3 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
7 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system are:
15 # You may also wish to add these:
16 (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
17 (cd pod && make html && mv *.html <www home dir>)
18 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
20 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
22 For information on non-Unix systems, see L<"Porting information"> below.
26 You should probably at least skim through this entire document before
27 proceeding. Special notes specific to this release are identified
30 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
31 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
32 read it as is with any pager or editor.
34 If you're building Perl on a non-Unix system, you should also read
35 the README file specific to your operating system, since this may
36 provide additional or different instructions for building Perl.
38 =head1 Space Requirements
40 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 7 MB of disk space.
41 The complete tree after completing C<make> takes roughly
42 15 MB, though the actual total is likely to be quite
43 system-dependent. The installation directories need something
44 on the order of 7 MB, though again that value is system-dependent.
46 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
48 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
53 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh file. If
54 you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you change
55 systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if you are
56 experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably I<not>
57 re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or rename it, e.g.
59 mv config.sh config.sh.old
61 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
62 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
63 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
64 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
65 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
66 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
67 probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't, presently.
68 Similarly, if you used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version
69 numbers, you will probably want to adjust them as well.
71 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. Some Linux systems
72 call themselves i486, while others use i586. If you pick up a
73 precompiled binary, it might not use the same name.
75 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
76 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
80 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
81 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
82 you about. To accept the default, just press C<RETURN>. The default
85 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
86 F<*.SH> files and offer to run B<make depend>.
88 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h>
89 to get a listing. To compile with gcc, for example, you can run
93 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
94 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
96 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
97 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
99 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
104 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
105 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. You can specify a different 'prefix' for
106 the default installation directory, when Configure prompts you or by
107 using the Configure command line option -Dprefix='/some/directory',
110 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
112 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the directories
113 are simplified. For example, if you use prefix=/opt/perl,
114 then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
115 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/.
117 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
118 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
119 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
120 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
122 =head2 GNU-style configure
124 If you prefer the GNU-style B<configure> command line interface, you can
125 use the supplied B<configure> command, e.g.
129 The B<configure> script emulates a few of the more common configure
136 Cross compiling is not supported.
138 For systems that do not distinguish the files "Configure" and
139 "configure", Perl includes a copy of B<configure> named
144 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
145 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
146 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
147 DynaLoader, Fcntl, and IO are always built by default. Configure does
148 not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX is always built
149 by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can set the
150 Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from the
151 Configure command line. Similarly, the Opcode extension is always built
152 by default, but you can skip it by setting the Configure variable
153 useopcode=false either in a hint file for from the command line.
155 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
156 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
157 version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
159 In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
160 to turn off each extension:
163 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
164 Fcntl (Always included by default)
166 IO (Always included by default)
170 SDBM_File (Always included by default)
174 Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
176 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
178 Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
181 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
182 the extensions you want.
184 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern Unix systems do)
185 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
186 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
187 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
189 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
191 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
192 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
193 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
194 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
195 are B<not> included with perl. See the library documentation for
196 how to obtain the libraries.
198 I<Note:> If your database header (.h) files are not in a
199 directory normally searched by your C compiler, then you will need to
200 include the appropriate B<-I/your/directory> option when prompted by
201 Configure. If your database library (.a) files are not in a directory
202 normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to
203 include the appropriate B<-L/your/directory> option when prompted by
204 Configure. See the examples below.
210 =item gdbm in /usr/local
212 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
213 GDBM_File extension. This examples assumes you have F<gdbm.h>
214 installed in F</usr/local/include/gdbm.h> and F<libgdbm.a> installed in
215 F</usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a>. Configure should figure all the
216 necessary steps out automatically.
218 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
219 your C compiler, you should include C<-I/usr/local/include>.
221 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
224 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
225 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
228 Again, this should all happen automatically. If you want to accept the
229 defaults for all the questions and have Configure print out only terse
230 messages, then you can just run
234 and Configure should include the GDBM_File extension automatically.
