3 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
7 First, make sure you are installing an up-to-date version of Perl. If
8 you didn't get your Perl source from CPAN, check the latest version at
9 <URL:http://www.cpan.org/src/>.
11 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system
12 with all the defaults are:
14 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
20 # You may also wish to add these:
21 (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
23 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
25 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
27 B<NOTE>: starting from the release 5.6.0 Perl will use a version
28 scheme where even-numbered subreleases (like 5.6) are stable
29 maintenance releases and odd-numbered subreleases (like 5.7) are
30 unstable development releases. Development releases should not be
31 used in production environments. Fixes and new features are first
32 carefully tested in development releases and only if they prove
33 themselves to be worthy will they be migrated to the maintenance
36 The above commands will install Perl to /usr/local or /opt, depending
37 on the platform. If that's not okay with you, use
39 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
45 For information on non-Unix systems, see the section on L<"Porting
48 If "make install" just says "`install' is up to date" or something
49 similar, you may be on case-preserving filesystems such as Mac's HFS+
50 and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion brought to you
51 by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
53 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
54 L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
56 For information on what's new in this release, see the
57 pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
58 changes, see the Changes file.
62 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
63 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
64 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
65 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
67 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
69 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
71 Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
72 you should probably at least skim through this entire document before
75 If you're building Perl on a non-Unix system, you should also read
76 the README file specific to your operating system, since this may
77 provide additional or different instructions for building Perl. There
78 are also README files for several flavors of Unix systems, such as
79 Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX; if you have one of those systems, you should
80 also read the README file specific to that system.
82 If there is a hint file for your system (in the hints/ directory) you
83 should also read that hint file for specific information for your
84 system. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh hint file.) If
85 there is a README file for your platform, then you should read
86 that too. Additional information is in the Porting/ directory.
88 =head1 WARNING: This version requires an extra step to build old extensions.
90 5.005_53 and later releases do not export unadorned
91 global symbols anymore. This means you may need to build older
92 extensions that have not been updated for the new naming convention
95 perl Makefile.PL POLLUTE=1
97 Alternatively, you can enable CPP symbol pollution wholesale by
98 building perl itself with:
100 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_POLLUTE
102 pod/perldelta.pod contains more details about this.
104 =head1 WARNING: This version may not be binary compatible with Perl 5.005.
106 Using the default Configure options for building perl should get you
107 a perl that will be binary compatible with the 5.005 release.
109 However, if you run Configure with any custom options, such as
110 -Dusethreads, -Dusemultiplicity, -Dusemymalloc, -Ubincompat5005 etc.,
111 the resulting perl will not be binary compatible. Under these
112 circumstances, if you have dynamically loaded extensions that were
113 built under perl 5.005, you will need to rebuild and reinstall all
114 those extensions to use them with 5.6.
116 Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
117 without reinstallation. See the discussions below on
118 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> and
119 L<"Upgrading from 5.005 to 5.6"> for more details.
121 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
123 On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the
124 changes in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
125 pod/perldelta.pod (and pod/perl500Xdelta.pod) for a description of
126 what's changed. See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod
127 file for a (possibly incomplete) list of locally installed modules.
128 Also see CPAN::autobundle for one way to make a "bundle" of your
129 currently installed modules.
131 =head1 WARNING: This version requires a compiler that supports ANSI C.
133 Most C compilers are now ANSI-compliant. However, a few current
134 computers are delivered with an older C compiler expressly for
135 rebuilding the system kernel, or for some other historical reason.
136 Alternatively, you may have an old machine which was shipped before
137 ANSI compliance became widespread. Such compilers are not suitable
140 If you find that your default C compiler is not ANSI-capable, but you
141 know that an ANSI-capable compiler is installed on your system, you
142 can tell F<Configure> to use the correct compiler by means of the
143 C<-Dcc=> command-line option -- see L<"gcc">.
145 If do not have an ANSI-capable compiler there are several avenues open
152 You may try obtaining GCC, available from GNU mirrors worldwide,
153 listed at <URL:http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html>. If, rather than
154 building gcc from source code, you locate a binary version configured
155 for your platform, be sure that it is compiled for the version of the
156 operating system that you are using.
160 You may purchase a commercial ANSI C compiler from your system
161 supplier or elsewhere. (Or your organization may already have
162 licensed such software -- ask your colleagues to find out how to
163 access it.) If there is a README file for your system in the Perl
164 distribution (for example, F<README.hpux>), it may contain advice on
169 Another alternative may be to use a tool like ansi2knr to convert the
170 sources back to K&R style, but there is no guarantee this route will get
171 you anywhere, since the prototypes are not the only ANSI features used
172 in the Perl sources. ansi2knr is usually found as part of the freely
173 available Ghostscript distribution. Another similar tool is
174 unprotoize, distributed with GCC. Since unprotoize requires GCC to
175 run, you may have to run it on a platform where GCC is available, and move
176 the sources back to the platform without GCC.
178 If you succeed in automatically converting the sources to a K&R compatible
179 form, be sure to email perlbug@perl.org to let us know the steps you
180 followed. This will enable us to officially support this option.
184 Although Perl can be compiled using a C++ compiler, the Configure script
185 does not work with some C++ compilers.
187 =head1 Space Requirements
189 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 40 MB of disk space.
190 After completing make, it takes up roughly 60 MB, though the actual
191 total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
192 directories need something on the order of 35 MB, though again that
193 value is system-dependent.
