3 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
7 First, make sure you are installing an up-to-date version of Perl. If
8 you didn't get your Perl source from CPAN, check the latest version at
9 <URL:http://www.cpan.org/src/>.
11 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system
12 with all the defaults are:
14 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
20 # You may also wish to add these:
21 (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
23 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
25 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
27 The above commands will install Perl to /usr/local or /opt, depending
28 on the platform. If that's not okay with you, use
30 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
36 For information on non-Unix systems, see the section on
37 L<"Porting information"> below.
39 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
40 L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
42 For information on what's new in this release, see the
43 pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
44 changes, see the Changes file.
48 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
49 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
50 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
51 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
53 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
55 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
57 Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
58 you should probably at least skim through this entire document before
61 If you're building Perl on a non-Unix system, you should also read
62 the README file specific to your operating system, since this may
63 provide additional or different instructions for building Perl.
65 If there is a hint file for your system (in the hints/ directory) you
66 should also read that hint file for specific information for your
67 system. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh hint file.) If
68 there is a README file for your platform, then you should read
69 that too. Additional information is in the Porting/ directory.
71 =head1 WARNING: This version requires an extra step to build old extensions.
73 5.005_53 and later releases do not export unadorned
74 global symbols anymore. This means you may need to build older
75 extensions that have not been updated for the new naming convention
78 perl Makefile.PL POLLUTE=1
80 Alternatively, you can enable CPP symbol pollution wholesale by
81 building perl itself with:
83 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_POLLUTE
85 pod/perldelta.pod contains more details about this.
87 =head1 WARNING: This version may not be binary compatible with Perl 5.005.
89 Using the default Configure options for building perl should get you
90 a perl that will be binary compatible with the 5.005 release.
92 However, if you run Configure with any custom options, such as
93 -Dusethreads, -Dusemultiplicity, -Dusemymalloc, -Ubincompat5005 etc.,
94 the resulting perl will not be binary compatible. Under these
95 circumstances, if you have dynamically loaded extensions that were
96 built under perl 5.005, you will need to rebuild and reinstall all
97 those extensions to use them with 5.6.
99 Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
100 without reinstallation. See the discussions below on
101 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> and
102 L<"Upgrading from 5.005 to 5.6"> for more details.
104 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
106 On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the
107 changes in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
108 pod/perldelta.pod (and pod/perl500Xdelta.pod) for a description of
109 what's changed. See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod
110 file for a (possibly incomplete) list of locally installed modules.
111 Also see CPAN::autobundle for one way to make a "bundle" of your
112 currently installed modules.
114 =head1 WARNING: This version requires a compiler that supports ANSI C.
116 Most C compilers are now ANSI-compliant. However, a few current
117 computers are delivered with an older C compiler expressly for
118 rebuilding the system kernel, or for some other historical reason.
119 Alternatively, you may have an old machine which was shipped before
120 ANSI compliance became widespread. Such compilers are not suitable
123 If you find that your default C compiler is not ANSI-capable, but you
124 know that an ANSI-capable compiler is installed on your system, you
125 can tell F<Configure> to use the correct compiler by means of the
126 C<-Dcc=> command-line option -- see L<"gcc">.
128 If do not have an ANSI-capable compiler there are several avenues open
135 You may try obtaining GCC, available from GNU mirrors worldwide,
136 listed at <URL:http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html>. If, rather than
137 building gcc from source code, you locate a binary version configured
138 for your platform, be sure that it is compiled for the version of the
139 operating system that you are using.
143 You may purchase a commercial ANSI C compiler from your system
144 supplier or elsewhere. (Or your organization may already have
145 licensed such software -- ask your colleagues to find out how to
146 access it.) If there is a README file for your system in the Perl
147 distribution (for example, F<README.hpux>), it may contain advice on
152 Another alternative may be to use a tool like ansi2knr to convert the
153 sources back to K&R style, but there is no guarantee this route will get
154 you anywhere, since the prototypes are not the only ANSI features used
155 in the Perl sources. ansi2knr is usually found as part of the freely
156 available Ghostscript distribution. Another similar tool is
157 unprotoize, distributed with GCC. Since unprotoize requires GCC to
158 run, you may have to run it on a platform where GCC is available, and move
159 the sources back to the platform without GCC.