236 This should actually work if you have gdbm installed in any of
237 (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu, /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
239 =item gdbm in /usr/you
241 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
242 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
243 have F</usr/you/include/gdbm.h> and F</usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a>. You
244 still have to add B<-I/usr/you/include> to cc flags, but you have to take
245 an extra step to help Configure find F<libgdbm.a>. Specifically, when
246 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
247 F</usr/you/lib> to the list.
249 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
253 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
254 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
256 C<locincpth> is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
257 Configure will automatically add the appropriate B<-I> directives.
259 C<loclibpth> is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
260 Configure will automatically add the appropriate B<-L> directives. If
261 you have some libraries under F</usr/local/> and others under
262 F</usr/you>, then you have to include both, namely
265 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
266 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
270 =head2 Installation Directories
272 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
273 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
274 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
276 By default, Configure uses the following directories for
277 library files (archname is a string like sun4-sunos, determined
280 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.004
281 /usr/local/lib/perl5/
282 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/archname
283 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl
285 and the following directories for manual pages:
288 /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3
290 (Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
291 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
292 instead.) The module man pages are stuck in that strange spot so that
293 they don't collide with other man pages stored in /usr/local/man/man3,
294 and so that Perl's man pages don't hide system man pages. On some
295 systems, B<man less> would end up calling up Perl's less.pm module man
296 page, rather than the B<less> program.
298 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
299 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you Configure with
300 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the defaults are
302 /opt/perl/lib/archname/5.004
304 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/archname
305 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl
310 The perl executable will search the libraries in the order given
313 The directories site_perl and site_perl/archname are empty, but are
314 intended to be used for installing local or site-wide extensions. Perl
315 will automatically look in these directories. Previously, most sites
316 just put their local extensions in with the standard distribution.
318 In order to support using things like #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.004 after
319 a later version is released, architecture-dependent libraries are
320 stored in a version-specific directory, such as
321 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.004/. In Perl 5.000 and 5.001, these
322 files were just stored in /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/. If you will
323 not be using 5.001 binaries, you can delete the standard extensions from
324 the /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/ directory. Locally-added extensions
325 can be moved to the site_perl and site_perl/archname directories.
327 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
330 =head2 Changing the installation directory
332 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
333 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
334 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
335 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
336 However, sites that use software such as B<depot> to manage software
337 packages may also wish to install perl into a different directory and
338 use that management software to move perl to its final destination.
339 This section describes how to do this. Someday, Configure may support
340 an option -Dinstallprefix=/foo to simplify this.
342 Suppose you want to install perl under the F</tmp/perl5> directory.
343 You can edit F<config.sh> and change all the install* variables to
344 point to F</tmp/perl5> instead of F</usr/local/wherever>. You could
345 also set them all from the Configure command line. Or, you can
346 automate this process by placing the following lines in a file
347 F<config.over> B<before> you run Configure (replace /tmp/perl5 by a
348 directory of your choice):
350 installprefix=/tmp/perl5
351 test -d $installprefix || mkdir $installprefix
352 test -d $installprefix/bin || mkdir $installprefix/bin
353 installarchlib=`echo $installarchlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
354 installbin=`echo $installbin | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
355 installman1dir=`echo $installman1dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
356 installman3dir=`echo $installman3dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
357 installprivlib=`echo $installprivlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
358 installscript=`echo $installscript | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
359 installsitelib=`echo $installsitelib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
360 installsitearch=`echo $installsitearch | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
362 Then, you can Configure and install in the usual way:
369 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
371 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
372 convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
373 installed on multiple systems. Here's one way to do that:
375 # Set up config.over to install perl into a different directory,
376 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
382 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
383 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
384 cd /usr/local # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
385 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
387 =head2 Configure-time Options
389 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
390 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
391 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
392 some of the main things you can change.
394 =head2 Binary Compatibility With Earlier Versions of Perl 5
396 If you have dynamically loaded extensions that you built under
397 perl 5.003 and that you wish to continue to use with perl 5.004, then you
398 need to ensure that 5.004 remains binary compatible with 5.003.
