1 If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you see.
2 It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is specially
3 designed to be readable as is.
7 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
9 =head1 Reporting Problems
11 Wherever possible please use the perlbug tool supplied with this Perl
12 to report problems, as it automatically includes summary configuration
13 information about your perl, which may help us track down problems far
14 more quickly. But first you should read the advice in this file,
15 carefully re-read the error message and check the relevant manual pages
16 on your system, as these may help you find an immediate solution. If
17 you are not sure whether what you are seeing is a bug, you can send a
18 message describing the problem to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup to
21 The perlbug tool is installed along with perl, so after you have
22 completed C<make install> it should be possible to run it with plain
23 C<perlbug>. If the install fails, or you want to report problems with
24 C<make test> without installing perl, then you can use C<make nok> to
25 run perlbug to report the problem, or run it by hand from this source
26 directory with C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug>
28 If the build fails too early to run perlbug uninstalled, then please
29 B<run> the C<./myconfig> shell script, and mail its output along with
30 an accurate description of your problem to perlbug@perl.org
32 If Configure itself fails, and does not generate a config.sh file
33 (needed to run C<./myconfig>), then please mail perlbug@perl.org the
34 description of how Configure fails along with details of your system
35 - for example the output from running C<uname -a>
37 Please try to make your message brief but clear. Brief, clear bug
38 reports tend to get answered more quickly. Please don't worry if your
39 written English is not great - what matters is how well you describe
40 the important technical details of the problem you have encountered,
41 not whether your grammar and spelling is flawless.
43 Trim out unnecessary information. Do not include large files (such as
44 config.sh or a complete Configure or make log) unless absolutely
45 necessary. Do not include a complete transcript of your build
46 session. Just include the failing commands, the relevant error
47 messages, and whatever preceding commands are necessary to give the
48 appropriate context. Plain text should usually be sufficient--fancy
49 attachments or encodings may actually reduce the number of people who
50 read your message. Your message will get relayed to over 400
51 subscribers around the world so please try to keep it brief but clear.
53 If you are unsure what makes a good bug report please read "How to
54 report Bugs Effectively" by Simon Tatham:
55 http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html
59 First, make sure you have an up-to-date version of Perl. If you
60 didn't get your Perl source from CPAN, check the latest version at
61 http://www.cpan.org/src/. Perl uses a version scheme where even-numbered
62 subreleases (like 5.6.x and 5.8.x) are stable maintenance releases and
63 odd-numbered subreleases (like 5.7.x and 5.9.x) are unstable
64 development releases. Development releases should not be used in
65 production environments. Fixes and new features are first carefully
66 tested in development releases and only if they prove themselves to be
67 worthy will they be migrated to the maintenance releases.
69 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system with all
72 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
78 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
80 The above commands will install Perl to /usr/local (or some other
81 platform-specific directory -- see the appropriate file in hints/.)
82 If that's not okay with you, can run Configure interactively and use
84 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
90 # You may also wish to add these:
91 (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
93 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
95 or you can use some of the Configure options described below.
97 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
98 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
100 For information on what's new in this release, see the
101 pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
102 changes, see the Changes file.
106 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
107 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
108 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
109 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
111 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
113 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
116 Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
117 you should probably at least skim through this document before
120 In addition to this file, check if there is a README file specific to
121 your operating system, since it may provide additional or different
122 instructions for building Perl. If there is a hint file for your
123 system (in the hints/ directory) you should also read that hint file
124 for even more information. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh or
125 the svr5.sh hint file.)
127 For additional information about porting Perl, see the section on
128 L<"Porting information"> below, and look at the files in the Porting/
133 =head2 Changes and Incompatibilities
135 Please see pod/perldelta.pod for a description of the changes and
136 potential incompatibilities introduced with this release. A few of
137 the most important issues are listed below, but you should refer
138 to pod/perldelta.pod for more detailed information.
140 =head3 WARNING: This version is not binary compatible with releases of
143 If you have built extensions (i.e. modules that include C code)
144 using an earlier version of Perl, you will need to rebuild and reinstall
147 Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
148 without reinstallation. See the discussions below on
149 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> and
150 L<"Upgrading from 5.005 or 5.6 to 5.8.0"> for more details.
152 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
154 On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the changes
155 in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
156 pod/perldelta.pod for a description of what's changed. See your
157 installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly incomplete)
158 list of locally installed modules. Also see CPAN::autobundle for one
159 way to make a "bundle" of your currently installed modules.
161 =head2 Space Requirements
163 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 60 MB of disk space.
164 After completing make, it takes up roughly 100 MB, though the actual
165 total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
166 directories need something on the order of 50 MB, though again that
167 value is quite system-dependent.
169 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
171 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
180 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
181 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
183 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
184 files. If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
185 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
186 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
187 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it
191 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
192 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
193 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
194 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
195 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
196 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Similarly, if you used
197 a shared libperl.so (see below) with version numbers, you will probably
198 want to adjust them as well.
200 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. For example, some
201 Linux distributions use i386, but Configure uses the output of the arch
202 command, which might be i686 instead. If you pick up a precompiled
203 binary, or compile extensions on different systems, they might not all
204 agree on the architecture name.
206 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
207 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
209 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
210 installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
211 using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
212 settings"> below. If you wish to start with a fresh distribution, you
213 also need to remove any old Policy.sh files you may have with
219 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
220 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
221 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
222 almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
223 since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
226 At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
227 defaults from then on.
229 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
230 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
232 =head2 Common Configure options
234 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run
238 to get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
239 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
245 To compile with gcc you should run
247 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
249 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
250 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
252 =item Installation prefix
254 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
255 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
256 and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for
259 You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
260 directory when Configure prompts you, or by using the Configure command
261 line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
263 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
265 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
266 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
267 prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
268 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
269 for more details. Do not include a trailing slash, (i.e. /opt/perl/)
270 or you may experience odd test failures.
272 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
273 as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
274 attempt infinite recursion.
278 It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
279 find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
280 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
281 careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
282 vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing. If you insist
283 on replacing your vendor's perl, useful information on how it was
284 configured may be found with
288 (Check the output carefully, however, since this doesn't preserve
289 spaces in arguments to Configure. For that, you have to look carefully
290 at config_arg1, config_arg2, etc.)
292 By default, Configure will not try to link /usr/bin/perl to the current
293 version of perl. You can turn on that behavior by running
295 Configure -Dinstallusrbinperl
297 or by answering 'yes' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
299 In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to put
300 (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
301 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
302 obvious and convenient place.
304 =item Building a development release.
