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 perl 5.
11 First, make sure you have an up-to-date version of Perl. If you
12 didn't get your Perl source from CPAN, check the latest version at
13 http://www.cpan.org/src/. Perl uses a version scheme where even-numbered
14 subreleases (like 5.8.x and 5.10.x) are stable maintenance releases and
15 odd-numbered subreleases (like 5.7.x and 5.9.x) are unstable
16 development releases. Development releases should not be used in
17 production environments. Fixes and new features are first carefully
18 tested in development releases and only if they prove themselves to be
19 worthy will they be migrated to the maintenance releases.
21 The basic steps to build and install perl 5 on a Unix system with all
22 the defaults are to run, from a freshly unpacked source tree:
29 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
31 The above commands will install Perl to /usr/local (or some other
32 platform-specific directory -- see the appropriate file in hints/.)
33 If that's not okay with you, you can run Configure interactively, by
34 just typing "sh Configure" (without the -de args). You can also specify
35 any prefix location by adding "-Dprefix='/some/dir'" to Configure's args.
36 To explicitly name the perl binary, use the command
37 "make install PERLNAME=myperl".
39 These options, and many more, are explained in further detail below.
41 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
42 L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
44 For information on what's new in this release, see the
45 pod/perl5100delta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
46 changes, see the Changes file.
50 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
51 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
52 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
53 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
55 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
57 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
60 Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
61 you should probably at least skim through this document before
64 In addition to this file, check if there is a README file specific to
65 your operating system, since it may provide additional or different
66 instructions for building Perl. If there is a hint file for your
67 system (in the hints/ directory) you might also want to read it
68 for even more information.
70 For additional information about porting Perl, see the section on
71 L<"Porting information"> below, and look at the files in the Porting/
76 =head2 Changes and Incompatibilities
78 Please see pod/perl5100delta.pod for a description of the changes and
79 potential incompatibilities introduced with this release. A few of
80 the most important issues are listed below, but you should refer
81 to pod/perl5100delta.pod for more detailed information.
83 B<WARNING:> This version is not binary compatible with prior releases of Perl.
84 If you have built extensions (i.e. modules that include C code)
85 using an earlier version of Perl, you will need to rebuild and reinstall
88 Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
89 without reinstallation. See the discussion below on
90 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> for more details.
92 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
94 On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the changes
95 in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
96 pod/perl5100delta.pod for a description of what's changed. See your
97 installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly incomplete)
98 list of locally installed modules. Also see CPAN::autobundle for one
99 way to make a "bundle" of your currently installed modules.
103 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
104 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
105 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
106 almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
107 since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
110 At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
111 defaults from then on.
113 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
114 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
116 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
119 =head2 Common Configure options
121 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run
125 to get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
126 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
132 To compile with gcc, if it's not the default compiler on your
133 system, you should run
135 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
137 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or any another alternative
138 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
140 =item Installation prefix
142 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
143 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
144 and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below for
147 You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
148 directory when Configure prompts you, or by using the Configure command
149 line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
151 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
153 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
154 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
155 prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
156 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
157 for more details. Do not include a trailing slash, (i.e. /opt/perl/)
158 or you may experience odd test failures.
160 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
161 as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
162 attempt infinite recursion.
166 It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
167 find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
168 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
169 careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
170 vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing. If you insist
171 on replacing your vendor's perl, useful information on how it was
172 configured may be found with
176 (Check the output carefully, however, since this doesn't preserve
177 spaces in arguments to Configure. For that, you have to look carefully
178 at config_arg1, config_arg2, etc.)
180 By default, Configure will not try to link /usr/bin/perl to the current
181 version of perl. You can turn on that behavior by running
183 Configure -Dinstallusrbinperl
185 or by answering 'yes' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
187 In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to put
188 (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
189 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
190 obvious and convenient place.
192 =item Building a development release
194 For development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.9.x) if you want to
195 use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel to Configure,
196 because the default answer to the question "do you really want to
197 Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel skips that
202 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
207 =head2 Altering Configure variables for C compiler switches etc.
209 For most users, most of the Configure defaults are fine, or can easily
210 be set on the Configure command line. However, if Configure doesn't
211 have an option to do what you want, you can change Configure variables
212 after the platform hints have been run by using Configure's -A switch.
213 For example, here's how to add a couple of extra flags to C compiler
216 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_EXTERNAL_GLOB -DNO_HASH_SEED"
218 To clarify, those ccflags values are not Configure options; if passed to
219 Configure directly, they won't do anything useful (they will define a
220 variable in config.sh, but without taking any action based upon it).
221 But when passed to the compiler, those flags will activate #ifdefd code.
223 For more help on Configure switches, run
227 =head2 Major Configure-time Build Options
229 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
230 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
231 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
232 some of the main things you can change.
236 On some platforms, perl can be compiled with support for threads. To
239 sh Configure -Dusethreads
241 The default is to compile without thread support.
243 Perl used to have two different internal threads implementations. The current
244 model (available internally since 5.6, and as a user-level module since 5.8) is
245 called interpreter-based implementation (ithreads), with one interpreter per
246 thread, and explicit sharing of data. The (deprecated) 5.005 version
247 (5005threads) has been removed for release 5.10.
249 The 'threads' module is for use with the ithreads implementation. The
250 'Thread' module emulates the old 5005threads interface on top of the current
253 When using threads, perl uses a dynamically-sized buffer for some of
254 the thread-safe library calls, such as those in the getpw*() family.