161 If you succeed in automatically converting the sources to a K&R compatible
162 form, be sure to email perlbug@perl.com to let us know the steps you
163 followed. This will enable us to officially support this option.
167 Although Perl can be compiled using a C++ compiler, the Configure script
168 does not work with some C++ compilers.
170 =head1 Space Requirements
172 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 20 MB of disk space.
173 After completing make, it takes up roughly 30 MB, though the actual
174 total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
175 directories need something on the order of 20 MB, though again that
176 value is system-dependent.
178 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
180 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
189 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
190 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
192 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
193 files. If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
194 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
195 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
196 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it
200 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
201 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
202 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
203 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
204 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
205 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
206 probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't, presently.
207 Similarly, if you used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version
208 numbers, you will probably want to adjust them as well.
210 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. For example, some
211 Linux distributions use i386, while others may use i486. If you build
212 it yourself, Configure uses the output of the arch command, which
213 might be i586 or i686 instead. If you pick up a precompiled binary, or
214 compile extensions on different systems, they might not all agree on
215 the architecture name.
217 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
218 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
220 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
221 installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
222 using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
223 settings"> below. If you wish to start with a fresh distribution, you
224 also need to remove any old Policy.sh files you may have with
230 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
231 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
232 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
233 almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
234 since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
237 At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
238 defaults from then on.
240 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
241 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
243 =head2 Altering config.sh variables for C compiler switches etc.
245 For most users, all of the Configure defaults are fine. Configure
246 also has several convenient options which are all described below.
247 However, if Configure doesn't have an option to do what you want,
248 you can change Configure variables after the platform hints have been
249 run, by using Configure's -A switch. For example, here's how to add
250 a couple of extra flags to C compiler invocations:
252 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_Y2KWARN -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC"
254 For more help on Configure switches, run:
258 =head2 Common Configure options
260 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h> to
261 get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
262 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
268 To compile with gcc you should run
270 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
272 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
273 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
275 =item Installation prefix
277 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
278 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
279 and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for
282 You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
283 directory, when Configure prompts you or by using the Configure command
284 line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
286 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
288 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
289 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
290 prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
291 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
294 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
295 as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
296 attempt infinite recursion.
300 It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
301 find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
302 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
303 careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
304 vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing.
306 By default, Configure will arrange for /usr/bin/perl to be linked to
307 the current version of perl. You can turn off that behavior by running
309 Configure -Uinstallusrbinperl
311 or by answering 'no' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
313 In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to
314 put (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
315 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
316 obvious and convenient place.
318 =item Overriding an old config.sh
320 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
321 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
325 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
330 For my Solaris system, I usually use
332 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
334 =head2 GNU-style configure
336 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
337 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
339 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
341 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
344 ./configure.gnu --help
348 Cross compiling and compiling in a different directory are not supported.
350 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
351 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
353 =head2 Installation Directories
355 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
356 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
357 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
358 Further, there are a number of additions to the installation
359 directories since 5.005, so reusing your old config.sh may not
360 be sufficient to put everything where you want it.
362 I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
363 everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
364 process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use
365 the defaults from then on.
367 The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
368 people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
369 distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
370 need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
371 you can safely skip the next section.
373 The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
377 =item Directories for the perl distribution
379 By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.6.0.
380 $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
381 5.6.0 or 5.6.1, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
382 determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
383 variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
385 Configure variable Default value
388 $scriptdir $prefix/bin
389 $privlib $prefix/lib/perl5/$version
390 $archlib $prefix/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
391 $man1dir $prefix/man/man1
392 $man3dir $prefix/man/man3
396 Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
397 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
398 instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
399 directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
400 the common style is shown here.
