1 If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you see.
2 It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is specially
3 designed to be readable as is.
7 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
9 =head1 Reporting Problems
11 Wherever possible please use the perlbug tool supplied with this Perl
12 to report problems, as it automatically includes summary configuration
13 information about your perl, which may help us track down problems far
14 more quickly. But first you should read the advice in this file,
15 carefully re-read the error message and check the relevant manual pages
16 on your system, as these may help you find an immediate solution. If
17 you are not sure whether what you are seeing is a bug, you can send a
18 message describing the problem to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup to
21 The perlbug tool is installed along with perl, so after you have
22 completed C<make install> it should be possible to run it with plain
23 C<perlbug>. If the install fails, or you want to report problems with
24 C<make test> without installing perl, then you can use C<make nok> to
25 run perlbug to report the problem, or run it by hand from this source
26 directory with C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug>
28 If the build fails too early to run perlbug uninstalled, then please
29 B<run> the C<./myconfig> shell script, and mail its output along with
30 an accurate description of your problem to perlbug@perl.org
32 If Configure itself fails, and does not generate a config.sh file
33 (needed to run C<./myconfig>), then please mail perlbug@perl.org the
34 description of how Configure fails along with details of your system
35 - for example the output from running C<uname -a>
37 Please try to make your message brief but clear. Brief, clear bug
38 reports tend to get answered more quickly. Please don't worry if your
39 written English is not great - what matters is how well you describe
40 the important technical details of the problem you have encountered,
41 not whether your grammar and spelling is flawless.
43 Trim out unnecessary information. Do not include large files (such as
44 config.sh or a complete Configure or make log) unless absolutely
45 necessary. Do not include a complete transcript of your build
46 session. Just include the failing commands, the relevant error
47 messages, and whatever preceding commands are necessary to give the
48 appropriate context. Plain text should usually be sufficient--fancy
49 attachments or encodings may actually reduce the number of people who
50 read your message. Your message will get relayed to over 400
51 subscribers around the world so please try to keep it brief but clear.
53 If you are unsure what makes a good bug report please read "How to
54 report Bugs Effectively" by Simon Tatham:
55 http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html
59 First, make sure you have an up-to-date version of Perl. If you
60 didn't get your Perl source from CPAN, check the latest version at
61 http://www.cpan.org/src/. Perl uses a version scheme where even-numbered
62 subreleases (like 5.6.x and 5.8.x) are stable maintenance releases and
63 odd-numbered subreleases (like 5.7.x and 5.9.x) are unstable
64 development releases. Development releases should not be used in
65 production environments. Fixes and new features are first carefully
66 tested in development releases and only if they prove themselves to be
67 worthy will they be migrated to the maintenance releases.
69 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system with all
72 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
78 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
80 The above commands will install Perl to /usr/local (or some other
81 platform-specific directory -- see the appropriate file in hints/.)
82 If that's not okay with you, can run Configure interactively and use
84 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
90 # You may also wish to add these:
91 (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
93 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
95 or you can use some of the Configure options described below.
97 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
98 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
100 For information on what's new in this release, see the
101 pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
102 changes, see the Changes file.
106 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
107 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
108 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
109 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
111 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
113 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
116 Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
117 you should probably at least skim through this document before
120 In addition to this file, check if there is a README file specific to
121 your operating system, since it may provide additional or different
122 instructions for building Perl. If there is a hint file for your
123 system (in the hints/ directory) you should also read that hint file
124 for even more information. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh or
125 the svr5.sh hint file.)
127 For additional information about porting Perl, see the section on
128 L<"Porting information"> below, and look at the files in the Porting/
133 =head2 Changes and Incompatibilities
135 Please see pod/perldelta.pod for a description of the changes and
136 potential incompatibilities introduced with this release. A few of
137 the most important issues are listed below, but you should refer
138 to pod/perldelta.pod for more detailed information.
140 =head3 WARNING: This version is not binary compatible with releases of
143 If you have built extensions (i.e. modules that include C code)
144 using an earlier version of Perl, you will need to rebuild and reinstall
147 Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
148 without reinstallation. See the discussions below on
149 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> and
150 L<"Upgrading from 5.005 or 5.6 to 5.8.0"> for more details.
152 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
154 On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the changes
155 in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
156 pod/perldelta.pod for a description of what's changed. See your
157 installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly incomplete)
158 list of locally installed modules. Also see CPAN::autobundle for one
159 way to make a "bundle" of your currently installed modules.
161 =head2 Space Requirements
163 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 60 MB of disk space.
164 After completing make, it takes up roughly 100 MB, though the actual
165 total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
166 directories need something on the order of 45 MB, though again that
167 value is system-dependent. A perl build with debug symbols and
168 -DDEBUGGING will require something on the order of 10 MB extra.
170 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
172 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
181 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
182 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
184 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
185 files. If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
186 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
187 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
188 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it
192 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
193 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
194 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
195 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
196 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
197 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
198 probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't. Similarly, if you
199 used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version numbers, you will
200 probably want to adjust them as well.
202 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. For example, some
203 Linux distributions use i386, while others may use i486. If you build
204 it yourself, Configure uses the output of the arch command, which
205 might be i586 or i686 instead. If you pick up a precompiled binary, or
206 compile extensions on different systems, they might not all agree on
207 the architecture name.
209 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
210 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
212 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
213 installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
214 using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
215 settings"> below. If you wish to start with a fresh distribution, you
216 also need to remove any old Policy.sh files you may have with
222 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
223 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
224 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
225 almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
226 since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
229 At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
230 defaults from then on.
232 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
233 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
235 =head2 Common Configure options
237 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run
241 to get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
242 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
248 To compile with gcc you should run
250 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
252 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
253 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
255 =item Installation prefix
257 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
258 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
259 and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for
262 You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
263 directory when Configure prompts you, or by using the Configure command
264 line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
266 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
268 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
269 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
270 prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
271 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
272 for more details. Do not include a trailing slash, (i.e. /opt/perl/)
273 or you may experience odd test failures.
275 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
276 as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
277 attempt infinite recursion.
281 It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
282 find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
283 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
284 careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
285 vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing. If you insist
286 on replacing your vendor's perl, useful information on how it was
287 configured may be found with
291 (Check the output carefully, however, since this doesn't preserve
292 spaces in arguments to Configure. For that, you have to look carefully
293 at config_arg1, config_arg2, etc.)