255 This buffer starts small, but it will keep growing until the result
256 fits. To get a fixed upper limit, you should compile Perl with
257 PERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE defined to be the number of bytes you want. One
258 way to do this is to run Configure with
259 C<-Accflags=-DPERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE=65536>.
261 =head3 Large file support
263 Since Perl 5.6.0, Perl has supported large files (files larger than
264 2 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
265 support is on by default.
267 This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files,
268 seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad in that if you are interfacing Perl
269 using some extension, the components you are connecting to must also
270 be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
271 parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
274 There's also one known limitation with the current large files
275 implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
276 section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer formats
277 like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
279 If you want to compile perl without large file support, use
281 sh Configure -Uuselargefiles
283 =head3 64 bit support
285 If your platform does not run natively at 64 bits, but can simulate
286 them with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>,
287 you can build a perl that uses 64 bits.
289 There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
290 using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
291 -Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
292 the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
294 The C<use64bitint> option does only as much as is required to get
295 64-bit integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long
296 longs") while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because
297 your pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint>
298 does not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it
299 might, but it doesn't have to). The C<use64bitint> simply means that
300 you will be able to have 64 bit-wide scalar values.
302 The C<use64bitall> option goes all the way by attempting to switch
303 integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
304 create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
305 resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
306 have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
309 Natively 64-bit systems need neither -Duse64bitint nor -Duse64bitall.
313 In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
314 range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
315 (that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
316 this support (if it is available).
320 You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
321 and the long double support.
323 =head3 Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Hashes
325 In Perls 5.8.0 and earlier it was easy to create degenerate hashes.
326 Processing such hashes would consume large amounts of CPU time,
327 enabling a "Denial of Service" attack against Perl. Such hashes may be
328 a problem for example for mod_perl sites, sites with Perl CGI scripts
329 and web services, that process data originating from external sources.
331 In Perl 5.8.1 a security feature was introduced to make it harder to
332 create such degenerate hashes. A visible side effect of this was that
333 the keys(), values(), and each() functions may return the hash elements
334 in different order between different runs of Perl even with the same
335 data. It also had unintended binary incompatibility issues with
336 certain modules compiled against Perl 5.8.0.
338 In Perl 5.8.2 an improved scheme was introduced. Hashes will return
339 elements in the same order as Perl 5.8.0 by default. On a hash by hash
340 basis, if pathological data is detected during a hash key insertion,
341 then that hash will switch to an alternative random hash seed. As
342 adding keys can always dramatically change returned hash element order,
343 existing programs will not be affected by this, unless they
344 specifically test for pre-recorded hash return order for contrived
345 data. (eg the list of keys generated by C<map {"\0"x$_} 0..15> trigger
346 randomisation) In effect the new implementation means that 5.8.1 scheme
347 is only being used on hashes which are under attack.
349 One can still revert to the old guaranteed repeatable order (and be
350 vulnerable to attack by wily crackers) by setting the environment
351 variable PERL_HASH_SEED, see L<perlrun/PERL_HASH_SEED>. Another option
352 is to add -DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT to the compilation flags (for
353 example by using C<Configure -Accflags=-DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT>), in
354 which case one has to explicitly set the PERL_HASH_SEED environment
355 variable to enable the security feature, or by adding -DNO_HASH_SEED to
356 the compilation flags to completely disable the randomisation feature.
358 B<Perl has never guaranteed any ordering of the hash keys>, and the
359 ordering has already changed several times during the lifetime of Perl
360 5. Also, the ordering of hash keys has always been, and continues to
361 be, affected by the insertion order. Note that because of this
362 randomisation for example the Data::Dumper results will be different
363 between different runs of Perl, since Data::Dumper by default dumps
364 hashes "unordered". The use of the Data::Dumper C<Sortkeys> option is
369 Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
370 TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
371 access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
372 Version 5. The corresponding Configure option is -Dusesocks.
373 You can find more about SOCKS from wikipedia at
374 L<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOCKS>.
376 =head3 Dynamic Loading
378 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading.
379 If you want to force perl to be compiled completely
380 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
381 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
382 With this option, you won't be able to use any new extension
383 (XS) module without recompiling perl itself.
385 =head3 Building a shared Perl library
387 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
388 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
389 extensions, and various extra libraries, such as -lm.
391 On systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
392 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
393 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
394 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
395 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
396 can share the same library.
398 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
399 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
400 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
403 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
404 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
405 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
408 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
409 libperl.so.5.8.8 (for Perl 5.8.8), or libperl.so.588, or simply
410 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
411 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
412 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
413 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
415 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
417 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
419 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
420 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
421 NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
422 for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
423 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
424 be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
425 library search settings. You can find the name of the environment
426 variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
428 grep ldlibpthname config.sh
430 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
431 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
432 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
435 cd t; ./perl -MTestInit misc/failing_test.t
439 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
441 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
444 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
446 for Bourne-style shells, or
448 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
450 for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
451 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And
452 again, it may be something other than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
454 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
455 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
458 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
460 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
461 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
462 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
463 install a standard Perl 5.10.0 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
464 try to build Perl 5.10.0 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
465 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
466 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
467 libperl.so.8 rather with the installed libperl.so.8? The answer is
468 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
469 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
470 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
471 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux, you can only override at runtime via
472 LD_PRELOAD, specifying the exact filename you wish to be used; and on
473 Digital Unix, you can override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the
474 _RLD_ROOT environment variable to point to the perl build directory.
476 In other words, it is generally not a good idea to try to build a perl
477 with a shared library if $archlib/CORE/$libperl already exists from a
480 A good workaround is to specify a different directory for the
481 architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING version of perl.
482 You can do this by changing all the *archlib* variables in config.sh to
483 point to your new architecture-dependent library.
