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
453 for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
455 Configure variable Default value
457 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
458 $vendorbin $vendorprefix/bin
459 $vendorscript $vendorprefix/bin
460 $vendorlib $vendorprefix/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
461 $vendorarch $vendorprefix/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
462 $vendorman1 $vendorprefix/man/man1
463 $vendorman3 $vendorprefix/man/man3
467 These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
468 a vendor might choose the following settings:
471 $siteprefix /usr/local
474 This would have the effect of setting the following:
478 $privlib /usr/lib/perl5/$version
479 $archlib /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
480 $man1dir /usr/man/man1
481 $man3dir /usr/man/man3
483 $sitebin /usr/local/bin
484 $sitescript /usr/local/bin
485 $sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
486 $sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
487 $siteman1 /usr/local/man/man1
488 $siteman3 /usr/local/man/man3
491 $vendorscript /usr/bin
492 $vendorlib /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
493 $vendorarch /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
494 $vendorman1 /usr/man/man1
495 $vendorman3 /usr/man/man3
497 Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
498 /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
499 the /usr/local hierarchy.
501 The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
502 version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
503 However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
504 installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
505 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for more details
506 on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
508 Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
509 example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
510 are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
511 site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
512 network. One way to do that would be something like
514 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
518 As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
519 variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
520 directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
521 Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
522 version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
524 For example, if you have a bundle of perl libraries from a previous
525 installation, perhaps in a strange place:
527 Configure -Dotherlibdirs=/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1
531 There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
532 that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
533 separated list of directories, like this
535 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
537 The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
538 ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
539 modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
540 touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
541 version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
542 present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
543 directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
544 run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
548 In versions 5.005_57 and earlier, the default was to store module man
549 pages in a version-specific directory, such as
550 /usr/local/lib/perl5/$version/man/man3. The default for 5.005_58 and
551 after is /usr/local/man/man3 so that most users can find the man pages
552 without resetting MANPATH.
554 You can continue to use the old default from the command line with
556 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0/man/man3
558 Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
560 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
562 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
567 Currently, the standard perl installation does not do anything with
568 HTML documentation, but that may change in the future. Further, some
569 add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The html Configure
570 variables listed above are provided if you wish to specify where such
571 documents should be placed. The default is "none", but will likely
572 eventually change to something useful based on user feedback.
576 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
577 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
580 Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
581 directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
584 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
585 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
586 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below.
588 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
589 library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
590 suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
592 Thus, for example, if you Configure with
593 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.8.0 are
595 Configure variable Default value
596 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.8.0
597 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.8.0/$archname
598 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.8.0
599 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.8.0/$archname
601 =head2 Changing the installation directory
603 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
604 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
605 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
606 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
607 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
608 packages, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
609 wish to install perl into a different directory and use that
610 management software to move perl to its final destination. This
611 section describes how to do that.
613 Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You
614 could edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to
615 /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local, or you could simply use the
616 following command line:
618 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
620 (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
622 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
623 modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
624 follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with
627 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
629 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
630 convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
631 installed on multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to
632 create an archive that can be installed in /opt/perl.
633 Here's one way to do that:
635 # Set up to install perl into a different directory,
636 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
637 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5 -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
640 make install # This will install everything into /tmp/perl5.
642 # Edit $archlib/Config.pm and $archlib/.packlist to change all the
643 # install* variables back to reflect where everything will
644 # really be installed. (That is, change /tmp/perl5 to /opt/perl
645 # everywhere in those files.)
646 # Check the scripts in $scriptdir to make sure they have the correct
647 # #!/wherever/perl line.
648 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
649 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
650 cd /opt/perl # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
651 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
653 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
655 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
656 answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact
657 person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another
658 system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file
659 to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate
660 hint file for your system.
662 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
667 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
669 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
671 If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
672 to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
673 platform-specific hints files.
675 =head2 Configure-time Options
677 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
678 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
679 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
680 some of the main things you can change.
684 On some platforms, perl can be compiled with
685 support for threads. To enable this, run
687 sh Configure -Dusethreads
689 Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command
690 line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
692 The default is to compile without thread support.
694 Perl has two different internal threads implementations. The current
695 model (available internally since 5.6, and as a user-level module
696 since 5.8) is called interpreter-based implementation (ithreads),
697 with one interpreter per thread, and explicit sharing of data.
699 The 5.005 version (5005threads) is considered obsolete, buggy, and
702 By default, Configure selects ithreads if -Dusethreads is specified.
704 (You need to also use the PerlIO layer, explained later, if you decide
705 to use ithreads, to guarantee the good interworking of threads and I/O.)
707 However, if you wish, you can select the unsupported old 5005threads behavior
709 sh Configure -Dusethreads -Duse5005threads
711 If you decide to use ithreads, the 'threads' module allows their use,
712 and the 'Thread' module offers an interface to both 5005threads and
713 ithreads (whichever has been configured).
