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.
11 First, make sure you have an up-to-date version of Perl. If you
12 didn't get your Perl source from CPAN, check the latest version at
13 http://www.cpan.org/src/. Perl uses a version scheme where even-numbered
14 subreleases (like 5.8.x and 5.10.x) are stable maintenance releases and
15 odd-numbered subreleases (like 5.7.x and 5.9.x) are unstable
16 development releases. Development releases should not be used in
17 production environments. Fixes and new features are first carefully
18 tested in development releases and only if they prove themselves to be
19 worthy will they be migrated to the maintenance releases.
21 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system with all
24 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
30 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
32 The above commands will install Perl to /usr/local (or some other
33 platform-specific directory -- see the appropriate file in hints/.)
34 If that's not okay with you, can run Configure interactively, by
35 just typing "sh Configure" (without the -de args). You can also specify
36 any prefix location by adding "-Dprefix='/some/dir'" to Configure's args.
37 To explicitly name the perl binary, use the command
38 "make install PERLNAME=myperl".
40 These options, and many more, are explained in further detail below.
42 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
43 L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
45 For information on what's new in this release, see the
46 pod/perl5100delta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
47 changes, see the Changes file.
51 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
52 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
53 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
54 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
56 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
58 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
61 Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
62 you should probably at least skim through this document before
65 In addition to this file, check if there is a README file specific to
66 your operating system, since it may provide additional or different
67 instructions for building Perl. If there is a hint file for your
68 system (in the hints/ directory) you should also read that hint file
69 for even more information. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh or
70 the svr5.sh hint file.)
72 For additional information about porting Perl, see the section on
73 L<"Porting information"> below, and look at the files in the Porting/
78 =head2 Changes and Incompatibilities
80 Please see pod/perl5100delta.pod for a description of the changes and
81 potential incompatibilities introduced with this release. A few of
82 the most important issues are listed below, but you should refer
83 to pod/perl5100delta.pod for more detailed information.
85 B<WARNING:> This version is not binary compatible with prior releases of Perl.
87 If you have built extensions (i.e. modules that include C code)
88 using an earlier version of Perl, you will need to rebuild and reinstall
91 Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
92 without reinstallation. See the discussions below on
93 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> and
94 L<"Upgrading from 5.005 or 5.6 to 5.8.0"> for more details.
96 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
98 On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the changes
99 in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
100 pod/perl5100delta.pod for a description of what's changed. See your
101 installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly incomplete)
102 list of locally installed modules. Also see CPAN::autobundle for one
103 way to make a "bundle" of your currently installed modules.
105 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
107 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
116 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
117 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
119 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
120 files. If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
121 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
122 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
123 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it
127 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
128 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
129 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
130 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
131 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
132 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Similarly, if you used
133 a shared libperl.so (see below) with version numbers, you will probably
134 want to adjust them as well.
136 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. For example, some
137 Linux distributions use i386, but Configure uses the output of the arch
138 command, which might be i686 instead. If you pick up a precompiled
139 binary, or compile extensions on different systems, they might not all
140 agree on the architecture name.
142 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
143 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
145 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
146 installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
147 using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
148 settings"> below. If you wish to start with a fresh distribution, you
149 also need to remove any old Policy.sh files you may have with
155 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
156 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
157 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
158 almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
159 since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
162 At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
163 defaults from then on.
165 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
166 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
168 =head2 Common Configure options
170 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run
174 to get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
175 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
181 To compile with gcc, if it's not the default compiler on your
182 system, you should run
184 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
186 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or any another alternative
187 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
189 =item Installation prefix
191 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
192 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
193 and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for
196 You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
197 directory when Configure prompts you, or by using the Configure command
198 line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
200 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
202 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
203 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
204 prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
205 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
206 for more details. Do not include a trailing slash, (i.e. /opt/perl/)
207 or you may experience odd test failures.
209 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
210 as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
211 attempt infinite recursion.
215 It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
216 find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
217 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
218 careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
219 vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing. If you insist
220 on replacing your vendor's perl, useful information on how it was
221 configured may be found with
225 (Check the output carefully, however, since this doesn't preserve
226 spaces in arguments to Configure. For that, you have to look carefully
227 at config_arg1, config_arg2, etc.)
229 By default, Configure will not try to link /usr/bin/perl to the current
230 version of perl. You can turn on that behavior by running
232 Configure -Dinstallusrbinperl
234 or by answering 'yes' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
236 In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to put
237 (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
238 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
239 obvious and convenient place.
241 =item Building a development release.
243 For development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.9.x) if you want to
244 use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel to Configure,
245 because the default answer to the question "do you really want to
246 Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel skips that
251 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
256 For example for my Solaris/x86 system, I usually use
258 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
260 =head2 Altering config.sh variables for C compiler switches etc.
262 For most users, most of the Configure defaults are fine, or can easily
263 be set on the Configure command line. However, if Configure doesn't
264 have an option to do what you want, you can change Configure variables
265 after the platform hints have been run by using Configure's -A switch.
266 For example, here's how to add a couple of extra flags to C compiler
269 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_EXTERNAL_GLOB -DNO_HASH_SEED"
271 To clarify, those ccflags values are not Configure options; if passed to
272 Configure directly, they won't do anything useful (that will define a config.sh
273 variable, but without taking any action based upon it). When passed to the
274 compiler, those flags will activate #ifdefd code.
276 For more help on Configure switches, run
280 =head2 Major Configure-time Build Options
282 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
283 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
284 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
285 some of the main things you can change.
289 On some platforms, perl can be compiled with support for threads. To
292 sh Configure -Dusethreads
294 Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command
295 line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
297 The default is to compile without thread support.
299 Perl used to have two different internal threads implementations. The current
300 model (available internally since 5.6, and as a user-level module since 5.8) is
301 called interpreter-based implementation (ithreads), with one interpreter per
302 thread, and explicit sharing of data. The (deprecated) 5.005 version
303 (5005threads) has been removed for release 5.10.
305 The 'threads' module is for use with the ithreads implementation. The
306 'Thread' module emulates the old 5005threads interface on top of the current
309 When using threads, perl uses a dynamically-sized buffer for some of
310 the thread-safe library calls, such as those in the getpw*() family.
311 This buffer starts small, but it will keep growing until the result
312 fits. To get a fixed upper limit, you should compile Perl with
313 PERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE defined to be the number of bytes you want. One
314 way to do this is to run Configure with
315 C<-Accflags=-DPERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE=65536>.
317 =head3 Large file support
319 Since Perl 5.6.0, Perl has supported large files (files larger than
320 2 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
321 support is on by default.