485 =head3 Environment access
487 Perl often needs to write to the program's environment, such as when C<%ENV>
488 is assigned to. Many implementations of the C library function C<putenv()>
489 leak memory, so where possible perl will manipulate the environment directly
490 to avoid these leaks. The default is now to perform direct manipulation
491 whenever perl is running as a stand alone interpreter, and to call the safe
492 but potentially leaky C<putenv()> function when the perl interpreter is
493 embedded in another application. You can force perl to always use C<putenv()>
494 by compiling with -DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV. You can force an embedded perl to
495 use direct manipulation by setting C<PL_use_safe_putenv = 0;> after the
496 C<perl_construct()> call.
498 =head2 Installation Directories
500 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
501 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the installation
502 questions are near the beginning of Configure. Do not include trailing
503 slashes on directory names. At any point during the Configure process,
504 you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use the defaults
505 from then on. Alternatively, you can
507 grep '^install' config.sh
509 after Configure has run to verify the installation paths.
511 The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
512 people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
513 distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
514 need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
515 you can safely skip the next section.
517 The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
521 =item Directories for the perl distribution
523 By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.10.0.
524 $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
525 5.10.0 or 5.9.5, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
526 determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
527 variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
529 Configure variable Default value
530 $prefixexp /usr/local
531 $binexp $prefixexp/bin
532 $scriptdirexp $prefixexp/bin
533 $privlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version
534 $archlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
535 $man1direxp $prefixexp/man/man1
536 $man3direxp $prefixexp/man/man3
540 $prefixexp is generated from $prefix, with ~ expansion done to convert home
541 directories into absolute paths. Similarly for the other variables listed. As
542 file system calls do not do this, you should always reference the ...exp
543 variables, to support users who build perl in their home directory.
545 Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
546 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
547 instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
548 directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
549 the common style is shown here.
551 =item Directories for site-specific add-on files
553 After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
554 CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
555 be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
557 Configure variable Default value
558 $siteprefixexp $prefixexp
559 $sitebinexp $siteprefixexp/bin
560 $sitescriptexp $siteprefixexp/bin
561 $sitelibexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
562 $sitearchexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
563 $siteman1direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man1
564 $siteman3direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man3
565 $sitehtml1direxp (none)
566 $sitehtml3direxp (none)
568 By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
569 modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
571 =item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
573 Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
574 distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
575 for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
577 Configure variable Default value
578 $vendorprefixexp (none)
579 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
580 $vendorbinexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
581 $vendorscriptexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
583 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
585 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
586 $vendorman1direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man1
587 $vendorman3direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man3
588 $vendorhtml1direxp (none)
589 $vendorhtml3direxp (none)
591 These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
592 a vendor might choose the following settings:
595 $siteprefix /usr/local
598 This would have the effect of setting the following:
601 $scriptdirexp /usr/bin
602 $privlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version
603 $archlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
604 $man1direxp /usr/man/man1
605 $man3direxp /usr/man/man3
607 $sitebinexp /usr/local/bin
608 $sitescriptexp /usr/local/bin
609 $sitelibexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
610 $sitearchexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
611 $siteman1direxp /usr/local/man/man1
612 $siteman3direxp /usr/local/man/man3
614 $vendorbinexp /usr/bin
615 $vendorscriptexp /usr/bin
616 $vendorlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
617 $vendorarchexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
618 $vendorman1direxp /usr/man/man1
619 $vendorman3direxp /usr/man/man3
621 Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
622 /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
623 the /usr/local hierarchy.
625 The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
626 version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
627 However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
628 installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
629 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below for more details
630 on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
632 Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
633 example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
634 are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
635 site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
636 network. One way to do that would be something like
638 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
642 As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
643 variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
644 directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
645 Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
646 version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
648 For example, if you have a bundle of perl libraries from a previous
649 installation, perhaps in a strange place:
651 Configure -Dotherlibdirs=/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1
655 There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
656 that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
657 separated list of directories, like this
659 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
661 The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
662 ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
663 modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
664 touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
665 version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
666 present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
667 directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
668 run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
670 =item USE_SITECUSTOMIZE
672 Run-time customization of @INC can be enabled with:
674 sh Configure -Dusesitecustomize
676 Which will define USE_SITECUSTOMIZE and $Config{usesitecustomize}.
677 When enabled, make perl run F<$sitelibexp/sitecustomize.pl> before
678 anything else. This script can then be set up to add additional
683 By default, man pages will be installed in $man1dir and $man3dir, which
684 are normally /usr/local/man/man1 and /usr/local/man/man3. If you
685 want to use a .3pm suffix for perl man pages, you can do that with
687 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
691 Currently, the standard perl installation does not do anything with
692 HTML documentation, but that may change in the future. Further, some
693 add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The html Configure
694 variables listed above are provided if you wish to specify where such
695 documents should be placed. The default is "none", but will likely
696 eventually change to something useful based on user feedback.
700 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
701 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
704 Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
705 directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
708 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
709 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
710 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below.
712 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
713 library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
714 suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
716 Thus, for example, if you Configure with
717 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.9.0 are
719 Configure variable Default value
720 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0
721 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0/$archname
722 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0
723 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0/$archname
725 =head2 Changing the installation directory
727 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
728 associated files) should be installed, and the directory in which it
729 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
730 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
731 However, sites that use package management software such as rpm or
732 dpkg, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
733 wish to install perl into a different directory before moving perl
734 to its final destination. There are two ways to do that:
740 To install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory, use the following
743 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
745 (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
747 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
748 modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
749 follow this example. That's why it's usually better to use DESTDIR,
750 as shown in the next section.
