1 If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you see.
2 It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is specially
3 designed to be readable as is.
7 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
9 =head1 Reporting Problems
11 Wherever possible please use the perlbug tool supplied with this Perl
12 to report problems, as it automatically includes summary configuration
13 information about your perl, which may help us track down problems far
14 more quickly. But first you should read the advice in this file,
15 carefully re-read the error message and check the relevant manual pages
16 on your system, as these may help you find an immediate solution. If
17 you are not sure whether what you are seeing is a bug, you can send a
18 message describing the problem to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup to
21 The perlbug tool is installed along with perl, so after you have
22 completed C<make install> it should be possible to run it with plain
23 C<perlbug>. If the install fails, or you want to report problems with
24 C<make test> without installing perl, then you can use C<make nok> to
25 run perlbug to report the problem, or run it by hand from this source
26 directory with C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug>
28 If the build fails too early to run perlbug uninstalled, then please
29 B<run> the C<./myconfig> shell script, and mail its output along with
30 an accurate description of your problem to perlbug@perl.org
32 If Configure itself fails, and does not generate a config.sh file
33 (needed to run C<./myconfig>), then please mail perlbug@perl.org the
34 description of how Configure fails along with details of your system
35 - for example the output from running C<uname -a>
37 Please try to make your message brief but clear. Brief, clear bug
38 reports tend to get answered more quickly. Please don't worry if your
39 written English is not great - what matters is how well you describe
40 the important technical details of the problem you have encountered,
41 not whether your grammar and spelling is flawless.
43 Trim out unnecessary information. Do not include large files (such as
44 config.sh or a complete Configure or make log) unless absolutely
45 necessary. Do not include a complete transcript of your build
46 session. Just include the failing commands, the relevant error
47 messages, and whatever preceding commands are necessary to give the
48 appropriate context. Plain text should usually be sufficient--fancy
49 attachments or encodings may actually reduce the number of people who
50 read your message. Your message will get relayed to over 400
51 subscribers around the world so please try to keep it brief but clear.
53 If you are unsure what makes a good bug report please read "How to
54 report Bugs Effectively" by Simon Tatham:
55 http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html
59 First, make sure you have an up-to-date version of Perl. If you
60 didn't get your Perl source from CPAN, check the latest version at
61 http://www.cpan.org/src/. Perl uses a version scheme where even-numbered
62 subreleases (like 5.6.x and 5.8.x) are stable maintenance releases and
63 odd-numbered subreleases (like 5.7.x and 5.9.x) are unstable
64 development releases. Development releases should not be used in
65 production environments. Fixes and new features are first carefully
66 tested in development releases and only if they prove themselves to be
67 worthy will they be migrated to the maintenance releases.
69 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system with all
72 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
78 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
80 The above commands will install Perl to /usr/local (or some other
81 platform-specific directory -- see the appropriate file in hints/.)
82 If that's not okay with you, can run Configure interactively and use
84 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
90 # You may also wish to add these:
91 (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
93 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
95 or you can use some of the Configure options described below.
97 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
98 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
100 For information on what's new in this release, see the
101 pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
102 changes, see the Changes file.
106 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
107 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
108 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
109 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
111 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
113 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
116 Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
117 you should probably at least skim through this document before
120 In addition to this file, check if there is a README file specific to
121 your operating system, since it may provide additional or different
122 instructions for building Perl. If there is a hint file for your
123 system (in the hints/ directory) you should also read that hint file
124 for even more information. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh or
125 the svr5.sh hint file.)
127 For additional information about porting Perl, see the section on
128 L<"Porting information"> below, and look at the files in the Porting/
133 =head2 Changes and Incompatibilities
135 Please see pod/perldelta.pod for a description of the changes and
136 potential incompatibilities introduced with this release. A few of
137 the most important issues are listed below, but you should refer
138 to pod/perldelta.pod for more detailed information.
140 =head3 WARNING: This version is not binary compatible with releases of
143 If you have built extensions (i.e. modules that include C code)
144 using an earlier version of Perl, you will need to rebuild and reinstall
147 Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
148 without reinstallation. See the discussions below on
149 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> and
150 L<"Upgrading from 5.005 or 5.6 to 5.8.0"> for more details.
152 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
154 On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the changes
155 in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
156 pod/perldelta.pod for a description of what's changed. See your
157 installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly incomplete)
158 list of locally installed modules. Also see CPAN::autobundle for one
159 way to make a "bundle" of your currently installed modules.
161 =head2 Space Requirements
163 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 60 MB of disk space.
164 After completing make, it takes up roughly 100 MB, though the actual
165 total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
166 directories need something on the order of 45 MB, though again that
167 value is system-dependent. A perl build with debug symbols and
168 -DDEBUGGING will require something on the order of 10 MB extra.
170 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
172 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
181 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
182 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
184 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
185 files. If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
186 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
187 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
188 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it
192 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
193 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
194 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
195 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
196 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
197 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
198 probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't. Similarly, if you
199 used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version numbers, you will
200 probably want to adjust them as well.
202 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. For example, some
203 Linux distributions use i386, while others may use i486. If you build
204 it yourself, Configure uses the output of the arch command, which
205 might be i586 or i686 instead. If you pick up a precompiled binary, or
206 compile extensions on different systems, they might not all agree on
207 the architecture name.
209 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
210 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
212 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
213 installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
214 using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
215 settings"> below. If you wish to start with a fresh distribution, you
216 also need to remove any old Policy.sh files you may have with
222 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
223 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
224 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
225 almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
226 since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
229 At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
230 defaults from then on.
232 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
233 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
235 =head2 Common Configure options
237 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run
241 to get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
242 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
248 To compile with gcc you should run
250 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
252 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
253 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
255 =item Installation prefix
257 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
258 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
259 and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for
262 You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
263 directory when Configure prompts you, or by using the Configure command
264 line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
266 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
268 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
269 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
270 prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
271 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
272 for more details. Do not include a trailing slash, (i.e. /opt/perl/)
273 or you may experience odd test failures.
275 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
276 as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
277 attempt infinite recursion.
281 It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
282 find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
283 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
284 careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
285 vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing. If you insist
286 on replacing your vendor's perl, useful information on how it was
287 configured may be found with
291 (Check the output carefully, however, since this doesn't preserve
292 spaces in arguments to Configure. For that, you have to look carefully
293 at config_arg1, config_arg2, etc.)
295 By default, Configure will not try to link /usr/bin/perl to the current
296 version of perl. You can turn on that behavior by running
298 Configure -Dinstallusrbinperl
300 or by answering 'yes' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
302 In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to put
303 (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
304 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
305 obvious and convenient place.
307 =item Building a development release.
