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
46 L<"Porting information"> below.
48 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
49 L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
51 For information on what's new in this release, see the
52 pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
53 changes, see the Changes file.
57 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
58 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
59 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
60 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
62 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
64 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
66 Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
67 you should probably at least skim through this entire document before
70 If you're building Perl on a non-Unix system, you should also read
71 the README file specific to your operating system, since this may
72 provide additional or different instructions for building Perl.
74 If there is a hint file for your system (in the hints/ directory) you
75 should also read that hint file for specific information for your
76 system. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh hint file.) If
77 there is a README file for your platform, then you should read
78 that too. Additional information is in the Porting/ directory.
80 =head1 WARNING: This version requires an extra step to build old extensions.
82 5.005_53 and later releases do not export unadorned
83 global symbols anymore. This means you may need to build older
84 extensions that have not been updated for the new naming convention
87 perl Makefile.PL POLLUTE=1
89 Alternatively, you can enable CPP symbol pollution wholesale by
90 building perl itself with:
92 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_POLLUTE
94 pod/perldelta.pod contains more details about this.
96 =head1 WARNING: This version may not be binary compatible with Perl 5.005.
98 Using the default Configure options for building perl should get you
99 a perl that will be binary compatible with the 5.005 release.
101 However, if you run Configure with any custom options, such as
102 -Dusethreads, -Dusemultiplicity, -Dusemymalloc, -Ubincompat5005 etc.,
103 the resulting perl will not be binary compatible. Under these
104 circumstances, if you have dynamically loaded extensions that were
105 built under perl 5.005, you will need to rebuild and reinstall all
106 those extensions to use them with 5.6.
108 Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
109 without reinstallation. See the discussions below on
110 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> and
111 L<"Upgrading from 5.005 to 5.6"> for more details.
113 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
115 On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the
116 changes in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
117 pod/perldelta.pod (and pod/perl500Xdelta.pod) for a description of
118 what's changed. See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod
119 file for a (possibly incomplete) list of locally installed modules.
120 Also see CPAN::autobundle for one way to make a "bundle" of your
121 currently installed modules.
123 =head1 WARNING: This version requires a compiler that supports ANSI C.
125 Most C compilers are now ANSI-compliant. However, a few current
126 computers are delivered with an older C compiler expressly for
127 rebuilding the system kernel, or for some other historical reason.
128 Alternatively, you may have an old machine which was shipped before
129 ANSI compliance became widespread. Such compilers are not suitable
132 If you find that your default C compiler is not ANSI-capable, but you
133 know that an ANSI-capable compiler is installed on your system, you
134 can tell F<Configure> to use the correct compiler by means of the
135 C<-Dcc=> command-line option -- see L<"gcc">.
137 If do not have an ANSI-capable compiler there are several avenues open
144 You may try obtaining GCC, available from GNU mirrors worldwide,
145 listed at <URL:http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html>. If, rather than
146 building gcc from source code, you locate a binary version configured
147 for your platform, be sure that it is compiled for the version of the
148 operating system that you are using.
152 You may purchase a commercial ANSI C compiler from your system
153 supplier or elsewhere. (Or your organization may already have
154 licensed such software -- ask your colleagues to find out how to
155 access it.) If there is a README file for your system in the Perl
156 distribution (for example, F<README.hpux>), it may contain advice on
161 Another alternative may be to use a tool like ansi2knr to convert the
162 sources back to K&R style, but there is no guarantee this route will get
163 you anywhere, since the prototypes are not the only ANSI features used
164 in the Perl sources. ansi2knr is usually found as part of the freely
165 available Ghostscript distribution. Another similar tool is
166 unprotoize, distributed with GCC. Since unprotoize requires GCC to
167 run, you may have to run it on a platform where GCC is available, and move
168 the sources back to the platform without GCC.
170 If you succeed in automatically converting the sources to a K&R compatible
171 form, be sure to email perlbug@perl.org to let us know the steps you
172 followed. This will enable us to officially support this option.
176 Although Perl can be compiled using a C++ compiler, the Configure script
177 does not work with some C++ compilers.
179 =head1 Space Requirements
181 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 20 MB of disk space.
182 After completing make, it takes up roughly 30 MB, though the actual
183 total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
184 directories need something on the order of 20 MB, though again that
185 value is system-dependent.