295 By default, Configure will not try to link /usr/bin/perl to the current
296 version of perl. You can turn on that behavior by running
298 Configure -Dinstallusrbinperl
300 or by answering 'yes' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
302 In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to put
303 (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
304 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
305 obvious and convenient place.
307 =item Building a development release.
309 For development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.9.x) if you want to
310 use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel to Configure,
311 because the default answer to the question "do you really want to
312 Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel skips that
317 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
322 For example for my Solaris/x86 system, I usually use
324 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
326 =head2 Altering config.sh variables for C compiler switches etc.
328 For most users, most of the Configure defaults are fine, or can easily
329 be set on the Configure command line. However, if Configure doesn't
330 have an option to do what you want, you can change Configure variables
331 after the platform hints have been run by using Configure's -A switch.
332 For example, here's how to add a couple of extra flags to C compiler
335 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_Y2KWARN -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC"
337 For more help on Configure switches, run
341 =head2 Major Configure-time Build Options
343 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
344 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
345 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
346 some of the main things you can change.
350 On some platforms, perl can be compiled with support for threads. To
353 sh Configure -Dusethreads
355 Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command
356 line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
358 The default is to compile without thread support.
360 Perl has two different internal threads implementations. The current
361 model (available internally since 5.6, and as a user-level module since
362 5.8) is called interpreter-based implementation (ithreads), with one
363 interpreter per thread, and explicit sharing of data. The 5.005
364 version (5005threads) is considered obsolete, buggy, and unmaintained.
366 By default, Configure selects ithreads if -Dusethreads is specified.
368 However, if you insist, you can select the unsupported old 5005threads behavior
370 sh Configure -Dusethreads -Duse5005threads
372 The 'threads' module is for use with the ithreads implementation. The
373 'Thread' module offers an interface to either 5005threads or ithreads
374 (whichever has been configured).
376 When using threads, perl uses a dynamically-sized buffer for some of
377 the thread-safe library calls, such as those in the getpw*() family.
378 This buffer starts small, but it will keep growing until the result
379 fits. To get a fixed upper limit, you should compile Perl with
380 PERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE defined to be the number of bytes you want. One
381 way to do this is to run Configure with
382 C<-Accflags=-DPERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE=65536>
384 =head3 Large file support.
386 Since Perl 5.6.0, Perl has supported large files (files larger than
387 2 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
388 support is on by default.
390 This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files,
391 seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad in that if you are interfacing Perl
392 using some extension, the components you are connecting to must also
393 be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
394 parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
395 will happen. One popular extension suffering from this ailment is the
396 Apache extension mod_perl.
398 There's also one known limitation with the current large files
399 implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
400 section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer formats
401 like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
403 =head3 64 bit support.
405 If your platform does not have run natively at 64 bits, but can
406 simulate them with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>,
407 you can build a perl that uses 64 bits.
409 There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
410 using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
411 -Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
412 the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
414 The C<use64bitint> option does only as much as is required to get
415 64-bit integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long
416 longs") while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because
417 your pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint>
418 does not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it
419 might, but it doesn't have to). The C<use64bitint> simply means that
420 you will be able to have 64 bit-wide scalar values.
422 The C<use64bitall> option goes all the way by attempting to switch
423 integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
424 create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
425 resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
426 have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
429 Natively 64-bit systems like Alpha and Cray need neither -Duse64bitint
432 NOTE: 64-bit support is still experimental on most platforms.
433 Existing support only covers the LP64 data model. In particular, the
434 LLP64 data model is not yet supported. 64-bit libraries and system
435 APIs on many platforms have not stabilized--your mileage may vary.
439 In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
440 range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
441 (that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
442 this support (if it is available).
446 You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
447 and the long double support.
449 =head3 Selecting File IO mechanisms
451 Executive summary: as of Perl 5.8, you should use the default "PerlIO"
452 as the IO mechanism unless you have a good reason not to.
454 In more detail: previous versions of perl used the standard IO
455 mechanisms as defined in stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl
456 introduced alternate IO mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but up
457 until and including Perl 5.6, the stdio mechanism was still the default
458 and the only supported mechanism.
460 Starting from Perl 5.8, the default mechanism is to use the PerlIO
461 abstraction, because it allows better control of I/O mechanisms,
462 instead of having to work with (often, work around) vendors' I/O
465 This PerlIO abstraction can be (but again, unless you know what you
466 are doing, should not be) disabled either on the Configure command
469 sh Configure -Uuseperlio
471 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
473 With the PerlIO abstraction layer, there is another possibility for
474 the underlying IO calls, AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance
475 to stdio.h in many cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline"
476 modules ("Native" PerlIO has them too). Sfio currently only builds on
477 a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports. Because the data
478 structures are completely different from stdio, perl extension modules
479 or external libraries may not work. This configuration exists to
480 allow these issues to be worked on.
482 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
483 The latest sfio is available from http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/sfio/
485 You select this option by
487 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
489 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
490 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
493 Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails to
494 detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent). Apparently,
495 this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux and SunOS 4.
496 Configure should detect this problem and warn you about problems with
497 _exit vs. exit. If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to
498 your sfio sources and correct iffe's guess about atexit.
500 =head3 Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Hashes
502 In Perls 5.8.0 and earlier it was easy to create degenerate hashes.
503 Processing such hashes would consume large amounts of CPU time,
504 enabling a "Denial of Service" attack against Perl. Such hashes may be
505 a problem for example for mod_perl sites, sites with Perl CGI scripts
506 and web services, that process data originating from external sources.
508 In Perl 5.8.1 a security feature was introduced to make it harder to
509 create such degenerate hashes. A visible side effect of this was that
510 the keys(), values(), and each() functions may return the hash elements
511 in different order between different runs of Perl even with the same
512 data. It also had unintended binary incompatibility issues with
513 certain modules compiled against Perl 5.8.0.