402 =item Directories for site-specific add-on files
404 After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
405 CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
406 be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
408 Configure variable Default value
410 $sitebin $siteprefix/bin
411 $sitescript $siteprefix/bin
412 $sitelib $siteprefix/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
413 $sitearch $siteprefix/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
414 $siteman1 $siteprefix/man/man1
415 $siteman3 $siteprefix/man/man3
419 By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
420 modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
422 NOTE: As of 5.6.0, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will use $sitelib and $sitearch,
423 but will not use the other site-specific directories. Volunteers to
426 =item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
428 Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
429 distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
430 for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
432 Configure variable Default value
434 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
435 $vendorbin $vendorprefix/bin
436 $vendorscript $vendorprefix/bin
437 $vendorlib $vendorprefix/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
438 $vendorarch $vendorprefix/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
439 $vendorman1 $vendorprefix/man/man1
440 $vendorman3 $vendorprefix/man/man3
444 These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
445 a vendor might choose the following settings:
448 $siteprefix /usr/local/bin
449 $vendorprefix /usr/bin
451 This would have the effect of setting the following:
455 $privlib /usr/lib/perl5/$version
456 $archlib /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
457 $man1dir /usr/man/man1
458 $man3dir /usr/man/man3
460 $sitebin /usr/local/bin
461 $sitescript /usr/local/bin
462 $sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
463 $sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
464 $siteman1 /usr/local/man/man1
465 $siteman3 /usr/local/man/man3
468 $vendorscript /usr/bin
469 $vendorlib /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
470 $vendorarch /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
471 $vendorman1 /usr/man/man1
472 $vendorman3 /usr/man/man3
474 Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
475 /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
476 the /usr/local hierarchy.
478 NOTE: As of 5.6.0, ExtUtils::MakeMaker does not use these directories.
479 Volunteers to fix this are needed.
481 The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
482 version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
483 However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
484 installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
485 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for more details
486 on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
488 Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
489 example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
490 are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
491 site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
492 network. One way to do that would be something like
494 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
498 As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
499 variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
500 directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
501 Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
502 version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
506 In versions 5.005_57 and earlier, the default was to store module man
507 pages in a version-specific directory, such as
508 /usr/local/lib/perl5/$version/man/man3. The default for 5.005_58 and
509 after is /usr/local/man/man3 so that most users can find the man pages
510 without resetting MANPATH.
512 You can continue to use the old default from the command line with
514 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/man/man3
516 Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
518 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
520 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
525 As of perl5.005_57, the standard perl installation does not do
526 anything with HTML documentation, but that may change in the future.
527 Further, some add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The
528 html Configure variables listed above are provided if you wish to
529 specify where such documents should be placed. The default is "none",
530 but will likely eventually change to something useful based on user
535 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
536 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
539 Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
540 directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
543 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
544 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
545 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below.
547 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
548 library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
549 suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
551 Thus, for example, if you Configure with
552 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.6.0 are
554 Configure variable Default value
555 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.6.0
556 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.6.0/$archname
557 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.0
558 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
560 =head2 Changing the installation directory
562 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
563 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
564 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
565 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
566 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
567 packages, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
568 wish to install perl into a different directory and use that
569 management software to move perl to its final destination. This
570 section describes how to do that.
572 Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You
573 could edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to
574 /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local, or you could simply use the
575 following command line:
577 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
579 (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
581 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
582 modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
583 follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with
586 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
588 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
589 convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
590 installed on multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to
591 create an archive that can be installed in /opt/perl.
592 Here's one way to do that:
594 # Set up to install perl into a different directory,
595 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
596 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5 -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
599 make install # This will install everything into /tmp/perl5.
601 # Edit $archlib/Config.pm and $archlib/.packlist to change all the
602 # install* variables back to reflect where everything will
603 # really be installed. (That is, change /tmp/perl5 to /opt/perl
604 # everywhere in those files.)
605 # Check the scripts in $scriptdir to make sure they have the correct
606 # #!/wherever/perl line.
607 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
608 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
609 cd /opt/perl # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
610 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
612 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
614 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
615 answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact
616 person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another
617 system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file
618 to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate
619 hint file for your system.
621 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
626 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
628 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
630 If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
631 to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
632 platform-specific hints files.
634 Note: Since the directory hierarchy for 5.6.0 contains a number of
635 new vendor* and site* entries, your Policy.sh file will probably not
636 set them to your desired values. I encourage you to run Configure
637 interactively to be sure it puts things where you want them.
639 =head2 Configure-time Options
641 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
642 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
643 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
644 some of the main things you can change.