309 For development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.9.x) if you want to
310 use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel to Configure,
311 because the default answer to the question "do you really want to
312 Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel skips that
317 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
322 For example for my Solaris/x86 system, I usually use
324 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
326 =head2 Altering config.sh variables for C compiler switches etc.
328 For most users, most of the Configure defaults are fine, or can easily
329 be set on the Configure command line. However, if Configure doesn't
330 have an option to do what you want, you can change Configure variables
331 after the platform hints have been run by using Configure's -A switch.
332 For example, here's how to add a couple of extra flags to C compiler
335 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_EXTERNAL_GLOB -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC"
337 To clarify, those ccflags values are not Configure options; if passed to
338 Configure directly, they won't do anything useful (that will define a config.sh
339 variable, but without taking any action based upon it). When passed to the
340 compiler, those flags will activate #ifdefd code.
342 For more help on Configure switches, run
346 =head2 Major Configure-time Build Options
348 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
349 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
350 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
351 some of the main things you can change.
355 On some platforms, perl can be compiled with support for threads. To
358 sh Configure -Dusethreads
360 Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command
361 line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
363 The default is to compile without thread support.
365 Perl has two different internal threads implementations. The current
366 model (available internally since 5.6, and as a user-level module since
367 5.8) is called interpreter-based implementation (ithreads), with one
368 interpreter per thread, and explicit sharing of data. The 5.005
369 version (5005threads) is considered obsolete, buggy, and unmaintained.
371 By default, Configure selects ithreads if -Dusethreads is specified.
373 However, if you insist, you can select the unsupported old 5005threads behavior
375 sh Configure -Dusethreads -Duse5005threads
377 The 'threads' module is for use with the ithreads implementation. The
378 'Thread' module offers an interface to either 5005threads or ithreads
379 (whichever has been configured).
381 When using threads, perl uses a dynamically-sized buffer for some of
382 the thread-safe library calls, such as those in the getpw*() family.
383 This buffer starts small, but it will keep growing until the result
384 fits. To get a fixed upper limit, you should compile Perl with
385 PERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE defined to be the number of bytes you want. One
386 way to do this is to run Configure with
387 C<-Accflags=-DPERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE=65536>
389 =head3 Large file support.
391 Since Perl 5.6.0, Perl has supported large files (files larger than
392 2 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
393 support is on by default.
395 This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files,
396 seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad in that if you are interfacing Perl
397 using some extension, the components you are connecting to must also
398 be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
399 parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
400 will happen. One popular extension suffering from this ailment is the
401 Apache extension mod_perl.
403 There's also one known limitation with the current large files
404 implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
405 section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer formats
406 like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
408 =head3 64 bit support.
410 If your platform does not have run natively at 64 bits, but can
411 simulate them with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>,
412 you can build a perl that uses 64 bits.
414 There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
415 using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
416 -Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
417 the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
419 The C<use64bitint> option does only as much as is required to get
420 64-bit integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long
421 longs") while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because
422 your pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint>
423 does not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it
424 might, but it doesn't have to). The C<use64bitint> simply means that
425 you will be able to have 64 bit-wide scalar values.
427 The C<use64bitall> option goes all the way by attempting to switch
428 integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
429 create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
430 resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
431 have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
434 Natively 64-bit systems like Alpha and Cray need neither -Duse64bitint
437 NOTE: 64-bit support is still experimental on most platforms.
438 Existing support only covers the LP64 data model. In particular, the
439 LLP64 data model is not yet supported. 64-bit libraries and system
440 APIs on many platforms have not stabilized--your mileage may vary.
444 In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
445 range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
446 (that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
447 this support (if it is available).
451 You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
452 and the long double support.
454 =head3 Selecting File IO mechanisms
456 Executive summary: as of Perl 5.8, you should use the default "PerlIO"
457 as the IO mechanism unless you have a good reason not to.
459 In more detail: previous versions of perl used the standard IO
460 mechanisms as defined in stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl
461 introduced alternate IO mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but up
462 until and including Perl 5.6, the stdio mechanism was still the default
463 and the only supported mechanism.
465 Starting from Perl 5.8, the default mechanism is to use the PerlIO
466 abstraction, because it allows better control of I/O mechanisms,
467 instead of having to work with (often, work around) vendors' I/O
470 This PerlIO abstraction can be (but again, unless you know what you
471 are doing, should not be) disabled either on the Configure command
474 sh Configure -Uuseperlio
476 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
478 With the PerlIO abstraction layer, there is another possibility for
479 the underlying IO calls, AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance
480 to stdio.h in many cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline"
481 modules ("Native" PerlIO has them too). Sfio currently only builds on
482 a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports. Because the data
483 structures are completely different from stdio, perl extension modules
484 or external libraries may not work. This configuration exists to
485 allow these issues to be worked on.
487 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
488 The latest sfio is available from http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/sfio/
490 You select this option by
492 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
494 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
495 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
498 Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails to
499 detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent). Apparently,
500 this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux and SunOS 4.
501 Configure should detect this problem and warn you about problems with
502 _exit vs. exit. If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to
503 your sfio sources and correct iffe's guess about atexit.
505 =head3 Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Hashes
507 In Perls 5.8.0 and earlier it was easy to create degenerate hashes.
508 Processing such hashes would consume large amounts of CPU time,
509 enabling a "Denial of Service" attack against Perl. Such hashes may be
510 a problem for example for mod_perl sites, sites with Perl CGI scripts
511 and web services, that process data originating from external sources.
513 In Perl 5.8.1 a security feature was introduced to make it harder to
514 create such degenerate hashes. A visible side effect of this was that
515 the keys(), values(), and each() functions may return the hash elements
516 in different order between different runs of Perl even with the same
517 data. It also had unintended binary incompatibility issues with
518 certain modules compiled against Perl 5.8.0.
520 In Perl 5.8.2 an improved scheme was introduced. Hashes will return
521 elements in the same order as Perl 5.8.0 by default. On a hash by hash
522 basis, if pathological data is detected during a hash key insertion,
523 then that hash will switch to an alternative random hash seed. As
524 adding keys can always dramatically change returned hash element order,
525 existing programs will not be affected by this, unless they
526 specifically test for pre-recorded hash return order for contrived
527 data. (eg the list of keys generated by C<map {"\0"x$_} 0..15> trigger
528 randomisation) In effect the new implementation means that 5.8.1 scheme
529 is only being used on hashes which are under attack.