323 This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files,
324 seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad in that if you are interfacing Perl
325 using some extension, the components you are connecting to must also
326 be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
327 parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
330 There's also one known limitation with the current large files
331 implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
332 section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer formats
333 like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
335 =head3 64 bit support
337 If your platform does not run natively at 64 bits, but can simulate
338 them with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>,
339 you can build a perl that uses 64 bits.
341 There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
342 using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
343 -Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
344 the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
346 The C<use64bitint> option does only as much as is required to get
347 64-bit integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long
348 longs") while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because
349 your pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint>
350 does not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it
351 might, but it doesn't have to). The C<use64bitint> simply means that
352 you will be able to have 64 bit-wide scalar values.
354 The C<use64bitall> option goes all the way by attempting to switch
355 integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
356 create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
357 resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
358 have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
361 Natively 64-bit systems need neither -Duse64bitint nor -Duse64bitall.
365 In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
366 range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
367 (that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
368 this support (if it is available).
372 You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
373 and the long double support.
375 =head3 Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Hashes
377 In Perls 5.8.0 and earlier it was easy to create degenerate hashes.
378 Processing such hashes would consume large amounts of CPU time,
379 enabling a "Denial of Service" attack against Perl. Such hashes may be
380 a problem for example for mod_perl sites, sites with Perl CGI scripts
381 and web services, that process data originating from external sources.
383 In Perl 5.8.1 a security feature was introduced to make it harder to
384 create such degenerate hashes. A visible side effect of this was that
385 the keys(), values(), and each() functions may return the hash elements
386 in different order between different runs of Perl even with the same
387 data. It also had unintended binary incompatibility issues with
388 certain modules compiled against Perl 5.8.0.
390 In Perl 5.8.2 an improved scheme was introduced. Hashes will return
391 elements in the same order as Perl 5.8.0 by default. On a hash by hash
392 basis, if pathological data is detected during a hash key insertion,
393 then that hash will switch to an alternative random hash seed. As
394 adding keys can always dramatically change returned hash element order,
395 existing programs will not be affected by this, unless they
396 specifically test for pre-recorded hash return order for contrived
397 data. (eg the list of keys generated by C<map {"\0"x$_} 0..15> trigger
398 randomisation) In effect the new implementation means that 5.8.1 scheme
399 is only being used on hashes which are under attack.
401 One can still revert to the old guaranteed repeatable order (and be
402 vulnerable to attack by wily crackers) by setting the environment
403 variable PERL_HASH_SEED, see L<perlrun/PERL_HASH_SEED>. Another option
404 is to add -DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT to the compilation flags (for
405 example by using C<Configure -Accflags=-DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT>), in
406 which case one has to explicitly set the PERL_HASH_SEED environment
407 variable to enable the security feature, or by adding -DNO_HASH_SEED to
408 the compilation flags to completely disable the randomisation feature.
410 B<Perl has never guaranteed any ordering of the hash keys>, and the
411 ordering has already changed several times during the lifetime of Perl
412 5. Also, the ordering of hash keys has always been, and continues to
413 be, affected by the insertion order. Note that because of this
414 randomisation for example the Data::Dumper results will be different
415 between different runs of Perl, since Data::Dumper by default dumps
416 hashes "unordered". The use of the Data::Dumper C<Sortkeys> option is
421 Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
422 TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
423 access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
424 Version 5. You can find more about SOCKS from http://www.socks.nec.com/
426 =head3 Dynamic Loading
428 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
429 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
430 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
431 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
433 =head3 Building a shared Perl library
435 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
436 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
437 extensions, and various extra libraries, such as -lm.
439 On systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
440 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
441 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
442 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
443 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
444 can share the same library.
446 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
447 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
448 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
451 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
452 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
453 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
456 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
457 libperl.so.5.8.8 (for Perl 5.8.8), or libperl.so.588, or simply
458 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
459 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
460 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
461 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
463 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
465 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
467 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
468 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
469 NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
470 for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
471 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
472 be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
473 library search settings. You can find the name of the environment
474 variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
476 grep ldlibpthname config.sh
478 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
479 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
480 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
483 cd t; ./perl -MTestInit misc/failing_test.t
487 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
489 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
492 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
494 for Bourne-style shells, or
496 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
498 for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
499 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And
500 again, it may be something other than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
502 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
503 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
506 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
508 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
509 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
510 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
511 install a standard Perl 5.10.0 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
512 try to build Perl 5.10.0 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
513 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
514 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
515 libperl.so.8 rather with the installed libperl.so.8? The answer is
516 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
517 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
518 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
519 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux, you can only override at runtime via
520 LD_PRELOAD, specifying the exact filename you wish to be used; and on
521 Digital Unix, you can override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the
522 _RLD_ROOT environment variable to point to the perl build directory.
524 In other words, it is generally not a good idea to try to build a perl
525 with a shared library if $archlib/CORE/$libperl already exists from a
528 A good workaround is to specify a different directory for the
529 architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING version of perl.
530 You can do this by changing all the *archlib* variables in config.sh to
531 point to your new architecture-dependent library.
533 =head3 Environment access
535 Perl often needs to write to the program's environment, such as when C<%ENV>
536 is assigned to. Many implementations of the C library function C<putenv()>
537 leak memory, so where possible perl will manipulate the environment directly
538 to avoid these leaks. The default is now to perform direct manipulation
539 whenever perl is running as a stand alone interpreter, and to call the safe
540 but potentially leaky C<putenv()> function when the perl interpreter is
541 embedded in another application. You can force perl to always use C<putenv()>
542 by compiling with -DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV. You can force an embedded perl to
543 use direct manipulation by setting C<PL_use_safe_putenv = 0;> after the
544 C<perl_construct()> call.
546 =head2 Installation Directories
548 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
549 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the installation
550 questions are near the beginning of Configure. Do not include trailing
551 slashes on directory names. At any point during the Configure process,
552 you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use the defaults
553 from then on. Alternatively, you can
555 grep '^install' config.sh
557 after Configure has run to verify the installation paths.
559 The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
560 people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
561 distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
562 need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
563 you can safely skip the next section.
