3 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
7 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system are:
9 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
15 # You may also wish to add these:
16 (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
18 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
20 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
22 For information on non-Unix systems, see the section on
23 L<"Porting information"> below.
25 For information on what's new in this release, see the
26 pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
27 changes, see the Changes file.
31 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
32 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
33 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
34 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
36 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
38 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
40 You should probably at least skim through this entire document before
43 If you're building Perl on a non-Unix system, you should also read
44 the README file specific to your operating system, since this may
45 provide additional or different instructions for building Perl.
47 If there is a hint file for your system (in the hints/ directory) you
48 should also read that hint file for specific information for your
49 system. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh hint file.)
51 =head1 WARNING: This version is not binary compatible with Perl 5.004.
53 Starting with Perl 5.004_50 there were many deep and far-reaching changes
54 to the language internals. If you have dynamically loaded extensions
55 that you built under perl 5.003 or 5.004, you can continue to use them
56 with 5.004, but you will need to rebuild and reinstall those extensions
57 to use them 5.005. See the discussions below on
58 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> and
59 L<"Upgrading from 5.004 to 5.005"> for more details.
61 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
63 In a related issue, old extensions may possibly be affected by the
64 changes in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
65 pod/perldelta.pod for a description of what's changed.
67 =head1 WARNING: This version requires a compiler that supports ANSI C.
69 If you find that your C compiler is not ANSI-capable, try obtaining
70 GCC, available from GNU mirrors worldwide (e.g. ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu).
71 Another alternative may be to use a tool like C<ansi2knr> to convert the
72 sources back to K&R style, but there is no guarantee this route will get
73 you anywhere, since the prototypes are not the only ANSI features used
74 in the Perl sources. C<ansi2knr> is usually found as part of the freely
75 available C<Ghostscript> distribution. Another similar tool is
76 C<unprotoize>, distributed with GCC. Since C<unprotoize> requires GCC to
77 run, you may have to run it on a platform where GCC is available, and move
78 the sources back to the platform without GCC.
80 If you succeed in automatically converting the sources to a K&R compatible
81 form, be sure to email perlbug@perl.com to let us know the steps you
82 followed. This will enable us to officially support this option.
84 =head1 Space Requirements
86 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 10 MB of disk space. The
87 complete tree after completing make takes roughly 20 MB, though the
88 actual total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
89 directories need something on the order of 10 MB, though again that
90 value is system-dependent.
92 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
94 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
103 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
104 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
106 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
107 files. If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
108 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
109 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
110 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or rename it, e.g.
112 mv config.sh config.sh.old
114 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
115 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
116 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
117 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
118 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
119 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
120 probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't, presently.
121 Similarly, if you used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version
122 numbers, you will probably want to adjust them as well.
124 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. Some Linux systems
125 (such as Debian) use i386, while others may use i486, i586, or i686.
126 If you pick up a precompiled binary, it might not use the same name.
128 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
129 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
131 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your
132 particular installation choices, then you can probably achieve the
133 same effect by using the new Policy.sh file. See the section on
134 L<"Site-wide Policy settings"> below.
138 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
139 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
140 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default
141 is almost always okay. At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d
142 and Configure will use the defaults from then on.
144 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
145 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
147 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h> to
148 get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
149 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
151 To compile with gcc, for example, you should run
153 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
155 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
156 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
158 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
159 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
161 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
162 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. You can specify a different 'prefix' for
163 the default installation directory, when Configure prompts you or by
164 using the Configure command line option -Dprefix='/some/directory',
167 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
169 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the directories
170 are simplified. For example, if you use prefix=/opt/perl,
171 then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
172 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/.
174 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is below
175 your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will attempt
178 It may seem obvious to say, but Perl is useful only when users can
179 easily find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
180 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
181 careful, however, of overwriting a version of perl supplied by your
182 vendor. In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to
183 put (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
184 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
185 obvious and convenient place.