754 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is convenient
755 to compile it once and create an archive that can be installed on
756 multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to create an
757 archive that can be installed in /opt/perl. One way to do that is by
758 using the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>. The DESTDIR is
759 automatically prepended to all the installation paths. Thus you
762 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
765 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
766 cd /tmp/perl5/opt/perl
767 tar cvf /tmp/perl5-archive.tar .
771 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
773 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
774 answers (such as installation directories) in the Policy.sh file.
775 If you want to build perl on another system using the same policy
776 defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file to the new system's perl build
777 directory, and Configure will use it. This will work even if Policy.sh was
778 generated for another version of Perl, or on a system with a
779 different architecture and/or operating system. However, in such cases,
780 you should review the contents of the file before using it: for
781 example, your new target may not keep its man pages in the same place
782 as the system on which the file was generated.
784 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
789 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
791 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
793 If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
794 to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
795 platform-specific hints files.
797 =head2 Disabling older versions of Perl
799 Configure will search for binary compatible versions of previously
800 installed perl binaries in the tree that is specified as target tree,
801 and these will be used as locations to search for modules by the perl
802 being built. The list of perl versions found will be put in the Configure
803 variable inc_version_list.
805 To disable this use of older perl modules, even completely valid pure perl
806 modules, you can specify to not include the paths found:
808 sh Configure -Dinc_version_list=none ...
810 When using the newer perl, you can add these paths again in the
811 $PERL5LIB environment variable or with perl's -I runtime option.
813 =head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
815 Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
816 where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
817 read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
818 architectures. You can do this (if your file system supports symbolic
821 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
822 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
823 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
825 This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
826 pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
827 unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
833 as usual, and Perl will be built in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
835 =head2 Building a debugging perl
837 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
838 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
839 you probably want to have support for perl internal debugging code
840 (activated by adding -DDEBUGGING to ccflags), and/or support for the
841 system debugger by adding -g to the optimisation flags. For that,
844 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING
848 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING=<mode>
850 For a more eye appealing call, -DEBUGGING is defined to be an alias
851 for -DDEBUGGING. For both, the -U calls are also supported, in order
852 to be able to overrule the hints or Policy.sh settings.
854 Here are the DEBUGGING modes:
862 =item -DEBUGGING=both
864 Sets both -DDEBUGGING in the ccflags, and adds -g to optimize.
866 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently (see below),
867 but usually it's convenient to have both.
873 Adds -g to optimize, but does not set -DDEBUGGING.
875 (Note: Your system may actually require something like cc -g2.
876 Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for your system.)
878 =item -DEBUGGING=none
882 Removes -g from optimize, and -DDEBUGGING from ccflags.
886 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
887 versions of perl under L<Building a shared Perl library>.
891 Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
892 in the ext/ subdirectory.
894 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
895 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
896 only if it is able to find the gdbm library.
898 To disable certain extensions so that they are not built, use the
899 -Dnoextensions=... and -Donlyextensions=... options. They both accept
900 a space-separated list of extensions. The extensions listed in
901 C<noextensions> are removed from the list of extensions to build, while
902 the C<onlyextensions> is rather more severe and builds only the listed
903 extensions. The latter should be used with extreme caution since
904 certain extensions are used by many other extensions and modules:
905 examples of such modules include Fcntl and IO. The order of processing
906 these options is first C<only> (if present), then C<no> (if present).
908 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
909 the extensions you want.
911 If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
912 running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
913 extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
914 it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
915 has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
916 extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
917 convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
918 you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
919 dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
920 Another way of specifying extra modules is described in
921 L<"Adding extra modules to the build"> below.
923 If you re-use an old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
924 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
925 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
928 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
930 Perl comes with interfaces to number of libraries, including threads,
931 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For the *db* extension, if
932 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
933 automatically include that extension. The threading extension needs
934 to be specified explicitely (see L<Threads>).
936 Those libraries are not distributed with perl. If your header (.h) files
937 for those libraries are not in a directory normally searched by your C
938 compiler, then you will need to include the appropriate -I/your/directory
939 option when prompted by Configure. If your libraries are not in a
940 directory normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will
941 need to include the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted
942 by Configure. See the examples below.
948 =item gdbm in /usr/local
950 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
951 GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
952 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
953 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
954 necessary steps out automatically.
956 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
957 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include, if it's
958 not here yet. Similarly, when Configure prompts you for linker flags,
959 you should include -L/usr/local/lib.
961 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
962 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
965 Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
966 you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
967 /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
969 =item gdbm in /usr/you
971 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local,
972 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
973 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
974 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
975 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
976 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
977 /usr/you/lib to the list.
979 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
983 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
984 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
986 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
987 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
989 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
990 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
991 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
992 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
995 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
996 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
1000 =head2 Overriding an old config.sh
1002 If you want to use an old config.sh produced by a previous run of
1003 Configure, but override some of the items with command line options, you
1004 need to use B<Configure -O>.
1006 =head2 GNU-style configure
1008 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
1009 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
1011 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
1013 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
1016 ./configure.gnu --help
1020 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
1021 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
1023 =head2 Malloc Issues
1025 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
1026 so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
1027 the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
1028 version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
1029 perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
1030 than your system malloc.
1032 However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
1033 experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
1034 that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
1035 (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
1039 =item Using the system malloc
1041 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
1043 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
1045 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
1047 =item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
1049 NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you just
1050 run Configure to accept all the defaults.
1052 Perl's malloc family of functions are normally called Perl_malloc(),
1053 Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree().