306 For development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.9.x) if you want to
307 use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel to Configure,
308 because the default answer to the question "do you really want to
309 Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel skips that
314 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
319 For example for my Solaris/x86 system, I usually use
321 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
323 =head2 Altering config.sh variables for C compiler switches etc.
325 For most users, most of the Configure defaults are fine, or can easily
326 be set on the Configure command line. However, if Configure doesn't
327 have an option to do what you want, you can change Configure variables
328 after the platform hints have been run by using Configure's -A switch.
329 For example, here's how to add a couple of extra flags to C compiler
332 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_EXTERNAL_GLOB -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC"
334 To clarify, those ccflags values are not Configure options; if passed to
335 Configure directly, they won't do anything useful (that will define a config.sh
336 variable, but without taking any action based upon it). When passed to the
337 compiler, those flags will activate #ifdefd code.
339 For more help on Configure switches, run
343 =head2 Major Configure-time Build Options
345 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
346 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
347 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
348 some of the main things you can change.
352 On some platforms, perl can be compiled with support for threads. To
355 sh Configure -Dusethreads
357 Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command
358 line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
360 The default is to compile without thread support.
362 Perl used to have two different internal threads implementations. The current
363 model (available internally since 5.6, and as a user-level module since 5.8) is
364 called interpreter-based implementation (ithreads), with one interpreter per
365 thread, and explicit sharing of data. The (deprecated) 5.005 version
366 (5005threads) has been removed for release 5.10.
368 The 'threads' module is for use with the ithreads implementation. The
369 'Thread' module emulates the old 5005threads interface on top of the current
372 When using threads, perl uses a dynamically-sized buffer for some of
373 the thread-safe library calls, such as those in the getpw*() family.
374 This buffer starts small, but it will keep growing until the result
375 fits. To get a fixed upper limit, you should compile Perl with
376 PERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE defined to be the number of bytes you want. One
377 way to do this is to run Configure with
378 C<-Accflags=-DPERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE=65536>
380 =head3 Large file support.
382 Since Perl 5.6.0, Perl has supported large files (files larger than
383 2 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
384 support is on by default.
386 This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files,
387 seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad in that if you are interfacing Perl
388 using some extension, the components you are connecting to must also
389 be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
390 parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
391 will happen. One popular extension suffering from this ailment is the
392 Apache extension mod_perl.
394 There's also one known limitation with the current large files
395 implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
396 section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer formats
397 like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
399 =head3 64 bit support.
401 If your platform does not have run natively at 64 bits, but can
402 simulate them with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>,
403 you can build a perl that uses 64 bits.
405 There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
406 using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
407 -Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
408 the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
410 The C<use64bitint> option does only as much as is required to get
411 64-bit integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long
412 longs") while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because
413 your pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint>
414 does not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it
415 might, but it doesn't have to). The C<use64bitint> simply means that
416 you will be able to have 64 bit-wide scalar values.
418 The C<use64bitall> option goes all the way by attempting to switch
419 integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
420 create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
421 resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
422 have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
425 Natively 64-bit systems like Alpha and Cray need neither -Duse64bitint
428 NOTE: 64-bit support is still experimental on most platforms.
429 Existing support only covers the LP64 data model. In particular, the
430 LLP64 data model is not yet supported. 64-bit libraries and system
431 APIs on many platforms have not stabilized--your mileage may vary.
435 In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
436 range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
437 (that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
438 this support (if it is available).
442 You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
443 and the long double support.
445 =head3 Selecting File IO mechanisms
447 Executive summary: as of Perl 5.8, you should use the default "PerlIO"
448 as the IO mechanism unless you have a good reason not to.
450 In more detail: previous versions of perl used the standard IO
451 mechanisms as defined in stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl
452 introduced alternate IO mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but up
453 until and including Perl 5.6, the stdio mechanism was still the default
454 and the only supported mechanism.
456 Starting from Perl 5.8, the default mechanism is to use the PerlIO
457 abstraction, because it allows better control of I/O mechanisms,
458 instead of having to work with (often, work around) vendors' I/O
461 This PerlIO abstraction can be (but again, unless you know what you
462 are doing, should not be) disabled either on the Configure command
465 sh Configure -Uuseperlio
467 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
469 =head3 Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Hashes
471 In Perls 5.8.0 and earlier it was easy to create degenerate hashes.
472 Processing such hashes would consume large amounts of CPU time,
473 enabling a "Denial of Service" attack against Perl. Such hashes may be
474 a problem for example for mod_perl sites, sites with Perl CGI scripts
475 and web services, that process data originating from external sources.
477 In Perl 5.8.1 a security feature was introduced to make it harder to
478 create such degenerate hashes. A visible side effect of this was that
479 the keys(), values(), and each() functions may return the hash elements
480 in different order between different runs of Perl even with the same
481 data. It also had unintended binary incompatibility issues with
482 certain modules compiled against Perl 5.8.0.
484 In Perl 5.8.2 an improved scheme was introduced. Hashes will return
485 elements in the same order as Perl 5.8.0 by default. On a hash by hash
486 basis, if pathological data is detected during a hash key insertion,
487 then that hash will switch to an alternative random hash seed. As
488 adding keys can always dramatically change returned hash element order,
489 existing programs will not be affected by this, unless they
490 specifically test for pre-recorded hash return order for contrived
491 data. (eg the list of keys generated by C<map {"\0"x$_} 0..15> trigger
492 randomisation) In effect the new implementation means that 5.8.1 scheme
493 is only being used on hashes which are under attack.
495 One can still revert to the old guaranteed repeatable order (and be
496 vulnerable to attack by wily crackers) by setting the environment
497 variable PERL_HASH_SEED, see L<perlrun/PERL_HASH_SEED>. Another option
498 is to add -DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT to the compilation flags (for
499 example by using C<Configure -Accflags=-DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT>), in
500 which case one has to explicitly set the PERL_HASH_SEED environment
501 variable to enable the security feature, or by adding -DNO_HASH_SEED to
502 the compilation flags to completely disable the randomisation feature.
504 B<Perl has never guaranteed any ordering of the hash keys>, and the
505 ordering has already changed several times during the lifetime of Perl
506 5. Also, the ordering of hash keys has always been, and continues to
507 be, affected by the insertion order. It is likely that Perl 5.10 and
508 Perl 6 will randomise all hashes. Note that because of this
509 randomisation for example the Data::Dumper results will be different
510 between different runs of Perl since Data::Dumper by default dumps
511 hashes "unordered". The use of the Data::Dumper C<Sortkeys> option is
516 Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
517 TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
518 access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
519 Version 5. You can find more about SOCKS from http://www.socks.nec.com/
521 =head3 Dynamic Loading
523 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
524 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
525 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
526 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
528 =head3 Building a shared Perl library
530 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
531 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
532 extensions, and various extra libraries, such as -lm.