565 The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
569 =item Directories for the perl distribution
571 By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.10.0.
572 $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
573 5.10.0 or 5.9.5, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
574 determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
575 variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
577 Configure variable Default value
578 $prefixexp /usr/local
579 $binexp $prefixexp/bin
580 $scriptdirexp $prefixexp/bin
581 $privlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version
582 $archlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
583 $man1direxp $prefixexp/man/man1
584 $man3direxp $prefixexp/man/man3
588 $prefixexp is generated from $prefix, with ~ expansion done to convert home
589 directories into absolute paths. Similarly for the other variables listed. As
590 file system calls do not do this, you should always reference the ...exp
591 variables, to support users who build perl in their home directory.
593 Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
594 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
595 instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
596 directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
597 the common style is shown here.
599 =item Directories for site-specific add-on files
601 After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
602 CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
603 be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
605 Configure variable Default value
606 $siteprefixexp $prefixexp
607 $sitebinexp $siteprefixexp/bin
608 $sitescriptexp $siteprefixexp/bin
609 $sitelibexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
610 $sitearchexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
611 $siteman1direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man1
612 $siteman3direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man3
613 $sitehtml1direxp (none)
614 $sitehtml3direxp (none)
616 By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
617 modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
619 =item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
621 Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
622 distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
623 for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
625 Configure variable Default value
626 $vendorprefixexp (none)
627 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
628 $vendorbinexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
629 $vendorscriptexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
631 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
633 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
634 $vendorman1direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man1
635 $vendorman3direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man3
636 $vendorhtml1direxp (none)
637 $vendorhtml3direxp (none)
639 These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
640 a vendor might choose the following settings:
643 $siteprefix /usr/local
646 This would have the effect of setting the following:
649 $scriptdirexp /usr/bin
650 $privlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version
651 $archlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
652 $man1direxp /usr/man/man1
653 $man3direxp /usr/man/man3
655 $sitebinexp /usr/local/bin
656 $sitescriptexp /usr/local/bin
657 $sitelibexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
658 $sitearchexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
659 $siteman1direxp /usr/local/man/man1
660 $siteman3direxp /usr/local/man/man3
662 $vendorbinexp /usr/bin
663 $vendorscriptexp /usr/bin
664 $vendorlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
665 $vendorarchexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
666 $vendorman1direxp /usr/man/man1
667 $vendorman3direxp /usr/man/man3
669 Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
670 /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
671 the /usr/local hierarchy.
673 The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
674 version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
675 However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
676 installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
677 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for more details
678 on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
680 Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
681 example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
682 are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
683 site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
684 network. One way to do that would be something like
686 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
690 As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
691 variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
692 directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
693 Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
694 version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
696 For example, if you have a bundle of perl libraries from a previous
697 installation, perhaps in a strange place:
699 Configure -Dotherlibdirs=/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1
703 There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
704 that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
705 separated list of directories, like this
707 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
709 The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
710 ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
711 modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
712 touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
713 version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
714 present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
715 directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
716 run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
718 =item USE_SITECUSTOMIZE
720 Run-time customization of @INC can be enabled with:
722 sh Configure -Dusesitecustomize
724 Which will define USE_SITECUSTOMIZE and $Config{usesitecustomize}.
725 When enabled, make perl run F<$sitelibexp/sitecustomize.pl> before
726 anything else. This script can then be set up to add additional
731 By default, man pages will be installed in $man1dir and $man3dir, which
732 are normally /usr/local/man/man1 and /usr/local/man/man3. If you
733 want to use a .3pm suffix for perl man pages, you can do that with
735 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
739 Currently, the standard perl installation does not do anything with
740 HTML documentation, but that may change in the future. Further, some
741 add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The html Configure
742 variables listed above are provided if you wish to specify where such
743 documents should be placed. The default is "none", but will likely
744 eventually change to something useful based on user feedback.
748 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
749 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
752 Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
753 directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
756 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
757 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
758 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below.
760 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
761 library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
762 suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
764 Thus, for example, if you Configure with
765 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.9.0 are
767 Configure variable Default value
768 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0
769 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0/$archname
770 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0
771 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0/$archname
773 =head2 Changing the installation directory
775 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
776 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
777 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
778 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
779 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
780 packages, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
781 wish to install perl into a different directory and use that
782 management software to move perl to its final destination. This
783 section describes how to do that.
785 To install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory, use the following
788 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
790 (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
792 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
793 modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
794 follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with
797 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
799 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is convenient
800 to compile it once and create an archive that can be installed on
801 multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to create an
802 archive that can be installed in /opt/perl. One way to do that is by
803 using the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>. The DESTDIR is
804 automatically prepended to all the installation paths. Thus you
807 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
810 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
811 cd /tmp/perl5/opt/perl
812 tar cvf /tmp/perl5-archive.tar .
814 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
816 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
817 answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact
818 person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another
819 system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file
820 to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate
821 hint file for your system. This will work even if Policy.sh was
822 generated for another version of Perl, or on a system with a
823 different architecture and/or operating system. However, in such cases,
824 you should review the contents of the file before using it: for
825 example, your new target may not keep its man pages in the same place
826 as the system on which the file was generated.
828 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
833 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
835 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
837 If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
838 to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
839 platform-specific hints files.
841 =head2 Disabling older versions of Perl
843 Configure will search for binary compatible versions of previously
844 installed perl binaries in the tree that is specified as target tree
845 and these will be used by the perl being built.
846 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> for more details.
848 To disable this use of older perl modules, even completely valid pure perl
849 modules, you can specify to not include the paths found:
851 sh Configure -Dinc_version_list=none ...
853 When using the newer perl, you can add these paths again in the
854 $PERL5LIB environment variable or with perl's -I runtime option.
856 =head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
858 Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
859 where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
860 read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
861 architectures. You can do this (if your file system supports symbolic
864 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
865 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
866 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
868 This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
869 pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
870 unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
874 as usual, and Perl will be built in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
876 =head2 Building a debugging perl
878 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
879 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
880 you probably want to have support for perl internal debugging code
881 (activated by adding -DDEBUGGING to ccflags), and/or support for the
882 system debugger by adding -g to optimize.
884 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING
888 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING=<mode>
890 For a more eye appealing call, -DEBUGGING is defined to be an alias
891 for -DDEBUGGING. For both, the -U calls are also supported, in order
892 to be able to overrule the hints or Policy.sh settings.
898 Which is the default, and supports the old convention of
900 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
902 This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
903 to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
904 executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
905 cc -g2. Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for
906 your system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags
907 variable in config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's
908 internal state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by default
909 if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to reuse your
910 old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the optimize and
911 ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes as shown in
912 L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
914 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
915 it's convenient to have both.