1054 These names do not clash with the system versions of these functions.
1056 If this flag is enabled, however, Perl's malloc family of functions
1057 will have the same names as the system versions. This may be required
1058 sometimes if you have libraries that like to free() data that may have
1059 been allocated by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1061 Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1062 from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1063 does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1066 =item -DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS
1068 This flag enables debugging mstats, which is required to use the
1069 Devel::Peek::mstat() function. You cannot enable this unless you are
1070 using Perl's malloc, so a typical Configure command would be
1072 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS -Dusemymalloc
1074 to enable this option.
1078 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1080 If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1081 If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1085 =item Running Configure Interactively
1087 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1088 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1091 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1092 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1093 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1094 will use the defaults from then on.
1096 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1097 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1098 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1102 Hint files tell Configure about a number of things:
1108 The peculiarities or conventions of particular platforms -- non-standard
1109 library locations and names, default installation locations for binaries,
1114 The deficiencies of the platform -- for example, library functions that,
1115 although present, are too badly broken to be usable; or limits on
1116 resources that are generously available on most platforms.
1120 How best to optimize for the platform, both in terms of binary size and/or
1121 speed, and for Perl feature support. Because of wide variations in the
1122 implementation of shared libraries and of threading, for example, Configure
1123 often needs hints in order to be able to use these features.
1127 The perl distribution includes many system-specific hints files
1128 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1129 will offer to use that hint file. Unless you have a very good reason
1130 not to, you should accept its offer.
1132 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1133 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1134 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1135 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
1136 file, which also explains hint files known as callback-units.
1138 Note that any hint file is read before any Policy file, meaning that
1139 Policy overrides hints -- see L</Site-wide Policy settings>.
1141 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1143 If you are re-using an old config.sh, it's possible that Configure detects
1144 different values from the ones specified in this file. You will almost
1145 always want to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something
1148 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1149 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1150 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1151 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1154 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1155 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1156 Keep the previous value? [y]
1158 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1159 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1160 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1162 =item Changing Compilers
1164 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1165 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1166 rename it, then rerun Configure with the options you want to use.
1168 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1170 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1171 them to all the .SH files by running
1175 You will then have to rebuild by running
1180 =item config.over and config.arch
1182 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride
1183 Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1184 before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1185 however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1186 This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1188 There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1189 config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1190 architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1191 hints file that creates the config.arch.
1195 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1196 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1197 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1199 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1200 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1205 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1206 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1207 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1208 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1209 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1210 lost the next time you run Configure.
1212 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1213 see the file hints/README.hints.
1215 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1216 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1223 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1224 Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1225 system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1226 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1229 =item Porting information
1231 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan 9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1232 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1233 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1234 subdirectory. Porting/Glossary should especially come in handy.
1236 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1237 http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
1238 various other operating systems.
1240 If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture, study carefully the
1241 section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1242 in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file Porting/patching.pod.
1243 Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1247 =head2 Adding extra modules to the build
1249 You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1250 CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1251 command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1253 Configure -Dextras="Bundle::LWP DBI"
1255 or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
1256 then answer "Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
1257 The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
1258 This will only work if those modules are to be built as dynamic
1259 extensions. If you wish to include those extra modules as static
1260 extensions, see L<"Extensions"> above.
1262 Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1263 modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1264 or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1265 do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1267 Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1268 dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
1269 For example: you will need to have the Foo database specific
1270 headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1271 process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1275 suidperl is an optional component, which is normally neither built
1276 nor installed by default. From perlfaq1:
1278 On some systems, setuid and setgid scripts (scripts written
1279 in the C shell, Bourne shell, or Perl, for example, with the
1280 set user or group ID permissions enabled) are insecure due to
1281 a race condition in the kernel. For those systems, Perl versions
1282 5 and 4 attempt to work around this vulnerability with an optional
1283 component, a special program named suidperl, also known as sperl.
1284 This program attempts to emulate the set-user-ID and set-group-ID
1285 features of the kernel.
1287 Because of the buggy history of suidperl, and the difficulty
1288 of properly security auditing as large and complex piece of
1289 software as Perl, we cannot recommend using suidperl and the feature
1290 should be considered deprecated.
1292 Instead, use a tool specifically designed to handle changes in
1293 privileges, such as B<sudo>.
1297 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1298 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1299 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1300 makefile, not Makefile, since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1301 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1302 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1304 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1309 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1311 =head2 Expected errors
1313 These errors are normal, and can be ignored:
1316 make: [extra.pods] Error 1 (ignored)
1318 make: [extras.make] Error 1 (ignored)
1320 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1322 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1323 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1324 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1325 then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1331 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1332 for further tips and information.
1336 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1337 during the building of extensions, run
1341 to test your version of miniperl.
1345 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1346 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1347 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1348 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1349 whole L<perllocale/"LOCALE PROBLEMS"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1350 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1352 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1353 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1356 are supported and installed on your system.
1357 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1363 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1364 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1365 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1366 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by installing gcc
1367 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1368 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1369 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1373 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1374 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1376 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1377 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1378 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1380 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1381 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1383 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1385 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1386 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1387 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1388 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1389 of your local set-up.
1393 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1394 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1397 sh Configure -Uusenm
1399 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1400 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1403 =item umask not found
1405 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1406 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1407 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1408 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1409 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1413 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1414 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1415 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1416 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1417 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1421 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1422 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1423 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1427 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1428 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1429 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1430 on L<"nm extraction">.
1432 =item __inet_* errors
1434 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1435 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1436 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1437 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1438 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1439 newer version of BIND (and remove the files the old one left behind).