515 In Perl 5.8.2 an improved scheme was introduced. Hashes will return
516 elements in the same order as Perl 5.8.0 by default. On a hash by hash
517 basis, if pathological data is detected during a hash key insertion,
518 then that hash will switch to an alternative random hash seed. As
519 adding keys can always dramatically change returned hash element order,
520 existing programs will not be affected by this, unless they
521 specifically test for pre-recorded hash return order for contrived
522 data. (eg the list of keys generated by C<map {"\0"x$_} 0..15> trigger
523 randomisation) In effect the new implementation means that 5.8.1 scheme
524 is only being used on hashes which are under attack.
526 One can still revert to the old guaranteed repeatable order (and be
527 vulnerable to attack by wily crackers) by setting the environment
528 variable PERL_HASH_SEED, see L<perlrun/PERL_HASH_SEED>. Another option
529 is to add -DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT to the compilation flags (for
530 example by using C<Configure -Accflags=-DUSE_HAS_SEED_EXPLICIT>), in
531 which case one has to explicitly set the PERL_HASH_SEED environment
532 variable to enable the security feature, or by adding -DNO_HASH_SEED to
533 the compilation flags to completely disable the randomisation feature.
535 B<Perl has never guaranteed any ordering of the hash keys>, and the
536 ordering has already changed several times during the lifetime of Perl
537 5. Also, the ordering of hash keys has always been, and continues to
538 be, affected by the insertion order. It is likely that Perl 5.10 and
539 Perl 6 will randomise all hashes. Note that because of this
540 randomisation for example the Data::Dumper results will be different
541 between different runs of Perl since Data::Dumper by default dumps
542 hashes "unordered". The use of the Data::Dumper C<Sortkeys> option is
547 Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
548 TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
549 access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
550 Version 5. You can find more about SOCKS from http://www.socks.nec.com/
552 =head3 Dynamic Loading
554 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
555 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
556 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
557 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
559 =head3 Building a shared Perl library
561 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
562 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
563 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
566 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
567 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
568 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
569 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
570 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
571 can share the same library.
573 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
574 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
575 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
578 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
579 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
580 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
583 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
584 libperl.so.6.2 (for Perl 5.6.2), or libperl.so.602, or simply
585 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
586 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
587 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
588 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
590 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
591 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
593 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
595 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
597 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
598 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
599 NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
600 for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
601 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
602 be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
603 library search settings. You can find the name of the environment
604 variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
606 grep ldlibpthname config.sh
608 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
609 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
610 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
613 cd t; ./perl misc/failing_test.t
615 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
617 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
620 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
622 for Bourne-style shells, or
624 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
626 for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
627 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And
628 again, it may be something other than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
630 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
631 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
633 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
635 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
636 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
637 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
638 install a standard Perl 5.8.0 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
639 try to build Perl 5.8.0 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
640 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
641 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
642 libperl.so.8 rather with the installed libperl.so.8? The answer is
643 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
644 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
645 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
646 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux, you can only override at runtime via
647 LD_PRELOAD, specifying the exact filename you wish to be used; and on
648 Digital Unix, you can override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the
649 _RLD_ROOT environment variable to point to the perl build directory.
651 In other words, it is generally not a good idea to try to build a perl
652 with a shared library if $archlib/CORE/$libperl already exists from a
655 A good workaround is to specify a different directory for the
656 architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING version of perl.
657 You can do this by changing all the *archlib* variables in config.sh to
658 point to your new architecture-dependent library.
660 =head2 Installation Directories
662 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
663 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
664 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
665 Do not include trailing slashes on directory names.
667 I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
668 everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
669 process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use
670 the defaults from then on. Alternatively, you can
672 grep '^install' config.sh
674 after Configure has run to verify the installation paths.
676 The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
677 people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
678 distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
679 need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
680 you can safely skip the next section.
682 The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
686 =item Directories for the perl distribution
688 By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.9.0.
689 $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
690 5.9.0 or 5.9.1, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
691 determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
692 variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
694 Configure variable Default value
695 $prefixexp /usr/local
696 $binexp $prefixexp/bin
697 $scriptdirexp $prefixexp/bin
698 $privlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version
699 $archlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
700 $man1direxp $prefixexp/man/man1
701 $man3direxp $prefixexp/man/man3
705 $prefixexp is generated from $prefix, with ~ expansion done to convert home
706 directories into absolute paths. Similarly for the other variables listed. As
707 file system calls do not do this, you should always reference the ...exp
708 variables, to support users who build perl in their home directory.
710 Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
711 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
712 instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
713 directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
714 the common style is shown here.
716 =item Directories for site-specific add-on files
718 After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
719 CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
720 be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
722 Configure variable Default value
723 $siteprefixexp $prefixexp
724 $sitebinexp $siteprefixexp/bin
725 $sitescriptexp $siteprefixexp/bin
726 $sitelibexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
727 $sitearchexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
728 $siteman1direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man1
729 $siteman3direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man3
730 $sitehtml1direxp (none)
731 $sitehtml3direxp (none)
733 By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
734 modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
736 =item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
738 Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
739 distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
740 for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
742 Configure variable Default value
743 $vendorprefixexp (none)
744 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
745 $vendorbinexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
746 $vendorscriptexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
748 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
750 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
751 $vendorman1direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man1
752 $vendorman3direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man3
753 $vendorhtml1direxp (none)
754 $vendorhtml3direxp (none)
756 These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
757 a vendor might choose the following settings:
760 $siteprefix /usr/local
763 This would have the effect of setting the following:
766 $scriptdirexp /usr/bin
767 $privlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version
768 $archlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
769 $man1direxp /usr/man/man1
770 $man3direxp /usr/man/man3
772 $sitebinexp /usr/local/bin
773 $sitescriptexp /usr/local/bin
774 $sitelibexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
775 $sitearchexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
776 $siteman1direxp /usr/local/man/man1
777 $siteman3direxp /usr/local/man/man3
779 $vendorbinexp /usr/bin
780 $vendorscriptexp /usr/bin
781 $vendorlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
782 $vendorarchexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
783 $vendorman1direxp /usr/man/man1
784 $vendorman3direxp /usr/man/man3
786 Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
787 /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
788 the /usr/local hierarchy.