400 Starting with Perl 5.003, all functions in the Perl C source code have
401 been protected by default by the prefix Perl_ (or perl_) so that you
402 may link with third-party libraries without fear of namespace
403 collisions. This change broke compatibility with version 5.002, so
404 installing 5.003 or 5.004 over 5.002 or earlier will force you to
405 re-build and install all of your dynamically loadable extensions.
406 (The standard extensions supplied with Perl are handled
407 automatically). You can turn off this namespace protection by adding
408 -DNO_EMBED to your ccflags variable in config.sh.
410 Perl 5.003's namespace protection was incomplete, but this has
411 been fixed in 5.004. However, some sites may need to maintain
412 complete binary compatibility with Perl 5.003. If you are building
413 Perl for such a site, then when B<Configure> asks if you want binary
414 compatibility, answer "y".
416 On the other hand, if you are embedding perl into another application
417 and want the maximum namespace protection, then you probably ought to
418 answer "n" when B<Configure> asks if you want binary compatibility.
420 The default answer of "y" to maintain binary compatibility is probably
421 appropriate for almost everyone.
423 =head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
425 Previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in
426 <stdio.h>. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl allow alternate IO
427 mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but the stdio mechanism is still
428 the default and is the only supported mechanism.
430 This PerlIO abstraction can be enabled either on the Configure command
433 sh Configure -Duseperlio
435 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
437 If you choose to use the PerlIO abstraction layer, there are two
438 (experimental) possibilities for the underlying IO calls. These have been
439 tested to some extent on some platforms, but are not guaranteed to work
446 AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance to <stdio.h> in many
447 cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline" modules. Sfio
448 currently only builds on a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports.
449 Because the data structures are completely different from stdio, perl
450 extension modules or external libraries may not work. This
451 configuration exists to allow these issues to be worked on.
453 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
454 A (fairly old) version of sfio is in CPAN, and work is in progress to make
455 it more easily buildable by adding Configure support.
457 You select this option by
459 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
461 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
462 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
465 I<Note:> On some systems, sfio's B<iffe> configuration script fails
466 to detect that you have an C<atexit> function (or equivalent).
467 Apparently, this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux
470 You can test if you have this problem by trying the following shell
471 script. (You may have to add some extra cflags and libraries. A
472 portable version of this may eventually make its way into Configure.)
477 main() { printf("42\n"); }
479 cc -o try try.c -lsfio
481 if test X$val = X42; then
482 echo "Your sfio looks ok"
484 echo "Your sfio has the exit problem."
487 If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to your sfio sources
488 and correct iffe's guess about atexit (or whatever is appropriate for
491 There also might be a more recent release of Sfio that fixes your
496 Normal stdio IO, but with all IO going through calls to the PerlIO
497 abstraction layer. This configuration can be used to check that perl and
498 extension modules have been correctly converted to use the PerlIO
501 This configuration should work on all platforms (but might not).
503 You select this option via:
505 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Uusesfio
507 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure does not
508 detect sfio, then this will be the default suggested by Configure.
512 =head2 Building a shared libperl.so Perl library
514 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
515 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
516 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
519 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
520 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
521 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
522 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
523 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
524 can share the same library.
526 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
527 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
528 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
531 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
532 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
533 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
536 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
537 libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
538 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
539 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
540 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
541 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
543 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
544 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
546 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
548 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
550 To actually build perl, you must add the current working directory to your
551 LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable before running make. You can do
554 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
556 for Bourne-style shells, or
558 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
560 for Csh-style shells. You *MUST* do this before running make.
561 Folks running NeXT OPENSTEP must substitute DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
562 LD_LIBRARY_PATH above.
564 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
565 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
566 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
567 install a standard Perl 5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
568 try to build Perl 5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
569 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
570 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
571 libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is
572 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
573 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
574 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
575 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't.
577 The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different
578 directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING
579 version of perl. You can do this with by changing all the *archlib*
580 variables in config.sh, namely archlib, archlib_exp, and
581 installarchlib, to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
585 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed, so
586 perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
587 the malloc function on your system.
589 The perl source is shipped with a version of malloc that is very fast
590 but somewhat wasteful of space. On the other hand, your system's
591 malloc() function is probably a bit slower but also a bit more frugal.