195 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
197 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
206 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
207 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
209 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
210 files. If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
211 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
212 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
213 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it
217 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
218 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
219 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
220 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
221 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
222 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
223 probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't, presently.
224 Similarly, if you used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version
225 numbers, you will probably want to adjust them as well.
227 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. For example, some
228 Linux distributions use i386, while others may use i486. If you build
229 it yourself, Configure uses the output of the arch command, which
230 might be i586 or i686 instead. If you pick up a precompiled binary, or
231 compile extensions on different systems, they might not all agree on
232 the architecture name.
234 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
235 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
237 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
238 installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
239 using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
240 settings"> below. If you wish to start with a fresh distribution, you
241 also need to remove any old Policy.sh files you may have with
247 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
248 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
249 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
250 almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
251 since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
254 At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
255 defaults from then on.
257 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
258 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
260 =head2 Altering config.sh variables for C compiler switches etc.
262 For most users, all of the Configure defaults are fine. Configure
263 also has several convenient options which are all described below.
264 However, if Configure doesn't have an option to do what you want,
265 you can change Configure variables after the platform hints have been
266 run, by using Configure's -A switch. For example, here's how to add
267 a couple of extra flags to C compiler invocations:
269 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_Y2KWARN -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC"
271 For more help on Configure switches, run:
275 =head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
277 Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
278 where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
279 read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
282 Starting from Perl 5.6.1 you can do this (if your file system supports
285 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
286 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
287 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
289 This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
290 pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
291 unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
295 and Perl will be built and tested, all in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
297 =head2 Common Configure options
299 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h> to
300 get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
301 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
307 To compile with gcc you should run
309 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
311 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
312 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
314 =item Installation prefix
316 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
317 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
318 and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for
321 You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
322 directory, when Configure prompts you or by using the Configure command
323 line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
325 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
327 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
328 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
329 prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
330 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
333 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
334 as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
335 attempt infinite recursion.
339 It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
340 find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
341 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
342 careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
343 vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing.
345 By default, Configure will arrange for /usr/bin/perl to be linked to
346 the current version of perl. You can turn off that behavior by running
348 Configure -Uinstallusrbinperl
350 or by answering 'no' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
352 In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to
353 put (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
354 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
355 obvious and convenient place.
357 =item Overriding an old config.sh
359 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
360 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
364 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
369 Note: for development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.7, as opposed
370 to maintenance releases which have even subreleases, like 5.6)
371 if you want to use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel
372 to Configure, because the default answer to the question "do you really
373 want to Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel
374 skips that sanity check.
376 For example for my Solaris system, I usually use
378 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
380 =head2 GNU-style configure
382 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
383 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
385 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
387 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
390 ./configure.gnu --help
394 Cross compiling and compiling in a different directory are not supported.
396 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
397 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
399 =head2 Installation Directories
401 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
402 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
403 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
404 Further, there are a number of additions to the installation
405 directories since 5.005, so reusing your old config.sh may not
406 be sufficient to put everything where you want it.
408 I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
409 everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
410 process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use
411 the defaults from then on.
413 The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
414 people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
415 distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
416 need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
417 you can safely skip the next section.
419 The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
423 =item Directories for the perl distribution
425 By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.6.0.
426 $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
427 5.6.0 or 5.6.1, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
428 determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
429 variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
431 Configure variable Default value
434 $scriptdir $prefix/bin
435 $privlib $prefix/lib/perl5/$version
436 $archlib $prefix/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
437 $man1dir $prefix/man/man1
438 $man3dir $prefix/man/man3
442 Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
443 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
444 instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
445 directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
446 the common style is shown here.
448 =item Directories for site-specific add-on files
450 After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
451 CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
452 be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
454 Configure variable Default value
456 $sitebin $siteprefix/bin
457 $sitescript $siteprefix/bin
458 $sitelib $siteprefix/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
459 $sitearch $siteprefix/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
460 $siteman1 $siteprefix/man/man1
461 $siteman3 $siteprefix/man/man3
465 By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
466 modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
468 NOTE: As of 5.6.0, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will use $sitelib and $sitearch,
469 but will not use the other site-specific directories. Volunteers to
472 =item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
474 Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
475 distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
476 for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
478 Configure variable Default value
480 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
481 $vendorbin $vendorprefix/bin
482 $vendorscript $vendorprefix/bin
483 $vendorlib $vendorprefix/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
484 $vendorarch $vendorprefix/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
485 $vendorman1 $vendorprefix/man/man1
486 $vendorman3 $vendorprefix/man/man3
490 These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
491 a vendor might choose the following settings:
494 $siteprefix /usr/local
497 This would have the effect of setting the following:
501 $privlib /usr/lib/perl5/$version
502 $archlib /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
503 $man1dir /usr/man/man1
504 $man3dir /usr/man/man3
506 $sitebin /usr/local/bin
507 $sitescript /usr/local/bin
508 $sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
509 $sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
510 $siteman1 /usr/local/man/man1
511 $siteman3 /usr/local/man/man3
514 $vendorscript /usr/bin
515 $vendorlib /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
516 $vendorarch /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
517 $vendorman1 /usr/man/man1
518 $vendorman3 /usr/man/man3
520 Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
521 /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
522 the /usr/local hierarchy.