790 The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
791 version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
792 However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
793 installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
794 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for more details
795 on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
797 Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
798 example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
799 are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
800 site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
801 network. One way to do that would be something like
803 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
807 As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
808 variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
809 directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
810 Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
811 version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
813 For example, if you have a bundle of perl libraries from a previous
814 installation, perhaps in a strange place:
816 Configure -Dotherlibdirs=/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1
820 There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
821 that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
822 separated list of directories, like this
824 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
826 The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
827 ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
828 modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
829 touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
830 version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
831 present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
832 directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
833 run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
837 In versions 5.005_57 and earlier, the default was to store module man
838 pages in a version-specific directory, such as
839 /usr/local/lib/perl5/$version/man/man3. The default for 5.005_58 and
840 after is /usr/local/man/man3 so that most users can find the man pages
841 without resetting MANPATH.
843 You can continue to use the old default from the command line with
845 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.9.0/man/man3
847 Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
849 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
851 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
856 Currently, the standard perl installation does not do anything with
857 HTML documentation, but that may change in the future. Further, some
858 add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The html Configure
859 variables listed above are provided if you wish to specify where such
860 documents should be placed. The default is "none", but will likely
861 eventually change to something useful based on user feedback.
865 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
866 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
869 Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
870 directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
873 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
874 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
875 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below.
877 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
878 library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
879 suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
881 Thus, for example, if you Configure with
882 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.9.0 are
884 Configure variable Default value
885 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0
886 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0/$archname
887 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0
888 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0/$archname
890 =head2 Changing the installation directory
892 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
893 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
894 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
895 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
896 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
897 packages, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
898 wish to install perl into a different directory and use that
899 management software to move perl to its final destination. This
900 section describes how to do that.
902 Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You
903 could edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to
904 /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local, or you could simply use the
905 following command line:
907 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
909 (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
911 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
912 modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
913 follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with
916 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
918 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is convenient
919 to compile it once and create an archive that can be installed on
920 multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to create an
921 archive that can be installed in /opt/perl. One way to do that is by
922 using the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>. The DESTDIR is
923 automatically prepended to all the installation paths. Thus you
926 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
929 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
930 cd /tmp/perl5/opt/perl
931 tar cvf /tmp/perl5-archive.tar .
933 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
935 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
936 answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact
937 person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another
938 system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file
939 to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate
940 hint file for your system.
942 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
947 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
949 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
951 If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
952 to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
953 platform-specific hints files.
955 =head2 Disabling older versions of Perl
957 Configure will search for binary compatible versions of previously
958 installed perl binaries in the tree that is specified as target tree
959 and these will be used by the perl being built.
960 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> for more details.
962 To disable this use of older perl modules, even completely valid pure perl
963 modules, you can specify to not include the paths found:
965 sh Configure -Dinc_version_list=none ...
967 When using the newer perl, you can add these paths again in the
968 $PERL5LIB environment variable or with perl's -I runtime option.
970 =head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
972 Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
973 where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
974 read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
975 architectures. You can do this (if your file system supports symbolic
978 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
979 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
980 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
982 This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
983 pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
984 unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
988 as usual, and Perl will be built in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
990 =head2 Building a debugging perl
992 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
993 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
994 you probably want to do
996 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
998 This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
999 to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
1000 executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
1001 cc -g2. Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for
1002 your system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags
1003 variable in config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's
1004 internal state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by default
1005 if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to reuse your
1006 old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the optimize and
1007 ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes as shown in
1008 L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
1010 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
1011 it's convenient to have both.
1013 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
1014 versions of perl under L<Building a shared Perl library>.
1018 Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
1019 in the ext/ subdirectory.
1021 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
1022 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
1023 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
1024 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
1025 is always built by default. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
1026 set the Configure variable useposix=false from the Configure command line.
1028 If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
1029 running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
1030 extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
1031 it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
1032 has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
1033 extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
1034 convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
1035 you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
1036 dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
1038 If you have dynamic loading, another way of specifying extra modules
1039 is described in L<"Adding extra modules to the build"> below.
1041 You can learn more about each of the supplied extensions by consulting the
1042 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
1045 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
1046 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
1047 version. Configure will suggest this as the default.
1049 To disable certain extensions so that they are not built, use the
1050 -Dnoextensions=... and -Donlyextensions=... options. They both accept
1051 a space-separated list of extensions. The extensions listed in
1052 C<noextensions> are removed from the list of extensions to build, while
1053 the C<onlyextensions> is rather more severe and builds only the listed
1054 extensions. The latter should be used with extreme caution since
1055 certain extensions are used by many other extensions and modules:
1056 examples of such modules include Fcntl and IO. The order of processing
1057 these options is first C<only> (if present), then C<no> (if present).
1059 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
1060 the extensions you want.
1062 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley
1063 DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect
1064 this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with earlier
1065 releases of version 2.
1067 If you re-use your old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
1068 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
1069 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
1072 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern systems do)
1073 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
1074 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
1075 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
1077 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
1079 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
1080 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
1081 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
1082 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
1083 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
1084 how to obtain the libraries.
1086 If your database header (.h) files are not in a directory normally
1087 searched by your C compiler, then you will need to include the
1088 appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by Configure. If
1089 your database libraries are not in a directory normally
1090 searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to include
1091 the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by Configure.
1092 See the examples below.
1098 =item gdbm in /usr/local
1100 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
1101 GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
1102 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
1103 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
1104 necessary steps out automatically.
1106 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1107 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
1109 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
1112 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
1113 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1116 Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1117 you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1118 /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
1120 =item gdbm in /usr/you
1122 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
1123 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
1124 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
1125 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
1126 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
1127 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
1128 /usr/you/lib to the list.
1130 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
1134 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
1135 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
1137 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1138 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1140 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
1141 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
1142 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
1143 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
1146 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
1147 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
1151 =head2 Building DB, NDBM, and ODBM interfaces with Berkeley DB 3
1153 A Perl interface for DB3 is part of Berkeley DB, but if you want to
1154 compile the standard Perl DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you must follow
1155 following instructions.