534 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
535 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
536 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
537 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
538 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
539 can share the same library.
541 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
542 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
543 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
546 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
547 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
548 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
551 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
552 libperl.so.6.2 (for Perl 5.6.2), or libperl.so.602, or simply
553 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
554 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
555 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
556 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
558 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
559 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
561 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
563 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
565 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
566 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
567 NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
568 for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
569 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
570 be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
571 library search settings. You can find the name of the environment
572 variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
574 grep ldlibpthname config.sh
576 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
577 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
578 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
581 cd t; ./perl misc/failing_test.t
583 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
585 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
588 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
590 for Bourne-style shells, or
592 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
594 for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
595 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And
596 again, it may be something other than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
598 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
599 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
601 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
603 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
604 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
605 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
606 install a standard Perl 5.8.0 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
607 try to build Perl 5.8.0 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
608 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
609 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
610 libperl.so.8 rather with the installed libperl.so.8? The answer is
611 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
612 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
613 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
614 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux, you can only override at runtime via
615 LD_PRELOAD, specifying the exact filename you wish to be used; and on
616 Digital Unix, you can override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the
617 _RLD_ROOT environment variable to point to the perl build directory.
619 In other words, it is generally not a good idea to try to build a perl
620 with a shared library if $archlib/CORE/$libperl already exists from a
623 A good workaround is to specify a different directory for the
624 architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING version of perl.
625 You can do this by changing all the *archlib* variables in config.sh to
626 point to your new architecture-dependent library.
628 =head3 Environment access
630 Perl often needs to write to the program's environment, such as when C<%ENV>
631 is assigned to. Many implementations of the C library function C<putenv()>
632 leak memory, so where possible perl will manipulate the environment directly
633 to avoid these leaks. The default is now to perform direct manipulation
634 whenever perl is running as a stand alone interpreter, and to call the safe
635 but potentially leaky C<putenv()> function when the perl interpreter is
636 embedded in another application. You can force perl to always use C<putenv()>
637 by compiling with -DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV. You can force an embedded perl to
638 use direct manipulation by setting C<PL_use_safe_putenv = 0;> after the
639 C<perl_construct()> call.
641 =head2 Installation Directories
643 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
644 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the installation
645 questions are near the beginning of Configure. Do not include trailing
646 slashes on directory names. At any point during the Configure process,
647 you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use the defaults
648 from then on. Alternatively, you can
650 grep '^install' config.sh
652 after Configure has run to verify the installation paths.
654 The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
655 people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
656 distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
657 need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
658 you can safely skip the next section.
660 The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
664 =item Directories for the perl distribution
666 By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.9.0.
667 $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
668 5.9.0 or 5.9.1, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
669 determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
670 variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
672 Configure variable Default value
673 $prefixexp /usr/local
674 $binexp $prefixexp/bin
675 $scriptdirexp $prefixexp/bin
676 $privlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version
677 $archlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
678 $man1direxp $prefixexp/man/man1
679 $man3direxp $prefixexp/man/man3
683 $prefixexp is generated from $prefix, with ~ expansion done to convert home
684 directories into absolute paths. Similarly for the other variables listed. As
685 file system calls do not do this, you should always reference the ...exp
686 variables, to support users who build perl in their home directory.
688 Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
689 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
690 instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
691 directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
692 the common style is shown here.
694 =item Directories for site-specific add-on files
696 After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
697 CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
698 be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
700 Configure variable Default value
701 $siteprefixexp $prefixexp
702 $sitebinexp $siteprefixexp/bin
703 $sitescriptexp $siteprefixexp/bin
704 $sitelibexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
705 $sitearchexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
706 $siteman1direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man1
707 $siteman3direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man3
708 $sitehtml1direxp (none)
709 $sitehtml3direxp (none)
711 By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
712 modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
714 =item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
716 Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
717 distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
718 for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
720 Configure variable Default value
721 $vendorprefixexp (none)
722 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
723 $vendorbinexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
724 $vendorscriptexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
726 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
728 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
729 $vendorman1direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man1
730 $vendorman3direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man3
731 $vendorhtml1direxp (none)
732 $vendorhtml3direxp (none)
734 These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
735 a vendor might choose the following settings:
738 $siteprefix /usr/local
741 This would have the effect of setting the following:
744 $scriptdirexp /usr/bin
745 $privlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version
746 $archlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
747 $man1direxp /usr/man/man1
748 $man3direxp /usr/man/man3
750 $sitebinexp /usr/local/bin
751 $sitescriptexp /usr/local/bin
752 $sitelibexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
753 $sitearchexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
754 $siteman1direxp /usr/local/man/man1
755 $siteman3direxp /usr/local/man/man3
757 $vendorbinexp /usr/bin
758 $vendorscriptexp /usr/bin
759 $vendorlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
760 $vendorarchexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
761 $vendorman1direxp /usr/man/man1
762 $vendorman3direxp /usr/man/man3
764 Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
765 /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
766 the /usr/local hierarchy.
768 The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
769 version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
770 However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
771 installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
772 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for more details
773 on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
775 Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
776 example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
777 are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
778 site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
779 network. One way to do that would be something like
781 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
785 As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
786 variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
787 directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
788 Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
789 version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
791 For example, if you have a bundle of perl libraries from a previous
792 installation, perhaps in a strange place:
794 Configure -Dotherlibdirs=/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1
798 There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
799 that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
800 separated list of directories, like this
802 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
804 The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
805 ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
806 modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
807 touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
808 version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
809 present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
810 directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
811 run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
813 =item USE_SITECUSTOMIZE
815 Run-time customization of @INC can be enabled with:
817 sh Configure -Dusesitecustomize
819 Which will define USE_SITECUSTOMIZE and $Config{usesitecustomize}.
820 When enabled, make perl run F<$sitelibexp/sitecustomize.pl> before
821 anything else. This script can then be set up to add additional
826 By default, man pages will be installed in $man1dir and $man3dir, which
827 are normally /usr/local/man/man1 and /usr/local/man/man3. If you
828 want to use a .3pm suffix for perl man pages, you can do that with
830 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
834 Currently, the standard perl installation does not do anything with
835 HTML documentation, but that may change in the future. Further, some
836 add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The html Configure
837 variables listed above are provided if you wish to specify where such
838 documents should be placed. The default is "none", but will likely
839 eventually change to something useful based on user feedback.
843 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
844 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
847 Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
848 directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
851 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
852 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
853 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below.