715 When building threaded for certain library calls like the getgr*() and
716 the getpw*() there is a dynamically sized result buffer: the buffer
717 starts small but Perl will keep growing the buffer until the result fits.
718 To get a fixed upper limit you will have to recompile Perl with
719 PERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE defined to be the number of bytes you want.
720 One way to do this is to run Configure with
721 C<-Accflags=-DPERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE=65536>
723 =head2 Large file support.
725 Since Perl 5.6.0, Perl has supported large files (files larger than
726 2 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
727 support is on by default.
729 This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files,
730 seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad in that if you are interfacing Perl
731 using some extension, the components you are connecting to must also
732 be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
733 parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
734 will happen. One popular extension suffering from this ailment is the
735 Apache extension mod_perl.
737 There's also one known limitation with the current large files
738 implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
739 section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer
740 formats like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
742 =head2 64 bit support.
744 If your platform does not have 64 bits natively, but can simulate them
745 with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>, you can build a
746 perl that uses 64 bits.
748 There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
749 using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
750 -Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
751 the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
753 The C<use64bitint> does only as much as is required to get 64-bit
754 integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long longs")
755 while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because your
756 pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint> does
757 not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it might,
758 but it doesn't have to): the C<use64bitint> means that you will be
759 able to have 64 bits wide scalar values.
761 The C<use64bitall> goes all the way by attempting to switch also
762 integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
763 create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
764 resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
765 have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
768 Natively 64-bit systems like Alpha and Cray need neither -Duse64bitint
771 NOTE: 64-bit support is still experimental on most platforms.
772 Existing support only covers the LP64 data model. In particular, the
773 LLP64 data model is not yet supported. 64-bit libraries and system
774 APIs on many platforms have not stabilized--your mileage may vary.
778 In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
779 range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
780 (that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
781 this support (if it is available).
785 You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
786 and the long double support.
788 =head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
790 Executive summary: in Perl 5.8, you should use the default "PerlIO"
791 as the IO mechanism unless you have a good reason not to.
793 In more detail: previous versions of perl used the standard IO
794 mechanisms as defined in stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl
795 introduced alternate IO mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but up
796 until and including Perl 5.6, the stdio mechanism was still the default
797 and the only supported mechanism.
799 Starting from Perl 5.8, the default mechanism is to use the PerlIO
800 abstraction, because it allows better control of I/O mechanisms,
801 instead of having to work with (often, work around) vendors' I/O
804 This PerlIO abstraction can be (but again, unless you know what you
805 are doing, should not be) disabled either on the Configure command
808 sh Configure -Uuseperlio
810 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
812 With the PerlIO abstraction layer, there is another possibility for
813 the underlying IO calls, AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance
814 to stdio.h in many cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline"
815 modules ("Native" PerlIO has them too). Sfio currently only builds on
816 a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports. Because the data
817 structures are completely different from stdio, perl extension modules
818 or external libraries may not work. This configuration exists to
819 allow these issues to be worked on.
821 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
822 The latest sfio is available from http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/sfio/
824 You select this option by
826 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
828 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
829 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
832 Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails to
833 detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent). Apparently,
834 this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux and SunOS 4.
835 Configure should detect this problem and warn you about problems with
836 _exit vs. exit. If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to
837 your sfio sources and correct iffe's guess about atexit.
839 =head2 Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Hashes
841 In Perls 5.8.0 and earlier it was easy to create degenerate hashes.
842 Processing such hashes would consume large amounts of CPU time,
843 enabling a "Denial of Service" attack against Perl. Such hashes may be
844 a problem for example for mod_perl sites, sites with Perl CGI scripts
845 and web services, that process data originating from external sources.
847 In Perl 5.8.1 a security feature was introduced to make it harder
848 to create such degenerate hashes.
850 Because of this feature the keys(), values(), and each() functions
851 may return the hash elements in different order between different
852 runs of Perl even with the same data. The additional randomisation
853 is enabled if the environment variable PERL_HASH_SEED is set, see
856 One make the randomisation default by adding -DUSE_HASH_SEED to the
857 compilation flags, or completely disable it by adding -DNO_HASH_SEED.
859 B<Perl has never guaranteed any ordering of the hash keys>, and the
860 ordering has already changed several times during the lifetime of
861 Perl 5. Also, the ordering of hash keys has always been, and
862 continues to be, affected by the insertion order.
864 Note that because of this randomisation for example the Data::Dumper
865 results will be different between different runs of Perl since
866 Data::Dumper by default dumps hashes "unordered". The use of the
867 Data::Dumper C<Sortkeys> option is recommended.
871 Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
872 TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
873 access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
874 Version 5. You can find more about SOCKS from http://www.socks.nec.com/
876 =head2 Dynamic Loading
878 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
879 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
880 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
881 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
883 =head2 Building a shared Perl library
885 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
886 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
887 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
890 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
891 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
892 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
893 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
894 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
895 can share the same library.