1157 Berkeley DB3 from Sleepycat Software is by default installed without
1158 DB1 compatibility code (needed for the DB_File interface) and without
1159 links to compatibility files. So if you want to use packages written
1160 for the DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you need to configure DB3 with
1161 --enable-compat185 (and optionally with --enable-dump185) and create
1162 additional references (suppose you are installing DB3 with
1165 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdbm.so
1166 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libndbm.so
1167 echo '#define DB_DBM_HSEARCH 1' >dbm.h
1168 echo '#include <db.h>' >>dbm.h
1169 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/dbm.h
1170 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/ndbm.h
1172 Optionally, if you have compiled with --enable-compat185 (not needed
1175 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb1.so
1176 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb.so
1178 ODBM emulation seems not to be perfect, but is quite usable,
1181 lib/odbm.............FAILED at test 9
1182 Failed 1/64 tests, 98.44% okay
1184 =head2 Overriding an old config.sh
1186 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
1187 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
1189 =head2 GNU-style configure
1191 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
1192 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
1194 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
1196 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
1199 ./configure.gnu --help
1203 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
1204 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
1206 See L<Cross-compilation> below for information on cross-compiling.
1208 =head2 Malloc Issues
1210 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
1211 so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
1212 the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
1213 version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
1214 perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
1215 than your system malloc.
1217 However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
1218 experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
1219 that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
1220 (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
1224 =item Using the system malloc
1226 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
1228 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
1230 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
1232 =item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
1234 NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you just
1235 run Configure to accept all the defaults on those platforms.
1237 Perl's malloc family of functions are normally called Perl_malloc(),
1238 Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree().
1239 These names do not clash with the system versions of these functions.
1241 If this flag is enabled, however, Perl's malloc family of functions
1242 will have the same names as the system versions. This may be required
1243 sometimes if you have libraries that like to free() data that may have
1244 been allocated by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1246 Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1247 from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1248 does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1251 =item -DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS
1253 This flag enables debugging mstats, which is required to use the
1254 Devel::Peek::mstat() function. You cannot enable this unless you are
1255 using Perl's malloc, so a typical Configure command would be
1257 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS -Dusemymalloc='y'
1259 to enable this option.
1263 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1265 If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1266 If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
1270 =item Running Configure Interactively
1272 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1273 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1276 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1277 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1278 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1279 will use the defaults from then on.
1281 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1282 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1283 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1287 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
1288 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1289 will offer to use that hint file.
1291 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1292 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1293 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1294 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
1297 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1299 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
1300 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
1301 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
1304 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1305 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
1306 Keep the recommended value? [y]
1308 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
1309 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
1312 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
1313 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
1314 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
1317 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1318 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1319 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1320 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1323 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1324 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1325 Keep the previous value? [y]
1327 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1328 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1329 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1331 =item Changing Compilers
1333 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1334 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1335 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
1336 with the options you want to use.
1338 This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
1339 gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
1341 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1343 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1344 them to all the .SH files by running
1348 You will then have to rebuild by running
1353 =item config.over and config.arch
1355 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride
1356 Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1357 before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1358 however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1359 This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1361 There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1362 config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1363 architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1364 hints file that creates the config.arch.
1368 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1369 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1370 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1372 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1373 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1378 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1379 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1380 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1381 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1382 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1383 lost the next time you run Configure.
1385 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1386 see the file hints/README.hints.
1388 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1389 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1396 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1397 Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1398 system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1399 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1402 =item Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX and BIN_SH
1404 In Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX, Configure might abort with
1406 Build a threading Perl? [n]
1407 Configure[2437]: Syntax error at line 1 : `config.sh' is not expected.
1409 This indicates that Configure is being run with a broken Korn shell
1410 (even though you think you are using a Bourne shell by using
1411 "sh Configure" or "./Configure"). The Korn shell bug has been reported
1412 to Compaq as of February 1999 but in the meanwhile, the reason ksh is
1413 being used is that you have the environment variable BIN_SH set to
1414 'xpg4'. This causes /bin/sh to delegate its duties to /bin/posix/sh
1415 (a ksh). Unset the environment variable and rerun Configure.
1417 =item HP-UX 11, pthreads, and libgdbm
1419 If you are running Configure with -Dusethreads in HP-UX 11, be warned
1420 that POSIX threads and libgdbm (the GNU dbm library) compiled before
1421 HP-UX 11 do not mix. This will cause a basic test run by Configure to
1424 Pthread internal error: message: __libc_reinit() failed, file: ../pthreads/pthread.c, line: 1096
1425 Return Pointer is 0xc082bf33
1426 sh: 5345 Quit(coredump)
1428 and Configure will give up. The cure is to recompile and install
1429 libgdbm under HP-UX 11.
1431 =item Porting information
1433 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan 9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1434 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1435 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1436 subdirectory. Porting/Glossary should especially come in handy.
1438 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1439 http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
1440 various other operating systems.
1442 If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture, study carefully the
1443 section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1444 in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file Porting/patching.pod.
1445 Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1449 =head2 Adding extra modules to the build
1451 You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1452 CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1453 command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1455 Configure -Dextras="Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI"
1457 or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
1458 then answer "Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
1459 The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
1460 This will only work if those modules are to be built as dynamic
1461 extensions. If you wish to include those extra modules as static
1462 extensions, see L<"Extensions"> above.
1464 Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1465 modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1466 or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1467 do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1469 Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1470 dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
1471 For example: you will need to have the zlib.h header and the libz
1472 library installed for the Compress::Zlib, or the Foo database specific
1473 headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1474 process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1478 suidperl is an optional component, which is normally neither built
1479 nor installed by default. From perlfaq1:
1481 On some systems, setuid and setgid scripts (scripts written
1482 in the C shell, Bourne shell, or Perl, for example, with the
1483 set user or group ID permissions enabled) are insecure due to
1484 a race condition in the kernel. For those systems, Perl versions
1485 5 and 4 attempt to work around this vulnerability with an optional
1486 component, a special program named suidperl, also known as sperl.
1487 This program attempts to emulate the set-user-ID and set-group-ID
1488 features of the kernel.
1490 Because of the buggy history of suidperl, and the difficulty
1491 of properly security auditing as large and complex piece of
1492 software as Perl, we cannot recommend using suidperl and the feature
1493 should be considered deprecated.
1494 Instead, use a tool specifically designed to handle changes in
1495 privileges, such as B<sudo>, http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/ .
1499 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1500 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1501 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1502 makefile, not Makefile, since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1503 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1504 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1506 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1511 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1513 =head2 Expected errors
1515 These errors are normal, and can be ignored:
1518 make: [extra.pods] Error 1 (ignored)
1520 make: [extras.make] Error 1 (ignored)
1522 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1524 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1525 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1526 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1527 then see L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
1533 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1534 for further tips and information.