187 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
189 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
198 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
199 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
201 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
202 files. If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
203 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
204 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
205 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it
209 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
210 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
211 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
212 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
213 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
214 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
215 probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't, presently.
216 Similarly, if you used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version
217 numbers, you will probably want to adjust them as well.
219 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. For example, some
220 Linux distributions use i386, while others may use i486. If you build
221 it yourself, Configure uses the output of the arch command, which
222 might be i586 or i686 instead. If you pick up a precompiled binary, or
223 compile extensions on different systems, they might not all agree on
224 the architecture name.
226 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
227 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
229 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
230 installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
231 using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
232 settings"> below. If you wish to start with a fresh distribution, you
233 also need to remove any old Policy.sh files you may have with
239 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
240 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
241 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
242 almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
243 since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
246 At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
247 defaults from then on.
249 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
250 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
252 =head2 Altering config.sh variables for C compiler switches etc.
254 For most users, all of the Configure defaults are fine. Configure
255 also has several convenient options which are all described below.
256 However, if Configure doesn't have an option to do what you want,
257 you can change Configure variables after the platform hints have been
258 run, by using Configure's -A switch. For example, here's how to add
259 a couple of extra flags to C compiler invocations:
261 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_Y2KWARN -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC"
263 For more help on Configure switches, run:
267 =head2 Common Configure options
269 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h> to
270 get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
271 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
277 To compile with gcc you should run
279 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
281 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
282 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
284 =item Installation prefix
286 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
287 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
288 and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for
291 You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
292 directory, when Configure prompts you or by using the Configure command
293 line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
295 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
297 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
298 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
299 prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
300 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
303 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
304 as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
305 attempt infinite recursion.
309 It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
310 find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
311 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
312 careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
313 vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing.
315 By default, Configure will arrange for /usr/bin/perl to be linked to
316 the current version of perl. You can turn off that behavior by running
318 Configure -Uinstallusrbinperl
320 or by answering 'no' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
322 In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to
323 put (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
324 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
325 obvious and convenient place.
327 =item Overriding an old config.sh
329 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
330 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
334 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
339 Note: for development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.7, as opposed
340 to maintenance releases which have even subreleases, like 5.6)
341 if you want to use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel
342 to Configure, because the default answer to the question "do you really
343 want to Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel
344 skips that sanity check.
346 For example for my Solaris system, I usually use
348 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
350 =head2 GNU-style configure
352 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
353 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
355 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
357 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
360 ./configure.gnu --help
364 Cross compiling and compiling in a different directory are not supported.
366 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
367 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
369 =head2 Installation Directories
371 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
372 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
373 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
374 Further, there are a number of additions to the installation
375 directories since 5.005, so reusing your old config.sh may not
376 be sufficient to put everything where you want it.
378 I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
379 everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
380 process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use
381 the defaults from then on.
383 The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
384 people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
385 distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
386 need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
387 you can safely skip the next section.
389 The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
393 =item Directories for the perl distribution
395 By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.6.0.
396 $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
397 5.6.0 or 5.6.1, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
398 determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
399 variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
401 Configure variable Default value
404 $scriptdir $prefix/bin
405 $privlib $prefix/lib/perl5/$version
406 $archlib $prefix/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
407 $man1dir $prefix/man/man1
408 $man3dir $prefix/man/man3
412 Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
413 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
414 instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
415 directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
416 the common style is shown here.
418 =item Directories for site-specific add-on files
420 After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
421 CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
422 be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
424 Configure variable Default value
426 $sitebin $siteprefix/bin
427 $sitescript $siteprefix/bin
428 $sitelib $siteprefix/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
429 $sitearch $siteprefix/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
430 $siteman1 $siteprefix/man/man1
431 $siteman3 $siteprefix/man/man3
435 By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
436 modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
438 NOTE: As of 5.6.0, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will use $sitelib and $sitearch,
439 but will not use the other site-specific directories. Volunteers to
442 =item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
444 Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
445 distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
446 for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
448 Configure variable Default value
450 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
451 $vendorbin $vendorprefix/bin
452 $vendorscript $vendorprefix/bin
453 $vendorlib $vendorprefix/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
454 $vendorarch $vendorprefix/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
455 $vendorman1 $vendorprefix/man/man1
456 $vendorman3 $vendorprefix/man/man3
460 These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
461 a vendor might choose the following settings:
464 $siteprefix /usr/local/bin
465 $vendorprefix /usr/bin
467 This would have the effect of setting the following:
471 $privlib /usr/lib/perl5/$version
472 $archlib /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
473 $man1dir /usr/man/man1
474 $man3dir /usr/man/man3
476 $sitebin /usr/local/bin
477 $sitescript /usr/local/bin
478 $sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
479 $sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
480 $siteman1 /usr/local/man/man1
481 $siteman3 /usr/local/man/man3
484 $vendorscript /usr/bin
485 $vendorlib /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
486 $vendorarch /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
487 $vendorman1 /usr/man/man1
488 $vendorman3 /usr/man/man3
490 Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
491 /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
492 the /usr/local hierarchy.