531 One can still revert to the old guaranteed repeatable order (and be
532 vulnerable to attack by wily crackers) by setting the environment
533 variable PERL_HASH_SEED, see L<perlrun/PERL_HASH_SEED>. Another option
534 is to add -DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT to the compilation flags (for
535 example by using C<Configure -Accflags=-DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT>), in
536 which case one has to explicitly set the PERL_HASH_SEED environment
537 variable to enable the security feature, or by adding -DNO_HASH_SEED to
538 the compilation flags to completely disable the randomisation feature.
540 B<Perl has never guaranteed any ordering of the hash keys>, and the
541 ordering has already changed several times during the lifetime of Perl
542 5. Also, the ordering of hash keys has always been, and continues to
543 be, affected by the insertion order. It is likely that Perl 5.10 and
544 Perl 6 will randomise all hashes. Note that because of this
545 randomisation for example the Data::Dumper results will be different
546 between different runs of Perl since Data::Dumper by default dumps
547 hashes "unordered". The use of the Data::Dumper C<Sortkeys> option is
552 Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
553 TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
554 access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
555 Version 5. You can find more about SOCKS from http://www.socks.nec.com/
557 =head3 Dynamic Loading
559 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
560 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
561 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
562 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
564 =head3 Building a shared Perl library
566 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
567 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
568 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
571 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
572 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
573 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
574 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
575 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
576 can share the same library.
578 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
579 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
580 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
583 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
584 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
585 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
588 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
589 libperl.so.6.2 (for Perl 5.6.2), or libperl.so.602, or simply
590 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
591 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
592 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
593 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
595 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
596 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
598 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
600 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
602 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
603 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
604 NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
605 for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
606 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
607 be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
608 library search settings. You can find the name of the environment
609 variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
611 grep ldlibpthname config.sh
613 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
614 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
615 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
618 cd t; ./perl misc/failing_test.t
620 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
622 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
625 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
627 for Bourne-style shells, or
629 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
631 for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
632 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And
633 again, it may be something other than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
635 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
636 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
638 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
640 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
641 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
642 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
643 install a standard Perl 5.8.0 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
644 try to build Perl 5.8.0 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
645 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
646 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
647 libperl.so.8 rather with the installed libperl.so.8? The answer is
648 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
649 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
650 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
651 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux, you can only override at runtime via
652 LD_PRELOAD, specifying the exact filename you wish to be used; and on
653 Digital Unix, you can override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the
654 _RLD_ROOT environment variable to point to the perl build directory.
656 In other words, it is generally not a good idea to try to build a perl
657 with a shared library if $archlib/CORE/$libperl already exists from a
660 A good workaround is to specify a different directory for the
661 architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING version of perl.
662 You can do this by changing all the *archlib* variables in config.sh to
663 point to your new architecture-dependent library.
665 =head3 Environment access
667 Perl often needs to write to the program's environment, such as when C<%ENV>
668 is assigned to. Many implementations of the C library function C<putenv()>
669 leak memory, so where possible perl will manipulate the environment directly
670 to avoid these leaks. The default is now to perform direct manipulation
671 whenever perl is running as a stand alone interpreter, and to call the safe
672 but potentially leaky C<putenv()> function when the perl interpreter is
673 embedded in another application. You can force perl to always use C<putenv()>
674 by compiling with -DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV. You can force an embedded perl to
675 use direct manipulation by setting C<PL_use_safe_putenv = 0;> after the
676 C<perl_construct()> call.
678 =head2 Installation Directories
680 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
681 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
682 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
683 Do not include trailing slashes on directory names.
685 I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
686 everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
687 process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use
688 the defaults from then on. Alternatively, you can
690 grep '^install' config.sh
692 after Configure has run to verify the installation paths.
694 The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
695 people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
696 distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
697 need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
698 you can safely skip the next section.
700 The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
704 =item Directories for the perl distribution
706 By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.9.0.
707 $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
708 5.9.0 or 5.9.1, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
709 determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
710 variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
712 Configure variable Default value
713 $prefixexp /usr/local
714 $binexp $prefixexp/bin
715 $scriptdirexp $prefixexp/bin
716 $privlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version
717 $archlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
718 $man1direxp $prefixexp/man/man1
719 $man3direxp $prefixexp/man/man3
723 $prefixexp is generated from $prefix, with ~ expansion done to convert home
724 directories into absolute paths. Similarly for the other variables listed. As
725 file system calls do not do this, you should always reference the ...exp
726 variables, to support users who build perl in their home directory.
728 Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
729 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
730 instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
731 directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
732 the common style is shown here.
734 =item Directories for site-specific add-on files
736 After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
737 CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
738 be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
740 Configure variable Default value
741 $siteprefixexp $prefixexp
742 $sitebinexp $siteprefixexp/bin
743 $sitescriptexp $siteprefixexp/bin
744 $sitelibexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
745 $sitearchexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
746 $siteman1direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man1
747 $siteman3direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man3
748 $sitehtml1direxp (none)
749 $sitehtml3direxp (none)
751 By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
752 modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
754 =item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
756 Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
757 distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
758 for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
760 Configure variable Default value
761 $vendorprefixexp (none)
762 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
763 $vendorbinexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
764 $vendorscriptexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
766 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
768 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
769 $vendorman1direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man1
770 $vendorman3direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man3
771 $vendorhtml1direxp (none)
772 $vendorhtml3direxp (none)
774 These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
775 a vendor might choose the following settings:
778 $siteprefix /usr/local
781 This would have the effect of setting the following:
784 $scriptdirexp /usr/bin
785 $privlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version
786 $archlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
787 $man1direxp /usr/man/man1
788 $man3direxp /usr/man/man3
790 $sitebinexp /usr/local/bin
791 $sitescriptexp /usr/local/bin
792 $sitelibexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
793 $sitearchexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
794 $siteman1direxp /usr/local/man/man1
795 $siteman3direxp /usr/local/man/man3
797 $vendorbinexp /usr/bin
798 $vendorscriptexp /usr/bin
799 $vendorlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
800 $vendorarchexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
801 $vendorman1direxp /usr/man/man1
802 $vendorman3direxp /usr/man/man3
804 Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
805 /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
806 the /usr/local hierarchy.
808 The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
809 version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
810 However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
811 installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
812 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for more details
813 on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
815 Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
816 example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
817 are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
818 site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
819 network. One way to do that would be something like
821 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
825 As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
826 variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
827 directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
828 Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
829 version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
831 For example, if you have a bundle of perl libraries from a previous
832 installation, perhaps in a strange place:
834 Configure -Dotherlibdirs=/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1
838 There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
839 that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
840 separated list of directories, like this
842 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
844 The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
845 ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
846 modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
847 touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
848 version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
849 present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
850 directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
851 run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
853 =item USE_SITECUSTOMIZE
855 Run-time customization of @INC can be enabled with:
857 sh Configure -Dusesitecustomize
859 Which will define USE_SITECUSTOMIZE and $Config{usesitecustomize}.
860 When enabled, make perl run F<$sitelibexp/sitecustomize.pl> before
861 anything else. This script can then be set up to add additional
866 In versions 5.005_57 and earlier, the default was to store module man
867 pages in a version-specific directory, such as
868 /usr/local/lib/perl5/$version/man/man3. The default for 5.005_58 and
869 after is /usr/local/man/man3 so that most users can find the man pages
870 without resetting MANPATH.