921 =item -DEBUGGING=both
923 Sets both -DDEBUGGING in the ccflags, and add -g to optimize.
927 Adds -g to optimize, but does not set -DDEBUGGING.
929 =item -DEBUGGING=none
931 Removes -g from optimize, and -DDEBUGGING from ccflags.
935 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
936 versions of perl under L<Building a shared Perl library>.
940 Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
941 in the ext/ subdirectory.
943 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
944 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
945 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
946 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
947 is always built by default. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
948 set the Configure variable useposix=false from the Configure command line.
950 If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
951 running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
952 extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
953 it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
954 has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
955 extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
956 convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
957 you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
958 dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
960 If you have dynamic loading, another way of specifying extra modules
961 is described in L<"Adding extra modules to the build"> below.
963 You can learn more about each of the supplied extensions by consulting the
964 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
967 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
968 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
969 version. Configure will suggest this as the default.
971 To disable certain extensions so that they are not built, use the
972 -Dnoextensions=... and -Donlyextensions=... options. They both accept
973 a space-separated list of extensions. The extensions listed in
974 C<noextensions> are removed from the list of extensions to build, while
975 the C<onlyextensions> is rather more severe and builds only the listed
976 extensions. The latter should be used with extreme caution since
977 certain extensions are used by many other extensions and modules:
978 examples of such modules include Fcntl and IO. The order of processing
979 these options is first C<only> (if present), then C<no> (if present).
981 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
982 the extensions you want.
984 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley
985 DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect
986 this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with earlier
987 releases of version 2.
989 If you re-use your old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
990 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
991 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
994 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern systems do)
995 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
996 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
997 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
999 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
1001 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
1002 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
1003 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
1004 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
1005 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
1006 how to obtain the libraries.
1008 If your database header (.h) files are not in a directory normally
1009 searched by your C compiler, then you will need to include the
1010 appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by Configure. If
1011 your database libraries are not in a directory normally
1012 searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to include
1013 the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by Configure.
1014 See the examples below.
1020 =item gdbm in /usr/local
1022 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
1023 GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
1024 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
1025 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
1026 necessary steps out automatically.
1028 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1029 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
1031 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
1034 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
1035 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1038 Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1039 you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1040 /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
1042 =item gdbm in /usr/you
1044 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
1045 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
1046 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
1047 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
1048 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
1049 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
1050 /usr/you/lib to the list.
1052 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
1056 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
1057 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
1059 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1060 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1062 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
1063 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
1064 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
1065 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
1068 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
1069 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
1073 =head2 Building DB, NDBM, and ODBM interfaces with Berkeley DB 3
1075 A Perl interface for DB3 is part of Berkeley DB, but if you want to
1076 compile the standard Perl DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you must follow
1077 following instructions.
1079 Berkeley DB3 from Sleepycat Software is by default installed without
1080 DB1 compatibility code (needed for the DB_File interface) and without
1081 links to compatibility files. So if you want to use packages written
1082 for the DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you need to configure DB3 with
1083 --enable-compat185 (and optionally with --enable-dump185) and create
1084 additional references (suppose you are installing DB3 with
1087 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdbm.so
1088 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libndbm.so
1089 echo '#define DB_DBM_HSEARCH 1' >dbm.h
1090 echo '#include <db.h>' >>dbm.h
1091 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/dbm.h
1092 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/ndbm.h
1094 Optionally, if you have compiled with --enable-compat185 (not needed
1097 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb1.so
1098 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb.so
1100 ODBM emulation seems not to be perfect, but is quite usable,
1103 lib/odbm.............FAILED at test 9
1104 Failed 1/64 tests, 98.44% okay
1106 =head2 Overriding an old config.sh
1108 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
1109 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
1111 =head2 GNU-style configure
1113 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
1114 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
1116 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
1118 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
1121 ./configure.gnu --help
1125 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
1126 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
1128 See L<Cross-compilation> below for information on cross-compiling.
1130 =head2 Malloc Issues
1132 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
1133 so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
1134 the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
1135 version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
1136 perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
1137 than your system malloc.
1139 However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
1140 experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
1141 that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
1142 (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
1146 =item Using the system malloc
1148 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
1150 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
1152 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
1154 =item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
1156 NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you just
1157 run Configure to accept all the defaults on those platforms.
1159 Perl's malloc family of functions are normally called Perl_malloc(),
1160 Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree().
1161 These names do not clash with the system versions of these functions.
1163 If this flag is enabled, however, Perl's malloc family of functions
1164 will have the same names as the system versions. This may be required
1165 sometimes if you have libraries that like to free() data that may have
1166 been allocated by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1168 Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1169 from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1170 does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1173 =item -DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS
1175 This flag enables debugging mstats, which is required to use the
1176 Devel::Peek::mstat() function. You cannot enable this unless you are
1177 using Perl's malloc, so a typical Configure command would be
1179 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS -Dusemymalloc='y'
1181 to enable this option.
1185 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1187 If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1188 If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1192 =item Running Configure Interactively
1194 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1195 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1198 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1199 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1200 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1201 will use the defaults from then on.
1203 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1204 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1205 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1209 Hint files tell Configure about a number of things:
1215 The peculiarities or conventions of particular platforms -- non-standard
1216 library locations and names, default installation locations for binaries,
1221 The deficiencies of the platform -- for example, library functions that,
1222 although present, are too badly broken to be usable; or limits on
1223 resources that are generously available on most platforms.
1227 How best to optimize for the platform, both in terms of binary size and/or
1228 speed, and for Perl feature support. Because of wide variations in the
1229 implementation of shared libraries and of threading, for example, Configure
1230 often needs hints in order to be able to use these features.
1234 The perl distribution includes many system-specific hints files
1235 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1236 will offer to use that hint file. Unless you have a very good reason
1237 not to, you should accept its offer.
1239 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1240 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1241 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1242 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
1243 file, which also explains hint files known as callback-units.
1245 Note that any hint file is read before any Policy file, meaning that
1246 Policy overrides hints -- see L</Site-wide Policy settings>.
1248 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1250 If you are re-using an old config.sh, it's possible that Configure detects
1251 different values from the ones specified in this file. You will almost
1252 always want to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something
1255 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1256 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1257 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1258 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1261 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1262 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1263 Keep the previous value? [y]
1265 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1266 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1267 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1269 =item Changing Compilers
1271 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1272 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1273 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
1274 with the options you want to use.