855 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
856 library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
857 suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
859 Thus, for example, if you Configure with
860 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.9.0 are
862 Configure variable Default value
863 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0
864 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0/$archname
865 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0
866 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0/$archname
868 =head2 Changing the installation directory
870 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
871 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
872 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
873 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
874 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
875 packages, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
876 wish to install perl into a different directory and use that
877 management software to move perl to its final destination. This
878 section describes how to do that.
880 To install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory, use the following
883 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
885 (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
887 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
888 modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
889 follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with
892 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
894 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is convenient
895 to compile it once and create an archive that can be installed on
896 multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to create an
897 archive that can be installed in /opt/perl. One way to do that is by
898 using the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>. The DESTDIR is
899 automatically prepended to all the installation paths. Thus you
902 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
905 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
906 cd /tmp/perl5/opt/perl
907 tar cvf /tmp/perl5-archive.tar .
909 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
911 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
912 answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact
913 person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another
914 system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file
915 to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate
916 hint file for your system. This will work even if Policy.sh was
917 generated for another version of Perl, or on a system with a
918 different architecture and/or operating system. However, in such cases,
919 you should review the contents of the file before using it: for
920 example, your new target may not keep its man pages in the same place
921 as the system on which the file was generated.
923 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
928 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
930 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
932 If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
933 to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
934 platform-specific hints files.
936 =head2 Disabling older versions of Perl
938 Configure will search for binary compatible versions of previously
939 installed perl binaries in the tree that is specified as target tree
940 and these will be used by the perl being built.
941 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> for more details.
943 To disable this use of older perl modules, even completely valid pure perl
944 modules, you can specify to not include the paths found:
946 sh Configure -Dinc_version_list=none ...
948 When using the newer perl, you can add these paths again in the
949 $PERL5LIB environment variable or with perl's -I runtime option.
951 =head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
953 Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
954 where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
955 read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
956 architectures. You can do this (if your file system supports symbolic
959 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
960 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
961 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
963 This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
964 pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
965 unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
969 as usual, and Perl will be built in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
971 =head2 Building a debugging perl
973 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
974 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
975 you probably want to have support for perl internal debugging code
976 (activated by adding -DDEBUGGING to ccflags), and/or support for the
977 system debugger by adding -g to optimize.
979 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING=<mode>
981 For a more eye appealing call, -DEBUGGING is defined to be an alias
982 for -DDEBUGGING. For both, the -U calls are also supported, in order
983 to be able to overrule the hints or Policy.sh settings.
989 Which is the default, and supports the old convention of
991 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
993 This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
994 to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
995 executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
996 cc -g2. Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for
997 your system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags
998 variable in config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's
999 internal state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by default
1000 if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to reuse your
1001 old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the optimize and
1002 ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes as shown in
1003 L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
1005 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
1006 it's convenient to have both.
1014 =item -DEBUGGING=both
1016 Sets both -DDEBUGGING in the ccflags, and add -g to optimize.
1020 Adds -g to optimize, but does not set -DDEBUGGING.
1022 =item -DEBUGGING=none
1024 Removes -g from optimize, and -DDEBUGGING from ccflags.
1028 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
1029 versions of perl under L<Building a shared Perl library>.
1033 Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
1034 in the ext/ subdirectory.
1036 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
1037 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
1038 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
1039 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
1040 is always built by default. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
1041 set the Configure variable useposix=false from the Configure command line.
1043 If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
1044 running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
1045 extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
1046 it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
1047 has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
1048 extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
1049 convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
1050 you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
1051 dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
1053 If you have dynamic loading, another way of specifying extra modules
1054 is described in L<"Adding extra modules to the build"> below.
1056 You can learn more about each of the supplied extensions by consulting the
1057 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
1060 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
1061 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
1062 version. Configure will suggest this as the default.
1064 To disable certain extensions so that they are not built, use the
1065 -Dnoextensions=... and -Donlyextensions=... options. They both accept
1066 a space-separated list of extensions. The extensions listed in
1067 C<noextensions> are removed from the list of extensions to build, while
1068 the C<onlyextensions> is rather more severe and builds only the listed
1069 extensions. The latter should be used with extreme caution since
1070 certain extensions are used by many other extensions and modules:
1071 examples of such modules include Fcntl and IO. The order of processing
1072 these options is first C<only> (if present), then C<no> (if present).
1074 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
1075 the extensions you want.
1077 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley
1078 DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect
1079 this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with earlier
1080 releases of version 2.
1082 If you re-use your old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
1083 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
1084 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
1087 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern systems do)
1088 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
1089 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
1090 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
1092 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
1094 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
1095 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
1096 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
1097 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
1098 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
1099 how to obtain the libraries.
1101 If your database header (.h) files are not in a directory normally
1102 searched by your C compiler, then you will need to include the
1103 appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by Configure. If
1104 your database libraries are not in a directory normally
1105 searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to include
1106 the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by Configure.
1107 See the examples below.
1113 =item gdbm in /usr/local
1115 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
1116 GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
1117 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
1118 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
1119 necessary steps out automatically.
1121 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1122 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
1124 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
1127 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
1128 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1131 Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1132 you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1133 /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
1135 =item gdbm in /usr/you
1137 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
1138 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
1139 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
1140 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
1141 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
1142 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
1143 /usr/you/lib to the list.
1145 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
1149 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
1150 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
1152 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1153 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1155 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
1156 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
1157 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
1158 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
1161 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
1162 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
1166 =head2 Building DB, NDBM, and ODBM interfaces with Berkeley DB 3
1168 A Perl interface for DB3 is part of Berkeley DB, but if you want to
1169 compile the standard Perl DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you must follow
1170 following instructions.
1172 Berkeley DB3 from Sleepycat Software is by default installed without
1173 DB1 compatibility code (needed for the DB_File interface) and without
1174 links to compatibility files. So if you want to use packages written
1175 for the DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you need to configure DB3 with
1176 --enable-compat185 (and optionally with --enable-dump185) and create
1177 additional references (suppose you are installing DB3 with
1180 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdbm.so
1181 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libndbm.so
1182 echo '#define DB_DBM_HSEARCH 1' >dbm.h
1183 echo '#include <db.h>' >>dbm.h
1184 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/dbm.h
1185 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/ndbm.h
1187 Optionally, if you have compiled with --enable-compat185 (not needed
1190 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb1.so
1191 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb.so
1193 ODBM emulation seems not to be perfect, but is quite usable,
1196 lib/odbm.............FAILED at test 9
1197 Failed 1/64 tests, 98.44% okay
1199 =head2 Overriding an old config.sh
1201 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
1202 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
1204 =head2 GNU-style configure
1206 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
1207 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
1209 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
1211 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
1214 ./configure.gnu --help
1218 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
1219 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
1221 See L<Cross-compilation> below for information on cross-compiling.
1223 =head2 Malloc Issues
1225 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
1226 so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
1227 the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
1228 version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
1229 perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
1230 than your system malloc.