872 You can continue to use the old default from the command line with
874 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.9.0/man/man3
876 Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
878 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
880 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
885 Currently, the standard perl installation does not do anything with
886 HTML documentation, but that may change in the future. Further, some
887 add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The html Configure
888 variables listed above are provided if you wish to specify where such
889 documents should be placed. The default is "none", but will likely
890 eventually change to something useful based on user feedback.
894 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
895 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
898 Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
899 directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
902 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
903 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
904 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below.
906 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
907 library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
908 suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
910 Thus, for example, if you Configure with
911 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.9.0 are
913 Configure variable Default value
914 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0
915 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0/$archname
916 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0
917 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0/$archname
919 =head2 Changing the installation directory
921 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
922 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
923 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
924 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
925 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
926 packages, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
927 wish to install perl into a different directory and use that
928 management software to move perl to its final destination. This
929 section describes how to do that.
931 Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You
932 could edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to
933 /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local, or you could simply use the
934 following command line:
936 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
938 (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
940 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
941 modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
942 follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with
945 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
947 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is convenient
948 to compile it once and create an archive that can be installed on
949 multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to create an
950 archive that can be installed in /opt/perl. One way to do that is by
951 using the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>. The DESTDIR is
952 automatically prepended to all the installation paths. Thus you
955 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
958 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
959 cd /tmp/perl5/opt/perl
960 tar cvf /tmp/perl5-archive.tar .
962 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
964 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
965 answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact
966 person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another
967 system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file
968 to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate
969 hint file for your system.
971 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
976 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
978 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
980 If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
981 to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
982 platform-specific hints files.
984 =head2 Disabling older versions of Perl
986 Configure will search for binary compatible versions of previously
987 installed perl binaries in the tree that is specified as target tree
988 and these will be used by the perl being built.
989 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> for more details.
991 To disable this use of older perl modules, even completely valid pure perl
992 modules, you can specify to not include the paths found:
994 sh Configure -Dinc_version_list=none ...
996 When using the newer perl, you can add these paths again in the
997 $PERL5LIB environment variable or with perl's -I runtime option.
999 =head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
1001 Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
1002 where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
1003 read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
1004 architectures. You can do this (if your file system supports symbolic
1007 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
1008 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
1009 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
1011 This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
1012 pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
1013 unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
1017 as usual, and Perl will be built in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
1019 =head2 Building a debugging perl
1021 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
1022 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
1023 you probably want to have support for perl internal debugging code
1024 (activated by adding -DDEBUGGING to ccflags), and/or support for the
1025 system debugger by adding -g to optimize.
1027 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING=<mode>
1029 For a more eye appealing call, -DEBUGGING is defined to be an alias
1030 for -DDEBUGGING. For both, the -U calls are also supported, in order
1031 to be able to overrule the hints or Policy.sh settings.
1035 =item -DEBUGGING=old
1037 Which is the default, and supports the old convention of
1039 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
1041 This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
1042 to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
1043 executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
1044 cc -g2. Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for
1045 your system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags
1046 variable in config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's
1047 internal state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by default
1048 if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to reuse your
1049 old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the optimize and
1050 ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes as shown in
1051 L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
1053 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
1054 it's convenient to have both.
1062 =item -DEBUGGING=both
1064 Sets both -DDEBUGGING in the ccflags, and add -g to optimize.
1068 Adds -g to optimize, but does not set -DDEBUGGING.
1070 =item -DEBUGGING=none
1072 Removes -g from optimize, and -DDEBUGGING from ccflags.
1076 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
1077 versions of perl under L<Building a shared Perl library>.
1081 Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
1082 in the ext/ subdirectory.
1084 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
1085 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
1086 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
1087 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
1088 is always built by default. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
1089 set the Configure variable useposix=false from the Configure command line.
1091 If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
1092 running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
1093 extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
1094 it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
1095 has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
1096 extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
1097 convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
1098 you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
1099 dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
1101 If you have dynamic loading, another way of specifying extra modules
1102 is described in L<"Adding extra modules to the build"> below.
1104 You can learn more about each of the supplied extensions by consulting the
1105 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
1108 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
1109 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
1110 version. Configure will suggest this as the default.
1112 To disable certain extensions so that they are not built, use the
1113 -Dnoextensions=... and -Donlyextensions=... options. They both accept
1114 a space-separated list of extensions. The extensions listed in
1115 C<noextensions> are removed from the list of extensions to build, while
1116 the C<onlyextensions> is rather more severe and builds only the listed
1117 extensions. The latter should be used with extreme caution since
1118 certain extensions are used by many other extensions and modules:
1119 examples of such modules include Fcntl and IO. The order of processing
1120 these options is first C<only> (if present), then C<no> (if present).
1122 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
1123 the extensions you want.
1125 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley
1126 DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect
1127 this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with earlier
1128 releases of version 2.
1130 If you re-use your old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
1131 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
1132 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
1135 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern systems do)
1136 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
1137 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
1138 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
1140 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
1142 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
1143 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
1144 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
1145 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
1146 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
1147 how to obtain the libraries.
1149 If your database header (.h) files are not in a directory normally
1150 searched by your C compiler, then you will need to include the
1151 appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by Configure. If
1152 your database libraries are not in a directory normally
1153 searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to include
1154 the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by Configure.
1155 See the examples below.
1161 =item gdbm in /usr/local
1163 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
1164 GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
1165 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
1166 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
1167 necessary steps out automatically.
1169 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1170 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
1172 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
1175 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
1176 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1179 Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1180 you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1181 /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
1183 =item gdbm in /usr/you
1185 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
1186 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
1187 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
1188 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
1189 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
1190 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
1191 /usr/you/lib to the list.
1193 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
1197 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
1198 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
1200 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1201 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1203 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
1204 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
1205 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
1206 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
1209 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
1210 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
1214 =head2 Building DB, NDBM, and ODBM interfaces with Berkeley DB 3
1216 A Perl interface for DB3 is part of Berkeley DB, but if you want to
1217 compile the standard Perl DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you must follow
1218 following instructions.