187 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
188 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
189 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
190 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
192 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
197 For my Solaris system, I usually use
199 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
201 =head2 GNU-style configure
203 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
204 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
206 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
208 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
211 ./configure.gnu --help
215 Cross compiling is not supported.
217 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
218 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
222 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
223 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
224 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
225 B, DynaLoader, Fcntl, IO, and attrs are always built by default.
226 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
227 is always built by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
228 set the Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from
229 the Configure command line. Similarly, the Opcode extension is always
230 built by default, but you can skip it by setting the Configure variable
231 useopcode=false either in a hint file for from the command line.
233 You can learn more about each of these extensions by consulting the
234 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
237 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
238 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
239 version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
241 In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
242 to turn off each extension:
244 B (Always included by default)
246 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
247 Fcntl (Always included by default)
249 IO (Always included by default)
253 SDBM_File (Always included by default)
257 attrs (Always included by default)
259 Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
261 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
263 Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
266 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
267 the extensions you want.
269 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley
270 DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect
271 this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with version 2.
273 If you re-use your old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
274 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
275 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
278 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern Unix systems do)
279 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
280 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
281 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
283 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
285 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
286 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
287 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
288 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
289 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
290 how to obtain the libraries.
292 Note: If your database header (.h) files are not in a
293 directory normally searched by your C compiler, then you will need to
294 include the appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by
295 Configure. If your database library (.a) files are not in a directory
296 normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to
297 include the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by
298 Configure. See the examples below.
304 =item gdbm in /usr/local
306 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
307 GDBM_File extension. This examples assumes you have gdbm.h
308 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
309 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
310 necessary steps out automatically.
312 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
313 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
315 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
318 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
319 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
322 Again, this should all happen automatically. If you want to accept the
323 defaults for all the questions and have Configure print out only terse
324 messages, then you can just run
328 and Configure should include the GDBM_File extension automatically.
330 This should actually work if you have gdbm installed in any of
331 (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu, /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
333 =item gdbm in /usr/you
335 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
336 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
337 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
338 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
339 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
340 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
341 /usr/you/lib to the list.
343 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
347 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
348 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
350 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
351 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
353 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
354 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
355 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
356 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
359 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
360 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
364 =head2 Installation Directories
366 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
367 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
368 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
370 I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
371 everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
372 process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure
373 will use the defaults from then on.
375 By default, Configure will use the following directories for library files
376 for 5.005 (archname is a string like sun4-sunos, determined by Configure).
378 Configure variable Default value
379 $archlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.005/archname
380 $privlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.005
381 $sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/archname
382 $sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
384 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
385 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
388 By default, Configure will use the following directories for manual pages:
390 Configure variable Default value
391 $man1dir /usr/local/man/man1
392 $man3dir /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3
394 (Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
395 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
398 The module man pages are stuck in that strange spot so that
399 they don't collide with other man pages stored in /usr/local/man/man3,
400 and so that Perl's man pages don't hide system man pages. On some
401 systems, B<man less> would end up calling up Perl's less.pm module man
402 page, rather than the less program. (This default location will likely
403 change to /usr/local/man/man3 in a future release of perl.)
405 Note: Many users prefer to store the module man pages in
406 /usr/local/man/man3. You can do this from the command line with
408 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/man/man3
410 Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
412 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
414 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
415 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you Configure with
416 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the defaults for 5.005 are
418 Configure variable Default value
419 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.005/archname
420 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.005
421 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.005/archname
422 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.005
424 $man1dir /opt/perl/man/man1
425 $man3dir /opt/perl/man/man3
427 The perl executable will search the libraries in the order given
430 The directories under site_perl are empty, but are intended to be used
431 for installing local or site-wide extensions. Perl will automatically
432 look in these directories.
434 In order to support using things like #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.005 after
435 a later version is released, architecture-dependent libraries are
436 stored in a version-specific directory, such as
437 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.005/.
439 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
440 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
441 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below.