648 On some platforms, perl5.005 and later can be compiled with
649 experimental support for threads. To enable this, read the file
650 README.threads, and then try:
652 sh Configure -Dusethreads
654 Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command
655 line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
657 The default is to compile without thread support.
659 As of v5.5.64, perl has two different internal threads implementations.
660 The 5.005 version (5005threads) and an interpreter-based implementation
661 (ithreads) with one interpreter per thread. By default, Configure selects
662 ithreads if -Dusethreads is specified. However, you can select the old
663 5005threads behavior instead by either
665 sh Configure -Dusethreads -Duse5005threads
668 sh Configure -Dusethreads -Uuseithreads
670 Eventually (by perl v5.6.0) this internal confusion ought to disappear,
671 and these options may disappear as well.
673 =head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
675 Previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in
676 stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl allow alternate IO
677 mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but the stdio mechanism is still
678 the default and is the only supported mechanism.
680 This PerlIO abstraction can be enabled either on the Configure command
683 sh Configure -Duseperlio
685 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
687 If you choose to use the PerlIO abstraction layer, there are two
688 (experimental) possibilities for the underlying IO calls. These have been
689 tested to some extent on some platforms, but are not guaranteed to work
696 AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance to stdio.h in many
697 cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline" modules. Sfio
698 currently only builds on a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports.
699 Because the data structures are completely different from stdio, perl
700 extension modules or external libraries may not work. This
701 configuration exists to allow these issues to be worked on.
703 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
704 A (fairly old) version of sfio is in CPAN.
706 You select this option by
708 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
710 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
711 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
714 Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails to
715 detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent). Apparently,
716 this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux and SunOS 4.
717 Configure should detect this problem and warn you about problems with
718 _exit vs. exit. If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to
719 your sfio sources and correct iffe's guess about atexit.
721 There also might be a more recent release of Sfio that fixes your
726 Normal stdio IO, but with all IO going through calls to the PerlIO
727 abstraction layer. This configuration can be used to check that perl and
728 extension modules have been correctly converted to use the PerlIO
731 This configuration should work on all platforms (but might not).
733 You select this option via:
735 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Uusesfio
737 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure does not
738 detect sfio, then this will be the default suggested by Configure.
742 =head2 Dynamic Loading
744 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
745 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
746 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
747 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
749 =head2 Building a shared libperl.so Perl library
751 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
752 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
753 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
756 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
757 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
758 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
759 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
760 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
761 can share the same library.
763 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
764 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
765 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
768 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
769 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
770 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
773 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
774 libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
775 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
776 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
777 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
778 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
780 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
781 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
783 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
785 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
787 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
788 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
789 NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, SHLIB_PATH for
790 HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
791 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
792 be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
793 library search settings.
795 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
796 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
797 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
800 cd t; ./perl misc/failing_test.t
802 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
804 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
807 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
809 for Bourne-style shells, or
811 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
813 for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
814 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.)
816 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
817 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
819 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
821 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
822 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
823 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
824 install a standard Perl 5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
825 try to build Perl 5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
826 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
827 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
828 libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is
829 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
830 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
831 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
832 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't. On Digital Unix, you can
833 override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the _RLD_ROOT environment variable
834 to point to the perl build directory.
836 The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different
837 directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING
838 version of perl. You can do this by changing all the *archlib*
839 variables in config.sh to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
843 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
844 so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
845 the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
846 version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
847 perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
848 than your system malloc.
850 However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
851 experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
852 that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
853 (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
857 =item Using the system malloc
859 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
861 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
863 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
865 =item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
867 NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you
868 asked for binary compatibility with version 5.005, or if you just
869 run Configure to accept all the defaults on those platforms. You
870 can refuse the automatic binary compatibility flags wholesale by
873 sh Configure -Ubincompat5005
875 or by answering 'n' at the appropriate prompt.
877 Perl's malloc family of functions are called Perl_malloc(),
878 Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree(). When this flag is
879 not enabled, the names do not clash with the system versions of
882 If enabled, Perl's malloc family of functions will have the same
883 names as the system versions. This may be sometimes required when you
884 have libraries that like to free() data that may have been allocated
885 by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
887 Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
888 from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
889 does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
894 =head2 Building a debugging perl
896 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
897 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
898 you probably want to do
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.
917 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
918 versions of perl under L<Building a shared libperl.so Perl library>.
922 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
923 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
924 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
925 B, DynaLoader, Fcntl, IO, and attrs are always built by default.
926 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
927 is always built by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
928 set the Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from
929 the Configure command line. Similarly, the Opcode extension is always
930 built by default, but you can skip it by setting the Configure variable
931 useopcode=false either in a hint file for from the command line.