1220 Berkeley DB3 from Sleepycat Software is by default installed without
1221 DB1 compatibility code (needed for the DB_File interface) and without
1222 links to compatibility files. So if you want to use packages written
1223 for the DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you need to configure DB3 with
1224 --enable-compat185 (and optionally with --enable-dump185) and create
1225 additional references (suppose you are installing DB3 with
1228 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdbm.so
1229 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libndbm.so
1230 echo '#define DB_DBM_HSEARCH 1' >dbm.h
1231 echo '#include <db.h>' >>dbm.h
1232 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/dbm.h
1233 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/ndbm.h
1235 Optionally, if you have compiled with --enable-compat185 (not needed
1238 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb1.so
1239 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb.so
1241 ODBM emulation seems not to be perfect, but is quite usable,
1244 lib/odbm.............FAILED at test 9
1245 Failed 1/64 tests, 98.44% okay
1247 =head2 Overriding an old config.sh
1249 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
1250 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
1252 =head2 GNU-style configure
1254 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
1255 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
1257 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
1259 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
1262 ./configure.gnu --help
1266 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
1267 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
1269 See L<Cross-compilation> below for information on cross-compiling.
1271 =head2 Malloc Issues
1273 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
1274 so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
1275 the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
1276 version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
1277 perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
1278 than your system malloc.
1280 However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
1281 experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
1282 that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
1283 (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
1287 =item Using the system malloc
1289 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
1291 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
1293 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
1295 =item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
1297 NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you just
1298 run Configure to accept all the defaults on those platforms.
1300 Perl's malloc family of functions are normally called Perl_malloc(),
1301 Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree().
1302 These names do not clash with the system versions of these functions.
1304 If this flag is enabled, however, Perl's malloc family of functions
1305 will have the same names as the system versions. This may be required
1306 sometimes if you have libraries that like to free() data that may have
1307 been allocated by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1309 Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1310 from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1311 does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1314 =item -DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS
1316 This flag enables debugging mstats, which is required to use the
1317 Devel::Peek::mstat() function. You cannot enable this unless you are
1318 using Perl's malloc, so a typical Configure command would be
1320 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS -Dusemymalloc='y'
1322 to enable this option.
1326 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1328 If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1329 If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
1333 =item Running Configure Interactively
1335 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1336 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1339 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1340 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1341 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1342 will use the defaults from then on.
1344 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1345 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1346 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1350 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
1351 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1352 will offer to use that hint file.
1354 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1355 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1356 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1357 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
1360 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1362 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
1363 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
1364 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
1367 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1368 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
1369 Keep the recommended value? [y]
1371 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
1372 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
1375 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
1376 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
1377 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
1380 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1381 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1382 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1383 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1386 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1387 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1388 Keep the previous value? [y]
1390 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1391 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1392 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1394 =item Changing Compilers
1396 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1397 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1398 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
1399 with the options you want to use.
1401 This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
1402 gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
1404 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1406 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1407 them to all the .SH files by running
1411 You will then have to rebuild by running
1416 =item config.over and config.arch
1418 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride
1419 Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1420 before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1421 however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1422 This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1424 There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1425 config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1426 architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1427 hints file that creates the config.arch.
1431 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1432 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1433 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1435 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1436 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1441 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1442 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1443 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1444 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1445 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1446 lost the next time you run Configure.
1448 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1449 see the file hints/README.hints.
1451 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1452 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1459 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1460 Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1461 system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1462 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1465 =item Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX and BIN_SH
1467 In Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX, Configure might abort with
1469 Build a threading Perl? [n]
1470 Configure[2437]: Syntax error at line 1 : `config.sh' is not expected.
1472 This indicates that Configure is being run with a broken Korn shell
1473 (even though you think you are using a Bourne shell by using
1474 "sh Configure" or "./Configure"). The Korn shell bug has been reported
1475 to Compaq as of February 1999 but in the meanwhile, the reason ksh is
1476 being used is that you have the environment variable BIN_SH set to
1477 'xpg4'. This causes /bin/sh to delegate its duties to /bin/posix/sh
1478 (a ksh). Unset the environment variable and rerun Configure.
1480 =item HP-UX 11, pthreads, and libgdbm
1482 If you are running Configure with -Dusethreads in HP-UX 11, be warned
1483 that POSIX threads and libgdbm (the GNU dbm library) compiled before
1484 HP-UX 11 do not mix. This will cause a basic test run by Configure to
1487 Pthread internal error: message: __libc_reinit() failed, file: ../pthreads/pthread.c, line: 1096
1488 Return Pointer is 0xc082bf33
1489 sh: 5345 Quit(coredump)
1491 and Configure will give up. The cure is to recompile and install
1492 libgdbm under HP-UX 11.
1494 =item Porting information
1496 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan 9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1497 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1498 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1499 subdirectory. Porting/Glossary should especially come in handy.
1501 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1502 http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
1503 various other operating systems.
1505 If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture, study carefully the
1506 section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1507 in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file Porting/patching.pod.
1508 Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1512 =head2 Adding extra modules to the build
1514 You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1515 CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1516 command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1518 Configure -Dextras="Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI"
1520 or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
1521 then answer "Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
1522 The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
1523 This will only work if those modules are to be built as dynamic
1524 extensions. If you wish to include those extra modules as static
1525 extensions, see L<"Extensions"> above.
1527 Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1528 modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1529 or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1530 do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1532 Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1533 dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
1534 For example: you will need to have the zlib.h header and the libz
1535 library installed for the Compress::Zlib, or the Foo database specific
1536 headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1537 process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1541 suidperl is an optional component, which is normally neither built
1542 nor installed by default. From perlfaq1:
1544 On some systems, setuid and setgid scripts (scripts written
1545 in the C shell, Bourne shell, or Perl, for example, with the
1546 set user or group ID permissions enabled) are insecure due to
1547 a race condition in the kernel. For those systems, Perl versions
1548 5 and 4 attempt to work around this vulnerability with an optional
1549 component, a special program named suidperl, also known as sperl.
1550 This program attempts to emulate the set-user-ID and set-group-ID
1551 features of the kernel.
1553 Because of the buggy history of suidperl, and the difficulty
1554 of properly security auditing as large and complex piece of
1555 software as Perl, we cannot recommend using suidperl and the feature
1556 should be considered deprecated.
1557 Instead, use a tool specifically designed to handle changes in
1558 privileges, such as B<sudo>, http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/ .
1562 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1563 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1564 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1565 makefile, not Makefile, since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1566 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1567 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1569 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1574 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1576 =head2 Expected errors
1578 These errors are normal, and can be ignored:
1581 make: [extra.pods] Error 1 (ignored)
1583 make: [extras.make] Error 1 (ignored)
1585 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1587 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1588 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1589 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1590 then see L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
1596 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1597 for further tips and information.