494 NOTE: As of 5.6.0, ExtUtils::MakeMaker does not use these directories.
495 Volunteers to fix this are needed.
497 The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
498 version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
499 However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
500 installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
501 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for more details
502 on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
504 Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
505 example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
506 are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
507 site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
508 network. One way to do that would be something like
510 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
514 As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
515 variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
516 directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
517 Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
518 version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
522 In versions 5.005_57 and earlier, the default was to store module man
523 pages in a version-specific directory, such as
524 /usr/local/lib/perl5/$version/man/man3. The default for 5.005_58 and
525 after is /usr/local/man/man3 so that most users can find the man pages
526 without resetting MANPATH.
528 You can continue to use the old default from the command line with
530 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/man/man3
532 Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
534 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
536 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
541 As of perl5.005_57, the standard perl installation does not do
542 anything with HTML documentation, but that may change in the future.
543 Further, some add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The
544 html Configure variables listed above are provided if you wish to
545 specify where such documents should be placed. The default is "none",
546 but will likely eventually change to something useful based on user
551 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
552 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
555 Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
556 directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
559 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
560 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
561 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below.
563 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
564 library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
565 suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
567 Thus, for example, if you Configure with
568 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.6.0 are
570 Configure variable Default value
571 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.6.0
572 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.6.0/$archname
573 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.0
574 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
576 =head2 Changing the installation directory
578 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
579 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
580 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
581 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
582 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
583 packages, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
584 wish to install perl into a different directory and use that
585 management software to move perl to its final destination. This
586 section describes how to do that.
588 Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You
589 could edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to
590 /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local, or you could simply use the
591 following command line:
593 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
595 (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
597 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
598 modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
599 follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with
602 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
604 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
605 convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
606 installed on multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to
607 create an archive that can be installed in /opt/perl.
608 Here's one way to do that:
610 # Set up to install perl into a different directory,
611 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
612 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5 -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
615 make install # This will install everything into /tmp/perl5.
617 # Edit $archlib/Config.pm and $archlib/.packlist to change all the
618 # install* variables back to reflect where everything will
619 # really be installed. (That is, change /tmp/perl5 to /opt/perl
620 # everywhere in those files.)
621 # Check the scripts in $scriptdir to make sure they have the correct
622 # #!/wherever/perl line.
623 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
624 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
625 cd /opt/perl # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
626 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
628 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
630 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
631 answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact
632 person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another
633 system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file
634 to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate
635 hint file for your system.
637 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
642 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
644 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
646 If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
647 to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
648 platform-specific hints files.
650 Note: Since the directory hierarchy for 5.6.0 contains a number of
651 new vendor* and site* entries, your Policy.sh file will probably not
652 set them to your desired values. I encourage you to run Configure
653 interactively to be sure it puts things where you want them.
655 =head2 Configure-time Options
657 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
658 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
659 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
660 some of the main things you can change.
664 On some platforms, perl5.005 and later can be compiled with
665 experimental support for threads. To enable this, read the file
666 README.threads, and then try:
668 sh Configure -Dusethreads
670 Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command
671 line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
673 The default is to compile without thread support.
675 As of v5.5.64, perl has two different internal threads implementations.
676 The 5.005 version (5005threads) and an interpreter-based implementation
677 (ithreads) with one interpreter per thread. By default, Configure selects
678 ithreads if -Dusethreads is specified. However, you can select the old
679 5005threads behavior instead by either
681 sh Configure -Dusethreads -Duse5005threads
684 sh Configure -Dusethreads -Uuseithreads
686 Eventually (by perl v5.6.0) this internal confusion ought to disappear,
687 and these options may disappear as well.
689 =head2 64 bit support.