933 If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
934 running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
935 extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
936 it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
937 has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
938 extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
939 convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
940 you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
941 dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
943 You can learn more about each of the supplied extensions by consulting the
944 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
947 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
948 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
949 version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
951 In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
952 to turn off each extension:
954 B (Always included by default)
956 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
957 Fcntl (Always included by default)
959 IO (Always included by default)
963 SDBM_File (Always included by default)
966 Threads use5005threads
967 attrs (Always included by default)
969 Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
971 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
973 Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
976 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
977 the extensions you want.
979 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley
980 DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect
981 this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with earlier
982 releases of version 2.
984 If you re-use your old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
985 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
986 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
989 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern Unix systems do)
990 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
991 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
992 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
994 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
996 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
997 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
998 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
999 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
1000 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
1001 how to obtain the libraries.
1003 If your database header (.h) files are not in a directory normally
1004 searched by your C compiler, then you will need to include the
1005 appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by Configure. If
1006 your database library (.a) files are not in a directory normally
1007 searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to include
1008 the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by Configure.
1009 See the examples below.
1015 =item gdbm in /usr/local
1017 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
1018 GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
1019 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
1020 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
1021 necessary steps out automatically.
1023 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1024 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
1026 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
1029 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
1030 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1033 Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1034 you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1035 /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
1037 =item gdbm in /usr/you
1039 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
1040 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
1041 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
1042 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
1043 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
1044 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
1045 /usr/you/lib to the list.
1047 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
1051 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
1052 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
1054 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1055 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1057 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
1058 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
1059 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
1060 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
1063 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
1064 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
1068 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1070 If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1071 If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1075 =item Running Configure Interactively
1077 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1078 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1081 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1082 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1083 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1084 will use the defaults from then on.
1086 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1087 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1088 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1092 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
1093 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1094 will offer to use that hint file.
1096 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1097 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1098 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1099 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
1102 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1104 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
1105 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
1106 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
1109 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1110 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
1111 Keep the recommended value? [y]
1113 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
1114 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
1117 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
1118 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
1119 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
1122 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1123 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1124 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1125 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1128 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1129 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1130 Keep the previous value? [y]
1132 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1133 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1134 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1136 =item Changing Compilers
1138 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1139 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1140 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
1141 with the options you want to use.
1143 This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
1144 gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
1146 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1148 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1149 them to all the .SH files by running
1153 You will then have to rebuild by running
1160 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride Configure's
1161 guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just before config.sh
1162 is created. You have to be careful with this, however, as Configure
1163 does no checking that your changes make sense.
1167 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1168 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1169 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1171 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1172 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1177 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1178 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1179 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1180 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1181 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1182 lost the next time you run Configure.
1184 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1185 see the file hints/README.hints.
1187 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1188 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1195 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1196 Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1197 system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1198 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1201 =item Environment variable clashes
1203 Configure uses a CONFIG variable that is reported to cause trouble on
1204 ReliantUnix 5.44. If your system sets this variable, you can try
1205 unsetting it before you run Configure. Configure should eventually
1206 be fixed to avoid polluting the namespace of the environment.
1208 =item Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX and BIN_SH
1210 In Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX, Configure might abort with
1212 Build a threading Perl? [n]
1213 Configure[2437]: Syntax error at line 1 : `config.sh' is not expected.
1215 This indicates that Configure is being run with a broken Korn shell
1216 (even though you think you are using a Bourne shell by using
1217 "sh Configure" or "./Configure"). The Korn shell bug has been reported
1218 to Compaq as of February 1999 but in the meanwhile, the reason ksh is
1219 being used is that you have the environment variable BIN_SH set to
1220 'xpg4'. This causes /bin/sh to delegate its duties to /bin/posix/sh
1221 (a ksh). Unset the environment variable and rerun Configure.
1223 =item HP-UX 11, pthreads, and libgdbm
1225 If you are running Configure with -Dusethreads in HP-UX 11, be warned
1226 that POSIX threads and libgdbm (the GNU dbm library) compiled before
1227 HP-UX 11 do not mix. This will cause a basic test run by Configure to
1230 Pthread internal error: message: __libc_reinit() failed, file: ../pthreads/pthread.c, line: 1096
1231 Return Pointer is 0xc082bf33
1232 sh: 5345 Quit(coredump)
1234 and Configure will give up. The cure is to recompile and install
1235 libgdbm under HP-UX 11.