897 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
898 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
899 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
902 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
903 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
904 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
907 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
908 libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
909 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
910 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
911 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
912 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
914 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
915 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
917 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
919 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
921 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
922 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
923 NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
924 for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
925 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
926 be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
927 library search settings. You can find the name of the environment
928 variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
930 grep ldlibpthname config.sh
932 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
933 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
934 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
937 cd t; ./perl misc/failing_test.t
939 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
941 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
944 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
946 for Bourne-style shells, or
948 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
950 for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
951 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And
952 again, it may be something other than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
954 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
955 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
957 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
959 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
960 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
961 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
962 install a standard Perl 5.8.0 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
963 try to build Perl 5.8.0 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
964 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
965 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
966 libperl.so.8 rather with the installed libperl.so.8? The answer is
967 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
968 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
969 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
970 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux, you can only override at runtime via
971 LD_PRELOAD, specifying the exact filename you wish to be used; and on
972 Digital Unix, you can override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the
973 _RLD_ROOT environment variable to point to the perl build directory.
975 In other words, it is generally not a good idea to try to build a perl
976 with a shared library if $archlib/CORE/$libperl already exists from a
979 A good workaround is to specify a different directory for the
980 architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING version of perl.
981 You can do this by changing all the *archlib* variables in config.sh to
982 point to your new architecture-dependent library.
986 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
987 so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
988 the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
989 version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
990 perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
991 than your system malloc.
993 However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
994 experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
995 that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
996 (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
1000 =item Using the system malloc
1002 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
1004 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
1006 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
1008 =item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
1010 NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you just
1011 run Configure to accept all the defaults on those platforms.
1013 Perl's malloc family of functions are normally called Perl_malloc(),
1014 Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree().
1015 These names do not clash with the system versions of these functions.
1017 If this flag is enabled, however, Perl's malloc family of functions
1018 will have the same names as the system versions. This may be required
1019 sometimes if you have libraries that like to free() data that may have
1020 been allocated by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1022 Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1023 from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1024 does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1027 =item -DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS
1029 This flag enables debugging mstats, which is required to use the
1030 Devel::Peek::mstat() function. You cannot enable this unless you are
1031 using Perl's malloc, so a typical Configure command would be
1033 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS -Dusemymalloc='y'
1035 to enable this option.
1039 =head2 Building a debugging perl
1041 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
1042 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
1043 you probably want to do
1045 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
1047 This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
1048 to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
1049 executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
1050 cc -g2. Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for
1051 your system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags
1052 variable in config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's
1053 internal state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by default
1054 if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to reuse your
1055 old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the optimize and
1056 ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes as shown in
1057 L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
1059 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
1060 it's convenient to have both.
1062 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
1063 versions of perl under L<Building a shared libperl.so Perl library>.
1067 Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
1068 in the ext/ subdirectory.
1070 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
1071 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
1072 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
1073 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
1074 is always built by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
1075 set the Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from
1076 the Configure command line.
1078 If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
1079 running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
1080 extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
1081 it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
1082 has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
1083 extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
1084 convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
1085 you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
1086 dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
1088 You can learn more about each of the supplied extensions by consulting the
1089 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
1092 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
1093 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
1094 version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
1096 To disable certain extensions so that they are not built, use
1097 the -Dnoextensions=... and -Donlyextensions=... options. They both
1098 accept a space-separated list of extensions. The extensions listed
1099 in C<noextensions> are removed from the list of extensions to build,
1100 while the C<onlyextensions> is rather more severe and builds only
1101 the listed extensions. The latter should be used with extreme caution
1102 since certain extensions are used by many other extensions and modules:
1103 such modules include Fcntl and IO. The order of processing these
1104 options is first C<only> (if present), then C<no> (if present).
1106 Another, older way to turn off various extensions (which is still good
1107 to know if you have to work with older Perl) exists. Here are the
1108 Configure command-line variables you can set to turn off various
1109 extensions. All others are included by default.
1112 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
1119 Threads use5005threads
1121 Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
1123 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
1125 Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
1128 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
1129 the extensions you want.
1131 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley
1132 DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect
1133 this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with earlier
1134 releases of version 2.
1136 If you re-use your old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
1137 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
1138 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
1141 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern systems do)
1142 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
1143 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
1144 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
1146 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
1148 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
1149 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
1150 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
1151 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
1152 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
1153 how to obtain the libraries.
1155 If your database header (.h) files are not in a directory normally
1156 searched by your C compiler, then you will need to include the
1157 appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by Configure. If
1158 your database library (.a) files are not in a directory normally
1159 searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to include
1160 the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by Configure.
1161 See the examples below.
1167 =item gdbm in /usr/local
1169 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
1170 GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
1171 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
1172 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
1173 necessary steps out automatically.