443 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
446 =head2 Changing the installation directory
448 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
449 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
450 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
451 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
452 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
453 packages may also wish to install perl into a different directory and
454 use that management software to move perl to its final destination.
455 This section describes how to do this. Someday, Configure may support
456 an option -Dinstallprefix=/foo to simplify this.
458 Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You
459 can edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to
460 /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local/wherever. Or, you can automate this
461 process by placing the following lines in a file config.over before you
462 run Configure (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice):
464 installprefix=/tmp/perl5
465 test -d $installprefix || mkdir $installprefix
466 test -d $installprefix/bin || mkdir $installprefix/bin
467 installarchlib=`echo $installarchlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
468 installbin=`echo $installbin | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
469 installman1dir=`echo $installman1dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
470 installman3dir=`echo $installman3dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
471 installprivlib=`echo $installprivlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
472 installscript=`echo $installscript | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
473 installsitelib=`echo $installsitelib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
474 installsitearch=`echo $installsitearch | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
476 Then, you can Configure and install in the usual way:
483 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
484 extensions, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
485 follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with
488 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
490 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
491 convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
492 installed on multiple systems. Here's one way to do that:
494 # Set up config.over to install perl into a different directory,
495 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
501 # Edit $archlib/Config.pm to change all the
502 # install* variables back to reflect where everything will
503 # really be installed.
504 # Edit any of the scripts in $scriptdir to have the correct
505 # #!/wherever/perl line.
506 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
507 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
508 cd /usr/local # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
509 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
511 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
513 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
514 answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact
515 person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another
516 system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file
517 to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate
518 hint file for your system.
520 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
525 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
527 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
529 =head2 Configure-time Options
531 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
532 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
533 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
534 some of the main things you can change.
538 On some platforms, perl5.005 can be compiled to use threads. To
539 enable this, read the file README.threads, and then try
541 sh Configure -Dusethreads
543 Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command
544 line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
546 The default is to compile without thread support.
548 =head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
550 Previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in
551 stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl allow alternate IO
552 mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but the stdio mechanism is still
553 the default and is the only supported mechanism.
555 This PerlIO abstraction can be enabled either on the Configure command
558 sh Configure -Duseperlio
560 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
562 If you choose to use the PerlIO abstraction layer, there are two
563 (experimental) possibilities for the underlying IO calls. These have been
564 tested to some extent on some platforms, but are not guaranteed to work
571 AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance to stdio.h in many
572 cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline" modules. Sfio
573 currently only builds on a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports.
574 Because the data structures are completely different from stdio, perl
575 extension modules or external libraries may not work. This
576 configuration exists to allow these issues to be worked on.
578 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
579 A (fairly old) version of sfio is in CPAN.
581 You select this option by
583 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
585 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
586 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
589 Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails
590 to detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent).
591 Apparently, this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux
594 You can test if you have this problem by trying the following shell
595 script. (You may have to add some extra cflags and libraries. A
596 portable version of this may eventually make its way into Configure.)
601 main() { printf("42\n"); }
603 cc -o try try.c -lsfio
605 if test X$val = X42; then
606 echo "Your sfio looks ok"
608 echo "Your sfio has the exit problem."
611 If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to your sfio sources
612 and correct iffe's guess about atexit.
614 There also might be a more recent release of Sfio that fixes your
619 Normal stdio IO, but with all IO going through calls to the PerlIO
620 abstraction layer. This configuration can be used to check that perl and
621 extension modules have been correctly converted to use the PerlIO
624 This configuration should work on all platforms (but might not).
626 You select this option via:
628 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Uusesfio
630 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure does not
631 detect sfio, then this will be the default suggested by Configure.
635 =head2 Building a shared libperl.so Perl library
637 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
638 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
639 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
642 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
643 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
644 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
645 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
646 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
647 can share the same library.