1237 =item Porting information
1239 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1240 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1241 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1242 subdirectory. Especially Porting/Glossary should come in handy.
1244 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1245 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports for current information on ports to
1246 various other operating systems.
1248 If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture study carefully the
1249 section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1250 in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file Porting/patching.pod.
1251 Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1257 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1258 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1259 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1260 makefile, not Makefile since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1261 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1262 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1264 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1269 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1271 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1273 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1274 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1275 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1276 then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1282 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1283 for further tips and information.
1287 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1288 during the building of extensions, you should run
1292 to test your version of miniperl.
1296 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1297 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1298 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1299 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1300 whole L<"Locale problems"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1301 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1303 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1304 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1307 are supported and installed on your system.
1308 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1314 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1315 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1316 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1317 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by running fixincludes
1318 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1319 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1320 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1324 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1325 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1327 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1328 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1329 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1331 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1332 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1334 =item Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading
1336 If you have problems with dynamic loading using gcc on SunOS or
1337 Solaris, and you are using GNU as and GNU ld, you may need to add
1338 -B/bin/ (for SunOS) or -B/usr/ccs/bin/ (for Solaris) to your
1339 $ccflags, $ldflags, and $lddlflags so that the system's versions of as
1340 and ld are used. Note that the trailing '/' is required.
1341 Alternatively, you can use the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX
1342 environment variable to ensure that Sun's as and ld are used. Consult
1343 your gcc documentation for further information on the -B option and
1344 the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX variable.
1346 One convenient way to ensure you are not using GNU as and ld is to
1347 invoke Configure with
1349 sh Configure -Dcc='gcc -B/usr/ccs/bin/'
1351 for Solaris systems. For a SunOS system, you must use -B/bin/
1354 Alternatively, recent versions of GNU ld reportedly work if you
1355 include C<-Wl,-export-dynamic> in the ccdlflags variable in
1358 =item ld.so.1: ./perl: fatal: relocation error:
1360 If you get this message on SunOS or Solaris, and you're using gcc,
1361 it's probably the GNU as or GNU ld problem in the previous item
1362 L<"Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading">.
1364 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1366 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1367 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1368 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1369 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1370 of your local set-up.
1372 =item dlopen: stub interception failed
1374 The primary cause of the 'dlopen: stub interception failed' message is
1375 that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable includes a directory
1376 which is a symlink to /usr/lib (such as /lib).
1378 The reason this causes a problem is quite subtle. The file libdl.so.1.0
1379 actually *only* contains functions which generate 'stub interception
1380 failed' errors! The runtime linker intercepts links to
1381 "/usr/lib/libdl.so.1.0" and links in internal implementation of those
1382 functions instead. [Thanks to Tim Bunce for this explanation.]
1386 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1387 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1390 sh Configure -Uusenm
1392 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1393 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1396 =item umask not found
1398 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1399 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1400 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1401 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1402 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1406 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1407 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1408 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1409 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1410 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1414 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1415 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1416 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1420 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1421 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1422 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1423 on L<"nm extraction">.
1425 =item __inet_* errors
1427 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1428 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1429 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1430 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1431 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1432 newer version of BIND. If you can't, you can either link with the
1433 updated resolver library provided with BIND 8.1 or rename
1434 /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and test process to
1437 =item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1439 This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1440 gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1441 changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1442 rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1443 update your gcc installation.
1447 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1448 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1456 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1457 with B<make depend; make>.
1461 If you still can't compile successfully, try:
1463 sh Configure -Accflags=-DCRIPPLED_CC
1465 This flag simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that get
1466 indigestion easily. (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it
1469 =item Missing functions
1471 If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
1472 other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
1473 there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
1474 likely suspects. If Configure guessed wrong on a number of functions,
1475 you might have the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1479 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1480 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1481 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1482 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1483 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1486 =item Missing dbmclose
1488 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1489 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1491 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1493 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1494 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1495 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1496 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1497 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1498 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1499 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1500 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1501 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1502 process is continuing.
1504 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1507 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1509 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1510 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1511 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1513 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1514 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1515 quite that tightly coordinated.