1440 If you can't, you can either link with the updated resolver library provided
1441 with BIND 8.1 or rename /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and
1442 test process to avoid the problem.
1444 =item *_r() prototype NOT found
1446 On a related note, if you see a bunch of complaints like the above about
1447 reentrant functions - specifically networking-related ones - being present
1448 but without prototypes available, check to see if BIND 8.1 (or possibly
1449 other BIND 8 versions) is (or has been) installed. They install
1450 header files such as netdb.h into places such as /usr/local/include (or into
1451 another directory as specified at build/install time), at least optionally.
1452 Remove them or put them in someplace that isn't in the C preprocessor's
1453 header file include search path (determined by -I options plus defaults,
1454 normally /usr/include).
1456 =item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1458 This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1459 gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1460 changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1461 rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1462 update your gcc installation.
1466 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1467 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1475 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1476 with B<make depend; make>.
1478 =item Missing functions and Undefined symbols
1480 If the build of miniperl fails with a long list of missing functions or
1481 undefined symbols, check the libs variable in the config.sh file. It
1482 should look something like
1484 libs='-lsocket -lnsl -ldl -lm -lc'
1486 The exact libraries will vary from system to system, but you typically
1487 need to include at least the math library -lm. Normally, Configure
1488 will suggest the correct defaults. If the libs variable is empty, you
1489 need to start all over again. Run
1493 and start from the very beginning. This time, unless you are sure of
1494 what you are doing, accept the default list of libraries suggested by
1497 If the libs variable looks correct, you might have the
1498 L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1500 If you stil have missing routines or undefined symbols, you probably
1501 need to add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature
1502 that Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete. If
1503 you used a hint file, see if it has any relevant advice. You can also
1504 look through through config.h for likely suspects.
1508 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1509 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1510 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1511 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1512 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1515 =item Missing dbmclose
1517 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1518 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1520 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1522 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1523 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1524 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1525 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1526 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1527 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1528 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1529 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1530 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1531 process is continuing.
1533 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1536 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1538 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1539 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1540 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1542 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1543 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1544 quite that tightly coordinated.
1546 =item sh: ar: not found
1548 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1549 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1550 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1551 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1554 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1556 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1557 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1558 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1560 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1562 If you get this error message from the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem test, your System
1563 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1564 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1565 to include the System V semaphores.
1567 =item ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem........semget: No space left on device
1569 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1570 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1571 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1572 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1577 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1578 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1579 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1580 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1581 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1582 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1583 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1584 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1586 =item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1588 The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1589 make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1590 archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1591 C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1592 archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1593 incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1594 official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1595 that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1596 archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1598 =item invalid token: ##
1600 You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. To compile Perl, you
1601 need to use a compiler that supports ANSI C. If there is a README
1602 file for your system, it may have further details on your compiler
1607 Some additional things that have been reported:
1609 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1611 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1613 UTS may need one or more of -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1615 FreeBSD can fail the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1616 configured in the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1617 you will get a message telling you what to do.
1619 Building Perl on a system that has also BIND (headers and libraries)
1620 installed may run into troubles because BIND installs its own netdb.h
1621 and socket.h, which may not agree with the operating system's ideas of
1622 the same files. Similarly, including -lbind may conflict with libc's
1623 view of the world. You may have to tweak -Dlocincpth and -Dloclibpth
1628 =head2 Cross-compilation
1630 Perl can be cross-compiled. It is just not trivial, cross-compilation
1631 rarely is. Perl is routinely cross-compiled for many platforms (as of
1632 June 2005 at least PocketPC aka WinCE, Open Zaurus, EPOC, Symbian, and
1633 the IBM OS/400). These platforms are known as the B<target> platforms,
1634 while the systems where the compilation takes place are the B<host>
1637 What makes the situation difficult is that first of all,
1638 cross-compilation environments vary significantly in how they are set
1639 up and used, and secondly because the primary way of configuring Perl
1640 (using the rather large Unix-tool-dependent Configure script) is not
1641 awfully well suited for cross-compilation. However, starting from
1642 version 5.8.0, the Configure script also knows one way of supporting
1643 cross-compilation support, please keep reading.
1645 See the following files for more information about compiling Perl for
1646 the particular platforms:
1650 =item WinCE/PocketPC
1672 Packaging and transferring either the core Perl modules or CPAN
1673 modules to the target platform is also left up to the each
1674 cross-compilation environment. Often the cross-compilation target
1675 platforms are somewhat limited in diskspace: see the section
1676 L<Minimizing the Perl installation> to learn more of the minimal set
1677 of files required for a functional Perl installation.
1679 For some cross-compilation environments the Configure option
1680 C<-Dinstallprefix=...> might be handy, see L<Changing the installation
1683 About the cross-compilation support of Configure: what is known to
1684 work is running Configure in a cross-compilation environment and
1685 building the miniperl executable. What is known not to work is
1686 building the perl executable because that would require building
1687 extensions: Dynaloader statically and File::Glob dynamically, for
1688 extensions one needs MakeMaker and MakeMaker is not yet
1689 cross-compilation aware, and neither is the main Makefile.
1691 The cross-compilation setup of Configure has successfully been used in
1692 at least two Linux cross-compilation environments. The setups were
1693 both such that the host system was Intel Linux with a gcc built for
1694 cross-compiling into ARM Linux, and there was a SSH connection to the
1697 To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch that
1698 has to be used is C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
1700 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1702 This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
1703 symbol C<usecrosscompile> available, and C<xconfig.h> will be used
1704 for cross-compilation.