649 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
650 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
651 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
654 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
655 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
656 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
659 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
660 libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
661 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
662 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
663 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
664 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
666 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
667 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
669 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
671 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
673 To actually build perl, you must add the current working directory to your
674 LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable before running make. You can do
677 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
679 for Bourne-style shells, or
681 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
683 for Csh-style shells. You *MUST* do this before running make.
684 Folks running NeXT OPENSTEP must substitute DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
685 LD_LIBRARY_PATH above.
687 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
688 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
689 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
690 install a standard Perl 5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
691 try to build Perl 5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
692 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
693 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
694 libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is
695 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
696 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
697 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
698 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't. On Digital Unix, you can
699 override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the _RLD_ROOT environment variable
700 to point to the perl build directory.
702 The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different
703 directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING
704 version of perl. You can do this by changing all the *archlib*
705 variables in config.sh, namely archlib, archlib_exp, and
706 installarchlib, to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
710 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed, so
711 perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
712 the malloc function on your system.
714 The perl source is shipped with a version of malloc that is very fast but
715 somewhat wasteful of space. On the other hand, your system's malloc
716 function may be a bit slower but also a bit more frugal. However,
717 as of 5.004_68, perl's malloc has been optimized for the typical
718 requests from perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and
721 For many uses, speed is probably the most important consideration, so
722 the default behavior (for most systems) is to use the malloc supplied
723 with perl. However, if you will be running very large applications
724 (e.g. Tk or PDL) or if your system already has an excellent malloc, or
725 if you are experiencing difficulties with extensions that use
726 third-party libraries that call malloc, then you might wish to use
727 your system's malloc. (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags
730 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
732 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
734 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
736 =head2 Malloc Performance Flags
738 If you are using Perl's malloc, you may add one or more of the following
739 items to your ccflags config.sh variable to change its behavior. You can
740 find out more about these and other flags by reading the commentary near
741 the top of the malloc.c source. The defaults should be fine for
746 =item -DNO_FANCY_MALLOC
748 Undefined by default. Defining it returns malloc to the version used
753 Undefined by default. Defining it in addition to NO_FANCY_MALLOC returns
754 malloc to the version used in Perl version 5.000.
758 =head2 Building a debugging perl
760 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
761 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
762 you probably want to do
764 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
766 This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
767 to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
768 executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
769 cc -g2. Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for your
770 system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags variable in
771 config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's internal
772 state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by
773 default if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to
774 reuse your old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the
775 optimize and ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes
776 as shown in L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
778 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
779 it's convenient to have both.
781 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
782 versions of perl under L<Building a shared libperl.so Perl library>.
784 =head2 Other Compiler Flags
786 For most users, all of the Configure defaults are fine. However,
787 you can change a number of factors in the way perl is built
788 by adding appropriate -D directives to your ccflags variable in
791 Starting from Perl 5.005_53 you no more need to replace the rand() and
792 srand() functions in the perl source by any other random number
793 generator because Configure chooses the widest one available
794 (drand48(), srandom(), or rand()).
796 You should also run Configure interactively to verify that a hint file
797 doesn't inadvertently override your ccflags setting. (Hints files
798 shouldn't do that, but some might.)
800 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
804 =item Running Configure Interactively
806 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
807 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
810 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
811 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
812 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
813 will use the defaults from then on.
815 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
816 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
817 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
821 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
822 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
823 will offer to use that hint file.
825 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
826 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
827 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
828 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
831 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
833 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
834 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
835 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
838 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
839 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
840 Keep the recommended value? [y]
842 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
843 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
846 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
847 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
848 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
851 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
852 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
853 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
854 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
857 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
858 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
859 Keep the previous value? [y]
861 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
862 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
863 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
865 =item Changing Compilers
867 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
868 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
869 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
870 with the options you want to use.