1601 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1602 during the building of extensions, run
1606 to test your version of miniperl.
1610 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1611 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1612 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1613 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1614 whole L<"Locale problems"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1615 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1617 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1618 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1621 are supported and installed on your system.
1622 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1628 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1629 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1630 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1631 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by installing gcc
1632 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1633 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1634 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1638 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1639 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1641 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1642 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1643 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1645 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1646 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1648 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1650 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1651 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1652 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1653 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1654 of your local set-up.
1658 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1659 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1662 sh Configure -Uusenm
1664 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1665 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1668 =item umask not found
1670 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1671 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1672 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1673 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1674 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1678 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1679 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1680 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1681 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1682 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1686 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1687 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1688 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1692 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1693 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1694 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1695 on L<"nm extraction">.
1697 =item __inet_* errors
1699 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1700 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1701 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1702 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1703 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1704 newer version of BIND (and remove the files the old one left behind).
1705 If you can't, you can either link with the updated resolver library provided
1706 with BIND 8.1 or rename /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and
1707 test process to avoid the problem.
1709 =item *_r() prototype NOT found
1711 On a related note, if you see a bunch of complaints like the above about
1712 reentrant functions - specifically networking-related ones - being present
1713 but without prototypes available, check to see if BIND 8.1 (or possibly
1714 other BIND 8 versions) is (or has been) installed. They install
1715 header files such as netdb.h into places such as /usr/local/include (or into
1716 another directory as specified at build/install time), at least optionally.
1717 Remove them or put them in someplace that isn't in the C preprocessor's
1718 header file include search path (determined by -I options plus defaults,
1719 normally /usr/include).
1721 =item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1723 This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1724 gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1725 changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1726 rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1727 update your gcc installation.
1731 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1732 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1740 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1741 with B<make depend; make>.
1743 =item Missing functions and Undefined symbols
1745 If the build of miniperl fails with a long list of missing functions or
1746 undefined symbols, check the libs variable in the config.sh file. It
1747 should look something like
1749 libs='-lsocket -lnsl -ldl -lm -lc'
1751 The exact libraries will vary from system to system, but you typically
1752 need to include at least the math library -lm. Normally, Configure
1753 will suggest the correct defaults. If the libs variable is empty, you
1754 need to start all over again. Run
1758 and start from the very beginning. This time, unless you are sure of
1759 what you are doing, accept the default list of libraries suggested by
1762 If the libs variable looks correct, you might have the
1763 L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1765 If you stil have missing routines or undefined symbols, you probably
1766 need to add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature
1767 that Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete. If
1768 you used a hint file, see if it has any relevant advice. You can also
1769 look through through config.h for likely suspects.
1773 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1774 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1775 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1776 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1777 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1780 =item Missing dbmclose
1782 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1783 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1785 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1787 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1788 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1789 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1790 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1791 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1792 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1793 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1794 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1795 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1796 process is continuing.
1798 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1801 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1803 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1804 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1805 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1807 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1808 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1809 quite that tightly coordinated.
1811 =item sh: ar: not found
1813 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1814 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1815 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1816 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1819 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1821 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1822 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1823 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1825 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1827 If you get this error message from the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem test, your System
1828 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1829 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1830 to include the System V semaphores.
1832 =item ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem........semget: No space left on device
1834 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1835 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1836 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1837 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1842 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1843 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1844 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1845 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1846 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1847 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1848 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1849 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1851 =item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1853 The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1854 make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1855 archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1856 C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1857 archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1858 incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1859 official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1860 that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1861 archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1863 =item invalid token: ##
1865 You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. To compile Perl, you
1866 need to use a compiler that supports ANSI C. If there is a README
1867 file for your system, it may have further details on your compiler
1872 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1874 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1876 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1878 UTS may need one or more of -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1880 FreeBSD can fail the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1881 configured in the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1882 you will get a message telling you what to do.
1884 HP-UX 11 Y2K patch "Y2K-1100 B.11.00.B0125 HP-UX Core OS Year 2000
1885 Patch Bundle" has been reported to break the io/fs test #18 which
1886 tests whether utime() can change timestamps. The Y2K patch seems to
1887 break utime() so that over NFS the timestamps do not get changed
1888 (on local filesystems utime() still works).
1890 Building Perl on a system that has also BIND (headers and libraries)
1891 installed may run into troubles because BIND installs its own netdb.h
1892 and socket.h, which may not agree with the operating system's ideas of
1893 the same files. Similarly, including -lbind may conflict with libc's
1894 view of the world. You may have to tweak -Dlocincpth and -Dloclibpth
1899 =head2 Cross-compilation
1901 Perl can be cross-compiled. It is just not trivial, cross-compilation
1902 rarely is. Perl is routinely cross-compiled for many platforms (as of
1903 June 2005 at least PocketPC aka WinCE, Open Zaurus, EPOC, Symbian, and
1904 the IBM OS/400). These platforms are known as the B<target> platforms,
1905 while the systems where the compilation takes place are the B<host>
1908 What makes the situation difficult is that first of all,
1909 cross-compilation environments vary significantly in how they are set
1910 up and used, and secondly because the primary way of configuring Perl
1911 (using the rather large Unix-tool-dependent Configure script) is not
1912 awfully well suited for cross-compilation. However, starting from
1913 version 5.8.0, the Configure script also knows one way of supporting
1914 cross-compilation support, please keep reading.
1916 See the following files for more information about compiling Perl for
1917 the particular platforms:
1921 =item WinCE/PocketPC
1943 Packaging and transferring either the core Perl modules or CPAN
1944 modules to the target platform is also left up to the each
1945 cross-compilation environment. Often the cross-compilation target
1946 platforms are somewhat limited in diskspace: see the section
1947 L<Minimizing the Perl installation> to learn more of the minimal set
1948 of files required for a functional Perl installation.
1950 For some cross-compilation environments the Configure option
1951 C<-Dinstallprefix=...> might be handy, see L<Changing the installation
1954 About the cross-compilation support of Configure: what is known to
1955 work is running Configure in a cross-compilation environment and
1956 building the miniperl executable. What is known not to work is
1957 building the perl executable because that would require building
1958 extensions: Dynaloader statically and File::Glob dynamically, for
1959 extensions one needs MakeMaker and MakeMaker is not yet
1960 cross-compilation aware, and neither is the main Makefile.
1962 The cross-compilation setup of Configure has successfully been used in
1963 at least two Linux cross-compilation environments. The setups were
1964 both such that the host system was Intel Linux with a gcc built for
1965 cross-compiling into ARM Linux, and there was a SSH connection to the
1968 To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch that
1969 has to be used is C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
1971 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1973 This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
1974 symbol C<usecrosscompile> available.