691 If your platform does not have 64 bits natively, but can simulate them with
692 compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>, you can build a perl that
695 There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
696 using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
697 -Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
698 the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
700 The C<use64bitint> does only as much as is required to get 64-bit
701 integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long longs")
702 while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because your
703 pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint> does
704 not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it might,
705 but it doesn't have to): the C<use64bitint> means that you will be
706 able to have 64 bits wide scalar values.
708 The C<use64bitall> goes all the way by attempting to switch also
709 integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
710 create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
711 resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
712 have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
715 Natively 64-bit systems like Alpha and Cray need neither -Duse64bitint
718 NOTE: 64-bit support is still experimental on most platforms.
719 Existing support only covers the LP64 data model. In particular, the
720 LLP64 data model is not yet supported. 64-bit libraries and system
721 APIs on many platforms have not stabilized--your mileage may vary.
725 In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
726 range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
727 (that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
728 this support (if it is available).
732 You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
733 and the long double support.
735 =head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
737 Previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in
738 stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl allow alternate IO
739 mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but the stdio mechanism is still
740 the default and is the only supported mechanism.
742 This PerlIO abstraction can be enabled either on the Configure command
745 sh Configure -Duseperlio
747 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
749 If you choose to use the PerlIO abstraction layer, there are two
750 (experimental) possibilities for the underlying IO calls. These have been
751 tested to some extent on some platforms, but are not guaranteed to work
758 AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance to stdio.h in many
759 cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline" modules. Sfio
760 currently only builds on a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports.
761 Because the data structures are completely different from stdio, perl
762 extension modules or external libraries may not work. This
763 configuration exists to allow these issues to be worked on.
765 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
766 The latest sfio is available from http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/sfio/
768 You select this option by
770 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
772 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
773 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
776 Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails to
777 detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent). Apparently,
778 this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux and SunOS 4.
779 Configure should detect this problem and warn you about problems with
780 _exit vs. exit. If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to
781 your sfio sources and correct iffe's guess about atexit.
785 Normal stdio IO, but with all IO going through calls to the PerlIO
786 abstraction layer. This configuration can be used to check that perl and
787 extension modules have been correctly converted to use the PerlIO
790 This configuration should work on all platforms (but might not).
792 You select this option via:
794 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Uusesfio
796 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure does not
797 detect sfio, then this will be the default suggested by Configure.
803 Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
804 TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
805 access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
806 Version 5. You can find more about SOCKS from http://www.socks.nec.com/
808 =head2 Dynamic Loading
810 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
811 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
812 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
813 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
815 =head2 Building a shared libperl.so Perl library
817 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
818 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
819 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
822 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
823 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
824 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
825 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
826 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
827 can share the same library.
829 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
830 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
831 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
834 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
835 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
836 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
839 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
840 libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
841 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
842 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
843 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
844 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
846 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
847 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
849 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
851 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
853 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
854 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
855 NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, SHLIB_PATH for
856 HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
857 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
858 be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
859 library search settings.
861 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
862 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
863 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
866 cd t; ./perl misc/failing_test.t
868 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
870 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
873 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
875 for Bourne-style shells, or
877 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
879 for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
880 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.)
882 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
883 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
885 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
887 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
888 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
889 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
890 install a standard Perl 5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
891 try to build Perl 5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
892 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
893 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
894 libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is
895 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
896 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
897 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
898 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't. On Digital Unix, you can
899 override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the _RLD_ROOT environment variable
900 to point to the perl build directory.
902 The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different
903 directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING
904 version of perl. You can do this by changing all the *archlib*
905 variables in config.sh to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
909 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
910 so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
911 the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
912 version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
913 perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
914 than your system malloc.
916 However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
917 experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
918 that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
919 (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
923 =item Using the system malloc
925 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
927 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
929 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
931 =item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
933 NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you
934 asked for binary compatibility with version 5.005, or if you just
935 run Configure to accept all the defaults on those platforms. You
936 can refuse the automatic binary compatibility flags wholesale by
939 sh Configure -Ubincompat5005
941 or by answering 'n' at the appropriate prompt.