524 NOTE: As of 5.6.0, ExtUtils::MakeMaker does not use these directories.
525 Volunteers to fix this are needed.
527 The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
528 version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
529 However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
530 installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
531 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for more details
532 on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
534 Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
535 example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
536 are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
537 site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
538 network. One way to do that would be something like
540 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
544 As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
545 variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
546 directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
547 Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
548 version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
552 There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
553 that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
554 separated list of directories, like this
556 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
558 The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
559 ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
560 modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
561 touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
562 version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
563 present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
564 directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
565 run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
569 In versions 5.005_57 and earlier, the default was to store module man
570 pages in a version-specific directory, such as
571 /usr/local/lib/perl5/$version/man/man3. The default for 5.005_58 and
572 after is /usr/local/man/man3 so that most users can find the man pages
573 without resetting MANPATH.
575 You can continue to use the old default from the command line with
577 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/man/man3
579 Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
581 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
583 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
588 As of perl5.005_57, the standard perl installation does not do
589 anything with HTML documentation, but that may change in the future.
590 Further, some add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The
591 html Configure variables listed above are provided if you wish to
592 specify where such documents should be placed. The default is "none",
593 but will likely eventually change to something useful based on user
598 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
599 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
602 Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
603 directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
606 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
607 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
608 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below.
610 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
611 library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
612 suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
614 Thus, for example, if you Configure with
615 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.6.0 are
617 Configure variable Default value
618 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.6.0
619 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.6.0/$archname
620 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.0
621 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
623 =head2 Changing the installation directory
625 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
626 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
627 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
628 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
629 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
630 packages, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
631 wish to install perl into a different directory and use that
632 management software to move perl to its final destination. This
633 section describes how to do that.
635 Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You
636 could edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to
637 /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local, or you could simply use the
638 following command line:
640 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
642 (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
644 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
645 modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
646 follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with
649 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
651 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
652 convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
653 installed on multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to
654 create an archive that can be installed in /opt/perl.
655 Here's one way to do that:
657 # Set up to install perl into a different directory,
658 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
659 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5 -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
662 make install # This will install everything into /tmp/perl5.
664 # Edit $archlib/Config.pm and $archlib/.packlist to change all the
665 # install* variables back to reflect where everything will
666 # really be installed. (That is, change /tmp/perl5 to /opt/perl
667 # everywhere in those files.)
668 # Check the scripts in $scriptdir to make sure they have the correct
669 # #!/wherever/perl line.
670 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
671 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
672 cd /opt/perl # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
673 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
675 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
677 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
678 answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact
679 person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another
680 system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file
681 to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate
682 hint file for your system.
684 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
689 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
691 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
693 If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
694 to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
695 platform-specific hints files.
697 Note: Since the directory hierarchy for 5.6.0 contains a number of
698 new vendor* and site* entries, your Policy.sh file will probably not
699 set them to your desired values. I encourage you to run Configure
700 interactively to be sure it puts things where you want them.
702 =head2 Configure-time Options
704 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
705 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
706 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
707 some of the main things you can change.
711 On some platforms, perl5.005 and later can be compiled with
712 experimental support for threads. To enable this, read the file
713 README.threads, and then try:
715 sh Configure -Dusethreads
717 Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command
718 line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
720 The default is to compile without thread support.
722 As of v5.5.64, perl has two different internal threads implementations.
723 The 5.005 version (5005threads) and an interpreter-based implementation
724 (ithreads) with one interpreter per thread. By default, Configure selects
725 ithreads if -Dusethreads is specified. However, you can select the old
726 5005threads behavior instead by either
728 sh Configure -Dusethreads -Duse5005threads
731 sh Configure -Dusethreads -Uuseithreads
733 Eventually (by perl v5.6.0) this internal confusion ought to disappear,
734 and these options may disappear as well.
736 =head2 Large file support.
738 Since Perl 5.6.0 Perl has supported large files (files larger than
739 2 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
740 support is on by default.
742 This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files,
743 seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad if you are interfacing Perl
744 using some extension, also the components you are connecting to must
745 be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
746 parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
747 will happen. One popular extension suffering from this ailment is the
748 Apache extension mod_perl.
750 There's also one known limitation with the current large files
751 implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
752 section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer
753 formats like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
755 =head2 64 bit support.
757 If your platform does not have 64 bits natively, but can simulate them
758 with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>, you can build a
759 perl that uses 64 bits.
761 There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
762 using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
763 -Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
764 the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
766 The C<use64bitint> does only as much as is required to get 64-bit
767 integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long longs")
768 while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because your
769 pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint> does
770 not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it might,
771 but it doesn't have to): the C<use64bitint> means that you will be
772 able to have 64 bits wide scalar values.
774 The C<use64bitall> goes all the way by attempting to switch also
775 integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
776 create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
777 resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
778 have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
781 Natively 64-bit systems like Alpha and Cray need neither -Duse64bitint
784 NOTE: 64-bit support is still experimental on most platforms.
785 Existing support only covers the LP64 data model. In particular, the
786 LLP64 data model is not yet supported. 64-bit libraries and system
787 APIs on many platforms have not stabilized--your mileage may vary.
791 In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
792 range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
793 (that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
794 this support (if it is available).
798 You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
799 and the long double support.
801 =head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
803 Previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in
804 stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl allow alternate IO
805 mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but the stdio mechanism is still
806 the default and is the only supported mechanism.
808 This PerlIO abstraction can be enabled either on the Configure command
811 sh Configure -Duseperlio
813 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
815 If you choose to use the PerlIO abstraction layer, there are two
816 (experimental) possibilities for the underlying IO calls. These have been
817 tested to some extent on some platforms, but are not guaranteed to work
824 AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance to stdio.h in many
825 cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline" modules. Sfio
826 currently only builds on a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports.