1976 During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1977 into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1978 cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1979 target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1980 transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1981 the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1982 methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1983 F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1985 To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1986 the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1987 happens), supply Configure with
1989 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1991 The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
1992 must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1993 You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
1997 but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
1999 Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
2000 which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
2001 This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
2002 In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
2005 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
2007 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
2008 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
2009 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
2011 If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
2012 compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
2013 C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
2014 (The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
2015 as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
2016 will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
2017 in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
2019 In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
2020 choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
2023 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
2025 Putting it all together:
2027 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
2028 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
2029 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
2031 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
2032 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
2033 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
2034 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
2035 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
2038 or if you are happy with the defaults:
2040 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
2041 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
2042 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
2045 Another example where the cross-compiler has been installed under
2046 F</usr/local/arm/2.95.5>:
2048 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
2049 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
2050 -Dcc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/bin/arm-linux-gcc \
2051 -Dincpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
2052 -Dusrinc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
2053 -Dlibpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/lib
2057 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
2058 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
2059 wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
2061 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
2062 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
2063 a few tty tests will be skipped.
2065 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
2067 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
2068 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
2069 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
2073 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
2074 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
2078 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
2079 complicated constructs). For extension and library tests you
2080 need a little bit more: you need to setup your environment variable
2081 PERL_CORE to a true value (like "1"), and you need to supply the
2082 right Perl library path:
2085 ./perl -I../lib ../ext/Socket/Socket.t
2086 ./perl -I../lib ../lib/less.t
2088 (For csh-like shells on UNIX; adjust appropriately for other platforms.)
2089 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
2090 comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
2091 shared library path if you get errors like:
2093 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
2095 See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
2101 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
2102 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
2103 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
2104 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
2105 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
2106 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
2108 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
2114 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
2116 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
2117 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
2118 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
2119 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
2120 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
2121 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
2124 =item Timing problems
2126 Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
2127 sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
2128 If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough,
2129 these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again
2130 with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive
2131 and load-sensitive tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
2132 F<ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t>, F<lib/Benchmark.t>,
2133 F<lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t>, and F<lib/Memoize/t/speed.t>.
2137 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
2138 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
2139 For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
2140 test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
2142 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
2144 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
2146 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
2147 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
2148 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
2149 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
2151 =item Failures from lib/File/Temp/t/security saying "system possibly insecure"
2153 First, such warnings are not necessarily serious or indicative of a
2154 real security threat. That being said, they bear investigating.
2156 Note that each of the tests is run twice. The first time is in the
2157 directory returned by File::Spec->tmpdir() (often /tmp on Unix
2158 systems), and the second time in the directory from which the test was
2159 run (usually the 't' directory, if the test was run as part of 'make
2162 The tests may fail for the following reasons:
2164 (1) If the directory the tests are being run in is owned by somebody
2165 other than the user running the tests, or by root (uid 0).
2167 This failure can happen if the Perl source code distribution is
2168 unpacked in such a way that the user ids in the distribution package
2169 are used as-is. Some tar programs do this.
2171 (2) If the directory the tests are being run in is writable by group or
2172 by others, and there is no sticky bit set for the directory. (With
2173 UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to a directory means the right to
2174 add or remove files in that directory. The 'sticky bit' is a feature
2175 used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if the bit is
2176 set for a directory, no one but the owner (or root) can remove that
2177 file even if the permissions would otherwise allow file removal by
2180 This failure may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the
2181 permissions policy used on this particular system. This failure can
2182 also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit (this
2183 is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle File::Temp
2184 should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or if the system
2185 supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons it is not being
2186 used. This is, for example, the case with HP-UX: as of HP-UX release
2187 11.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX doesn't use it
2188 on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also, as with the permissions, some
2189 local policy might dictate that the stickiness is not used.
2191 (3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
2192 any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
2193 directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
2194 (2). For Unix systems, this is usually not an issue if you are
2195 building on a local disk. See the documentation for the File::Temp
2196 module for more information about 'chown giveaway'.
2198 See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
2199 about the various security aspects of temporary files.
2205 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
2206 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
2207 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
2208 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
2209 are not root, you must still have permission to install into the directories
2210 in question and you should ignore any messages about chown not working.
2212 If "make install" just says "`install' is up to date" or something
2213 similar, you may be on a case-insensitive filesystems such as Mac's HFS+,
2214 and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion is brought to you
2215 by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
2217 =head2 Installing perl under different names
2219 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
2220 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
2221 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
2223 make install PERLNAME=myperl
2225 You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
2226 "perl5.005") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
2228 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
2230 This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (e.g. to
2231 avoid conflicts with an ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor).
2232 Without this the versioned binary would be called "perl55.005".
2234 =head2 Installing perl under a different directory
2236 You can install perl under a different destination directory by using
2237 the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>, with a command like
2239 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
2241 DESTDIR is automatically prepended to all the installation paths. See
2242 the example in L<"Creating an installable tar archive"> above.
2245 =head2 Installed files
2247 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
2248 anything, you can run
2250 ./perl installperl -n
2251 ./perl installman -n
2253 make install will install the following:
2258 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
2259 will be a link to perl.
2261 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
2262 a2p awk-to-perl translator
2266 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
2268 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
2269 s2p sed-to-perl translator
2270 find2perl find-to-perl translator
2271 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
2272 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
2273 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
2274 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
2275 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
2276 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
2277 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
2283 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
2284 dprofpp Perl code profile post-processor
2288 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
2289 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
2293 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2295 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
2296 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2298 Installperl will also create the directories listed above
2299 in L<"Installation Directories">.
2301 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
2302 under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
2303 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2304 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
2306 Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2307 installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
2308 perl alongside an already installed production version of perl without
2309 disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2310 To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2312 Configure -Dversiononly
2314 or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2315 you can just manually run
2317 ./perl installperl -v
2319 and skip installman altogether.
2320 See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2323 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
2325 Perl 5.9 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
2326 In other words, you will have to recompile your XS modules.
2328 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
2329 5.8.0) to another similar version (e.g. 5.8.2) without re-compiling
2330 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
2331 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
2332 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
2333 with 5.8.2, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
2334 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
2335 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.8.2.
2337 Usually, most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use
2338 with a newer version of Perl Here is how it is supposed to work.