943 Perl's malloc family of functions are called Perl_malloc(),
944 Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree(). When this flag is
945 not enabled, the names do not clash with the system versions of
948 If enabled, Perl's malloc family of functions will have the same
949 names as the system versions. This may be sometimes required when you
950 have libraries that like to free() data that may have been allocated
951 by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
953 Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
954 from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
955 does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
960 =head2 Building a debugging perl
962 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
963 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
964 you probably want to do
966 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
968 This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
969 to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
970 executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
971 cc -g2. Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for
972 your system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags
973 variable in config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's
974 internal state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by default
975 if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to reuse your
976 old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the optimize and
977 ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes as shown in
978 L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
980 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
981 it's convenient to have both.
983 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
984 versions of perl under L<Building a shared libperl.so Perl library>.
988 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
989 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
990 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
991 B, DynaLoader, Fcntl, IO, and attrs are always built by default.
992 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
993 is always built by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
994 set the Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from
995 the Configure command line. Similarly, the Opcode extension is always
996 built by default, but you can skip it by setting the Configure variable
997 useopcode=false either in a hint file for from the command line.
999 If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
1000 running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
1001 extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
1002 it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
1003 has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
1004 extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
1005 convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
1006 you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
1007 dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
1009 You can learn more about each of the supplied extensions by consulting the
1010 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
1013 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
1014 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
1015 version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
1017 In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
1018 to turn off each extension:
1020 B (Always included by default)
1022 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
1023 Fcntl (Always included by default)
1025 IO (Always included by default)
1029 SDBM_File (Always included by default)
1032 Threads use5005threads
1033 attrs (Always included by default)
1035 Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
1037 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
1039 Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
1042 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
1043 the extensions you want.
1045 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley
1046 DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect
1047 this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with earlier
1048 releases of version 2.
1050 If you re-use your old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
1051 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
1052 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
1055 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern Unix systems do)
1056 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
1057 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
1058 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
1060 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
1062 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
1063 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
1064 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
1065 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
1066 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
1067 how to obtain the libraries.
1069 If your database header (.h) files are not in a directory normally
1070 searched by your C compiler, then you will need to include the
1071 appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by Configure. If
1072 your database library (.a) files are not in a directory normally
1073 searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to include
1074 the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by Configure.
1075 See the examples below.
1081 =item gdbm in /usr/local
1083 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
1084 GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
1085 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
1086 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
1087 necessary steps out automatically.
1089 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1090 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
1092 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
1095 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
1096 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1099 Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1100 you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1101 /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
1103 =item gdbm in /usr/you
1105 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
1106 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
1107 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
1108 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
1109 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
1110 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
1111 /usr/you/lib to the list.
1113 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
1117 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
1118 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
1120 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1121 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1123 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
1124 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
1125 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
1126 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
1129 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
1130 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
1134 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1136 If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1137 If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1141 =item Running Configure Interactively
1143 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1144 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1147 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1148 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1149 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1150 will use the defaults from then on.
1152 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1153 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1154 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1158 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
1159 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1160 will offer to use that hint file.
1162 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1163 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1164 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1165 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
1168 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1170 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
1171 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
1172 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
1175 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1176 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
1177 Keep the recommended value? [y]
1179 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
1180 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
1183 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
1184 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
1185 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
1188 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1189 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1190 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1191 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1194 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1195 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1196 Keep the previous value? [y]
1198 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1199 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1200 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1202 =item Changing Compilers
1204 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1205 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1206 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
1207 with the options you want to use.
1209 This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
1210 gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
1212 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1214 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1215 them to all the .SH files by running
1219 You will then have to rebuild by running
1226 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride Configure's
1227 guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just before config.sh
1228 is created. You have to be careful with this, however, as Configure
1229 does no checking that your changes make sense.
1233 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1234 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1235 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1237 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1238 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1243 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1244 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1245 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1246 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1247 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1248 lost the next time you run Configure.
1250 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1251 see the file hints/README.hints.
1253 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1254 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1261 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1262 Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1263 system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1264 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1267 =item Environment variable clashes
1269 Configure uses a CONFIG variable that is reported to cause trouble on
1270 ReliantUnix 5.44. If your system sets this variable, you can try
1271 unsetting it before you run Configure. Configure should eventually
1272 be fixed to avoid polluting the namespace of the environment.