1517 =item sh: ar: not found
1519 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1520 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1521 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1522 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1525 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1527 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1528 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1529 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1531 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1533 If you get this error message from the lib/ipc_sysv test, your System
1534 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1535 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1536 to include the System V semaphores.
1538 =item lib/ipc_sysv........semget: No space left on device
1540 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1541 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1542 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1543 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1548 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1549 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1550 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1551 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1552 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1553 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1554 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1555 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1557 =item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1559 The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1560 make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1561 archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1562 C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1563 archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1564 incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1565 official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1566 that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1567 archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1569 This message can also be a symptom of using (say) a GNU tar compiled
1570 for SunOS4 on Solaris. When you run SunOS4 binaries on Solaris the
1571 run-time system magically alters pathnames matching m#lib/locale# - so
1572 when tar tries to create lib/locale.pm a differently-named file gets
1575 You may find the file under its assumed name and be able to rename it
1576 back. Or use Sun's tar to do the extract.
1578 =item invalid token: ##
1580 You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. See L<WARNING: This
1581 version requires a compiler that supports ANSI C>.
1583 =item lib/locale.pm: No such file or directory
1585 See L<THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE>.
1589 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1591 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1593 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1595 UTS may need one or more of -DCRIPPLED_CC, -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1597 FreeBSD can fail the lib/ipc_sysv.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1598 configured to the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1599 you will get a message telling what to do.
1601 If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.
1603 Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
1605 HP-UX 11 Y2K patch "Y2K-1100 B.11.00.B0125 HP-UX Core OS Year 2000
1606 Patch Bundle" has been reported to break the io/fs test #18 which
1607 tests whether utime() can change timestamps. The Y2K patch seems to
1608 break utime() so that over NFS the timestamps do not get changed
1609 (on local filesystems utime() still works).
1615 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
1616 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
1617 wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1619 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1620 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1621 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1623 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1625 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1626 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1627 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1631 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1632 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1636 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1637 complicated constructs).
1639 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1640 comments that apply to your system.
1646 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1647 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1648 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1649 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1650 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1651 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1653 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1659 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1661 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1662 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1663 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1664 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1665 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1666 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1671 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1672 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
1673 For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
1674 test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
1676 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1678 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
1680 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1681 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1682 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1683 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1689 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1690 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
1691 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
1692 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
1693 are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
1694 ignore any messages about chown not working.
1696 =head2 Installing perl under different names
1698 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
1699 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
1700 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
1702 make install PERLNAME=myperl
1704 You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
1705 "perl5.005") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
1707 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
1709 This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (due to an
1710 ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor, eg). Without this
1711 the versioned binary would be called "perl55.005".
1713 =head2 Installed files
1715 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
1716 anything, you can run
1718 ./perl installperl -n
1719 ./perl installman -n
1721 make install will install the following:
1724 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
1725 will be a link to perl.
1727 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
1728 a2p awk-to-perl translator
1729 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
1731 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
1732 s2p sed-to-perl translator
1733 find2perl find-to-perl translator
1734 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
1735 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
1736 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
1737 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
1738 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
1739 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
1740 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
1743 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
1744 dprofpp Perl code profile post-processor
1746 library files in $privlib and $archlib specified to
1747 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
1748 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
1750 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
1751 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
1753 Installperl will also create the directories listed above
1754 in L<"Installation Directories">.
1756 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl.a library are also installed
1757 under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
1758 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
1759 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
1761 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
1763 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
1764 5.004_04) to another similar version (e.g. 5.004_05) without re-compiling
1765 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
1766 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
1767 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
1768 with 5.004_04, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
1769 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
1770 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.00404.
1772 Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use
1773 with a newer version of perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
1774 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
1776 Suppose you already have version 5.005_03 installed. The directories
1777 searched by 5.005_03 are
1779 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503/$archname
1780 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503
1781 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
1782 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
1784 Beginning with 5.6.0 the version number in the site libraries are
1785 fully versioned. Now, suppose you install version 5.6.0. The directories
1786 searched by version 5.6.0 will be
1788 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/$archname
1789 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0
1790 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
1791 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
1793 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
1794 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
1795 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
1797 Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
1798 of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
1799 directories. This way, modules installed under 5.005_03 will continue
1800 to be usable by 5.005_03 but will also accessible to 5.6.0. Further,
1801 suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
1802 present only in 5.6.0. That new module will get installed into
1803 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0 and will be available to 5.6.0,
1804 but will not interfere with the 5.005_03 version.