827 Because the data structures are completely different from stdio, perl
828 extension modules or external libraries may not work. This
829 configuration exists to allow these issues to be worked on.
831 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
832 The latest sfio is available from http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/sfio/
834 You select this option by
836 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
838 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
839 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
842 Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails to
843 detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent). Apparently,
844 this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux and SunOS 4.
845 Configure should detect this problem and warn you about problems with
846 _exit vs. exit. If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to
847 your sfio sources and correct iffe's guess about atexit.
851 Normal stdio IO, but with all IO going through calls to the PerlIO
852 abstraction layer. This configuration can be used to check that perl and
853 extension modules have been correctly converted to use the PerlIO
856 This configuration should work on all platforms (but might not).
858 You select this option via:
860 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Uusesfio
862 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure does not
863 detect sfio, then this will be the default suggested by Configure.
869 Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
870 TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
871 access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
872 Version 5. You can find more about SOCKS from http://www.socks.nec.com/
874 =head2 Dynamic Loading
876 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
877 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
878 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
879 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
881 =head2 Building a shared Perl library
883 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
884 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
885 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
888 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
889 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
890 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
891 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
892 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
893 can share the same library.
895 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
896 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
897 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
900 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
901 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
902 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
905 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
906 libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
907 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
908 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
909 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
910 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
912 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
913 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
915 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
917 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
919 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
920 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
921 NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
922 for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
923 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
924 be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
925 library search settings. You can find the name of the environment
926 variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
928 grep ldlibpthname config.sh
930 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
931 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
932 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
935 cd t; ./perl misc/failing_test.t
937 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
939 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
942 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
944 for Bourne-style shells, or
946 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
948 for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
949 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And
950 again, it may be something else than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
952 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
953 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
955 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
957 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
958 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
959 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
960 install a standard Perl 5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
961 try to build Perl 5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
962 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
963 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
964 libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is
965 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
966 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
967 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
968 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't. On Digital Unix, you can
969 override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the _RLD_ROOT environment variable
970 to point to the perl build directory.
972 The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different
973 directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING
974 version of perl. You can do this by changing all the *archlib*
975 variables in config.sh to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
979 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
980 so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
981 the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
982 version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
983 perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
984 than your system malloc.
986 However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
987 experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
988 that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
989 (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
993 =item Using the system malloc
995 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
997 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
999 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
1001 =item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
1003 NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you
1004 asked for binary compatibility with version 5.005, or if you just
1005 run Configure to accept all the defaults on those platforms. You
1006 can refuse the automatic binary compatibility flags wholesale by
1009 sh Configure -Ubincompat5005
1011 or by answering 'n' at the appropriate prompt.
1013 Perl's malloc family of functions are called Perl_malloc(),
1014 Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree(). When this flag is
1015 not enabled, the names do not clash with the system versions of
1018 If enabled, Perl's malloc family of functions will have the same
1019 names as the system versions. This may be sometimes required when you
1020 have libraries that like to free() data that may have been allocated
1021 by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1023 Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1024 from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1025 does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1030 =head2 Building a debugging perl
1032 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
1033 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
1034 you probably want to do
1036 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
1038 This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
1039 to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
1040 executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
1041 cc -g2. Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for
1042 your system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags
1043 variable in config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's
1044 internal state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by default
1045 if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to reuse your
1046 old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the optimize and
1047 ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes as shown in
1048 L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
1050 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
1051 it's convenient to have both.
1053 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
1054 versions of perl under L<Building a shared libperl.so Perl library>.
1058 Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
1059 in the ext/ subdirectory.
1061 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
1062 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
1063 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
1064 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
1065 is always built by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
1066 set the Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from
1067 the Configure command line.
1069 If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
1070 running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
1071 extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
1072 it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
1073 has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
1074 extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
1075 convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
1076 you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
1077 dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
1079 You can learn more about each of the supplied extensions by consulting the
1080 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
1083 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
1084 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
1085 version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
1087 In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
1088 to turn off various extensions. All others are included by default.
1091 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
1098 Threads use5005threads
1100 Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
1102 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
1104 Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
1107 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
1108 the extensions you want.
1110 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley
1111 DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect
1112 this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with earlier
1113 releases of version 2.
1115 If you re-use your old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
1116 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
1117 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
1120 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern systems do)
1121 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
1122 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
1123 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
1125 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
1127 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
1128 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
1129 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
1130 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
1131 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
1132 how to obtain the libraries.
1134 If your database header (.h) files are not in a directory normally
1135 searched by your C compiler, then you will need to include the
1136 appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by Configure. If
1137 your database library (.a) files are not in a directory normally
1138 searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to include
1139 the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by Configure.
1140 See the examples below.
1146 =item gdbm in /usr/local
1148 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
1149 GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
1150 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
1151 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
1152 necessary steps out automatically.
1154 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1155 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
1157 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
1160 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
1161 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1164 Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1165 you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1166 /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
1168 =item gdbm in /usr/you
1170 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
1171 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
1172 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
1173 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
1174 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
1175 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
1176 /usr/you/lib to the list.
1178 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
1182 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
1183 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
1185 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1186 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1188 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
1189 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
1190 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
1191 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
1194 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
1195 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
1199 =head2 Building DB, NDBM, and ODBM interfaces with Berkeley DB 3
1201 Perl interface for DB3 is part of Berkeley DB, but if you want to
1202 compile standard Perl DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you must follow
1203 following instructions.