1175 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1176 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
1178 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
1181 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
1182 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1185 Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1186 you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1187 /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
1189 =item gdbm in /usr/you
1191 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
1192 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
1193 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
1194 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
1195 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
1196 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
1197 /usr/you/lib to the list.
1199 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
1203 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
1204 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
1206 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1207 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1209 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
1210 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
1211 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
1212 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
1215 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
1216 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
1220 =head2 Building DB, NDBM, and ODBM interfaces with Berkeley DB 3
1222 Perl interface for DB3 is part of Berkeley DB, but if you want to
1223 compile standard Perl DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you must follow
1224 following instructions.
1226 Berkeley DB3 from Sleepycat Software is by default installed without
1227 DB1 compatibility code (needed for DB_File interface) and without
1228 links to compatibility files. So if you want to use packages written
1229 for DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you need to configure DB3 with
1230 --enable-compat185 (and optionally with --enable-dump185) and create
1231 additional references (suppose you are installing DB3 with
1234 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdbm.so
1235 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libndbm.so
1236 echo '#define DB_DBM_HSEARCH 1' >dbm.h
1237 echo '#include <db.h>' >>dbm.h
1238 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/dbm.h
1239 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/ndbm.h
1241 Optionally, if you have compiled with --enable-compat185 (not needed
1244 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb1.so
1245 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb.so
1247 ODBM emulation seems not to be perfect, but is quite usable,
1250 lib/odbm.............FAILED at test 9
1251 Failed 1/64 tests, 98.44% okay
1253 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1255 If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1256 If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1260 =item Running Configure Interactively
1262 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1263 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1266 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1267 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1268 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1269 will use the defaults from then on.
1271 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1272 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1273 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1277 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
1278 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1279 will offer to use that hint file.
1281 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1282 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1283 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1284 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
1287 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1289 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
1290 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
1291 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
1294 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1295 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
1296 Keep the recommended value? [y]
1298 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
1299 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
1302 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
1303 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
1304 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
1307 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1308 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1309 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1310 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1313 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1314 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1315 Keep the previous value? [y]
1317 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1318 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1319 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1321 =item Changing Compilers
1323 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1324 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1325 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
1326 with the options you want to use.
1328 This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
1329 gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
1331 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1333 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1334 them to all the .SH files by running
1338 You will then have to rebuild by running
1343 =item config.over and config.arch
1345 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride
1346 Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1347 before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1348 however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1349 This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1351 There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1352 config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1353 architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1354 hints file that creates the config.arch.
1358 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1359 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1360 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1362 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1363 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1368 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1369 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1370 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1371 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1372 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1373 lost the next time you run Configure.
1375 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1376 see the file hints/README.hints.
1378 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1379 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1386 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1387 Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1388 system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1389 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1392 =item Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX and BIN_SH
1394 In Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX, Configure might abort with
1396 Build a threading Perl? [n]
1397 Configure[2437]: Syntax error at line 1 : `config.sh' is not expected.
1399 This indicates that Configure is being run with a broken Korn shell
1400 (even though you think you are using a Bourne shell by using
1401 "sh Configure" or "./Configure"). The Korn shell bug has been reported
1402 to Compaq as of February 1999 but in the meanwhile, the reason ksh is
1403 being used is that you have the environment variable BIN_SH set to
1404 'xpg4'. This causes /bin/sh to delegate its duties to /bin/posix/sh
1405 (a ksh). Unset the environment variable and rerun Configure.
1407 =item HP-UX 11, pthreads, and libgdbm
1409 If you are running Configure with -Dusethreads in HP-UX 11, be warned
1410 that POSIX threads and libgdbm (the GNU dbm library) compiled before
1411 HP-UX 11 do not mix. This will cause a basic test run by Configure to
1414 Pthread internal error: message: __libc_reinit() failed, file: ../pthreads/pthread.c, line: 1096
1415 Return Pointer is 0xc082bf33
1416 sh: 5345 Quit(coredump)
1418 and Configure will give up. The cure is to recompile and install
1419 libgdbm under HP-UX 11.
1421 =item Porting information
1423 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan 9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1424 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1425 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1426 subdirectory. Especially Porting/Glossary should come in handy.
1428 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1429 http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
1430 various other operating systems.
1432 If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture study carefully the
1433 section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1434 in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file Porting/patching.pod.
1435 Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1439 =head1 Adding extra modules to the build
1441 You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1442 CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1443 command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1445 Configure -Dextras="Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI"
1447 or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
1448 then answer "Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
1449 The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
1451 Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1452 modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1453 or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1454 do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1456 Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1457 dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
1458 For example: you will need to have the zlib.h header and the libz
1459 library installed for the Compress::Zlib, or the Foo database specific
1460 headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1461 process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1465 suidperl is an optional component, which is built or installed by default.