1232 However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
1233 experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
1234 that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
1235 (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
1239 =item Using the system malloc
1241 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
1243 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
1245 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
1247 =item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
1249 NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you just
1250 run Configure to accept all the defaults on those platforms.
1252 Perl's malloc family of functions are normally called Perl_malloc(),
1253 Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree().
1254 These names do not clash with the system versions of these functions.
1256 If this flag is enabled, however, Perl's malloc family of functions
1257 will have the same names as the system versions. This may be required
1258 sometimes if you have libraries that like to free() data that may have
1259 been allocated by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1261 Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1262 from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1263 does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1266 =item -DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS
1268 This flag enables debugging mstats, which is required to use the
1269 Devel::Peek::mstat() function. You cannot enable this unless you are
1270 using Perl's malloc, so a typical Configure command would be
1272 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS -Dusemymalloc='y'
1274 to enable this option.
1278 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1280 If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1281 If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
1285 =item Running Configure Interactively
1287 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1288 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1291 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1292 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1293 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1294 will use the defaults from then on.
1296 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1297 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1298 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1302 Hint files tell Configure about a number of things:
1308 The peculiarities or conventions of particular platforms -- non-standard
1309 library locations and names, default installation locations for binaries,
1314 The deficiencies of the platform -- for example, library functions that,
1315 although present, are too badly broken to be usable; or limits on
1316 resources that are generously available on most platforms.
1320 How best to optimize for the platform, both in terms of binary size and/or
1321 speed, and for Perl feature support. Because of wide variations in the
1322 implementation of shared libraries and of threading, for example, Configure
1323 often needs hints in order to be able to use these features.
1327 The perl distribution includes many system-specific hints files
1328 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1329 will offer to use that hint file. Unless you have a very good reason
1330 not to, you should accept its offer.
1332 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1333 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1334 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1335 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
1336 file, which also explains hint files known as callback-units.
1338 Note that any hint file is read before any Policy file, meaning that
1339 Policy overrides hints -- see L</Site-wide Policy settings>.
1341 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1343 If you are re-using an old config.sh, it's possible that Configure detects
1344 different values from the ones specified in this file. You will almost
1345 always want to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something
1348 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1349 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1350 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1351 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1354 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1355 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1356 Keep the previous value? [y]
1358 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1359 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1360 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1362 =item Changing Compilers
1364 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1365 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1366 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
1367 with the options you want to use.
1369 This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
1370 gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
1372 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1374 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1375 them to all the .SH files by running
1379 You will then have to rebuild by running
1384 =item config.over and config.arch
1386 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride
1387 Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1388 before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1389 however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1390 This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1392 There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1393 config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1394 architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1395 hints file that creates the config.arch.
1399 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1400 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1401 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1403 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1404 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1409 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1410 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1411 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1412 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1413 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1414 lost the next time you run Configure.
1416 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1417 see the file hints/README.hints.
1419 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1420 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1427 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1428 Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1429 system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1430 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1433 =item Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX and BIN_SH
1435 In Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX, Configure might abort with
1437 Build a threading Perl? [n]
1438 Configure[2437]: Syntax error at line 1 : `config.sh' is not expected.
1440 This indicates that Configure is being run with a broken Korn shell
1441 (even though you think you are using a Bourne shell by using
1442 "sh Configure" or "./Configure"). The Korn shell bug has been reported
1443 to Compaq as of February 1999 but in the meanwhile, the reason ksh is
1444 being used is that you have the environment variable BIN_SH set to
1445 'xpg4'. This causes /bin/sh to delegate its duties to /bin/posix/sh
1446 (a ksh). Unset the environment variable and rerun Configure.
1448 =item HP-UX 11, pthreads, and libgdbm
1450 If you are running Configure with -Dusethreads in HP-UX 11, be warned
1451 that POSIX threads and libgdbm (the GNU dbm library) compiled before
1452 HP-UX 11 do not mix. This will cause a basic test run by Configure to
1455 Pthread internal error: message: __libc_reinit() failed, file: ../pthreads/pthread.c, line: 1096
1456 Return Pointer is 0xc082bf33
1457 sh: 5345 Quit(coredump)
1459 and Configure will give up. The cure is to recompile and install
1460 libgdbm under HP-UX 11.
1462 =item Porting information
1464 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan 9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1465 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1466 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1467 subdirectory. Porting/Glossary should especially come in handy.
1469 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1470 http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
1471 various other operating systems.
1473 If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture, study carefully the
1474 section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1475 in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file Porting/patching.pod.
1476 Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1480 =head2 Adding extra modules to the build
1482 You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1483 CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1484 command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1486 Configure -Dextras="Bundle::LWP DBI"
1488 or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
1489 then answer "Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
1490 The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
1491 This will only work if those modules are to be built as dynamic
1492 extensions. If you wish to include those extra modules as static
1493 extensions, see L<"Extensions"> above.
1495 Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1496 modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1497 or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1498 do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1500 Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1501 dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
1502 For example: you will need to have the Foo database specific
1503 headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1504 process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1508 suidperl is an optional component, which is normally neither built
1509 nor installed by default. From perlfaq1:
1511 On some systems, setuid and setgid scripts (scripts written
1512 in the C shell, Bourne shell, or Perl, for example, with the
1513 set user or group ID permissions enabled) are insecure due to
1514 a race condition in the kernel. For those systems, Perl versions
1515 5 and 4 attempt to work around this vulnerability with an optional
1516 component, a special program named suidperl, also known as sperl.
1517 This program attempts to emulate the set-user-ID and set-group-ID
1518 features of the kernel.
1520 Because of the buggy history of suidperl, and the difficulty
1521 of properly security auditing as large and complex piece of
1522 software as Perl, we cannot recommend using suidperl and the feature
1523 should be considered deprecated.
1524 Instead, use a tool specifically designed to handle changes in
1525 privileges, such as B<sudo>, http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/ .
1529 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1530 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1531 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1532 makefile, not Makefile, since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1533 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1534 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1536 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1541 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1543 =head2 Expected errors
1545 These errors are normal, and can be ignored:
1548 make: [extra.pods] Error 1 (ignored)
1550 make: [extras.make] Error 1 (ignored)
1552 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1554 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1555 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1556 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1557 then see L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
1563 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1564 for further tips and information.
1568 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1569 during the building of extensions, run
1573 to test your version of miniperl.
1577 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1578 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1579 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1580 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1581 whole L<"Locale problems"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1582 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1584 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1585 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1588 are supported and installed on your system.