1205 Berkeley DB3 from Sleepycat Software is by default installed without
1206 DB1 compatibility code (needed for DB_File interface) and without
1207 links to compatibility files. So if you want to use packages written
1208 for DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you need to configure DB3 with
1209 --enable-compat185 (and optionally with --enable-dump185) and create
1210 additional references (suppose you are installing DB3 with
1213 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdbm.so
1214 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libndbm.so
1215 echo '#define DB_DBM_HSEARCH 1' >dbm.h
1216 echo '#include <db.h>' >>dbm.h
1217 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/dbm.h
1218 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/ndbm.h
1220 Optionally, if you have compiled with --enable-compat185 (not needed
1223 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb1.so
1224 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb.so
1226 ODBM emulation seems not to be perfect, but is quite usable,
1229 lib/odbm.............FAILED at test 9
1230 Failed 1/64 tests, 98.44% okay
1232 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1234 If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1235 If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1239 =item Running Configure Interactively
1241 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1242 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1245 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1246 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1247 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1248 will use the defaults from then on.
1250 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1251 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1252 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1256 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
1257 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1258 will offer to use that hint file.
1260 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1261 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1262 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1263 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
1266 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1268 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
1269 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
1270 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
1273 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1274 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
1275 Keep the recommended value? [y]
1277 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
1278 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
1281 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
1282 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
1283 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
1286 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1287 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1288 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1289 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1292 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1293 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1294 Keep the previous value? [y]
1296 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1297 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1298 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1300 =item Changing Compilers
1302 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1303 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1304 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
1305 with the options you want to use.
1307 This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
1308 gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
1310 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1312 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1313 them to all the .SH files by running
1317 You will then have to rebuild by running
1322 =item config.over and config.arch
1324 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride
1325 Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1326 before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1327 however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1328 This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1330 There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1331 config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1332 architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1333 hints file that creates the config.arch.
1337 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1338 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1339 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1341 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1342 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1347 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1348 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1349 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1350 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1351 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1352 lost the next time you run Configure.
1354 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1355 see the file hints/README.hints.
1357 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1358 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1365 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1366 Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1367 system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1368 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1371 =item Environment variable clashes
1373 Configure uses a CONFIG variable that is reported to cause trouble on
1374 ReliantUnix 5.44. If your system sets this variable, you can try
1375 unsetting it before you run Configure. Configure should eventually
1376 be fixed to avoid polluting the namespace of the environment.
1378 =item Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX and BIN_SH
1380 In Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX, Configure might abort with
1382 Build a threading Perl? [n]
1383 Configure[2437]: Syntax error at line 1 : `config.sh' is not expected.
1385 This indicates that Configure is being run with a broken Korn shell
1386 (even though you think you are using a Bourne shell by using
1387 "sh Configure" or "./Configure"). The Korn shell bug has been reported
1388 to Compaq as of February 1999 but in the meanwhile, the reason ksh is
1389 being used is that you have the environment variable BIN_SH set to
1390 'xpg4'. This causes /bin/sh to delegate its duties to /bin/posix/sh
1391 (a ksh). Unset the environment variable and rerun Configure.
1393 =item HP-UX 11, pthreads, and libgdbm
1395 If you are running Configure with -Dusethreads in HP-UX 11, be warned
1396 that POSIX threads and libgdbm (the GNU dbm library) compiled before
1397 HP-UX 11 do not mix. This will cause a basic test run by Configure to
1400 Pthread internal error: message: __libc_reinit() failed, file: ../pthreads/pthread.c, line: 1096
1401 Return Pointer is 0xc082bf33
1402 sh: 5345 Quit(coredump)
1404 and Configure will give up. The cure is to recompile and install
1405 libgdbm under HP-UX 11.
1407 =item Porting information
1409 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1410 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1411 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1412 subdirectory. Especially Porting/Glossary should come in handy.
1414 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1415 http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
1416 various other operating systems.
1418 If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture study carefully the
1419 section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1420 in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file Porting/patching.pod.
1421 Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1425 =head1 Adding extra modules to the build
1427 You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1428 CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1429 command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1431 Configure -Dextras="Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI"
1433 or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
1434 then answer "Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
1435 The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
1437 Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1438 modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1439 or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1440 do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1442 Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1443 dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
1444 For example: you will need to have the zlib.h header and the libz
1445 library installed for the Compress::Zlib, or the Foo database specific
1446 headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1447 process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1451 suidperl is an optional component, which is built or installed by default.
1454 On some systems, setuid and setgid scripts (scripts written
1455 in the C shell, Bourne shell, or Perl, for example, with the
1456 set user or group ID permissions enabled) are insecure due to
1457 a race condition in the kernel. For those systems, Perl versions
1458 5 and 4 attempt to work around this vulnerability with an optional
1459 component, a special program named suidperl, also known as sperl.
1460 This program attempts to emulate the set-user-ID and set-group-ID
1461 features of the kernel.
1463 Because of the buggy history of suidperl, and the difficulty
1464 of properly security auditing as large and complex piece of
1465 software as Perl, we cannot recommend using suidperl and the feature
1466 should be considered deprecated.
1467 Instead use for example 'sudo': http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/
1471 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1472 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1473 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1474 makefile, not Makefile since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1475 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1476 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1478 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1483 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1485 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1487 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1488 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1489 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1490 then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1496 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1497 for further tips and information.
1501 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1502 during the building of extensions, you should run
1506 to test your version of miniperl.
1510 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1511 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1512 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1513 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1514 whole L<"Locale problems"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1515 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1517 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1518 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1521 are supported and installed on your system.