1806 The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
1807 5.6.0 will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
1809 Lastly, suppose you now install version 5.6.1, which we'll assume is
1810 binary compatible with 5.6.0 and 5.005. The directories searched
1811 by 5.6.1 (if you don't change the Configure defaults) will be:
1813 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.1/$archname
1814 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.1
1815 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1/$archname
1816 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1
1818 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
1819 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
1821 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
1822 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
1823 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
1825 Assuming the users in your site are still actively using perl 5.6.0 and
1826 5.005 after you installed 5.6.1, you can continue to install add-on
1827 extensions using any of perl 5.6.1, 5.6.0, or 5.005. The installations
1828 of these different versions remain distinct, but remember that the newer
1829 versions of perl are automatically set up to search the site libraries of
1830 the older ones. This means that installing a new extension with 5.005
1831 will make it visible to all three versions. Later, if you install the
1832 same extension using, say, perl 5.6.1, it will override the 5.005-installed
1833 version, but only for perl 5.6.1.
1835 This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
1836 to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
1837 versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
1839 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
1841 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
1842 separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
1843 won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
1844 libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
1845 way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
1847 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.004
1849 and adding /opt/perl5.004/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
1850 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
1851 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
1853 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
1854 (e.g. 5.004 for all 5.004_0x versions), but change directory with
1857 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
1858 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
1859 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
1862 =head2 Upgrading from 5.005 to 5.6.0
1864 Most extensions built and installed with versions of perl
1865 prior to 5.005_50 will not need to be recompiled to be used with
1866 5.6.0. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with 5.6.0,
1867 you may safely do so without disturbing the 5.005 installation.
1868 (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> above.)
1870 See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
1871 incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
1872 perllocal.pod not perllocale.pod for installed module information.
1874 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
1876 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
1878 By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
1879 they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
1881 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
1882 perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
1883 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
1884 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
1885 the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036 (or
1886 whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod for
1887 possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
1889 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
1891 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
1892 system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
1893 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
1894 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
1895 library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
1897 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
1898 of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
1899 hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
1900 For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
1903 =head1 installhtml --help
1905 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
1906 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
1907 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
1909 Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
1910 html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
1912 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
1917 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
1919 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
1920 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
1921 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
1922 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
1923 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
1926 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
1927 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
1928 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
1929 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
1930 (and would welcome patches for them).
1932 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
1933 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
1935 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
1937 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
1938 available in TeX format. Type
1940 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
1942 =head1 Reporting Problems
1944 If you have difficulty building perl, and none of the advice in this file
1945 helps, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant manual
1946 pages on your system doesn't help either, then you should send a message
1947 to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to perlbug@perl.com with
1948 an accurate description of your problem.
1950 Please include the output of the ./myconfig shell script that comes with
1951 the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the perlbug program that
1952 comes with the perl distribution, but you need to have perl compiled
1953 before you can use it. (If you have not installed it yet, you need to
1954 run C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug> instead of a plain C<perlbug>.)
1956 Please try to make your message brief but clear. Trim out unnecessary
1957 information. Do not include large files (such as config.sh or a complete
1958 Configure or make log) unless absolutely necessary. Do not include a
1959 complete transcript of your build session. Just include the failing
1960 commands, the relevant error messages, and whatever preceding commands
1961 are necessary to give the appropriate context. Plain text should
1962 usually be sufficient--fancy attachments or encodings may actually
1963 reduce the number of people who read your message. Your message
1964 will get relayed to over 400 subscribers around the world so please
1965 try to keep it brief but clear.
1967 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
1969 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
1970 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
1971 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
1972 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
1973 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
1975 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
1976 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and
1979 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
1980 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
1982 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
1983 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
1986 Note that you must have performed the installation already before running
1987 the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate
1992 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
1993 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
1994 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
1996 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
1997 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
1999 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2001 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2002 the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2003 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2004 a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2005 and the contact information to match your distribution.
2007 =head1 LAST MODIFIED
2009 $Id: INSTALL,v 1.58 1999/07/23 14:43:00 doughera Exp $