1276 This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
1277 gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
1279 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1281 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1282 them to all the .SH files by running
1286 You will then have to rebuild by running
1291 =item config.over and config.arch
1293 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride
1294 Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1295 before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1296 however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1297 This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1299 There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1300 config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1301 architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1302 hints file that creates the config.arch.
1306 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1307 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1308 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1310 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1311 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1316 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1317 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1318 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1319 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1320 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1321 lost the next time you run Configure.
1323 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1324 see the file hints/README.hints.
1326 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1327 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1334 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1335 Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1336 system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1337 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1340 =item Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX and BIN_SH
1342 In Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX, Configure might abort with
1344 Build a threading Perl? [n]
1345 Configure[2437]: Syntax error at line 1 : `config.sh' is not expected.
1347 This indicates that Configure is being run with a broken Korn shell
1348 (even though you think you are using a Bourne shell by using
1349 "sh Configure" or "./Configure"). The Korn shell bug has been reported
1350 to Compaq as of February 1999 but in the meanwhile, the reason ksh is
1351 being used is that you have the environment variable BIN_SH set to
1352 'xpg4'. This causes /bin/sh to delegate its duties to /bin/posix/sh
1353 (a ksh). Unset the environment variable and rerun Configure.
1355 =item HP-UX 11, pthreads, and libgdbm
1357 If you are running Configure with -Dusethreads in HP-UX 11, be warned
1358 that POSIX threads and libgdbm (the GNU dbm library) compiled before
1359 HP-UX 11 do not mix. This will cause a basic test run by Configure to
1362 Pthread internal error: message: __libc_reinit() failed, file: ../pthreads/pthread.c, line: 1096
1363 Return Pointer is 0xc082bf33
1364 sh: 5345 Quit(coredump)
1366 and Configure will give up. The cure is to recompile and install
1367 libgdbm under HP-UX 11.
1369 =item Porting information
1371 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan 9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1372 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1373 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1374 subdirectory. Porting/Glossary should especially come in handy.
1376 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1377 http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
1378 various other operating systems.
1380 If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture, study carefully the
1381 section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1382 in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file Porting/patching.pod.
1383 Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1387 =head2 Adding extra modules to the build
1389 You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1390 CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1391 command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1393 Configure -Dextras="Bundle::LWP DBI"
1395 or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
1396 then answer "Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
1397 The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
1398 This will only work if those modules are to be built as dynamic
1399 extensions. If you wish to include those extra modules as static
1400 extensions, see L<"Extensions"> above.
1402 Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1403 modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1404 or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1405 do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1407 Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1408 dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
1409 For example: you will need to have the Foo database specific
1410 headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1411 process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1415 suidperl is an optional component, which is normally neither built
1416 nor installed by default. From perlfaq1:
1418 On some systems, setuid and setgid scripts (scripts written
1419 in the C shell, Bourne shell, or Perl, for example, with the
1420 set user or group ID permissions enabled) are insecure due to
1421 a race condition in the kernel. For those systems, Perl versions
1422 5 and 4 attempt to work around this vulnerability with an optional
1423 component, a special program named suidperl, also known as sperl.
1424 This program attempts to emulate the set-user-ID and set-group-ID
1425 features of the kernel.
1427 Because of the buggy history of suidperl, and the difficulty
1428 of properly security auditing as large and complex piece of
1429 software as Perl, we cannot recommend using suidperl and the feature
1430 should be considered deprecated.
1432 Instead, use a tool specifically designed to handle changes in
1433 privileges, such as B<sudo>.
1437 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1438 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1439 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1440 makefile, not Makefile, since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1441 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1442 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1444 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1449 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1451 =head2 Expected errors
1453 These errors are normal, and can be ignored:
1456 make: [extra.pods] Error 1 (ignored)
1458 make: [extras.make] Error 1 (ignored)
1460 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1462 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1463 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1464 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1465 then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1471 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1472 for further tips and information.
1476 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1477 during the building of extensions, run
1481 to test your version of miniperl.
1485 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1486 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1487 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1488 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1489 whole L<perllocale/"LOCALE PROBLEMS"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1490 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1492 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1493 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1496 are supported and installed on your system.
1497 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1503 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1504 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1505 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1506 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by installing gcc
1507 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1508 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1509 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1513 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1514 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1516 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1517 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1518 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1520 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1521 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1523 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1525 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1526 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1527 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1528 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1529 of your local set-up.
1533 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1534 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1537 sh Configure -Uusenm
1539 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1540 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1543 =item umask not found
1545 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1546 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1547 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1548 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1549 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1553 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1554 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1555 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1556 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1557 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1561 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1562 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1563 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1567 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1568 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1569 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1570 on L<"nm extraction">.
1572 =item __inet_* errors
1574 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1575 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1576 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1577 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1578 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1579 newer version of BIND (and remove the files the old one left behind).
1580 If you can't, you can either link with the updated resolver library provided
1581 with BIND 8.1 or rename /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and
1582 test process to avoid the problem.
1584 =item *_r() prototype NOT found
1586 On a related note, if you see a bunch of complaints like the above about
1587 reentrant functions - specifically networking-related ones - being present
1588 but without prototypes available, check to see if BIND 8.1 (or possibly
1589 other BIND 8 versions) is (or has been) installed. They install
1590 header files such as netdb.h into places such as /usr/local/include (or into
1591 another directory as specified at build/install time), at least optionally.
1592 Remove them or put them in someplace that isn't in the C preprocessor's
1593 header file include search path (determined by -I options plus defaults,
1594 normally /usr/include).
1596 =item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1598 This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1599 gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1600 changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1601 rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1602 update your gcc installation.
1606 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1607 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1615 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1616 with B<make depend; make>.
1618 =item Missing functions and Undefined symbols
1620 If the build of miniperl fails with a long list of missing functions or
1621 undefined symbols, check the libs variable in the config.sh file. It
1622 should look something like
1624 libs='-lsocket -lnsl -ldl -lm -lc'
1626 The exact libraries will vary from system to system, but you typically
1627 need to include at least the math library -lm. Normally, Configure
1628 will suggest the correct defaults. If the libs variable is empty, you
1629 need to start all over again. Run
1633 and start from the very beginning. This time, unless you are sure of
1634 what you are doing, accept the default list of libraries suggested by
1637 If the libs variable looks correct, you might have the
1638 L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1640 If you stil have missing routines or undefined symbols, you probably
1641 need to add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature
1642 that Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete. If
1643 you used a hint file, see if it has any relevant advice. You can also
1644 look through through config.h for likely suspects.