1538 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1539 during the building of extensions, run
1543 to test your version of miniperl.
1547 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1548 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1549 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1550 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1551 whole L<"Locale problems"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1552 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1554 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1555 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1558 are supported and installed on your system.
1559 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1565 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1566 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1567 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1568 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by installing gcc
1569 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1570 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1571 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1575 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1576 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1578 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1579 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1580 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1582 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1583 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1585 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1587 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1588 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1589 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1590 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1591 of your local set-up.
1595 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1596 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1599 sh Configure -Uusenm
1601 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1602 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1605 =item umask not found
1607 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1608 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1609 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1610 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1611 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1615 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1616 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1617 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1618 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1619 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1623 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1624 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1625 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1629 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1630 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1631 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1632 on L<"nm extraction">.
1634 =item __inet_* errors
1636 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1637 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1638 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1639 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1640 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1641 newer version of BIND (and remove the files the old one left behind).
1642 If you can't, you can either link with the updated resolver library provided
1643 with BIND 8.1 or rename /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and
1644 test process to avoid the problem.
1646 =item *_r() prototype NOT found
1648 On a related note, if you see a bunch of complaints like the above about
1649 reentrant functions - specifically networking-related ones - being present
1650 but without prototypes available, check to see if BIND 8.1 (or possibly
1651 other BIND 8 versions) is (or has been) installed. They install
1652 header files such as netdb.h into places such as /usr/local/include (or into
1653 another directory as specified at build/install time), at least optionally.
1654 Remove them or put them in someplace that isn't in the C preprocessor's
1655 header file include search path (determined by -I options plus defaults,
1656 normally /usr/include).
1658 =item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1660 This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1661 gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1662 changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1663 rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1664 update your gcc installation.
1668 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1669 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1677 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1678 with B<make depend; make>.
1680 =item Missing functions and Undefined symbols
1682 If the build of miniperl fails with a long list of missing functions or
1683 undefined symbols, check the libs variable in the config.sh file. It
1684 should look something like
1686 libs='-lsocket -lnsl -ldl -lm -lc'
1688 The exact libraries will vary from system to system, but you typically
1689 need to include at least the math library -lm. Normally, Configure
1690 will suggest the correct defaults. If the libs variable is empty, you
1691 need to start all over again. Run
1695 and start from the very beginning. This time, unless you are sure of
1696 what you are doing, accept the default list of libraries suggested by
1699 If the libs variable looks correct, you might have the
1700 L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1702 If you stil have missing routines or undefined symbols, you probably
1703 need to add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature
1704 that Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete. If
1705 you used a hint file, see if it has any relevant advice. You can also
1706 look through through config.h for likely suspects.
1710 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1711 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1712 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1713 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1714 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1717 =item Missing dbmclose
1719 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1720 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1722 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1724 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1725 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1726 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1727 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1728 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1729 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1730 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1731 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1732 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1733 process is continuing.
1735 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1738 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1740 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1741 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1742 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1744 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1745 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1746 quite that tightly coordinated.
1748 =item sh: ar: not found
1750 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1751 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1752 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1753 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1756 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1758 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1759 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1760 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1762 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1764 If you get this error message from the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem test, your System
1765 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1766 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1767 to include the System V semaphores.
1769 =item ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem........semget: No space left on device
1771 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1772 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1773 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1774 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1779 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1780 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1781 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1782 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1783 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1784 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1785 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1786 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1788 =item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1790 The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1791 make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1792 archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1793 C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1794 archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1795 incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1796 official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1797 that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1798 archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1800 =item invalid token: ##
1802 You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. To compile Perl, you
1803 need to use a compiler that supports ANSI C. If there is a README
1804 file for your system, it may have further details on your compiler
1809 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1811 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1813 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1815 UTS may need one or more of -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1817 FreeBSD can fail the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1818 configured in the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1819 you will get a message telling you what to do.
1821 HP-UX 11 Y2K patch "Y2K-1100 B.11.00.B0125 HP-UX Core OS Year 2000
1822 Patch Bundle" has been reported to break the io/fs test #18 which
1823 tests whether utime() can change timestamps. The Y2K patch seems to
1824 break utime() so that over NFS the timestamps do not get changed
1825 (on local filesystems utime() still works).
1827 Building Perl on a system that has also BIND (headers and libraries)
1828 installed may run into troubles because BIND installs its own netdb.h
1829 and socket.h, which may not agree with the operating system's ideas of
1830 the same files. Similarly, including -lbind may conflict with libc's
1831 view of the world. You may have to tweak -Dlocincpth and -Dloclibpth
1836 =head2 Cross-compilation
1838 Starting from version 5.8, Perl has the beginnings of cross-compilation
1839 support. What is known to work is running Configure in a
1840 cross-compilation environment and building the miniperl executable.
1841 What is known not to work is building the perl executable because
1842 that would require building extensions: Dynaloader statically and
1843 File::Glob dynamically, for extensions one needs MakeMaker and
1844 MakeMaker is not yet cross-compilation aware, and neither is
1847 Since the functionality is so lacking, it must be considered
1848 highly experimental. It is so experimental that it is not even
1849 mentioned during an interactive Configure session, a direct command
1850 line invocation (detailed shortly) is required to access the
1853 NOTE: Perl is routinely built using cross-compilation
1854 in the EPOC environment, in the WinCE, and in the OpenZaurus
1855 project, but all those use something slightly different setup
1856 than what described here. For the WinCE setup, read the
1857 wince/README.compile. For the OpenZaurus setup, read the
1860 The one environment where this cross-compilation setup has
1861 successfully been used as of this writing is the Compaq iPAQ running
1862 ARM Linux. The build host was Intel Linux, the networking setup was
1863 PPP + SSH. The exact setup details are beyond the scope of this
1864 document, see http://www.handhelds.org/ for more information.
1866 To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch is
1867 C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
1869 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1871 This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
1872 symbol C<usecrosscompile> available.