593 For many uses, speed is probably the most important consideration, so
594 the default behavior (for most systems) is to use the malloc supplied
595 with perl. However, if you will be running very large applications
596 (e.g. Tk or PDL) or if your system already has an excellent malloc, or
597 if you are experiencing difficulties with extensions that use
598 third-party libraries that call malloc, then you might wish to use
599 your system's malloc. (Or, you might wish to explore the experimental
600 malloc flags discussed below.)
602 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
604 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
606 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
608 =head2 Malloc Performance Flags
610 If you are using Perl's malloc, you may add one or
611 more of the following items to your C<cflags> config.sh variable
612 to change its behavior in potentially useful ways. You can find out
613 more about these flags by reading the F<malloc.c> source.
614 In a future version of perl, these might be enabled by default.
618 =item -DDEBUGGING_MSTATS
620 If C<DEBUGGING_MSTATS> is defined, you can extract malloc
621 statistics from the Perl interpreter. The overhead this imposes is not
622 large (perl just twiddles integers at malloc/free/sbrk time). When you
623 run perl with the environment variable C<PERL_DEBUG_MSTATS> set to
624 either 1 or 2, the interpreter will dump statistics to stderr at exit
625 time and (with a value of 2) after compilation. If you install the
626 Devel::Peek module you can get the statistics whenever you like by
627 invoking its mstat() function.
629 =item -DEMERGENCY_SBRK
631 If C<EMERGENCY_SBRK> is defined, running out of memory need not be a
632 fatal error: a memory pool can allocated by assigning to the special
633 variable C<$^M>. See L<perlvar> for more details.
637 If C<PACK_MALLOC> is defined, malloc.c uses a slightly different
638 algorithm for small allocations (up to 64 bytes long). Such small
639 allocations are quite common in typical Perl scripts.
641 The expected memory savings (with 8-byte alignment in C<alignbytes>) is
642 about 20% for typical Perl usage. The expected slowdown due to the
643 additional malloc overhead is in fractions of a percent. (It is hard
644 to measure because of the effect of the saved memory on speed).
646 =item -DTWO_POT_OPTIMIZE
648 If C<TWO_POT_OPTIMIZE> is defined, malloc.c uses a slightly different
649 algorithm for large allocations that are close to a power of two
650 (starting with 16K). Such allocations are typical for big hashes and
651 special-purpose scripts, especially image processing. If you will be
652 manipulating very large blocks with sizes close to powers of two, it
653 might be wise to define this macro.
655 The expected saving of memory is 0-100% (100% in applications which
656 require most memory in such 2**n chunks). The expected slowdown is
661 =head2 Building a debugging perl
663 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
664 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
665 you probably want to do
667 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
669 This will do two things: First, it will force compilation to use
670 B<cc -g> so that you can use your system's debugger on the executable.
671 Second, it will add a C<-DDEBUGGING> to your ccflags variable in
672 F<config.sh> so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's internal
673 state. Note, however, that Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by
674 default if you are not reusing your old F<config.sh>. If you want to
675 reuse your old F<config.sh>, then you can just edit it and change the
676 optimize and ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes
677 as shown in L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.
679 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
680 versions of perl under L<Building a shared libperl.so Perl library>.
682 =head2 Other Compiler Flags
684 For most users, all of the Configure defaults are fine. However,
685 you can change a number of factors in the way perl is built
686 by adding appropriate B<-D> directives to your ccflags variable in
689 For example, you can replace the rand() and srand() functions in the
690 perl source by any other random number generator by a trick such as the
693 sh Configure -Dccflags='-Drand=random -Dsrand=srandom'
695 or by adding C<-Drand=random> and C<-Dsrandom=srandom> to your ccflags
696 at the appropriate Configure prompt. (You may also have to adjust
697 Configure's guess for 'randbits' as well.)
699 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
703 =item Running Configure Interactively
705 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
706 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
709 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
710 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
711 flags) you can type C<&-d> at the next Configure prompt and Configure
712 will use the defaults from then on.