1274 =item Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX and BIN_SH
1276 In Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX, Configure might abort with
1278 Build a threading Perl? [n]
1279 Configure[2437]: Syntax error at line 1 : `config.sh' is not expected.
1281 This indicates that Configure is being run with a broken Korn shell
1282 (even though you think you are using a Bourne shell by using
1283 "sh Configure" or "./Configure"). The Korn shell bug has been reported
1284 to Compaq as of February 1999 but in the meanwhile, the reason ksh is
1285 being used is that you have the environment variable BIN_SH set to
1286 'xpg4'. This causes /bin/sh to delegate its duties to /bin/posix/sh
1287 (a ksh). Unset the environment variable and rerun Configure.
1289 =item HP-UX 11, pthreads, and libgdbm
1291 If you are running Configure with -Dusethreads in HP-UX 11, be warned
1292 that POSIX threads and libgdbm (the GNU dbm library) compiled before
1293 HP-UX 11 do not mix. This will cause a basic test run by Configure to
1296 Pthread internal error: message: __libc_reinit() failed, file: ../pthreads/pthread.c, line: 1096
1297 Return Pointer is 0xc082bf33
1298 sh: 5345 Quit(coredump)
1300 and Configure will give up. The cure is to recompile and install
1301 libgdbm under HP-UX 11.
1303 =item Porting information
1305 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1306 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1307 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1308 subdirectory. Especially Porting/Glossary should come in handy.
1310 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1311 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports for current information on ports to
1312 various other operating systems.
1314 If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture study carefully the
1315 section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1316 in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file Porting/patching.pod.
1317 Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1323 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1324 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1325 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1326 makefile, not Makefile since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1327 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1328 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1330 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1335 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1337 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1339 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1340 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1341 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1342 then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1348 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1349 for further tips and information.
1353 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1354 during the building of extensions, you should run
1358 to test your version of miniperl.
1362 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1363 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1364 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1365 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1366 whole L<"Locale problems"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1367 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1369 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1370 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1373 are supported and installed on your system.
1374 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1380 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1381 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1382 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1383 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by running fixincludes
1384 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1385 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1386 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1390 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1391 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1393 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1394 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1395 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1397 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1398 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1400 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1402 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1403 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1404 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1405 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1406 of your local set-up.
1410 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1411 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1414 sh Configure -Uusenm
1416 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1417 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1420 =item umask not found
1422 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1423 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1424 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1425 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1426 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1430 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1431 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1432 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1433 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1434 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1438 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1439 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1440 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1444 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1445 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1446 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1447 on L<"nm extraction">.
1449 =item __inet_* errors
1451 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1452 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1453 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1454 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1455 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1456 newer version of BIND. If you can't, you can either link with the
1457 updated resolver library provided with BIND 8.1 or rename
1458 /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and test process to
1461 =item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1463 This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1464 gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1465 changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1466 rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1467 update your gcc installation.
1471 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1472 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1480 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1481 with B<make depend; make>.
1485 If you still can't compile successfully, try:
1487 sh Configure -Accflags=-DCRIPPLED_CC
1489 This flag simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that get
1490 indigestion easily. (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it
1493 =item Missing functions
1495 If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
1496 other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
1497 there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
1498 likely suspects. If Configure guessed wrong on a number of functions,
1499 you might have the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1503 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1504 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1505 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1506 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1507 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1510 =item Missing dbmclose
1512 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1513 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1515 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1517 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1518 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1519 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1520 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1521 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1522 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1523 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1524 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1525 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1526 process is continuing.
1528 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1531 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1533 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1534 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1535 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1537 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1538 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1539 quite that tightly coordinated.
1541 =item sh: ar: not found
1543 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1544 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1545 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1546 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1549 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1551 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1552 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1553 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1555 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1557 If you get this error message from the lib/ipc_sysv test, your System
1558 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1559 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1560 to include the System V semaphores.
1562 =item lib/ipc_sysv........semget: No space left on device
1564 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1565 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1566 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1567 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1572 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1573 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1574 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1575 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1576 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1577 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1578 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1579 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1581 =item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1583 The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1584 make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1585 archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1586 C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1587 archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1588 incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1589 official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1590 that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1591 archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1593 =item invalid token: ##
1595 You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. See L<WARNING: This
1596 version requires a compiler that supports ANSI C>.
1600 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1602 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1604 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1606 UTS may need one or more of -DCRIPPLED_CC, -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1608 FreeBSD can fail the lib/ipc_sysv.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1609 configured to the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1610 you will get a message telling what to do.