1589 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1595 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1596 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1597 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1598 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by installing gcc
1599 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1600 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1601 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1605 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1606 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1608 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1609 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1610 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1612 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1613 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1615 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1617 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1618 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1619 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1620 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1621 of your local set-up.
1625 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1626 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1629 sh Configure -Uusenm
1631 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1632 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1635 =item umask not found
1637 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1638 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1639 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1640 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1641 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1645 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1646 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1647 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1648 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1649 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1653 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1654 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1655 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1659 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1660 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1661 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1662 on L<"nm extraction">.
1664 =item __inet_* errors
1666 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1667 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1668 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1669 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1670 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1671 newer version of BIND (and remove the files the old one left behind).
1672 If you can't, you can either link with the updated resolver library provided
1673 with BIND 8.1 or rename /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and
1674 test process to avoid the problem.
1676 =item *_r() prototype NOT found
1678 On a related note, if you see a bunch of complaints like the above about
1679 reentrant functions - specifically networking-related ones - being present
1680 but without prototypes available, check to see if BIND 8.1 (or possibly
1681 other BIND 8 versions) is (or has been) installed. They install
1682 header files such as netdb.h into places such as /usr/local/include (or into
1683 another directory as specified at build/install time), at least optionally.
1684 Remove them or put them in someplace that isn't in the C preprocessor's
1685 header file include search path (determined by -I options plus defaults,
1686 normally /usr/include).
1688 =item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1690 This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1691 gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1692 changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1693 rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1694 update your gcc installation.
1698 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1699 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1707 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1708 with B<make depend; make>.
1710 =item Missing functions and Undefined symbols
1712 If the build of miniperl fails with a long list of missing functions or
1713 undefined symbols, check the libs variable in the config.sh file. It
1714 should look something like
1716 libs='-lsocket -lnsl -ldl -lm -lc'
1718 The exact libraries will vary from system to system, but you typically
1719 need to include at least the math library -lm. Normally, Configure
1720 will suggest the correct defaults. If the libs variable is empty, you
1721 need to start all over again. Run
1725 and start from the very beginning. This time, unless you are sure of
1726 what you are doing, accept the default list of libraries suggested by
1729 If the libs variable looks correct, you might have the
1730 L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1732 If you stil have missing routines or undefined symbols, you probably
1733 need to add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature
1734 that Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete. If
1735 you used a hint file, see if it has any relevant advice. You can also
1736 look through through config.h for likely suspects.
1740 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1741 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1742 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1743 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1744 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1747 =item Missing dbmclose
1749 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1750 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1752 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1754 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1755 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1756 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1757 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1758 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1759 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1760 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1761 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1762 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1763 process is continuing.
1765 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1768 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1770 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1771 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1772 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1774 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1775 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1776 quite that tightly coordinated.
1778 =item sh: ar: not found
1780 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1781 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1782 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1783 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1786 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1788 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1789 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1790 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1792 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1794 If you get this error message from the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem test, your System
1795 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1796 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1797 to include the System V semaphores.
1799 =item ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem........semget: No space left on device
1801 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1802 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1803 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1804 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1809 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1810 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1811 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1812 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1813 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1814 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1815 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1816 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1818 =item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1820 The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1821 make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1822 archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1823 C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1824 archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1825 incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1826 official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1827 that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1828 archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1830 =item invalid token: ##
1832 You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. To compile Perl, you
1833 need to use a compiler that supports ANSI C. If there is a README
1834 file for your system, it may have further details on your compiler
1839 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1841 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1843 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1845 UTS may need one or more of -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1847 FreeBSD can fail the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1848 configured in the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1849 you will get a message telling you what to do.
1851 HP-UX 11 Y2K patch "Y2K-1100 B.11.00.B0125 HP-UX Core OS Year 2000
1852 Patch Bundle" has been reported to break the io/fs test #18 which
1853 tests whether utime() can change timestamps. The Y2K patch seems to
1854 break utime() so that over NFS the timestamps do not get changed
1855 (on local filesystems utime() still works).
1857 Building Perl on a system that has also BIND (headers and libraries)
1858 installed may run into troubles because BIND installs its own netdb.h
1859 and socket.h, which may not agree with the operating system's ideas of
1860 the same files. Similarly, including -lbind may conflict with libc's
1861 view of the world. You may have to tweak -Dlocincpth and -Dloclibpth
1866 =head2 Cross-compilation
1868 Perl can be cross-compiled. It is just not trivial, cross-compilation
1869 rarely is. Perl is routinely cross-compiled for many platforms (as of
1870 June 2005 at least PocketPC aka WinCE, Open Zaurus, EPOC, Symbian, and
1871 the IBM OS/400). These platforms are known as the B<target> platforms,
1872 while the systems where the compilation takes place are the B<host>
1875 What makes the situation difficult is that first of all,
1876 cross-compilation environments vary significantly in how they are set
1877 up and used, and secondly because the primary way of configuring Perl
1878 (using the rather large Unix-tool-dependent Configure script) is not
1879 awfully well suited for cross-compilation. However, starting from
1880 version 5.8.0, the Configure script also knows one way of supporting
1881 cross-compilation support, please keep reading.
1883 See the following files for more information about compiling Perl for
1884 the particular platforms:
1888 =item WinCE/PocketPC
1910 Packaging and transferring either the core Perl modules or CPAN
1911 modules to the target platform is also left up to the each
1912 cross-compilation environment. Often the cross-compilation target
1913 platforms are somewhat limited in diskspace: see the section
1914 L<Minimizing the Perl installation> to learn more of the minimal set
1915 of files required for a functional Perl installation.
1917 For some cross-compilation environments the Configure option
1918 C<-Dinstallprefix=...> might be handy, see L<Changing the installation
1921 About the cross-compilation support of Configure: what is known to
1922 work is running Configure in a cross-compilation environment and
1923 building the miniperl executable. What is known not to work is
1924 building the perl executable because that would require building
1925 extensions: Dynaloader statically and File::Glob dynamically, for
1926 extensions one needs MakeMaker and MakeMaker is not yet
1927 cross-compilation aware, and neither is the main Makefile.
1929 The cross-compilation setup of Configure has successfully been used in
1930 at least two Linux cross-compilation environments. The setups were
1931 both such that the host system was Intel Linux with a gcc built for
1932 cross-compiling into ARM Linux, and there was a SSH connection to the
1935 To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch that
1936 has to be used is C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
1938 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1940 This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
1941 symbol C<usecrosscompile> available, and C<xconfig.h> will be used
1942 for cross-compilation.