714 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
715 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
716 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
720 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
721 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
722 will offer to use that hint file.
724 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
725 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint
726 file for further information. See F<hints/solaris_2.sh> for an
729 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
731 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
732 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
733 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
736 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
737 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
738 Keep the recommended value? [y]
740 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
741 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
744 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
745 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
746 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
749 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
750 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
751 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
752 Now, Configure will find your gdbm library and will issue a message:
754 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
755 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
756 Keep the previous value? [y]
758 In this case, you do I<not> want to keep the previous value, so you
759 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
760 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
762 =item Changing Compilers
764 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
765 probably I<not> re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
766 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
767 with the options you want to use.
769 This is a common source of problems. If you change from B<cc> to
770 B<gcc>, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
772 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
774 If you make any changes to F<config.sh>, you should propagate
775 them to all the .SH files by running B<sh Configure -S>. You will
776 then have to rebuild by running
783 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride Configure's
784 guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just before config.sh
785 is created. You have to be careful with this, however, as Configure
786 does no checking that your changes make sense. See the section on
787 L<"Changing the installation directory"> for an example.
791 Many of the system dependencies are contained in F<config.h>.
792 F<Configure> builds F<config.h> by running the F<config_h.SH> script.
793 The values for the variables are taken from F<config.sh>.
795 If there are any problems, you can edit F<config.h> directly. Beware,
796 though, that the next time you run B<Configure>, your changes will be
801 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
802 line, they can be made in F<cflags.SH>. For instance, to turn off the
803 optimizer on F<toke.c>, find the line in the switch structure for
804 F<toke.c> and put the command C<optimize='-g'> before the C<;;>. You
805 can also edit F<cflags> directly, but beware that your changes will be
806 lost the next time you run B<Configure>.
808 To change the C flags for all the files, edit F<config.sh>
809 and change either C<$ccflags> or C<$optimize>,
810 and then re-run B<sh Configure -S ; make depend>.
814 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file config_H to
815 config.h and edit the config.h to reflect your system's peculiarities.
816 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
819 =item Porting information
821 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
822 corresponding subdirectories. Additional information, including
823 a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
826 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
827 L<"http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports"> for current information on ports to
828 various other operating systems.
834 This will look for all the includes.
835 The output is stored in F<makefile>. The only difference between
836 F<Makefile> and F<makefile> is the dependencies at the bottom of
837 F<makefile>. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
838 F<makefile>, not F<Makefile> since the Unix B<make> command reads
839 F<makefile> first. (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in
840 a different file. Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh
843 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
848 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
850 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
851 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
852 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help, you can
853 send a message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
854 perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
855 See L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
861 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
862 for further tips and information.
866 If you can successfully build F<miniperl>, but the process crashes
867 during the building of extensions, you should run
871 to test your version of miniperl.
875 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try
876 unsetting them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang
877 while running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C
878 locale. See the discussion under L<make test> below about locales.
882 If you get duplicates upon linking for malloc et al, add -DHIDEMYMALLOC
883 or -DEMBEDMYMALLOC to your ccflags variable in config.sh.
887 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
888 correctly. When using gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define'
889 and i_varargs='undef' in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by
890 running fixincludes correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't
891 forget to propagate your changes (see
892 L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
893 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
897 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
898 numbers will vary in different versions of perl):
900 util.c: In function `Perl_croak':
901 util.c:962: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
902 proto.h:45: prototype declaration
904 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
905 previous L<"varargs"> item.
907 =item Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading
909 If you have problems with dynamic loading using gcc on SunOS or
910 Solaris, and you are using GNU as and GNU ld, you may need to add
911 B<-B/bin/> (for SunOS) or B<-B/usr/ccs/bin/> (for Solaris) to your
912 $ccflags, $ldflags, and $lddlflags so that the system's versions of as
913 and ld are used. Alternatively, you can use the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX
914 environment variable to ensure that Sun's as and ld are used. Consult
915 your gcc documentation for further information on the B<-B> option and
916 the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX variable.