1706 During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1707 into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1708 cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1709 target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1710 transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1711 the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1712 methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1713 F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1715 To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1716 the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1717 happens), supply Configure with
1719 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1721 The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
1722 must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1723 You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
1727 but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
1729 Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
1730 which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
1731 This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
1732 In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
1735 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
1737 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1738 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1739 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
1741 If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
1742 compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
1743 C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
1744 (The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
1745 as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
1746 will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
1747 in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
1749 In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
1750 choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
1753 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
1755 Putting it all together:
1757 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1758 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1759 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
1761 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
1762 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1763 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1764 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1765 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
1768 or if you are happy with the defaults:
1770 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1771 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1772 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1775 Another example where the cross-compiler has been installed under
1776 F</usr/local/arm/2.95.5>:
1778 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1779 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1780 -Dcc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/bin/arm-linux-gcc \
1781 -Dincpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
1782 -Dusrinc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
1783 -Dlibpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/lib
1787 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
1788 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
1789 wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1791 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1792 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1793 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1795 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1797 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1798 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1799 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1803 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1804 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1808 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1809 complicated constructs). For extension and library tests you
1810 need a little bit more: you need to setup your environment variable
1811 PERL_CORE to a true value (like "1"), and you need to supply the
1812 right Perl library path:
1815 ./perl -I../lib ../ext/Socket/Socket.t
1816 ./perl -I../lib ../lib/less.t
1818 (For csh-like shells on UNIX; adjust appropriately for other platforms.)
1819 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1820 comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
1821 shared library path if you get errors like:
1823 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
1825 See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
1831 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1832 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1833 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1834 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1835 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1836 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1838 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1844 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1846 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1847 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1848 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1849 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1850 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1851 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1854 =item Timing problems
1856 Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
1857 sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
1858 If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough,
1859 these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again
1860 with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive
1861 and load-sensitive tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
1862 F<ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t>, F<lib/Benchmark.t>,
1863 F<lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t>, and F<lib/Memoize/t/speed.t>.
1867 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1868 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
1869 For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
1870 test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
1872 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1874 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
1876 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1877 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1878 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1879 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1881 =item Failures from lib/File/Temp/t/security saying "system possibly insecure"
1883 First, such warnings are not necessarily serious or indicative of a
1884 real security threat. That being said, they bear investigating.
1886 Note that each of the tests is run twice. The first time is in the
1887 directory returned by File::Spec->tmpdir() (often /tmp on Unix
1888 systems), and the second time in the directory from which the test was
1889 run (usually the 't' directory, if the test was run as part of 'make
1892 The tests may fail for the following reasons:
1894 (1) If the directory the tests are being run in is owned by somebody
1895 other than the user running the tests, or by root (uid 0).
1897 This failure can happen if the Perl source code distribution is
1898 unpacked in such a way that the user ids in the distribution package
1899 are used as-is. Some tar programs do this.
1901 (2) If the directory the tests are being run in is writable by group or
1902 by others, and there is no sticky bit set for the directory. (With
1903 UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to a directory means the right to
1904 add or remove files in that directory. The 'sticky bit' is a feature
1905 used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if the bit is
1906 set for a directory, no one but the owner (or root) can remove that
1907 file even if the permissions would otherwise allow file removal by
1910 This failure may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the
1911 permissions policy used on this particular system. This failure can
1912 also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit (this
1913 is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle File::Temp
1914 should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or if the system
1915 supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons it is not being
1916 used. This is, for example, the case with HP-UX: as of HP-UX release
1917 11.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX doesn't use it
1918 on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also, as with the permissions, some
1919 local policy might dictate that the stickiness is not used.
1921 (3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
1922 any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
1923 directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
1924 (2). For Unix systems, this is usually not an issue if you are
1925 building on a local disk. See the documentation for the File::Temp
1926 module for more information about 'chown giveaway'.
1928 See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
1929 about the various security aspects of temporary files.
1935 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1936 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
1937 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
1938 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
1939 are not root, you must still have permission to install into the directories
1940 in question and you should ignore any messages about chown not working.
1942 If "make install" just says "`install' is up to date" or something
1943 similar, you may be on a case-insensitive filesystems such as Mac's HFS+,
1944 and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion is brought to you
1945 by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
1947 =head2 Installing perl under different names
1949 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
1950 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
1951 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
1953 make install PERLNAME=myperl
1955 You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
1956 "perl5.8.9") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
1958 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
1960 This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (e.g. to
1961 avoid conflicts with an ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor).
1962 Without this the versioned binary would be called "perl55.8.8".
1964 =head2 Installing perl under a different directory
1966 You can install perl under a different destination directory by using
1967 the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>, with a command like
1969 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
1971 DESTDIR is automatically prepended to all the installation paths. See
1972 the example in L<"DESTDIR"> above.
1974 =head2 Installed files
1976 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
1977 anything, you can run
1979 ./perl installperl -n
1980 ./perl installman -n
1982 make install will install the following:
1987 perl5.n.n where 5.n.n is the current release number. This
1988 will be a link to perl.
1990 sperl5.n.n If you requested setuid emulation.
1991 a2p awk-to-perl translator
1995 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
1997 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
1998 s2p sed-to-perl translator
1999 find2perl find-to-perl translator
2000 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
2001 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
2002 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
2003 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
2004 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
2005 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
2006 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
2012 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
2013 dprofpp Perl code profile post-processor
2017 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
2018 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
2022 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2024 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
2025 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2027 Installperl will also create the directories listed above
2028 in L<"Installation Directories">.