1944 During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1945 into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1946 cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1947 target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1948 transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1949 the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1950 methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1951 F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1953 To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1954 the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1955 happens), supply Configure with
1957 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1959 The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
1960 must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1961 You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
1965 but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
1967 Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
1968 which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
1969 This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
1970 In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
1973 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
1975 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1976 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1977 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
1979 If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
1980 compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
1981 C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
1982 (The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
1983 as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
1984 will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
1985 in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
1987 In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
1988 choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
1991 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
1993 Putting it all together:
1995 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1996 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1997 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
1999 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
2000 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
2001 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
2002 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
2003 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
2006 or if you are happy with the defaults:
2008 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
2009 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
2010 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
2013 Another example where the cross-compiler has been installed under
2014 F</usr/local/arm/2.95.5>:
2016 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
2017 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
2018 -Dcc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/bin/arm-linux-gcc \
2019 -Dincpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
2020 -Dusrinc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
2021 -Dlibpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/lib
2025 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
2026 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
2027 wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
2029 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
2030 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
2031 a few tty tests will be skipped.
2033 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
2035 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
2036 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
2037 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
2041 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
2042 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
2046 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
2047 complicated constructs). For extension and library tests you
2048 need a little bit more: you need to setup your environment variable
2049 PERL_CORE to a true value (like "1"), and you need to supply the
2050 right Perl library path:
2053 ./perl -I../lib ../ext/Socket/Socket.t
2054 ./perl -I../lib ../lib/less.t
2056 (For csh-like shells on UNIX; adjust appropriately for other platforms.)
2057 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
2058 comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
2059 shared library path if you get errors like:
2061 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
2063 See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
2069 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
2070 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
2071 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
2072 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
2073 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
2074 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
2076 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
2082 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
2084 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
2085 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
2086 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
2087 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
2088 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
2089 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
2092 =item Timing problems
2094 Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
2095 sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
2096 If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough,
2097 these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again
2098 with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive
2099 and load-sensitive tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
2100 F<ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t>, F<lib/Benchmark.t>,
2101 F<lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t>, and F<lib/Memoize/t/speed.t>.
2105 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
2106 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
2107 For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
2108 test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
2110 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
2112 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
2114 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
2115 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
2116 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
2117 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
2119 =item Failures from lib/File/Temp/t/security saying "system possibly insecure"
2121 First, such warnings are not necessarily serious or indicative of a
2122 real security threat. That being said, they bear investigating.
2124 Note that each of the tests is run twice. The first time is in the
2125 directory returned by File::Spec->tmpdir() (often /tmp on Unix
2126 systems), and the second time in the directory from which the test was
2127 run (usually the 't' directory, if the test was run as part of 'make
2130 The tests may fail for the following reasons:
2132 (1) If the directory the tests are being run in is owned by somebody
2133 other than the user running the tests, or by root (uid 0).
2135 This failure can happen if the Perl source code distribution is
2136 unpacked in such a way that the user ids in the distribution package
2137 are used as-is. Some tar programs do this.
2139 (2) If the directory the tests are being run in is writable by group or
2140 by others, and there is no sticky bit set for the directory. (With
2141 UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to a directory means the right to
2142 add or remove files in that directory. The 'sticky bit' is a feature
2143 used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if the bit is
2144 set for a directory, no one but the owner (or root) can remove that
2145 file even if the permissions would otherwise allow file removal by
2148 This failure may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the
2149 permissions policy used on this particular system. This failure can
2150 also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit (this
2151 is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle File::Temp
2152 should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or if the system
2153 supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons it is not being
2154 used. This is, for example, the case with HP-UX: as of HP-UX release
2155 11.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX doesn't use it
2156 on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also, as with the permissions, some
2157 local policy might dictate that the stickiness is not used.
2159 (3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
2160 any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
2161 directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
2162 (2). For Unix systems, this is usually not an issue if you are
2163 building on a local disk. See the documentation for the File::Temp
2164 module for more information about 'chown giveaway'.
2166 See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
2167 about the various security aspects of temporary files.
2173 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
2174 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
2175 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
2176 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
2177 are not root, you must still have permission to install into the directories
2178 in question and you should ignore any messages about chown not working.
2180 If "make install" just says "`install' is up to date" or something
2181 similar, you may be on a case-insensitive filesystems such as Mac's HFS+,
2182 and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion is brought to you
2183 by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
2185 =head2 Installing perl under different names
2187 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
2188 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
2189 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
2191 make install PERLNAME=myperl
2193 You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
2194 "perl5.8.9") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
2196 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
2198 This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (e.g. to
2199 avoid conflicts with an ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor).
2200 Without this the versioned binary would be called "perl55.8.8".
2202 =head2 Installing perl under a different directory
2204 You can install perl under a different destination directory by using
2205 the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>, with a command like
2207 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
2209 DESTDIR is automatically prepended to all the installation paths. See
2210 the example in L<"Creating an installable tar archive"> above.
2212 =head2 Installed files
2214 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
2215 anything, you can run
2217 ./perl installperl -n
2218 ./perl installman -n
2220 make install will install the following:
2225 perl5.n.n where 5.n.n is the current release number. This
2226 will be a link to perl.
2228 sperl5.n.n If you requested setuid emulation.
2229 a2p awk-to-perl translator
2233 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
2235 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
2236 s2p sed-to-perl translator
2237 find2perl find-to-perl translator
2238 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
2239 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
2240 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
2241 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
2242 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
2243 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
2244 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
2250 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
2251 dprofpp Perl code profile post-processor
2255 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
2256 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
2260 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2262 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
2263 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2265 Installperl will also create the directories listed above
2266 in L<"Installation Directories">.
2268 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
2269 under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
2270 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2271 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
2273 Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2274 installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
2275 perl alongside an already installed production version of perl without
2276 disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2277 To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2279 Configure -Dversiononly
2281 or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2282 you can just manually run
2284 ./perl installperl -v
2286 and skip installman altogether.
2287 See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2290 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
2292 Perl 5.9 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
2293 In other words, you will have to recompile your XS modules.
2295 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
2296 5.8.0) to another similar version (e.g. 5.8.2) without re-compiling
2297 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
2298 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
2299 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
2300 with 5.8.2, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
2301 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
2302 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.8.2.