1648 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1649 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1650 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1651 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1652 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1655 =item Missing dbmclose
1657 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1658 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1660 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1662 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1663 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1664 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1665 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1666 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1667 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1668 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1669 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1670 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1671 process is continuing.
1673 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1676 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1678 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1679 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1680 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1682 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1683 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1684 quite that tightly coordinated.
1686 =item sh: ar: not found
1688 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1689 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1690 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1691 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1694 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1696 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1697 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1698 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1700 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1702 If you get this error message from the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem test, your System
1703 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1704 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1705 to include the System V semaphores.
1707 =item ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem........semget: No space left on device
1709 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1710 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1711 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1712 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1717 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1718 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1719 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1720 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1721 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1722 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1723 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1724 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1726 =item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1728 The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1729 make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1730 archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1731 C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1732 archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1733 incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1734 official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1735 that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1736 archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1738 =item invalid token: ##
1740 You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. To compile Perl, you
1741 need to use a compiler that supports ANSI C. If there is a README
1742 file for your system, it may have further details on your compiler
1747 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1749 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1751 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1753 UTS may need one or more of -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1755 FreeBSD can fail the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1756 configured in the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1757 you will get a message telling you what to do.
1759 HP-UX 11 Y2K patch "Y2K-1100 B.11.00.B0125 HP-UX Core OS Year 2000
1760 Patch Bundle" has been reported to break the io/fs test #18 which
1761 tests whether utime() can change timestamps. The Y2K patch seems to
1762 break utime() so that over NFS the timestamps do not get changed
1763 (on local filesystems utime() still works).
1765 Building Perl on a system that has also BIND (headers and libraries)
1766 installed may run into troubles because BIND installs its own netdb.h
1767 and socket.h, which may not agree with the operating system's ideas of
1768 the same files. Similarly, including -lbind may conflict with libc's
1769 view of the world. You may have to tweak -Dlocincpth and -Dloclibpth
1774 =head2 Cross-compilation
1776 Perl can be cross-compiled. It is just not trivial, cross-compilation
1777 rarely is. Perl is routinely cross-compiled for many platforms (as of
1778 June 2005 at least PocketPC aka WinCE, Open Zaurus, EPOC, Symbian, and
1779 the IBM OS/400). These platforms are known as the B<target> platforms,
1780 while the systems where the compilation takes place are the B<host>
1783 What makes the situation difficult is that first of all,
1784 cross-compilation environments vary significantly in how they are set
1785 up and used, and secondly because the primary way of configuring Perl
1786 (using the rather large Unix-tool-dependent Configure script) is not
1787 awfully well suited for cross-compilation. However, starting from
1788 version 5.8.0, the Configure script also knows one way of supporting
1789 cross-compilation support, please keep reading.
1791 See the following files for more information about compiling Perl for
1792 the particular platforms:
1796 =item WinCE/PocketPC
1818 Packaging and transferring either the core Perl modules or CPAN
1819 modules to the target platform is also left up to the each
1820 cross-compilation environment. Often the cross-compilation target
1821 platforms are somewhat limited in diskspace: see the section
1822 L<Minimizing the Perl installation> to learn more of the minimal set
1823 of files required for a functional Perl installation.
1825 For some cross-compilation environments the Configure option
1826 C<-Dinstallprefix=...> might be handy, see L<Changing the installation
1829 About the cross-compilation support of Configure: what is known to
1830 work is running Configure in a cross-compilation environment and
1831 building the miniperl executable. What is known not to work is
1832 building the perl executable because that would require building
1833 extensions: Dynaloader statically and File::Glob dynamically, for
1834 extensions one needs MakeMaker and MakeMaker is not yet
1835 cross-compilation aware, and neither is the main Makefile.
1837 The cross-compilation setup of Configure has successfully been used in
1838 at least two Linux cross-compilation environments. The setups were
1839 both such that the host system was Intel Linux with a gcc built for
1840 cross-compiling into ARM Linux, and there was a SSH connection to the
1843 To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch that
1844 has to be used is C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
1846 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1848 This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
1849 symbol C<usecrosscompile> available, and C<xconfig.h> will be used
1850 for cross-compilation.
1852 During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1853 into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1854 cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1855 target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1856 transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1857 the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1858 methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1859 F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1861 To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1862 the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1863 happens), supply Configure with
1865 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1867 The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
1868 must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1869 You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
1873 but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
1875 Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
1876 which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
1877 This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
1878 In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
1881 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
1883 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1884 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1885 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
1887 If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
1888 compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
1889 C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
1890 (The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
1891 as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
1892 will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
1893 in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
1895 In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
1896 choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
1899 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
1901 Putting it all together:
1903 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1904 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1905 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
1907 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
1908 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1909 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1910 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1911 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
1914 or if you are happy with the defaults:
1916 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1917 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1918 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1921 Another example where the cross-compiler has been installed under
1922 F</usr/local/arm/2.95.5>:
1924 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1925 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1926 -Dcc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/bin/arm-linux-gcc \
1927 -Dincpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
1928 -Dusrinc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
1929 -Dlibpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/lib
1933 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
1934 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
1935 wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1937 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1938 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1939 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1941 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1943 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1944 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1945 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1949 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1950 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1954 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1955 complicated constructs). For extension and library tests you
1956 need a little bit more: you need to setup your environment variable
1957 PERL_CORE to a true value (like "1"), and you need to supply the
1958 right Perl library path:
1961 ./perl -I../lib ../ext/Socket/Socket.t
1962 ./perl -I../lib ../lib/less.t
1964 (For csh-like shells on UNIX; adjust appropriately for other platforms.)
1965 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1966 comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
1967 shared library path if you get errors like:
1969 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
1971 See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
1977 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1978 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1979 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1980 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1981 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1982 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1984 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1990 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1992 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1993 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1994 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1995 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1996 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1997 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
2000 =item Timing problems
2002 Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
2003 sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
2004 If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough,
2005 these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again
2006 with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive
2007 and load-sensitive tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
2008 F<ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t>, F<lib/Benchmark.t>,
2009 F<lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t>, and F<lib/Memoize/t/speed.t>.
2013 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
2014 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
2015 For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
2016 test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
2018 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
2020 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
2022 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
2023 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
2024 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
2025 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
2027 =item Failures from lib/File/Temp/t/security saying "system possibly insecure"
2029 First, such warnings are not necessarily serious or indicative of a
2030 real security threat. That being said, they bear investigating.