1612 If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.
1614 Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
1616 HP-UX 11 Y2K patch "Y2K-1100 B.11.00.B0125 HP-UX Core OS Year 2000
1617 Patch Bundle" has been reported to break the io/fs test #18 which
1618 tests whether utime() can change timestamps. The Y2K patch seems to
1619 break utime() so that over NFS the timestamps do not get changed
1620 (on local filesystems utime() still works).
1626 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
1627 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
1628 wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1630 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1631 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1632 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1634 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1636 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1637 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1638 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1642 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1643 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1647 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1648 complicated constructs).
1650 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1651 comments that apply to your system.
1657 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1658 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1659 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1660 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1661 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1662 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1664 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1670 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1672 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1673 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1674 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1675 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1676 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1677 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1682 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1683 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
1684 For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
1685 test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
1687 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1689 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
1691 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1692 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1693 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1694 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1696 =item Test failures from lib/ftmp-security saying "system possibly insecure"
1698 Firstly, test failures from the ftmp-security are not necessarily
1699 serious or indicative of a real security threat. That being said,
1700 they bear investigating.
1702 The tests may fail for the following reasons. Note that each of the
1703 tests is run both in the building directory and the temporary
1704 directory, as returned by File::Spec->tmpdir().
1706 (1) If the directory the tests are being run is owned by somebody else
1707 than the user running the tests, or root (uid 0). This failure can
1708 happen if the Perl source code distribution is unpacked in a way that
1709 the user ids in the distribution package are used as-is. Some tar
1712 (2) If the directory the test are being run in is writable by group
1713 or by other (remember: with UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to
1714 a directory means the right to add/remove files in that directory),
1715 and there is no sticky bit set in the directory. 'Sticky bit' is
1716 a feature used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if
1717 the bit is on a directory, no one but the owner (or the root) can remove
1718 that file even if the permissions of the directory would allow file
1719 removal by others. This failure can happen if the permissions in the
1720 directory simply are a bit too liberal for the tests' liking. This
1721 may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the permissions policy
1722 used on this particular directory/project/system/site. This failure
1723 can also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit
1724 (this is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle the
1725 File::Temp should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or
1726 if the system supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons
1727 it is not being used. This is for example the case with HP-UX: as of
1728 HP-UX release 11.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX
1729 doesn't use it on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also as with the
1730 permissions, some local policy might dictate that the stickiness is
1733 (3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
1734 any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
1735 directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
1738 See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
1739 about the various security aspects.
1745 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1746 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
1747 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
1748 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
1749 are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
1750 ignore any messages about chown not working.
1752 =head2 Installing perl under different names
1754 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
1755 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
1756 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
1758 make install PERLNAME=myperl
1760 You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
1761 "perl5.005") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
1763 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
1765 This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (due to an
1766 ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor, eg). Without this
1767 the versioned binary would be called "perl55.005".
1769 =head2 Installed files
1771 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
1772 anything, you can run
1774 ./perl installperl -n
1775 ./perl installman -n
1777 make install will install the following:
1782 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
1783 will be a link to perl.
1785 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
1786 a2p awk-to-perl translator
1790 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
1792 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
1793 s2p sed-to-perl translator
1794 find2perl find-to-perl translator
1795 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
1796 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
1797 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
1798 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
1799 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
1800 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
1801 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
1807 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
1808 dprofpp Perl code profile post-processor
1812 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
1813 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
1817 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
1819 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
1820 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
1822 Installperl will also create the directories listed above
1823 in L<"Installation Directories">.
1825 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
1826 under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
1827 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
1828 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
1830 Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
1831 installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
1832 perl alongside an already installed production version of perl without
1833 disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
1834 To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
1836 Configure -Dversiononly
1838 or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
1839 you can just manually run
1841 ./perl installperl -v
1843 and skip installman altogether.
1844 See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
1847 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
1849 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
1850 5.004_04) to another similar version (e.g. 5.004_05) without re-compiling
1851 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
1852 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
1853 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
1854 with 5.004_04, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
1855 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
1856 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.00404.
1858 Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use
1859 with a newer version of perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
1860 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
1862 Suppose you already have version 5.005_03 installed. The directories
1863 searched by 5.005_03 are
1865 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503/$archname
1866 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503
1867 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
1868 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
1870 Beginning with 5.6.0 the version number in the site libraries are
1871 fully versioned. Now, suppose you install version 5.6.0. The directories
1872 searched by version 5.6.0 will be
1874 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/$archname
1875 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0
1876 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
1877 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
1879 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
1880 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
1881 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
1883 Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
1884 of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
1885 directories. This way, modules installed under 5.005_03 will continue
1886 to be usable by 5.005_03 but will also accessible to 5.6.0. Further,
1887 suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
1888 present only in 5.6.0. That new module will get installed into
1889 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0 and will be available to 5.6.0,
1890 but will not interfere with the 5.005_03 version.