872 This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
873 gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
875 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
877 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
878 them to all the .SH files by running
882 You will then have to rebuild by running
889 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride Configure's
890 guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just before config.sh
891 is created. You have to be careful with this, however, as Configure
892 does no checking that your changes make sense. See the section on
893 L<"Changing the installation directory"> for an example.
897 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
898 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
899 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
901 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
902 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
907 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
908 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
909 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
910 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
911 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
912 lost the next time you run Configure.
914 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
915 see the file hints/README.hints.
917 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
918 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
925 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file Porting/config_H
926 to config.h and edit the config.h to reflect your system's peculiarities.
927 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
930 =item Porting information
932 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
933 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
934 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
937 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
938 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports for current information on ports to
939 various other operating systems.
945 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
946 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
947 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
948 makefile, not Makefile since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
949 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
950 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
952 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
957 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
959 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
960 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
961 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help, you can
962 send a message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
963 perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
964 See L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
970 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
971 for further tips and information.
975 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
976 during the building of extensions, you should run
980 to test your version of miniperl.
984 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
985 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
986 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
987 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
988 whole L<"Locale problems"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
989 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
991 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
992 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
995 are supported and installed on your system.
996 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1000 =item malloc duplicates
1002 If you get duplicates upon linking for malloc et al, add -DEMBEDMYMALLOC
1003 to your ccflags variable in config.sh.
1007 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1008 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1009 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1010 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by running fixincludes
1011 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1012 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1013 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1017 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1018 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1020 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1021 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1022 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1024 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1025 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1027 =item Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading
1029 If you have problems with dynamic loading using gcc on SunOS or
1030 Solaris, and you are using GNU as and GNU ld, you may need to add
1031 -B/bin/ (for SunOS) or -B/usr/ccs/bin/ (for Solaris) to your
1032 $ccflags, $ldflags, and $lddlflags so that the system's versions of as
1033 and ld are used. Note that the trailing '/' is required.
1034 Alternatively, you can use the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX
1035 environment variable to ensure that Sun's as and ld are used. Consult
1036 your gcc documentation for further information on the -B option and
1037 the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX variable.
1039 One convenient way to ensure you are not using GNU as and ld is to
1040 invoke Configure with
1042 sh Configure -Dcc='gcc -B/usr/ccs/bin/'
1044 for Solaris systems. For a SunOS system, you must use -B/bin/
1047 Alternatively, recent versions of GNU ld reportedly work if you
1048 include C<-Wl,-export-dynamic> in the ccdlflags variable in
1051 =item ld.so.1: ./perl: fatal: relocation error:
1053 If you get this message on SunOS or Solaris, and you're using gcc,
1054 it's probably the GNU as or GNU ld problem in the previous item
1055 L<"Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading">.
1057 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1059 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1060 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1061 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1062 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1063 of your local set-up.
1065 =item dlopen: stub interception failed
1067 The primary cause of the 'dlopen: stub interception failed' message is
1068 that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable includes a directory
1069 which is a symlink to /usr/lib (such as /lib).
1071 The reason this causes a problem is quite subtle. The file libdl.so.1.0
1072 actually *only* contains functions which generate 'stub interception
1073 failed' errors! The runtime linker intercepts links to
1074 "/usr/lib/libdl.so.1.0" and links in internal implementation of those
1075 functions instead. [Thanks to Tim Bunce for this explanation.]
1079 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1080 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1083 sh Configure -Uusenm
1085 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1086 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1089 =item umask not found
1091 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1092 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1093 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1094 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1095 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1099 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1100 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1101 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1102 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1103 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1107 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1108 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1109 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1113 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1114 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1115 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1116 on L<"nm extraction">.
1118 =item __inet_* errors
1120 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1121 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1122 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1123 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1124 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1125 newer version of BIND. If you can't, you can either link with the
1126 updated resolver library provided with BIND 8.1 or rename
1127 /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and test process to
1132 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1133 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1141 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1142 with B<make depend; make>.
1146 If you still can't compile successfully, try adding a -DCRIPPLED_CC
1147 flag. (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it compiled right!)