1468 On some systems, setuid and setgid scripts (scripts written
1469 in the C shell, Bourne shell, or Perl, for example, with the
1470 set user or group ID permissions enabled) are insecure due to
1471 a race condition in the kernel. For those systems, Perl versions
1472 5 and 4 attempt to work around this vulnerability with an optional
1473 component, a special program named suidperl, also known as sperl.
1474 This program attempts to emulate the set-user-ID and set-group-ID
1475 features of the kernel.
1477 Because of the buggy history of suidperl, and the difficulty
1478 of properly security auditing as large and complex piece of
1479 software as Perl, we cannot recommend using suidperl and the feature
1480 should be considered deprecated.
1481 Instead use for example 'sudo': http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/
1485 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1486 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1487 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1488 makefile, not Makefile since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1489 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1490 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1492 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1497 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1499 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1501 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1502 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1503 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1504 then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1510 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1511 for further tips and information.
1515 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1516 during the building of extensions, you should run
1520 to test your version of miniperl.
1524 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1525 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1526 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1527 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1528 whole L<"Locale problems"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1529 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1531 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1532 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1535 are supported and installed on your system.
1536 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1542 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1543 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1544 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1545 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by running fixincludes
1546 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1547 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1548 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1552 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1553 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1555 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1556 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1557 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1559 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1560 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1562 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1564 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1565 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1566 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1567 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1568 of your local set-up.
1572 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1573 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1576 sh Configure -Uusenm
1578 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1579 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1582 =item umask not found
1584 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1585 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1586 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1587 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1588 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1592 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1593 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1594 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1595 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1596 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1600 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1601 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1602 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1606 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1607 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1608 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1609 on L<"nm extraction">.
1611 =item __inet_* errors
1613 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1614 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1615 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1616 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1617 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1618 newer version of BIND (and remove the files the old one left behind).
1619 If you can't, you can either link with the updated resolver library provided
1620 with BIND 8.1 or rename /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and
1621 test process to avoid the problem.
1623 =item *_r() prototype NOT found
1625 On a related note, if you see a bunch of complaints like the above about
1626 reentrant functions - specifically networking-related ones - being present
1627 but without prototypes available, check to see if BIND 8.1 (or possibly
1628 other BIND 8 versions) is (or has been) installed. They install
1629 header files such as netdb.h into places such as /usr/local/include (or into
1630 another directory as specified at build/install time), at least optionally.
1631 Remove them or put them in someplace that isn't in the C preprocessor's
1632 header file include search path (determined by -I options plus defaults,
1633 normally /usr/include).
1635 =item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1637 This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1638 gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1639 changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1640 rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1641 update your gcc installation.
1645 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1646 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1654 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1655 with B<make depend; make>.
1657 =item Missing functions
1659 If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
1660 other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
1661 there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
1662 likely suspects. If Configure guessed wrong on a number of functions,
1663 you might have the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1667 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1668 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1669 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1670 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1671 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1674 =item Missing dbmclose
1676 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1677 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1679 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1681 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1682 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1683 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1684 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1685 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1686 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1687 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1688 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1689 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1690 process is continuing.
1692 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1695 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1697 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1698 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1699 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1701 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1702 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1703 quite that tightly coordinated.
1705 =item sh: ar: not found
1707 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1708 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1709 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1710 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1713 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1715 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1716 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1717 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1719 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1721 If you get this error message from the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem test, your System
1722 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1723 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1724 to include the System V semaphores.
1726 =item ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem........semget: No space left on device
1728 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1729 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1730 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1731 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1736 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1737 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1738 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1739 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1740 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1741 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1742 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1743 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1745 =item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1747 The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1748 make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1749 archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1750 C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1751 archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1752 incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1753 official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1754 that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1755 archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1757 =item invalid token: ##
1759 You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. See L<WARNING: This
1760 version requires a compiler that supports ANSI C>.
1764 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1766 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1768 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1770 UTS may need one or more of -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1772 FreeBSD can fail the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1773 configured in the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1774 you will get a message telling what to do.
1776 HP-UX 11 Y2K patch "Y2K-1100 B.11.00.B0125 HP-UX Core OS Year 2000
1777 Patch Bundle" has been reported to break the io/fs test #18 which
1778 tests whether utime() can change timestamps. The Y2K patch seems to
1779 break utime() so that over NFS the timestamps do not get changed
1780 (on local filesystems utime() still works).
1782 Building Perl on a system that has also BIND (headers and libraries)
1783 installed may run into troubles because BIND installs its own netdb.h
1784 and socket.h, which may not agree with the operating system's ideas of
1785 the same files. Similarly, including -lbind may conflict with libc's
1786 view of the world. You may have to tweak -Dlocincpth and -Dloclibpth
1791 =head2 Cross-compilation
1793 Starting from Perl 5.8 Perl has the beginnings of cross-compilation
1794 support. What is known to work is running Configure in a
1795 cross-compilation environment and building the miniperl executable.