1874 During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1875 into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1876 cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1877 target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1878 transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1879 the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1880 methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1881 F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1883 To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1884 the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1885 happens), supply Configure with
1887 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1889 The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
1890 must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1891 You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
1895 but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
1897 Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
1898 which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
1899 This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
1900 In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
1903 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
1905 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1906 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1907 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
1909 If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
1910 compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
1911 C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
1912 (The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
1913 as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
1914 will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
1915 in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
1917 In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
1918 choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
1921 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
1923 Putting it all together:
1925 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1926 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1927 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
1929 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
1930 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1931 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1932 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1933 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
1936 or if you are happy with the defaults
1938 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1939 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1940 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1945 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
1946 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
1947 wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1949 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1950 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1951 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1953 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1955 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1956 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1957 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1961 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1962 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1966 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1967 complicated constructs). For extension and library tests you
1968 need a little bit more: you need to setup your environment variable
1969 PERL_CORE to a true value (like "1"), and you need to supply the
1970 right Perl library path:
1973 ./perl -I../lib ../ext/Socket/Socket.t
1974 ./perl -I../lib ../lib/less.t
1976 (For csh-like shells on UNIX; adjust appropriately for other platforms.)
1977 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1978 comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
1979 shared library path if you get errors like:
1981 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
1983 See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
1989 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1990 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1991 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1992 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1993 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1994 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1996 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
2002 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
2004 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
2005 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
2006 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
2007 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
2008 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
2009 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
2012 =item Timing problems
2014 Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
2015 sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
2016 If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough,
2017 these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again
2018 with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive
2019 and load-sensitive tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
2020 F<ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t>, F<lib/Benchmark.t>,
2021 F<lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t>, and F<lib/Memoize/t/speed.t>.
2025 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
2026 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
2027 For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
2028 test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
2030 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
2032 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
2034 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
2035 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
2036 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
2037 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
2039 =item Failures from lib/File/Temp/t/security saying "system possibly insecure"
2041 First, such warnings are not necessarily serious or indicative of a
2042 real security threat. That being said, they bear investigating.
2044 Note that each of the tests is run twice. The first time is in the
2045 directory returned by File::Spec->tmpdir() (often /tmp on Unix
2046 systems), and the second time in the directory from which the test was
2047 run (usually the 't' directory, if the test was run as part of 'make
2050 The tests may fail for the following reasons:
2052 (1) If the directory the tests are being run in is owned by somebody
2053 other than the user running the tests, or by root (uid 0).
2055 This failure can happen if the Perl source code distribution is
2056 unpacked in such a way that the user ids in the distribution package
2057 are used as-is. Some tar programs do this.
2059 (2) If the directory the tests are being run in is writable by group or
2060 by others, and there is no sticky bit set for the directory. (With
2061 UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to a directory means the right to
2062 add or remove files in that directory. The 'sticky bit' is a feature
2063 used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if the bit is
2064 set for a directory, no one but the owner (or root) can remove that
2065 file even if the permissions would otherwise allow file removal by
2068 This failure may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the
2069 permissions policy used on this particular system. This failure can
2070 also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit (this
2071 is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle File::Temp
2072 should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or if the system
2073 supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons it is not being
2074 used. This is, for example, the case with HP-UX: as of HP-UX release
2075 11.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX doesn't use it
2076 on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also, as with the permissions, some
2077 local policy might dictate that the stickiness is not used.
2079 (3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
2080 any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
2081 directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
2082 (2). For Unix systems, this is usually not an issue if you are
2083 building on a local disk. See the documentation for the File::Temp
2084 module for more information about 'chown giveaway'.
2086 See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
2087 about the various security aspects of temporary files.
2093 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
2094 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
2095 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
2096 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
2097 are not root, you must still have permission to install into the directories
2098 in question and you should ignore any messages about chown not working.
2100 If "make install" just says "`install' is up to date" or something
2101 similar, you may be on a case-insensitive filesystems such as Mac's HFS+,
2102 and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion is brought to you
2103 by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
2105 =head2 Installing perl under different names
2107 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
2108 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
2109 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
2111 make install PERLNAME=myperl
2113 You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
2114 "perl5.005") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
2116 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
2118 This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (e.g. to
2119 avoid conflicts with an ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor).
2120 Without this the versioned binary would be called "perl55.005".
2122 =head2 Installing perl under a different directory
2124 You can install perl under a different destination directory by using
2125 the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>, with a command like
2127 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
2129 DESTDIR is automatically prepended to all the installation paths. See
2130 the example in L<"Creating an installable tar archive"> above.
2133 =head2 Installed files
2135 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
2136 anything, you can run
2138 ./perl installperl -n
2139 ./perl installman -n
2141 make install will install the following:
2146 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
2147 will be a link to perl.
2149 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
2150 a2p awk-to-perl translator
2154 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
2156 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
2157 s2p sed-to-perl translator
2158 find2perl find-to-perl translator
2159 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
2160 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
2161 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
2162 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
2163 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
2164 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
2165 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
2171 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
2172 dprofpp Perl code profile post-processor
2176 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
2177 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
2181 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2183 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
2184 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2186 Installperl will also create the directories listed above
2187 in L<"Installation Directories">.
2189 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
2190 under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
2191 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2192 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
2194 Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2195 installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
2196 perl alongside an already installed production version of perl without
2197 disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2198 To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2200 Configure -Dversiononly
2202 or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2203 you can just manually run
2205 ./perl installperl -v
2207 and skip installman altogether.
2208 See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2211 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
2213 Perl 5.9 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
2214 In other words, you will have to recompile your XS modules.
2216 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
2217 5.8.0) to another similar version (e.g. 5.8.2) without re-compiling
2218 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
2219 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
2220 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
2221 with 5.8.2, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
2222 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
2223 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.8.2.
2225 Usually, most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use
2226 with a newer version of Perl Here is how it is supposed to work.
2227 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
2229 Suppose you already have version 5.005_03 installed. The directories
2230 searched by 5.005_03 are
2232 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503/$archname
2233 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503
2234 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2235 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2237 Beginning with 5.6.0 the version number in the site libraries are
2238 fully versioned. Now, suppose you install version 5.6.0. The directories
2239 searched by version 5.6.0 will be
2241 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/$archname
2242 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0
2243 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
2244 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2246 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2247 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2248 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2250 Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
2251 of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
2252 directories. This way, modules installed under 5.005_03 will continue
2253 to be usable by 5.005_03 but will also accessible to 5.6.0. Further,
2254 suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
2255 present only in 5.6.0. That new module will get installed into
2256 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0 and will be available to 5.6.0,
2257 but will not interfere with the 5.005_03 version.