918 =item ld.so.1: ./perl: fatal: relocation error:
920 If you get this message on SunOS or Solaris, and you're using gcc,
921 it's probably the GNU as or GNU ld problem in the previous item
922 L<"Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading">.
926 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
927 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
928 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
929 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
930 of your local set-up.
932 =item dlopen: stub interception failed
934 The primary cause of the 'dlopen: stub interception failed' message is
935 that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable includes a directory
936 which is a symlink to /usr/lib (such as /lib).
938 The reason this causes a problem is quite subtle. The file libdl.so.1.0
939 actually *only* contains functions which generate 'stub interception
940 failed' errors! The runtime linker intercepts links to
941 "/usr/lib/libdl.so.1.0" and links in internal implementation of those
942 functions instead. [Thanks to Tim Bunce for this explanation.]
946 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
947 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
952 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
953 If you have previously run Configure, you should I<not> reuse your old
958 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
959 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
960 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
961 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
962 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
966 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
967 on a number of other common functions too. You are probably better off
968 re-running Configure without using nm extraction (see previous item).
972 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
973 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
974 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous items
975 on L<"vsprintf"> and L<"nm extraction">.
979 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
980 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
988 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
989 with B<make depend; make>.
993 If you still can't compile successfully, try adding a C<-DCRIPPLED_CC>
994 flag. (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it compiled right!)
995 This simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that get
998 =item Missing functions
1000 If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
1001 other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
1002 there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
1007 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files without
1008 some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or allocate larger
1009 internal tables. You can customize the switches for each file in
1010 F<cflags>. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1011 F<makefile> since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1014 =item Missing dbmclose
1016 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1017 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1019 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1021 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1022 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1023 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1024 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1025 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1026 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1027 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1028 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1029 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1030 process is continuing.
1032 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1035 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1037 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1038 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1039 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1041 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1042 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1043 quite that tightly coordinated.
1045 =item sh: ar: not found
1047 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1048 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1049 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1050 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the F</usr/ccs/bin>
1053 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1055 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1056 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1057 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1061 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1063 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1065 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1067 UTS may need one or more of -DCRIPPLED_CC, B<-K> or B<-g>, and undef LSTAT.
1069 If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.
1071 Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
1077 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If it
1078 doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went wrong. See the
1079 file F<t/README> in the F<t> subdirectory. Note that you can't run the
1080 tests in background if this disables opening of /dev/tty.
1082 If B<make test> bombs out, just B<cd> to the F<t> directory and run
1083 F<./TEST> by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1084 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1088 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1089 individual subtests is to B<cd> to the F<t> directory and run
1093 (this assumes that I<most> tests succeed, since F<harness> uses
1094 complicated constructs).
1096 You can also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1097 comments that apply to your system.
1099 B<Note>: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1100 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1101 C<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1102 one or more of these environment variables set: C<LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1103 LC_COLLATE LANG>. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1104 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1106 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1112 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1114 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry C<make
1115 test>. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1116 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1117 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1118 things like: C<exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...")> or
1119 C<open("...|")>. All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1124 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1125 B<Configure>; by default this is F</usr/local/bin>. It will also try
1126 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
1127 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
1128 are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
1129 ignore any messages about chown not working.
1131 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
1132 anything, you can run
1134 ./perl installperl -n
1135 ./perl installman -n
1137 B<make install> will install the following:
1140 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
1141 will be a link to perl.
1143 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
1144 a2p awk-to-perl translator
1145 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
1147 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
1148 s2p sed-to-perl translator
1149 find2perl find-to-perl translator
1150 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
1151 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
1152 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
1153 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
1154 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
1155 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
1156 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
1159 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
1161 library files in $privlib and $archlib specified to
1162 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
1163 man pages in the location specified to Configure, usually
1164 something like /usr/local/man/man1.
1165 module in the location specified to Configure, usually
1166 man pages under /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3.
1167 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
1169 Installperl will also create the library directories $siteperl and
1170 $sitearch listed in config.sh. Usually, these are something like
1171 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
1172 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$archname
1173 where $archname is something like sun4-sunos. These directories
1174 will be used for installing extensions.