2032 Note that each of the tests is run twice. The first time is in the
2033 directory returned by File::Spec->tmpdir() (often /tmp on Unix
2034 systems), and the second time in the directory from which the test was
2035 run (usually the 't' directory, if the test was run as part of 'make
2038 The tests may fail for the following reasons:
2040 (1) If the directory the tests are being run in is owned by somebody
2041 other than the user running the tests, or by root (uid 0).
2043 This failure can happen if the Perl source code distribution is
2044 unpacked in such a way that the user ids in the distribution package
2045 are used as-is. Some tar programs do this.
2047 (2) If the directory the tests are being run in is writable by group or
2048 by others, and there is no sticky bit set for the directory. (With
2049 UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to a directory means the right to
2050 add or remove files in that directory. The 'sticky bit' is a feature
2051 used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if the bit is
2052 set for a directory, no one but the owner (or root) can remove that
2053 file even if the permissions would otherwise allow file removal by
2056 This failure may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the
2057 permissions policy used on this particular system. This failure can
2058 also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit (this
2059 is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle File::Temp
2060 should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or if the system
2061 supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons it is not being
2062 used. This is, for example, the case with HP-UX: as of HP-UX release
2063 11.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX doesn't use it
2064 on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also, as with the permissions, some
2065 local policy might dictate that the stickiness is not used.
2067 (3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
2068 any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
2069 directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
2070 (2). For Unix systems, this is usually not an issue if you are
2071 building on a local disk. See the documentation for the File::Temp
2072 module for more information about 'chown giveaway'.
2074 See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
2075 about the various security aspects of temporary files.
2081 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
2082 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
2083 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
2084 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
2085 are not root, you must still have permission to install into the directories
2086 in question and you should ignore any messages about chown not working.
2088 If "make install" just says "`install' is up to date" or something
2089 similar, you may be on a case-insensitive filesystems such as Mac's HFS+,
2090 and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion is brought to you
2091 by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
2093 =head2 Installing perl under different names
2095 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
2096 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
2097 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
2099 make install PERLNAME=myperl
2101 You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
2102 "perl5.8.9") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
2104 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
2106 This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (e.g. to
2107 avoid conflicts with an ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor).
2108 Without this the versioned binary would be called "perl55.8.8".
2110 =head2 Installing perl under a different directory
2112 You can install perl under a different destination directory by using
2113 the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>, with a command like
2115 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
2117 DESTDIR is automatically prepended to all the installation paths. See
2118 the example in L<"Creating an installable tar archive"> above.
2120 =head2 Installed files
2122 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
2123 anything, you can run
2125 ./perl installperl -n
2126 ./perl installman -n
2128 make install will install the following:
2133 perl5.n.n where 5.n.n is the current release number. This
2134 will be a link to perl.
2136 sperl5.n.n If you requested setuid emulation.
2137 a2p awk-to-perl translator
2141 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
2143 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
2144 s2p sed-to-perl translator
2145 find2perl find-to-perl translator
2146 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
2147 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
2148 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
2149 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
2150 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
2151 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
2152 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
2158 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
2159 dprofpp Perl code profile post-processor
2163 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
2164 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
2168 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2170 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
2171 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2173 Installperl will also create the directories listed above
2174 in L<"Installation Directories">.
2176 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
2177 under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
2178 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2179 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
2181 Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2182 installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
2183 perl alongside an already installed production version of perl without
2184 disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2185 To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2187 Configure -Dversiononly
2189 or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2190 you can just manually run
2192 ./perl installperl -v
2194 and skip installman altogether.
2195 See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2198 =head1 Reporting Problems
2200 Wherever possible please use the perlbug tool supplied with this Perl
2201 to report problems, as it automatically includes summary configuration
2202 information about your perl, which may help us track down problems far
2203 more quickly. But first you should read the advice in this file,
2204 carefully re-read the error message and check the relevant manual pages
2205 on your system, as these may help you find an immediate solution. If
2206 you are not sure whether what you are seeing is a bug, you can send a
2207 message describing the problem to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup to
2210 The perlbug tool is installed along with perl, so after you have
2211 completed C<make install> it should be possible to run it with plain
2212 C<perlbug>. If the install fails, or you want to report problems with
2213 C<make test> without installing perl, then you can use C<make nok> to
2214 run perlbug to report the problem, or run it by hand from this source
2215 directory with C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug>
2217 If the build fails too early to run perlbug uninstalled, then please
2218 B<run> the C<./myconfig> shell script, and mail its output along with
2219 an accurate description of your problem to perlbug@perl.org
2221 If Configure itself fails, and does not generate a config.sh file
2222 (needed to run C<./myconfig>), then please mail perlbug@perl.org the
2223 description of how Configure fails along with details of your system
2224 - for example the output from running C<uname -a>
2226 Please try to make your message brief but clear. Brief, clear bug
2227 reports tend to get answered more quickly. Please don't worry if your
2228 written English is not great - what matters is how well you describe
2229 the important technical details of the problem you have encountered,
2230 not whether your grammar and spelling is flawless.
2232 Trim out unnecessary information. Do not include large files (such as
2233 config.sh or a complete Configure or make log) unless absolutely
2234 necessary. Do not include a complete transcript of your build
2235 session. Just include the failing commands, the relevant error
2236 messages, and whatever preceding commands are necessary to give the
2237 appropriate context. Plain text should usually be sufficient--fancy
2238 attachments or encodings may actually reduce the number of people who
2239 read your message. Your message will get relayed to over 400
2240 subscribers around the world so please try to keep it brief but clear.
2242 If you are unsure what makes a good bug report please read "How to
2243 report Bugs Effectively" by Simon Tatham:
2244 http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html
2246 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
2248 Perl 5.10 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
2249 In other words, you will have to recompile your XS modules.
2251 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
2252 5.8.0) to another similar version (e.g. 5.8.2) without re-compiling
2253 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
2254 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
2255 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
2256 with 5.8.2, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
2257 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
2258 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.8.2.