1522 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1528 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1529 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1530 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1531 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by running fixincludes
1532 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1533 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1534 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1538 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1539 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1541 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1542 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1543 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1545 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1546 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1548 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1550 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1551 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1552 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1553 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1554 of your local set-up.
1558 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1559 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1562 sh Configure -Uusenm
1564 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1565 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1568 =item umask not found
1570 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1571 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1572 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1573 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1574 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1578 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1579 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1580 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1581 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1582 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1586 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1587 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1588 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1592 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1593 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1594 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1595 on L<"nm extraction">.
1597 =item __inet_* errors
1599 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1600 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1601 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1602 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1603 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1604 newer version of BIND. If you can't, you can either link with the
1605 updated resolver library provided with BIND 8.1 or rename
1606 /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and test process to
1609 =item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1611 This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1612 gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1613 changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1614 rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1615 update your gcc installation.
1619 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1620 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1628 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1629 with B<make depend; make>.
1633 If you still can't compile successfully, try:
1635 sh Configure -Accflags=-DCRIPPLED_CC
1637 This flag simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that get
1638 indigestion easily. (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it
1641 =item Missing functions
1643 If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
1644 other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
1645 there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
1646 likely suspects. If Configure guessed wrong on a number of functions,
1647 you might have the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1651 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1652 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1653 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1654 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1655 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1658 =item Missing dbmclose
1660 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1661 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1663 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1665 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1666 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1667 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1668 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1669 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1670 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1671 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1672 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1673 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1674 process is continuing.
1676 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1679 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1681 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1682 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1683 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1685 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1686 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1687 quite that tightly coordinated.
1689 =item sh: ar: not found
1691 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1692 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1693 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1694 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1697 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1699 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1700 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1701 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1703 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1705 If you get this error message from the lib/ipc_sysv test, your System
1706 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1707 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1708 to include the System V semaphores.
1710 =item lib/ipc_sysv........semget: No space left on device
1712 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1713 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1714 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1715 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1720 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1721 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1722 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1723 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1724 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1725 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1726 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1727 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1729 =item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1731 The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1732 make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1733 archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1734 C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1735 archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1736 incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1737 official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1738 that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1739 archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1741 =item invalid token: ##
1743 You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. See L<WARNING: This
1744 version requires a compiler that supports ANSI C>.
1748 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1750 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1752 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1754 UTS may need one or more of -DCRIPPLED_CC, -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1756 FreeBSD can fail the lib/ipc_sysv.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1757 configured to the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1758 you will get a message telling what to do.
1760 If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.
1762 Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
1764 HP-UX 11 Y2K patch "Y2K-1100 B.11.00.B0125 HP-UX Core OS Year 2000
1765 Patch Bundle" has been reported to break the io/fs test #18 which
1766 tests whether utime() can change timestamps. The Y2K patch seems to
1767 break utime() so that over NFS the timestamps do not get changed
1768 (on local filesystems utime() still works).
1772 =head2 Cross-compilation
1774 Starting from Perl 5.8 Perl has the beginnings of cross-compilation
1775 support. What is known to work is running Configure in a
1776 cross-compilation environment and building the miniperl executable.
1777 What is known not to work is building the perl executable because
1778 that would require building extensions: Dynaloader statically and
1779 File::Glob dynamically, for extensions one needs MakeMaker and
1780 MakeMaker is not yet cross-compilation aware, and neither is
1783 Since the functionality is so lacking, it must be considered
1784 highly experimental. It is so experimental that it is not even
1785 mentioned during an interactive Configure session, a direct command
1786 line invocation (detailed shortly) is required to access the
1789 NOTE: Perl is routinely built using cross-compilation
1790 in the EPOC environment but the solutions from there
1791 can't directly be used elsewhere.
1793 The one environment where cross-compilation has successfully been used
1794 as of this writing is the Compaq iPAQ running ARM Linux. The build
1795 host was Intel Linux, the networking setup was PPP + SSH. The exact
1796 setup details are beyond the scope of this document, see
1797 http://www.handhelds.org/ for more information.
1799 To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch is
1800 C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
1802 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1804 This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
1805 symbol C<usecrosscompile> available.
1807 During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1808 into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1809 cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1810 target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1811 transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1812 the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1813 methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1814 F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1816 To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1817 the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1818 happens), supply Configure with
1820 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1822 The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
1823 must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1824 You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
1828 but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
1830 Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
1831 which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
1832 This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
1833 In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
1836 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
1838 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1839 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1840 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
1842 If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
1843 compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
1844 C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
1845 (The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
1846 as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
1847 will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
1848 in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
1850 In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
1851 choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
1854 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
1856 Putting it all together:
1858 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1859 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1860 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
1862 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
1863 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1864 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1865 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1866 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
1869 or if you are happy with the defaults
1871 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1872 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1873 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1878 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
1879 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
1880 wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1882 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1883 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1884 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1886 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1888 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1889 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1890 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1894 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1895 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1899 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1900 complicated constructs). For extension and library tests you
1901 need a little bit more: you need to setup your environment variable
1902 PERL_CORE to a true value (like "1"), and you need to supply the
1903 right Perl library path:
1906 ./perl -I../lib ../ext/Socket/Socket.t
1907 ./perl -I../lib ../lib/less.t
1909 (For csh-like shells on UNIX, adjust appropriately for other platforms.)