1176 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl.a library are also installed
1177 under $archlib so that any user may later build new extensions, run the
1178 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
1179 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
1181 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
1183 You can safely install the current version of perl5 and still run scripts
1184 under the old binaries for versions 5.003 and later ONLY. Instead of
1185 starting your script with #!/usr/local/bin/perl, just start it with
1186 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.003 (or whatever version you want to run.)
1187 If you want to retain a version of Perl 5 prior to 5.003, you'll
1188 need to install the current version in a separate directory tree,
1189 since some of the architecture-independent library files have changed
1190 in incompatible ways.
1192 The architecture-dependent files are stored in a version-specific
1193 directory (such as F</usr/local/lib/perl5/sun4-sunos/5.004>) so that
1194 they are still accessible. I<Note:> Perl 5.000 and 5.001 did not
1195 put their architecture-dependent libraries in a version-specific
1196 directory. They are simply in F</usr/local/lib/perl5/$archname>. If
1197 you will not be using 5.000 or 5.001, you may safely remove those
1200 The standard library files in F</usr/local/lib/perl5>
1201 should be usable by all versions of perl5.
1203 Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use with a newer
1204 version of perl. If you do run into problems, and you want to continue
1205 to use the old version of perl along with your extension, simply move
1206 those extension files to the appropriate version directory, such as
1207 F</usr/local/lib/perl/archname/5.003>. Then Perl 5.003 will find your
1208 files in the 5.003 directory, and newer versions of perl will find your
1209 newer extension in the site_perl directory.
1211 Some users may prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
1212 separate directories. One convenient way to do this is by
1213 using a separate prefix for each version, such as
1215 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.004
1217 and adding /opt/perl5.004/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
1218 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
1219 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
1221 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
1223 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
1225 By default, the perl5 libraries go into F</usr/local/lib/perl5/>, so
1226 they don't override the perl4 libraries in F</usr/local/lib/perl/>.
1228 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
1229 F<perl4.036>. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
1230 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
1231 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
1232 the C<#!> line at the top of them by C<#!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036>
1233 (or whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod
1234 for possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
1236 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
1238 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from
1239 the system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
1240 header files in F</usr/include> into files that can be easily interpreted
1241 by perl. These files will be placed in the architectural library directory
1242 you specified to B<Configure>; by default this is
1243 F</usr/local/lib/perl5/ARCH/VERSION>, where B<ARCH> is your architecture
1244 (such as C<sun4-solaris>) and B<VERSION> is the version of perl you are
1245 building (for example, C<5.004>).
1247 B<Note:> Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the
1248 conversion of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have
1249 to hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse
1250 correctly. For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and
1253 =head1 cd pod && make html && mv *.html (www home dir)
1255 Some sites may wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
1256 available in HTML format. Type
1258 cd pod && make html && mv *.html <www home dir>
1260 where F<www home dir> is wherever your site keeps HTML files.
1262 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
1264 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
1265 available in TeX format. Type
1267 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
1269 =head1 Reporting Problems
1271 If you have difficulty building perl, and none of the advice in this
1272 file helps, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant
1273 manual pages on your system doesn't help either, then you should send a
1274 message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
1275 perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
1277 Please include the I<output> of the B<./myconfig> shell script
1278 that comes with the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the
1279 B<perlbug> program that comes with the perl distribution,
1280 but you need to have perl compiled and installed before you can use it.
1282 You might also find helpful information in the F<Porting>
1283 directory of the perl distribution.
1285 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
1287 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation is
1288 in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
1289 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
1290 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied B<perldoc> script. This
1291 is sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
1293 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form
1294 along with its I<Table of Contents> by going to the pod/ subdirectory
1295 and running (either):
1297 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
1298 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
1300 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
1301 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
1304 Note that you must have performed the installation already before
1305 running the above, since the script collects the installed files to
1306 generate the documentation.
1310 Andy Dougherty <doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu>, borrowing I<very> heavily
1311 from the original README by Larry Wall.
1313 =head1 LAST MODIFIED
1315 $Id: INSTALL,v 1.9 1997/03/25 18:50:19 doughera Released $