1148 This simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that get
1151 =item Missing functions
1153 If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
1154 other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
1155 there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
1156 likely suspects. If Configure guessed wrong on a number of functions,
1157 you might have the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1161 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1162 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1163 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1164 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1165 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1168 =item Missing dbmclose
1170 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1171 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1173 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1175 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1176 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1177 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1178 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1179 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1180 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1181 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1182 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1183 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1184 process is continuing.
1186 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1189 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1191 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1192 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1193 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1195 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1196 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1197 quite that tightly coordinated.
1199 =item sh: ar: not found
1201 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1202 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1203 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1204 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1207 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1209 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1210 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1211 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1213 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1215 If you get this error message from the lib/ipc_sysv test, your System
1216 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1217 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1218 to include the System V semaphores.
1220 =item lib/ipc_sysv........semget: No space left on device
1222 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1223 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1224 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1225 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1230 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1232 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1234 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1236 UTS may need one or more of -DCRIPPLED_CC, -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1238 FreeBSD can fail the lib/ipc_sysv.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1239 configured to the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1240 you will get a message telling what to do.
1242 If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.
1244 Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
1250 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made (you
1251 should run plain 'make' before 'make test' otherwise you won't have a
1252 complete build). If 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful"
1253 then something went wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1255 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1256 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1257 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1259 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1261 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1262 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1263 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1267 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1268 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1272 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1273 complicated constructs).
1275 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1276 comments that apply to your system.
1282 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1283 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1284 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1285 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1286 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1287 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1289 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1295 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1297 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1298 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1299 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1300 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1301 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1302 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1307 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1308 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
1309 Specifically, in perl5.004_64, tests 74 and 78 have been reported to
1310 fail on some systems. On my SparcStation IPC with 8 MB of RAM, test 78
1311 will fail if the system is running any other significant tasks at the
1314 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1316 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
1318 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1319 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1320 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1321 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1327 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1328 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
1329 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
1330 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
1331 are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
1332 ignore any messages about chown not working.
1334 =head2 Installing perl under different names
1336 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
1337 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
1338 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
1340 make install PERLNAME=myperl
1342 =head2 Installed files
1344 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
1345 anything, you can run
1347 ./perl installperl -n
1348 ./perl installman -n
1350 make install will install the following:
1353 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
1354 will be a link to perl.
1356 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
1357 a2p awk-to-perl translator
1358 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
1360 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
1361 s2p sed-to-perl translator
1362 find2perl find-to-perl translator
1363 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
1364 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
1365 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
1366 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
1367 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
1368 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
1369 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
1372 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
1374 library files in $privlib and $archlib specified to
1375 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
1376 man pages in the location specified to Configure, usually
1377 something like /usr/local/man/man1.
1378 module in the location specified to Configure, usually
1379 man pages under /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3.
1380 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
1382 Installperl will also create the library directories $siteperl and
1383 $sitearch listed in config.sh. Usually, these are something like
1385 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
1386 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/archname
1388 where archname is something like sun4-sunos. These directories
1389 will be used for installing extensions.
1391 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl.a library are also installed
1392 under $archlib so that any user may later build new extensions, run the
1393 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
1394 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
1396 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
1398 WARNING: The upgrade from 5.004_0x to 5.005 is going to be a bit
1399 tricky. See L<"Upgrading from 5.004 to 5.005"> below.
1401 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
1402 5.004_04) to another similar version (e.g. 5.004_05) without re-compiling
1403 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
1404 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
1405 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
1406 with 5.004_04, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
1407 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
1408 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.00404.