1796 What is known not to work is building the perl executable because
1797 that would require building extensions: Dynaloader statically and
1798 File::Glob dynamically, for extensions one needs MakeMaker and
1799 MakeMaker is not yet cross-compilation aware, and neither is
1802 Since the functionality is so lacking, it must be considered
1803 highly experimental. It is so experimental that it is not even
1804 mentioned during an interactive Configure session, a direct command
1805 line invocation (detailed shortly) is required to access the
1808 NOTE: Perl is routinely built using cross-compilation
1809 in the EPOC environment, in the WinCE, and in the OpenZaurus
1810 project, but all those use something slightly different setup
1811 than what described here. For the WinCE setup, read the
1812 wince/README.compile. For the OpenZaurus setup, read the
1815 The one environment where this cross-compilation setup has
1816 successfully been used as of this writing is the Compaq iPAQ running
1817 ARM Linux. The build host was Intel Linux, the networking setup was
1818 PPP + SSH. The exact setup details are beyond the scope of this
1819 document, see http://www.handhelds.org/ for more information.
1821 To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch is
1822 C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
1824 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1826 This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
1827 symbol C<usecrosscompile> available.
1829 During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1830 into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1831 cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1832 target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1833 transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1834 the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1835 methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1836 F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1838 To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1839 the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1840 happens), supply Configure with
1842 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1844 The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
1845 must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1846 You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
1850 but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
1852 Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
1853 which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
1854 This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
1855 In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
1858 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
1860 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1861 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1862 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
1864 If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
1865 compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
1866 C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
1867 (The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
1868 as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
1869 will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
1870 in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
1872 In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
1873 choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
1876 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
1878 Putting it all together:
1880 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1881 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1882 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
1884 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
1885 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1886 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1887 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1888 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
1891 or if you are happy with the defaults
1893 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1894 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1895 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1900 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
1901 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
1902 wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1904 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1905 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1906 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1908 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1910 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1911 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1912 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1916 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1917 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1921 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1922 complicated constructs). For extension and library tests you
1923 need a little bit more: you need to setup your environment variable
1924 PERL_CORE to a true value (like "1"), and you need to supply the
1925 right Perl library path:
1928 ./perl -I../lib ../ext/Socket/Socket.t
1929 ./perl -I../lib ../lib/less.t
1931 (For csh-like shells on UNIX; adjust appropriately for other platforms.)
1932 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1933 comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
1934 shared library path if you get errors like:
1936 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
1938 See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
1944 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1945 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1946 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1947 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1948 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1949 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1951 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1957 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1959 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1960 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1961 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1962 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1963 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1964 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1967 =item Timing problems
1969 Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
1970 sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
1971 If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough,
1972 these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again
1973 with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive
1974 and load-sensitive tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
1975 F<ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t>, F<lib/Benchmark.t>,
1976 F<lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t>, and F<lib/Memoize/t/speed.t>.
1980 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1981 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
1982 For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
1983 test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
1985 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1987 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
1989 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1990 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1991 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1992 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1994 =item Failures from lib/File/Temp/t/security saying "system possibly insecure"
1996 First, such warnings are not necessarily serious or indicative of a
1997 real security threat. That being said, they bear investigating.
1999 Note that each of the tests is run twice. The first time is in the
2000 directory returned by File::Spec->tmpdir() (often /tmp on Unix
2001 systems), and the second time in the directory from which the test was
2002 run (usually the 't' directory, if the test was run as part of 'make
2005 The tests may fail for the following reasons:
2007 (1) If the directory the tests are being run in is owned by somebody
2008 other than the user running the tests, or by root (uid 0).
2010 This failure can happen if the Perl source code distribution is
2011 unpacked in such a way that the user ids in the distribution package
2012 are used as-is. Some tar programs do this.
2014 (2) If the directory the tests are being run in is writable by group or
2015 by others, and there is no sticky bit set for the directory. (With
2016 UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to a directory means the right to
2017 add or remove files in that directory. The 'sticky bit' is a feature
2018 used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if the bit is
2019 set for a directory, no one but the owner (or root) can remove that
2020 file even if the permissions would otherwise allow file removal by
2023 This failure may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the
2024 permissions policy used on this particular system. This failure can
2025 also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit (this
2026 is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle File::Temp
2027 should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or if the system
2028 supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons it is not being
2029 used. This is, for example, the case with HP-UX: as of HP-UX release
2030 11.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX doesn't use it
2031 on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also, as with the permissions, some
2032 local policy might dictate that the stickiness is not used.
2034 (3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
2035 any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
2036 directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
2037 (2). For Unix systems, this is usually not an issue if you are
2038 building on a local disk. See the documentation for the File::Temp
2039 module for more information about 'chown giveaway'.
2041 See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
2042 about the various security aspects of temporary files.