1910 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1911 comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
1912 shared library path if you get errors like:
1914 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
1916 See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
1922 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1923 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1924 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1925 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1926 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1927 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1929 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1935 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1937 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1938 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1939 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1940 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1941 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1942 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1945 =item Timing problems
1947 Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
1948 sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
1949 If your system is quite busy and doesn't return quickly enough,
1950 these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again with
1951 the system under a lighter load. These tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
1952 F<ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t>, and F<lib/Benchmark.t>.
1956 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1957 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
1958 For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
1959 test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
1961 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1963 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
1965 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1966 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1967 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1968 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1970 =item Test failures from lib/ftmp-security saying "system possibly insecure"
1972 Firstly, test failures from the ftmp-security are not necessarily
1973 serious or indicative of a real security threat. That being said,
1974 they bear investigating.
1976 The tests may fail for the following reasons. Note that each of the
1977 tests is run both in the building directory and the temporary
1978 directory, as returned by File::Spec->tmpdir().
1980 (1) If the directory the tests are being run is owned by somebody else
1981 than the user running the tests, or root (uid 0). This failure can
1982 happen if the Perl source code distribution is unpacked in a way that
1983 the user ids in the distribution package are used as-is. Some tar
1986 (2) If the directory the test are being run in is writable by group
1987 or by other (remember: with UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to
1988 a directory means the right to add/remove files in that directory),
1989 and there is no sticky bit set in the directory. 'Sticky bit' is
1990 a feature used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if
1991 the bit is on a directory, no one but the owner (or the root) can remove
1992 that file even if the permissions of the directory would allow file
1993 removal by others. This failure can happen if the permissions in the
1994 directory simply are a bit too liberal for the tests' liking. This
1995 may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the permissions policy
1996 used on this particular directory/project/system/site. This failure
1997 can also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit
1998 (this is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle the
1999 File::Temp should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or
2000 if the system supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons
2001 it is not being used. This is for example the case with HP-UX: as of
2002 HP-UX release 11.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX
2003 doesn't use it on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also as with the
2004 permissions, some local policy might dictate that the stickiness is
2007 (3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
2008 any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
2009 directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
2012 See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
2013 about the various security aspects.
2019 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
2020 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
2021 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
2022 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
2023 are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
2024 ignore any messages about chown not working.
2026 =head2 Installing perl under different names
2028 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
2029 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
2030 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
2032 make install PERLNAME=myperl
2034 You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
2035 "perl5.005") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
2037 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
2039 This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (due to an
2040 ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor, eg). Without this
2041 the versioned binary would be called "perl55.005".
2043 =head2 Installed files
2045 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
2046 anything, you can run
2048 ./perl installperl -n
2049 ./perl installman -n
2051 make install will install the following:
2056 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
2057 will be a link to perl.
2059 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
2060 a2p awk-to-perl translator
2064 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
2066 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
2067 s2p sed-to-perl translator
2068 find2perl find-to-perl translator
2069 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
2070 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
2071 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
2072 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
2073 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
2074 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
2075 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
2081 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
2082 dprofpp Perl code profile post-processor
2086 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
2087 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
2091 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2093 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
2094 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2096 Installperl will also create the directories listed above
2097 in L<"Installation Directories">.
2099 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
2100 under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
2101 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2102 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
2104 Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2105 installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
2106 perl alongside an already installed production version of perl without
2107 disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2108 To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2110 Configure -Dversiononly
2112 or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2113 you can just manually run
2115 ./perl installperl -v
2117 and skip installman altogether.
2118 See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2121 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
2123 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
2124 5.004_04) to another similar version (e.g. 5.004_05) without re-compiling
2125 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
2126 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
2127 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
2128 with 5.004_04, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
2129 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
2130 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.00404.
2132 Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use
2133 with a newer version of perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
2134 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
2136 Suppose you already have version 5.005_03 installed. The directories
2137 searched by 5.005_03 are
2139 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503/$archname
2140 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503
2141 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2142 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2144 Beginning with 5.6.0 the version number in the site libraries are
2145 fully versioned. Now, suppose you install version 5.6.0. The directories
2146 searched by version 5.6.0 will be
2148 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/$archname
2149 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0
2150 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
2151 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2153 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2154 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2155 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2157 Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
2158 of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
2159 directories. This way, modules installed under 5.005_03 will continue
2160 to be usable by 5.005_03 but will also accessible to 5.6.0. Further,
2161 suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
2162 present only in 5.6.0. That new module will get installed into
2163 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0 and will be available to 5.6.0,
2164 but will not interfere with the 5.005_03 version.
2166 The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
2167 5.6.0 will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
2169 Lastly, suppose you now install version 5.6.1, which we'll assume is
2170 binary compatible with 5.6.0 and 5.005. The directories searched
2171 by 5.6.1 (if you don't change the Configure defaults) will be:
2173 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.1/$archname
2174 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.1
2175 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1/$archname
2176 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1
2178 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
2179 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2181 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2182 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2183 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2185 Assuming the users in your site are still actively using perl 5.6.0 and
2186 5.005 after you installed 5.6.1, you can continue to install add-on
2187 extensions using any of perl 5.6.1, 5.6.0, or 5.005. The installations
2188 of these different versions remain distinct, but remember that the newer
2189 versions of perl are automatically set up to search the site libraries of
2190 the older ones. This means that installing a new extension with 5.005
2191 will make it visible to all three versions. Later, if you install the
2192 same extension using, say, perl 5.6.1, it will override the 5.005-installed
2193 version, but only for perl 5.6.1.