2260 Usually, most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to be
2261 used with a newer version of Perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
2262 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
2264 Suppose you already have version 5.005_03 installed. The directories
2265 searched by 5.005_03 are
2267 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503/$archname
2268 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503
2269 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2270 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2272 Beginning with 5.6.0 the version number in the site libraries are
2273 fully versioned. Now, suppose you install version 5.6.0. The directories
2274 searched by version 5.6.0 will be
2276 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/$archname
2277 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0
2278 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
2279 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2281 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2282 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2283 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2285 Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
2286 of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
2287 directories. This way, modules installed under 5.005_03 will continue
2288 to be usable by 5.005_03 but will also accessible to 5.6.0. Further,
2289 suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
2290 present only in 5.6.0. That new module will get installed into
2291 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0 and will be available to 5.6.0,
2292 but will not interfere with the 5.005_03 version.
2294 The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
2295 5.6.0 and above will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
2297 Lastly, suppose you now install 5.8.0, which is not binary compatible
2298 with 5.6.0. The directories searched by 5.8.0 (if you don't change the
2299 Configure defaults) will be:
2301 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0/$archname
2302 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0
2303 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/$archname
2304 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0
2306 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2308 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2310 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2312 Note that the earlier $archname entries are now gone, but pure perl
2313 modules from earlier versions will still be found.
2315 Assuming the users in your site are still actively using perl 5.6.0 and
2316 5.005 after you installed 5.8.0, you can continue to install add-on
2317 extensions using any of perl 5.8.0, 5.6.0, or 5.005. The installations
2318 of these different versions remain distinct, but remember that the
2319 newer versions of perl are automatically set up to search the
2320 compatible site libraries of the older ones. This means that
2321 installing a new XS extension with 5.005 will make it visible to both
2322 5.005 and 5.6.0, but not to 5.8.0. Installing a pure perl module with
2323 5.005 will make it visible to all three versions. Later, if you
2324 install the same extension using, say, perl 5.8.0, it will override the
2325 5.005-installed version, but only for perl 5.8.0.
2327 This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2328 to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2329 versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
2331 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
2333 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
2334 separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
2335 won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2336 libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2337 way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
2339 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.8.2
2341 and adding /opt/perl5.8.2/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
2342 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2343 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2345 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
2346 (e.g. 5.8 for all 5.8.x versions), but change directory with
2349 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2350 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2351 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2354 =head2 Upgrading from 5.005 or 5.6 to 5.8.0
2356 B<Perl 5.9.0 is binary incompatible with Perl 5.8.x, Perl 5.6.x, 5.005,
2357 and any earlier Perl release.> Perl modules having binary parts
2358 (meaning that a C compiler is used) will have to be recompiled to be
2359 used with 5.9.0. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with
2360 5.9.0, you may safely do so without disturbing the older
2361 installations. (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5">
2364 See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2365 incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
2366 perllocal.pod, not perllocale.pod, for installed module information.
2368 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2370 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2371 system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2372 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2373 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2374 library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2376 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2377 of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2378 hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2379 For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2382 =head1 installhtml --help
2384 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2385 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2386 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2388 Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2389 html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2391 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2396 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2398 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2399 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2400 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2401 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2402 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
2405 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2406 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2407 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2408 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2409 (and would welcome patches for them).
2411 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2412 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2414 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2416 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2417 available in TeX format. Type
2419 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2421 =head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2423 The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2424 Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2425 operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2427 Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way:
2428 Encode, with its big conversion tables, consumes a lot of
2429 space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything. The
2430 Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network
2431 programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all
2432 depends on what do you need to do.
2434 In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2435 recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2436 depends on what you need.
2438 Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2442 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2446 in Linux is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
2449 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/strict.pm
2450 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/warnings.pm
2451 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/File/Glob.pm
2452 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/XSLoader.pm
2453 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2455 Secondly, Debian perl-base package contains the following files,
2456 size about 1.9MB in its i386 version:
2461 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B.pm
2462 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B/Deparse.pm
2463 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Config.pm
2464 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Cwd.pm
2465 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Data/Dumper.pm
2466 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/DynaLoader.pm
2467 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Errno.pm
2468 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Fcntl.pm
2469 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/File/Glob.pm
2470 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO.pm
2471 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/File.pm
2472 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Handle.pm
2473 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Pipe.pm
2474 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Seekable.pm
2475 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Select.pm
2476 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket.pm
2477 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/POSIX.pm
2478 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Socket.pm
2479 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/XSLoader.pm
2480 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.bs
2481 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.so
2482 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.bs
2483 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.so
2484 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a
2485 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2486 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2487 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2488 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2489 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/extralibs.ld
2490 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs
2491 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2492 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.bs
2493 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2494 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.bs
2495 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.so
2496 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.bs
2497 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2498 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2499 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2500 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.bs
2501 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2502 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/lib.pm
2503 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/re.pm
2504 /usr/share/doc/perl-base
2505 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
2506 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2507 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian.gz
2508 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
2509 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
2510 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
2512 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/AutoLoader.pm
2513 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp.pm
2514 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp/Heavy.pm
2515 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter.pm
2516 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2517 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec.pm
2518 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2519 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/FileHandle.pm
2520 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Getopt/Long.pm
2521 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2522 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2523 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open2.pm
2524 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open3.pm
2525 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/List/Util.pm
2526 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Scalar/Util.pm
2527 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/SelectSaver.pm
2528 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Symbol.pm
2529 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/ParseWords.pm
2530 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Tabs.pm
2531 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Wrap.pm
2532 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/attributes.pm
2533 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/base.pm
2534 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes.pm
2535 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes_heavy.pl
2536 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/constant.pm
2537 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/fields.pm
2538 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/integer.pm
2539 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/locale.pm
2540 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/overload.pm
2541 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/strict.pm
2542 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8.pm
2543 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8_heavy.pl
2544 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/vars.pm
2545 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings.pm
2546 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings/register.pm
2548 A nice trick to find out the minimal set of Perl library files you will
2549 need to run a Perl program is
2551 perl -e 'do "prog.pl"; END { print "$_\n" for sort keys %INC }'
2553 (this will not find libraries required in runtime, unfortunately, but
2554 it's a minimal set) and if you want to find out all the files you can
2555 use something like the below
2557 strace perl -le 'do "x.pl"' 2>&1 | perl -nle '/^open\(\"(.+?)"/ && print $1'
2559 (The 'strace' is Linux-specific, other similar utilities include 'truss'
2562 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
2564 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2565 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
2566 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
2567 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2568 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
2570 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
2571 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and
2574 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
2575 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
2577 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
2578 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
2581 Note that you must have performed the installation already before running
2582 the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate
2587 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2588 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2589 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
2591 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2592 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2594 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2596 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2597 the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2598 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2599 a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2600 and the contact information to match your distribution.