2048 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
2049 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
2050 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
2051 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
2052 are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
2053 ignore any messages about chown not working.
2055 =head2 Installing perl under different names
2057 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
2058 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
2059 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
2061 make install PERLNAME=myperl
2063 You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
2064 "perl5.005") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
2066 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
2068 This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (e.g. to
2069 avoid conflicts with an ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor).
2070 Without this the versioned binary would be called "perl55.005".
2072 =head2 Installed files
2074 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
2075 anything, you can run
2077 ./perl installperl -n
2078 ./perl installman -n
2080 make install will install the following:
2085 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
2086 will be a link to perl.
2088 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
2089 a2p awk-to-perl translator
2093 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
2095 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
2096 s2p sed-to-perl translator
2097 find2perl find-to-perl translator
2098 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
2099 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
2100 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
2101 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
2102 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
2103 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
2104 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
2110 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
2111 dprofpp Perl code profile post-processor
2115 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
2116 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
2120 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2122 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
2123 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2125 Installperl will also create the directories listed above
2126 in L<"Installation Directories">.
2128 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
2129 under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
2130 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2131 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
2133 Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2134 installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
2135 perl alongside an already installed production version of perl without
2136 disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2137 To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2139 Configure -Dversiononly
2141 or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2142 you can just manually run
2144 ./perl installperl -v
2146 and skip installman altogether.
2147 See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2150 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
2152 Perl 5.8 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
2153 In other words, you will have to recompile your XS modules.
2155 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
2156 5.004_04) to another similar version (e.g. 5.004_05) without re-compiling
2157 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
2158 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
2159 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
2160 with 5.004_04, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
2161 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
2162 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.00404.
2164 Usually, most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to
2165 use with a newer version of Perl (the Perl 5.6 to Perl 5.8 transition
2166 being an exception). Here is how it is supposed to work. (These
2167 examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
2169 Suppose you already have version 5.005_03 installed. The directories
2170 searched by 5.005_03 are
2172 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503/$archname
2173 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503
2174 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2175 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2177 Beginning with 5.6.0 the version number in the site libraries are
2178 fully versioned. Now, suppose you install version 5.6.0. The directories
2179 searched by version 5.6.0 will be
2181 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/$archname
2182 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0
2183 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
2184 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2186 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2187 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2188 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2190 Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
2191 of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
2192 directories. This way, modules installed under 5.005_03 will continue
2193 to be usable by 5.005_03 but will also accessible to 5.6.0. Further,
2194 suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
2195 present only in 5.6.0. That new module will get installed into
2196 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0 and will be available to 5.6.0,
2197 but will not interfere with the 5.005_03 version.
2199 The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
2200 5.6.0 and above will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
2202 Lastly, suppose you now install 5.8.0, which is not binary compatible
2203 with 5.6.0. The directories searched by 5.8.0 (if you don't change the
2204 Configure defaults) will be:
2206 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0/$archname
2207 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0
2208 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/$archname
2209 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0
2211 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2213 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2215 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2217 Note that the earlier $archname entries are now gone, but pure perl
2218 modules from earlier versions will still be found.
2220 Assuming the users in your site are still actively using perl 5.6.0 and
2221 5.005 after you installed 5.8.0, you can continue to install add-on
2222 extensions using any of perl 5.8.0, 5.6.0, or 5.005. The installations
2223 of these different versions remain distinct, but remember that the
2224 newer versions of perl are automatically set up to search the
2225 compatible site libraries of the older ones. This means that
2226 installing a new XS extension with 5.005 will make it visible to both
2227 5.005 and 5.6.0, but not to 5.8.0. Installing a pure perl module with
2228 5.005 will make it visible to all three versions. Later, if you
2229 install the same extension using, say, perl 5.8.0, it will override the
2230 5.005-installed version, but only for perl 5.8.0.
2232 This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2233 to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2234 versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
2236 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
2238 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
2239 separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
2240 won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2241 libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2242 way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
2244 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.004
2246 and adding /opt/perl5.004/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
2247 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2248 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2250 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
2251 (e.g. 5.8 for all 5.8.x versions), but change directory with
2254 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2255 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2256 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2259 =head2 Upgrading from 5.005 or 5.6 to 5.8.0
2261 B<Perl 5.8.0 is binary incompatible with Perl 5.6.1, 5.6.0, 5.005,
2262 and any earlier Perl release.> Perl modules having binary parts
2263 (meaning that a C compiler is used) will have to be recompiled to be
2264 used with 5.8.0. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with
2265 5.8.0, you may safely do so without disturbing the 5.005 or 5.6.0
2266 installations. (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5">
2269 See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2270 incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
2271 perllocal.pod, not perllocale.pod, for installed module information.