2195 This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2196 to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2197 versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
2199 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
2201 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
2202 separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
2203 won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2204 libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2205 way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
2207 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.004
2209 and adding /opt/perl5.004/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
2210 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2211 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2213 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
2214 (e.g. 5.004 for all 5.004_0x versions), but change directory with
2217 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2218 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2219 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2222 =head2 Upgrading from 5.005 to 5.6.0
2224 Most extensions built and installed with versions of perl
2225 prior to 5.005_50 will not need to be recompiled to be used with
2226 5.6.0. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with 5.6.0,
2227 you may safely do so without disturbing the 5.005 installation.
2228 (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> above.)
2230 See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2231 incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
2232 perllocal.pod not perllocale.pod for installed module information.
2234 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
2236 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
2238 By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
2239 they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
2241 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
2242 perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
2243 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
2244 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
2245 the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036 (or
2246 whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod for
2247 possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
2249 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2251 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2252 system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2253 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2254 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2255 library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2257 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2258 of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2259 hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2260 For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2263 =head1 installhtml --help
2265 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2266 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2267 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2269 Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2270 html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2272 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2277 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2279 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2280 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2281 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2282 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2283 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
2286 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2287 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2288 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2289 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2290 (and would welcome patches for them).
2292 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2293 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2295 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2297 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2298 available in TeX format. Type
2300 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2302 =head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2304 The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2305 Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2306 operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2308 In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2309 recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2310 depends on what you need.
2312 Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2316 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2320 in Solaris is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
2323 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2324 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2325 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2326 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2327 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2328 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/File/Glob/autosplit.ix
2329 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/Config.pm
2330 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/XSLoader.pm
2331 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/DynaLoader.pm
2332 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/CORE/libperl.so
2333 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/strict.pm
2334 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/warnings.pm
2335 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Carp.pm
2336 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Exporter.pm
2337 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/File/Glob.pm
2338 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/AutoLoader.pm
2339 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/vars.pm
2340 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/warnings/register.pm
2341 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Carp/Heavy.pm
2342 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2344 Secondly, Debian perl-base package contains the following files,
2345 size about 1.2MB in its i386 version:
2347 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2348 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian
2349 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
2350 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
2351 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
2352 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
2353 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/AutoLoader.pm
2354 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Carp.pm
2355 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Carp/Heavy.pm
2356 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Cwd.pm
2357 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Exporter.pm
2358 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2359 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/File/Spec.pm
2360 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2361 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/FileHandle.pm
2362 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Getopt/Long.pm
2363 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2364 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2365 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IPC/Open2.pm
2366 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IPC/Open3.pm
2367 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/SelectSaver.pm
2368 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Symbol.pm
2369 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Text/Tabs.pm
2370 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Text/Wrap.pm
2371 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/attributes.pm
2372 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/GetOptions.al
2373 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/FindOption.al
2374 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/Configure.al
2375 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/config.al
2376 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/Croak.al
2377 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/autosplit.ix
2378 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/base.pm
2379 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/constant.pm
2380 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/fields.pm
2381 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/integer.pm
2382 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/lib.pm
2383 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/locale.pm
2384 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/overload.pm
2385 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/strict.pm
2386 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/vars.pm
2387 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/warnings.pm
2388 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/warnings/register.pm
2390 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Config.pm
2391 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Data/Dumper.pm
2392 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/DynaLoader.pm
2393 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Errno.pm
2394 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Fcntl.pm
2395 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/File/Glob.pm
2396 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO.pm
2397 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/File.pm
2398 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Handle.pm
2399 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Pipe.pm
2400 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Seekable.pm
2401 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Select.pm
2402 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket.pm
2403 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/POSIX.pm
2404 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Socket.pm
2405 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/XSLoader.pm
2406 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.so
2407 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.bs
2408 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2409 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2410 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2411 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2412 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a
2413 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/extralibs.ld
2414 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2415 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs
2416 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/Glob.bs
2417 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2418 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/autosplit.ix
2419 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/IO/IO.so
2420 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/IO/IO.bs
2421 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/POSIX.bs
2422 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2423 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2424 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2425 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2426 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Socket/Socket.bs
2428 =head1 Reporting Problems
2430 If you have difficulty building perl, and none of the advice in this file
2431 helps, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant manual
2432 pages on your system doesn't help either, then you should send a message
2433 to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to perlbug@perl.org with
2434 an accurate description of your problem.
2436 Please include the output of the ./myconfig shell script that comes with
2437 the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the perlbug program that
2438 comes with the perl distribution, but you need to have perl compiled
2439 before you can use it. (If you have not installed it yet, you need to
2440 run C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug> instead of a plain C<perlbug>.)
2442 Please try to make your message brief but clear. Trim out unnecessary
2443 information. Do not include large files (such as config.sh or a complete
2444 Configure or make log) unless absolutely necessary. Do not include a
2445 complete transcript of your build session. Just include the failing
2446 commands, the relevant error messages, and whatever preceding commands
2447 are necessary to give the appropriate context. Plain text should
2448 usually be sufficient--fancy attachments or encodings may actually
2449 reduce the number of people who read your message. Your message
2450 will get relayed to over 400 subscribers around the world so please
2451 try to keep it brief but clear.
2453 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
2455 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2456 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
2457 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
2458 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2459 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
2461 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
2462 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and
2465 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
2466 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
2468 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
2469 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
2472 Note that you must have performed the installation already before running
2473 the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate
2478 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2479 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2480 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
2482 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2483 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2485 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2487 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2488 the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2489 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2490 a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2491 and the contact information to match your distribution.