2259 The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
2260 5.6.0 and above will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
2262 Lastly, suppose you now install 5.8.0, which is not binary compatible
2263 with 5.6.0. The directories searched by 5.8.0 (if you don't change the
2264 Configure defaults) will be:
2266 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0/$archname
2267 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0
2268 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/$archname
2269 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0
2271 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2273 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2275 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2277 Note that the earlier $archname entries are now gone, but pure perl
2278 modules from earlier versions will still be found.
2280 Assuming the users in your site are still actively using perl 5.6.0 and
2281 5.005 after you installed 5.8.0, you can continue to install add-on
2282 extensions using any of perl 5.8.0, 5.6.0, or 5.005. The installations
2283 of these different versions remain distinct, but remember that the
2284 newer versions of perl are automatically set up to search the
2285 compatible site libraries of the older ones. This means that
2286 installing a new XS extension with 5.005 will make it visible to both
2287 5.005 and 5.6.0, but not to 5.8.0. Installing a pure perl module with
2288 5.005 will make it visible to all three versions. Later, if you
2289 install the same extension using, say, perl 5.8.0, it will override the
2290 5.005-installed version, but only for perl 5.8.0.
2292 This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2293 to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2294 versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
2296 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
2298 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
2299 separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
2300 won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2301 libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2302 way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
2304 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.8.2
2306 and adding /opt/perl5.8.2/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
2307 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2308 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2310 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
2311 (e.g. 5.8 for all 5.8.x versions), but change directory with
2314 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2315 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2316 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2319 =head2 Upgrading from 5.005 or 5.6 to 5.8.0
2321 B<Perl 5.9.0 is binary incompatible with Perl 5.8.x, Perl 5.6.x, 5.005,
2322 and any earlier Perl release.> Perl modules having binary parts
2323 (meaning that a C compiler is used) will have to be recompiled to be
2324 used with 5.9.0. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with
2325 5.9.0, you may safely do so without disturbing the older
2326 installations. (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5">
2329 See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2330 incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
2331 perllocal.pod, not perllocale.pod, for installed module information.
2333 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
2335 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
2337 By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
2338 they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
2340 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
2341 perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
2342 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
2343 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
2344 the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036 (or
2345 whatever the appropriate pathname is). See L<perltrap> for
2346 possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
2348 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2350 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2351 system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2352 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2353 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2354 library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2356 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2357 of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2358 hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2359 For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2362 =head1 installhtml --help
2364 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2365 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2366 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2368 Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2369 html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2371 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2376 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2378 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2379 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2380 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2381 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2382 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
2385 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2386 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2387 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2388 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2389 (and would welcome patches for them).
2391 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2392 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2394 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2396 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2397 available in TeX format. Type
2399 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2401 =head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2403 The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2404 Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2405 operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2407 Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way:
2408 Encode, with its big conversion tables, consumes a lot of
2409 space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything. The
2410 Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network
2411 programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all
2412 depends on what do you need to do.
2414 In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2415 recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2416 depends on what you need.
2418 Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2422 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2426 in Solaris is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
2429 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2430 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2431 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2432 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2433 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2434 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/File/Glob/autosplit.ix
2435 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/Config.pm
2436 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/XSLoader.pm
2437 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/DynaLoader.pm
2438 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/CORE/libperl.so
2439 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/strict.pm
2440 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/warnings.pm
2441 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Carp.pm
2442 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Exporter.pm
2443 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/File/Glob.pm
2444 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/AutoLoader.pm
2445 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/vars.pm
2446 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/warnings/register.pm
2447 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Carp/Heavy.pm
2448 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2450 Secondly, Debian perl-base package contains the following files,
2451 size about 1.2MB in its i386 version:
2453 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2454 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian
2455 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
2456 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
2457 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
2458 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
2459 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/AutoLoader.pm
2460 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Carp.pm
2461 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Carp/Heavy.pm
2462 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Cwd.pm
2463 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Exporter.pm
2464 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2465 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/File/Spec.pm
2466 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2467 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/FileHandle.pm
2468 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Getopt/Long.pm
2469 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2470 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2471 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IPC/Open2.pm
2472 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IPC/Open3.pm
2473 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/SelectSaver.pm
2474 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Symbol.pm
2475 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Text/Tabs.pm
2476 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Text/Wrap.pm
2477 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/attributes.pm
2478 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/GetOptions.al
2479 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/FindOption.al
2480 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/Configure.al
2481 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/config.al
2482 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/Croak.al
2483 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/autosplit.ix
2484 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/base.pm
2485 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/constant.pm
2486 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/fields.pm
2487 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/integer.pm
2488 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/lib.pm
2489 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/locale.pm
2490 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/overload.pm
2491 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/strict.pm
2492 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/vars.pm
2493 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/warnings.pm
2494 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/warnings/register.pm
2496 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Config.pm
2497 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Data/Dumper.pm
2498 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/DynaLoader.pm
2499 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Errno.pm
2500 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Fcntl.pm
2501 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/File/Glob.pm
2502 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO.pm
2503 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/File.pm
2504 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Handle.pm
2505 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Pipe.pm
2506 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Seekable.pm
2507 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Select.pm
2508 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket.pm
2509 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/POSIX.pm
2510 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Socket.pm
2511 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/XSLoader.pm
2512 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.so
2513 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.bs
2514 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2515 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2516 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2517 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2518 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a
2519 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/extralibs.ld
2520 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2521 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs
2522 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/Glob.bs
2523 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2524 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/autosplit.ix
2525 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/IO/IO.so
2526 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/IO/IO.bs
2527 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/POSIX.bs
2528 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2529 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2530 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2531 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2532 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Socket/Socket.bs
2534 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
2536 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2537 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
2538 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
2539 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2540 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
2542 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
2543 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and
2546 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
2547 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
2549 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
2550 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
2553 Note that you must have performed the installation already before running
2554 the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate
2559 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2560 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2561 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
2563 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2564 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2566 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2568 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2569 the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2570 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2571 a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2572 and the contact information to match your distribution.