2273 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
2275 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
2277 By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
2278 they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
2280 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
2281 perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
2282 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
2283 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
2284 the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036 (or
2285 whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod for
2286 possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
2288 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2290 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2291 system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2292 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2293 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2294 library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2296 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2297 of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2298 hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2299 For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2302 =head1 installhtml --help
2304 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2305 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2306 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2308 Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2309 html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2311 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2316 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2318 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2319 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2320 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2321 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2322 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
2325 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2326 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2327 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2328 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2329 (and would welcome patches for them).
2331 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2332 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2334 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2336 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2337 available in TeX format. Type
2339 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2341 =head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2343 The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2344 Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2345 operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2347 Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way:
2348 Encode, with its big conversion tables, consumes a lot of
2349 space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything. The
2350 Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network
2351 programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all
2352 depends on what do you need to do.
2354 In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2355 recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2356 depends on what you need.
2358 Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2362 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2366 in Solaris is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
2369 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2370 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2371 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2372 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2373 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2374 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/File/Glob/autosplit.ix
2375 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/Config.pm
2376 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/XSLoader.pm
2377 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/DynaLoader.pm
2378 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/CORE/libperl.so
2379 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/strict.pm
2380 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/warnings.pm
2381 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Carp.pm
2382 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Exporter.pm
2383 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/File/Glob.pm
2384 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/AutoLoader.pm
2385 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/vars.pm
2386 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/warnings/register.pm
2387 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Carp/Heavy.pm
2388 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2390 Secondly, Debian perl-base package contains the following files,
2391 size about 1.2MB in its i386 version:
2393 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2394 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian
2395 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
2396 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
2397 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
2398 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
2399 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/AutoLoader.pm
2400 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Carp.pm
2401 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Carp/Heavy.pm
2402 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Cwd.pm
2403 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Exporter.pm
2404 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2405 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/File/Spec.pm
2406 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2407 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/FileHandle.pm
2408 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Getopt/Long.pm
2409 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2410 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2411 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IPC/Open2.pm
2412 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IPC/Open3.pm
2413 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/SelectSaver.pm
2414 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Symbol.pm
2415 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Text/Tabs.pm
2416 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Text/Wrap.pm
2417 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/attributes.pm
2418 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/GetOptions.al
2419 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/FindOption.al
2420 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/Configure.al
2421 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/config.al
2422 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/Croak.al
2423 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/autosplit.ix
2424 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/base.pm
2425 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/constant.pm
2426 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/fields.pm
2427 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/integer.pm
2428 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/lib.pm
2429 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/locale.pm
2430 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/overload.pm
2431 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/strict.pm
2432 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/vars.pm
2433 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/warnings.pm
2434 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/warnings/register.pm
2436 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Config.pm
2437 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Data/Dumper.pm
2438 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/DynaLoader.pm
2439 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Errno.pm
2440 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Fcntl.pm
2441 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/File/Glob.pm
2442 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO.pm
2443 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/File.pm
2444 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Handle.pm
2445 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Pipe.pm
2446 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Seekable.pm
2447 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Select.pm
2448 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket.pm
2449 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/POSIX.pm
2450 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Socket.pm
2451 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/XSLoader.pm
2452 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.so
2453 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.bs
2454 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2455 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2456 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2457 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2458 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a
2459 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/extralibs.ld
2460 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2461 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs
2462 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/Glob.bs
2463 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2464 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/autosplit.ix
2465 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/IO/IO.so
2466 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/IO/IO.bs
2467 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/POSIX.bs
2468 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2469 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2470 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2471 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2472 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Socket/Socket.bs
2474 =head1 Reporting Problems
2476 If you have difficulty building perl, and none of the advice in this file
2477 helps, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant manual
2478 pages on your system doesn't help either, then you should send a message
2479 to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to perlbug@perl.org with
2480 an accurate description of your problem.
2482 Please include the output of the ./myconfig shell script that comes with
2483 the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the perlbug program that
2484 comes with the perl distribution, but you need to have perl compiled
2485 before you can use it. (If you have not installed it yet, you need to
2486 run C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug> instead of a plain C<perlbug>.)
2488 Please try to make your message brief but clear. Trim out unnecessary
2489 information. Do not include large files (such as config.sh or a complete
2490 Configure or make log) unless absolutely necessary. Do not include a
2491 complete transcript of your build session. Just include the failing
2492 commands, the relevant error messages, and whatever preceding commands
2493 are necessary to give the appropriate context. Plain text should
2494 usually be sufficient--fancy attachments or encodings may actually
2495 reduce the number of people who read your message. Your message
2496 will get relayed to over 400 subscribers around the world so please
2497 try to keep it brief but clear.
2499 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
2501 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2502 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
2503 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
2504 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2505 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
2507 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
2508 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and
2511 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
2512 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
2514 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
2515 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
2518 Note that you must have performed the installation already before running
2519 the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate
2524 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2525 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2526 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
2528 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2529 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2531 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2533 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2534 the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2535 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2536 a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2537 and the contact information to match your distribution.