1410 Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use
1411 with a newer version of perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
1412 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
1414 The directories searched by version 5.005 will be
1416 Configure variable Default value
1417 $archlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.005/archname
1418 $privlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.005
1419 $sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/archname
1420 $sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
1422 while the directories searched by version 5.005_01 will be
1424 $archlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00501/archname
1425 $privlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00501
1426 $sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/archname
1427 $sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
1429 When you install an add-on extension, it gets installed into $sitelib (or
1430 $sitearch if it is architecture-specific). This directory deliberately
1431 does NOT include the sub-version number (01) so that both 5.005 and
1432 5.005_01 can use the extension. Only when a perl version changes to
1433 break backwards compatibility will the default suggestions for the
1434 $sitearch and $sitelib version numbers be increased.
1436 However, if you do run into problems, and you want to continue to use the
1437 old version of perl along with your extension, move those extension files
1438 to the appropriate version directory, such as $privlib (or $archlib).
1439 (The extension's .packlist file lists the files installed with that
1440 extension. For the Tk extension, for example, the list of files installed
1441 is in $sitearch/auto/Tk/.packlist.) Then use your newer version of perl
1442 to rebuild and re-install the extension into $sitelib. This way, Perl
1443 5.005 will find your files in the 5.005 directory, and newer versions
1444 of perl will find your newer extension in the $sitelib directory.
1445 (This is also why perl searches the site-specific libraries last.)
1447 Alternatively, if you are willing to reinstall all your extensions
1448 every time you upgrade perl, then you can include the subversion
1449 number in $sitearch and $sitelib when you run Configure.
1451 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
1453 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
1454 separate directories. One convenient way to do this is by
1455 using a separate prefix for each version, such as
1457 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.004
1459 and adding /opt/perl5.004/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
1460 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
1461 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
1463 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
1464 (e.g. 5.004 for all 5.004_0x versions), but change directory with
1467 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
1468 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
1469 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
1472 =head2 Upgrading from 5.004 to 5.005
1474 Extensions built and installed with versions of perl prior to 5.004_50
1475 will need to be recompiled to be used with 5.004_50 and later. You will,
1476 however, be able to continue using 5.004 even after you install 5.005.
1477 The 5.004 binary will still be able to find the extensions built under
1478 5.004; the 5.005 binary will look in the new $sitearch and $sitelib
1479 directories, and will not find them.
1481 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
1483 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
1485 By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
1486 they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
1488 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
1489 perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
1490 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
1491 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
1492 the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036
1493 (or whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod
1494 for possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
1496 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
1498 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from
1499 the system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
1500 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
1501 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent library
1502 ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
1504 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the
1505 conversion of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have
1506 to hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse
1507 correctly. For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and
1510 =head1 installhtml --help
1512 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
1513 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
1514 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
1516 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
1521 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
1523 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
1524 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
1525 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
1526 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
1527 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
1530 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
1531 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
1532 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
1533 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
1534 (and would welcome patches for them).
1536 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
1537 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
1539 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
1541 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
1542 available in TeX format. Type
1544 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
1546 =head1 Reporting Problems
1548 If you have difficulty building perl, and none of the advice in this file
1549 helps, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant manual
1550 pages on your system doesn't help either, then you should send a message
1551 to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to perlbug@perl.com with
1552 an accurate description of your problem.
1554 Please include the output of the ./myconfig shell script that comes with
1555 the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the perlbug program that
1556 comes with the perl distribution, but you need to have perl compiled
1557 before you can use it. (If you have not installed it yet, you need to
1558 run C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug> instead of a plain C<perlbug>.)
1560 You might also find helpful information in the Porting directory of the
1563 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
1565 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
1566 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
1567 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
1568 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
1569 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
1571 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
1572 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and
1575 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
1576 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
1578 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
1579 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
1582 Note that you must have performed the installation already before running
1583 the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate
1588 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
1589 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
1590 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
1592 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
1593 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
1595 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
1597 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
1598 the same terms as perl itself.
1600 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
1601 a larger package) please do modify these installation instructions and
1602 the contact information to match your distribution.
1604 =head1 LAST MODIFIED
1606 $Id: INSTALL,v 1.42 1998/07/15 18:04:44 doughera Released $