1892 The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
1893 5.6.0 will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
1895 Lastly, suppose you now install version 5.6.1, which we'll assume is
1896 binary compatible with 5.6.0 and 5.005. The directories searched
1897 by 5.6.1 (if you don't change the Configure defaults) will be:
1899 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.1/$archname
1900 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.1
1901 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1/$archname
1902 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1
1904 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
1905 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
1907 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
1908 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
1909 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
1911 Assuming the users in your site are still actively using perl 5.6.0 and
1912 5.005 after you installed 5.6.1, you can continue to install add-on
1913 extensions using any of perl 5.6.1, 5.6.0, or 5.005. The installations
1914 of these different versions remain distinct, but remember that the newer
1915 versions of perl are automatically set up to search the site libraries of
1916 the older ones. This means that installing a new extension with 5.005
1917 will make it visible to all three versions. Later, if you install the
1918 same extension using, say, perl 5.6.1, it will override the 5.005-installed
1919 version, but only for perl 5.6.1.
1921 This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
1922 to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
1923 versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
1925 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
1927 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
1928 separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
1929 won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
1930 libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
1931 way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
1933 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.004
1935 and adding /opt/perl5.004/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
1936 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
1937 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
1939 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
1940 (e.g. 5.004 for all 5.004_0x versions), but change directory with
1943 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
1944 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
1945 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
1948 =head2 Upgrading from 5.005 to 5.6.0
1950 Most extensions built and installed with versions of perl
1951 prior to 5.005_50 will not need to be recompiled to be used with
1952 5.6.0. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with 5.6.0,
1953 you may safely do so without disturbing the 5.005 installation.
1954 (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> above.)
1956 See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
1957 incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
1958 perllocal.pod not perllocale.pod for installed module information.
1960 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
1962 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
1964 By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
1965 they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
1967 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
1968 perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
1969 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
1970 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
1971 the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036 (or
1972 whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod for
1973 possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
1975 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
1977 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
1978 system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
1979 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
1980 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
1981 library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
1983 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
1984 of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
1985 hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
1986 For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
1989 =head1 installhtml --help
1991 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
1992 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
1993 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
1995 Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
1996 html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
1998 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2003 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2005 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2006 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2007 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2008 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2009 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
2012 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2013 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2014 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2015 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2016 (and would welcome patches for them).
2018 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2019 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2021 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2023 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2024 available in TeX format. Type
2026 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2028 =head1 Reporting Problems
2030 If you have difficulty building perl, and none of the advice in this file
2031 helps, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant manual
2032 pages on your system doesn't help either, then you should send a message
2033 to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to perlbug@perl.org with
2034 an accurate description of your problem.
2036 Please include the output of the ./myconfig shell script that comes with
2037 the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the perlbug program that
2038 comes with the perl distribution, but you need to have perl compiled
2039 before you can use it. (If you have not installed it yet, you need to
2040 run C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug> instead of a plain C<perlbug>.)
2042 Please try to make your message brief but clear. Trim out unnecessary
2043 information. Do not include large files (such as config.sh or a complete
2044 Configure or make log) unless absolutely necessary. Do not include a
2045 complete transcript of your build session. Just include the failing
2046 commands, the relevant error messages, and whatever preceding commands
2047 are necessary to give the appropriate context. Plain text should
2048 usually be sufficient--fancy attachments or encodings may actually
2049 reduce the number of people who read your message. Your message
2050 will get relayed to over 400 subscribers around the world so please
2051 try to keep it brief but clear.
2053 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
2055 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2056 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
2057 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
2058 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2059 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
2061 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
2062 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and
2065 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
2066 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
2068 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
2069 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
2072 Note that you must have performed the installation already before running
2073 the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate
2078 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2079 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2080 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
2082 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2083 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2085 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2087 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2088 the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2089 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2090 a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2091 and the contact information to match your distribution.
2093 =head1 LAST MODIFIED
2095 $Id: INSTALL,v 1.58 1999/07/23 14:43:00 doughera Exp $