2339 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
2341 Suppose you already have version 5.005_03 installed. The directories
2342 searched by 5.005_03 are
2344 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503/$archname
2345 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503
2346 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2347 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2349 Beginning with 5.6.0 the version number in the site libraries are
2350 fully versioned. Now, suppose you install version 5.6.0. The directories
2351 searched by version 5.6.0 will be
2353 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/$archname
2354 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0
2355 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
2356 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2358 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2359 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2360 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2362 Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
2363 of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
2364 directories. This way, modules installed under 5.005_03 will continue
2365 to be usable by 5.005_03 but will also accessible to 5.6.0. Further,
2366 suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
2367 present only in 5.6.0. That new module will get installed into
2368 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0 and will be available to 5.6.0,
2369 but will not interfere with the 5.005_03 version.
2371 The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
2372 5.6.0 and above will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
2374 Lastly, suppose you now install 5.8.0, which is not binary compatible
2375 with 5.6.0. The directories searched by 5.8.0 (if you don't change the
2376 Configure defaults) will be:
2378 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0/$archname
2379 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0
2380 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/$archname
2381 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0
2383 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2385 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2387 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2389 Note that the earlier $archname entries are now gone, but pure perl
2390 modules from earlier versions will still be found.
2392 Assuming the users in your site are still actively using perl 5.6.0 and
2393 5.005 after you installed 5.8.0, you can continue to install add-on
2394 extensions using any of perl 5.8.0, 5.6.0, or 5.005. The installations
2395 of these different versions remain distinct, but remember that the
2396 newer versions of perl are automatically set up to search the
2397 compatible site libraries of the older ones. This means that
2398 installing a new XS extension with 5.005 will make it visible to both
2399 5.005 and 5.6.0, but not to 5.8.0. Installing a pure perl module with
2400 5.005 will make it visible to all three versions. Later, if you
2401 install the same extension using, say, perl 5.8.0, it will override the
2402 5.005-installed version, but only for perl 5.8.0.
2404 This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2405 to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2406 versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
2408 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
2410 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
2411 separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
2412 won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2413 libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2414 way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
2416 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.8.2
2418 and adding /opt/perl5.8.2/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
2419 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2420 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2422 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
2423 (e.g. 5.8 for all 5.8.x versions), but change directory with
2426 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2427 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2428 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2431 =head2 Upgrading from 5.005 or 5.6 to 5.8.0
2433 B<Perl 5.9.0 is binary incompatible with Perl 5.8.x, Perl 5.6.x, 5.005,
2434 and any earlier Perl release.> Perl modules having binary parts
2435 (meaning that a C compiler is used) will have to be recompiled to be
2436 used with 5.9.0. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with
2437 5.9.0, you may safely do so without disturbing the older
2438 installations. (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5">
2441 See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2442 incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
2443 perllocal.pod, not perllocale.pod, for installed module information.
2445 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
2447 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
2449 By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
2450 they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
2452 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
2453 perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
2454 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
2455 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
2456 the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036 (or
2457 whatever the appropriate pathname is). See L<perltrap> for
2458 possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
2460 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2462 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2463 system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2464 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2465 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2466 library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2468 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2469 of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2470 hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2471 For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2474 =head1 installhtml --help
2476 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2477 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2478 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2480 Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2481 html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2483 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2488 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2490 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2491 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2492 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2493 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2494 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
2497 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2498 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2499 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2500 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2501 (and would welcome patches for them).
2503 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2504 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2506 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2508 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2509 available in TeX format. Type
2511 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2513 =head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2515 The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2516 Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2517 operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2519 Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way:
2520 Encode, with its big conversion tables, consumes a lot of
2521 space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything. The
2522 Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network
2523 programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all
2524 depends on what do you need to do.
2526 In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2527 recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2528 depends on what you need.
2530 Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2534 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2538 in Linux is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
2541 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/strict.pm
2542 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/warnings.pm
2543 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/File/Glob.pm
2544 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/XSLoader.pm
2545 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2547 Secondly, Debian perl-base package contains the following files,
2548 size about 1.9MB in its i386 version:
2553 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B.pm
2554 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B/Deparse.pm
2555 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Config.pm
2556 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Cwd.pm
2557 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Data/Dumper.pm
2558 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/DynaLoader.pm
2559 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Errno.pm
2560 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Fcntl.pm
2561 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/File/Glob.pm
2562 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO.pm
2563 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/File.pm
2564 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Handle.pm
2565 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Pipe.pm
2566 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Seekable.pm
2567 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Select.pm
2568 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket.pm
2569 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/POSIX.pm
2570 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Socket.pm
2571 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/XSLoader.pm
2572 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.bs
2573 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.so
2574 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.bs
2575 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.so
2576 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a
2577 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2578 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2579 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2580 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2581 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/extralibs.ld
2582 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs
2583 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2584 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.bs
2585 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2586 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.bs
2587 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.so
2588 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.bs
2589 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2590 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2591 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2592 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.bs
2593 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2594 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/lib.pm
2595 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/re.pm
2596 /usr/share/doc/perl-base
2597 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
2598 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2599 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian.gz
2600 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
2601 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
2602 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
2604 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/AutoLoader.pm
2605 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp.pm
2606 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp/Heavy.pm
2607 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter.pm
2608 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2609 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec.pm
2610 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2611 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/FileHandle.pm
2612 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Getopt/Long.pm
2613 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2614 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2615 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open2.pm
2616 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open3.pm
2617 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/List/Util.pm
2618 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Scalar/Util.pm
2619 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/SelectSaver.pm
2620 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Symbol.pm
2621 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/ParseWords.pm
2622 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Tabs.pm
2623 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Wrap.pm
2624 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/attributes.pm
2625 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/base.pm
2626 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes.pm
2627 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes_heavy.pl
2628 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/constant.pm
2629 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/fields.pm
2630 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/integer.pm
2631 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/locale.pm
2632 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/overload.pm
2633 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/strict.pm
2634 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8.pm
2635 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8_heavy.pl
2636 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/vars.pm
2637 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings.pm
2638 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings/register.pm
2640 A nice trick to find out the minimal set of Perl library files you will
2641 need to run a Perl program is
2643 perl -e 'do "prog.pl"; END { print "$_\n" for sort keys %INC }'
2645 (this will not find libraries required in runtime, unfortunately, but
2646 it's a minimal set) and if you want to find out all the files you can
2647 use something like the below
2649 strace perl -le 'do "x.pl"' 2>&1 | perl -nle '/^open\(\"(.+?)"/ && print $1'
2651 (The 'strace' is Linux-specific, other similar utilities include 'truss'
2654 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
2656 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2657 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
2658 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
2659 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2660 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
2662 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
2663 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and
2666 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
2667 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
2669 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
2670 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
2673 Note that you must have performed the installation already before running
2674 the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate
2679 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2680 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2681 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
2683 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2684 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2686 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2688 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2689 the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2690 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2691 a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2692 and the contact information to match your distribution.