2304 Usually, most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to be
2305 used with a newer version of Perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
2306 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
2308 Suppose you already have version 5.005_03 installed. The directories
2309 searched by 5.005_03 are
2311 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503/$archname
2312 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503
2313 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2314 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2316 Beginning with 5.6.0 the version number in the site libraries are
2317 fully versioned. Now, suppose you install version 5.6.0. The directories
2318 searched by version 5.6.0 will be
2320 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/$archname
2321 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0
2322 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
2323 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2325 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2326 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2327 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2329 Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
2330 of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
2331 directories. This way, modules installed under 5.005_03 will continue
2332 to be usable by 5.005_03 but will also accessible to 5.6.0. Further,
2333 suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
2334 present only in 5.6.0. That new module will get installed into
2335 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0 and will be available to 5.6.0,
2336 but will not interfere with the 5.005_03 version.
2338 The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
2339 5.6.0 and above will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
2341 Lastly, suppose you now install 5.8.0, which is not binary compatible
2342 with 5.6.0. The directories searched by 5.8.0 (if you don't change the
2343 Configure defaults) will be:
2345 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0/$archname
2346 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0
2347 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/$archname
2348 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0
2350 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2352 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2354 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2356 Note that the earlier $archname entries are now gone, but pure perl
2357 modules from earlier versions will still be found.
2359 Assuming the users in your site are still actively using perl 5.6.0 and
2360 5.005 after you installed 5.8.0, you can continue to install add-on
2361 extensions using any of perl 5.8.0, 5.6.0, or 5.005. The installations
2362 of these different versions remain distinct, but remember that the
2363 newer versions of perl are automatically set up to search the
2364 compatible site libraries of the older ones. This means that
2365 installing a new XS extension with 5.005 will make it visible to both
2366 5.005 and 5.6.0, but not to 5.8.0. Installing a pure perl module with
2367 5.005 will make it visible to all three versions. Later, if you
2368 install the same extension using, say, perl 5.8.0, it will override the
2369 5.005-installed version, but only for perl 5.8.0.
2371 This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2372 to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2373 versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
2375 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
2377 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
2378 separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
2379 won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2380 libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2381 way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
2383 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.8.2
2385 and adding /opt/perl5.8.2/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
2386 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2387 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2389 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
2390 (e.g. 5.8 for all 5.8.x versions), but change directory with
2393 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2394 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2395 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2398 =head2 Upgrading from 5.005 or 5.6 to 5.8.0
2400 B<Perl 5.9.0 is binary incompatible with Perl 5.8.x, Perl 5.6.x, 5.005,
2401 and any earlier Perl release.> Perl modules having binary parts
2402 (meaning that a C compiler is used) will have to be recompiled to be
2403 used with 5.9.0. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with
2404 5.9.0, you may safely do so without disturbing the older
2405 installations. (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5">
2408 See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2409 incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
2410 perllocal.pod, not perllocale.pod, for installed module information.
2412 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
2414 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
2416 By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
2417 they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
2419 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
2420 perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
2421 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
2422 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
2423 the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036 (or
2424 whatever the appropriate pathname is). See L<perltrap> for
2425 possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
2427 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2429 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2430 system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2431 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2432 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2433 library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2435 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2436 of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2437 hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2438 For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2441 =head1 installhtml --help
2443 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2444 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2445 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2447 Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2448 html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2450 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2455 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2457 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2458 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2459 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2460 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2461 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
2464 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2465 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2466 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2467 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2468 (and would welcome patches for them).
2470 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2471 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2473 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2475 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2476 available in TeX format. Type
2478 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2480 =head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2482 The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2483 Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2484 operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2486 Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way:
2487 Encode, with its big conversion tables, consumes a lot of
2488 space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything. The
2489 Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network
2490 programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all
2491 depends on what do you need to do.
2493 In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2494 recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2495 depends on what you need.
2497 Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2501 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2505 in Linux is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
2508 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/strict.pm
2509 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/warnings.pm
2510 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/File/Glob.pm
2511 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/XSLoader.pm
2512 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2514 Secondly, Debian perl-base package contains the following files,
2515 size about 1.9MB in its i386 version:
2520 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B.pm
2521 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B/Deparse.pm
2522 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Config.pm
2523 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Cwd.pm
2524 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Data/Dumper.pm
2525 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/DynaLoader.pm
2526 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Errno.pm
2527 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Fcntl.pm
2528 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/File/Glob.pm
2529 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO.pm
2530 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/File.pm
2531 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Handle.pm
2532 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Pipe.pm
2533 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Seekable.pm
2534 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Select.pm
2535 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket.pm
2536 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/POSIX.pm
2537 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Socket.pm
2538 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/XSLoader.pm
2539 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.bs
2540 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.so
2541 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.bs
2542 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.so
2543 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a
2544 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2545 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2546 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2547 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2548 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/extralibs.ld
2549 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs
2550 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2551 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.bs
2552 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2553 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.bs
2554 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.so
2555 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.bs
2556 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2557 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2558 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2559 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.bs
2560 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2561 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/lib.pm
2562 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/re.pm
2563 /usr/share/doc/perl-base
2564 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
2565 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2566 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian.gz
2567 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
2568 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
2569 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
2571 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/AutoLoader.pm
2572 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp.pm
2573 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp/Heavy.pm
2574 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter.pm
2575 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2576 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec.pm
2577 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2578 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/FileHandle.pm
2579 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Getopt/Long.pm
2580 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2581 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2582 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open2.pm
2583 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open3.pm
2584 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/List/Util.pm
2585 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Scalar/Util.pm
2586 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/SelectSaver.pm
2587 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Symbol.pm
2588 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/ParseWords.pm
2589 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Tabs.pm
2590 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Wrap.pm
2591 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/attributes.pm
2592 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/base.pm
2593 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes.pm
2594 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes_heavy.pl
2595 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/constant.pm
2596 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/fields.pm
2597 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/integer.pm
2598 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/locale.pm
2599 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/overload.pm
2600 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/strict.pm
2601 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8.pm
2602 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8_heavy.pl
2603 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/vars.pm
2604 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings.pm
2605 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings/register.pm
2607 A nice trick to find out the minimal set of Perl library files you will
2608 need to run a Perl program is
2610 perl -e 'do "prog.pl"; END { print "$_\n" for sort keys %INC }'
2612 (this will not find libraries required in runtime, unfortunately, but
2613 it's a minimal set) and if you want to find out all the files you can
2614 use something like the below
2616 strace perl -le 'do "x.pl"' 2>&1 | perl -nle '/^open\(\"(.+?)"/ && print $1'
2618 (The 'strace' is Linux-specific, other similar utilities include 'truss'
2621 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
2623 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2624 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
2625 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
2626 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2627 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
2629 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
2630 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and
2633 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
2634 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
2636 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
2637 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
2640 Note that you must have performed the installation already before running
2641 the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate
2646 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2647 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2648 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
2650 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2651 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2653 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2655 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2656 the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2657 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2658 a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2659 and the contact information to match your distribution.