2030 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
2031 under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
2032 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2033 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
2035 Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2036 installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
2037 perl alongside an already installed production version of perl without
2038 disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2039 To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2041 Configure -Dversiononly
2043 or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2044 you can just manually run
2046 ./perl installperl -v
2048 and skip installman altogether.
2049 See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2052 =head1 Reporting Problems
2054 Wherever possible please use the perlbug tool supplied with this Perl
2055 to report problems, as it automatically includes summary configuration
2056 information about your perl, which may help us track down problems far
2057 more quickly. But first you should read the advice in this file,
2058 carefully re-read the error message and check the relevant manual pages
2059 on your system, as these may help you find an immediate solution. If
2060 you are not sure whether what you are seeing is a bug, you can send a
2061 message describing the problem to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup to
2064 The perlbug tool is installed along with perl, so after you have
2065 completed C<make install> it should be possible to run it with plain
2066 C<perlbug>. If the install fails, or you want to report problems with
2067 C<make test> without installing perl, then you can use C<make nok> to
2068 run perlbug to report the problem, or run it by hand from this source
2069 directory with C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug>
2071 If the build fails too early to run perlbug uninstalled, then please
2072 B<run> the C<./myconfig> shell script, and mail its output along with
2073 an accurate description of your problem to perlbug@perl.org
2075 If Configure itself fails, and does not generate a config.sh file
2076 (needed to run C<./myconfig>), then please mail perlbug@perl.org the
2077 description of how Configure fails along with details of your system
2078 - for example the output from running C<uname -a>
2080 Please try to make your message brief but clear. Brief, clear bug
2081 reports tend to get answered more quickly. Please don't worry if your
2082 written English is not great - what matters is how well you describe
2083 the important technical details of the problem you have encountered,
2084 not whether your grammar and spelling is flawless.
2086 Trim out unnecessary information. Do not include large files (such as
2087 config.sh or a complete Configure or make log) unless absolutely
2088 necessary. Do not include a complete transcript of your build
2089 session. Just include the failing commands, the relevant error
2090 messages, and whatever preceding commands are necessary to give the
2091 appropriate context. Plain text should usually be sufficient--fancy
2092 attachments or encodings may actually reduce the number of people who
2093 read your message. Your message will get relayed to over 400
2094 subscribers around the world so please try to keep it brief but clear.
2096 If you are unsure what makes a good bug report please read "How to
2097 report Bugs Effectively" by Simon Tatham:
2098 http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html
2100 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5
2102 Perl 5.10 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
2103 In other words, you will have to recompile your XS modules.
2105 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
2106 5.8.0) to another similar version (e.g. 5.8.2) without re-compiling
2107 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
2108 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
2109 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
2110 with 5.8.2, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
2111 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
2112 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.8.2.
2114 Usually, most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to be
2115 used with a newer version of Perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
2116 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
2118 Suppose you already have version 5.005_03 installed. The directories
2119 searched by 5.005_03 are
2121 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503/$archname
2122 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503
2123 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2124 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2126 Beginning with 5.6.0 the version number in the site libraries are
2127 fully versioned. Now, suppose you install version 5.6.0. The directories
2128 searched by version 5.6.0 will be
2130 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/$archname
2131 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0
2132 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
2133 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2135 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2136 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2137 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2139 Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
2140 of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
2141 directories. This way, modules installed under 5.005_03 will continue
2142 to be usable by 5.005_03 but will also accessible to 5.6.0. Further,
2143 suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
2144 present only in 5.6.0. That new module will get installed into
2145 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0 and will be available to 5.6.0,
2146 but will not interfere with the 5.005_03 version.
2148 The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
2149 5.6.0 and above will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
2151 Lastly, suppose you now install 5.8.0, which is not binary compatible
2152 with 5.6.0. The directories searched by 5.8.0 (if you don't change the
2153 Configure defaults) will be:
2155 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0/$archname
2156 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0
2157 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/$archname
2158 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0
2160 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2162 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2164 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2166 Note that the earlier $archname entries are now gone, but pure perl
2167 modules from earlier versions will still be found.
2169 Assuming the users in your site are still actively using perl 5.6.0 and
2170 5.005 after you installed 5.8.0, you can continue to install add-on
2171 extensions using any of perl 5.8.0, 5.6.0, or 5.005. The installations
2172 of these different versions remain distinct, but remember that the
2173 newer versions of perl are automatically set up to search the
2174 compatible site libraries of the older ones. This means that
2175 installing a new XS extension with 5.005 will make it visible to both
2176 5.005 and 5.6.0, but not to 5.8.0. Installing a pure perl module with
2177 5.005 will make it visible to all three versions. Later, if you
2178 install the same extension using, say, perl 5.8.0, it will override the
2179 5.005-installed version, but only for perl 5.8.0.
2181 This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2182 to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2183 versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
2185 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
2187 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
2188 separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
2189 won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2190 libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2191 way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
2193 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.8.2
2195 and adding /opt/perl5.8.2/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
2196 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2197 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2199 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
2200 (e.g. 5.8 for all 5.8.x versions), but change directory with
2203 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2204 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2205 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2208 =head2 Upgrading from 5.8.x or earlier
2210 B<Perl 5.10.0 is binary incompatible with Perl 5.8.x and any earlier
2211 Perl release.> Perl modules having binary parts
2212 (meaning that a C compiler is used) will have to be recompiled to be
2213 used with 5.10.0. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with
2214 5.10.0, you may safely do so without disturbing the older
2215 installations. (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5">
2218 See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2219 incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
2220 perllocal.pod, not perllocale.pod, for installed module information.
2222 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2224 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2225 system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2226 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2227 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2228 library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2230 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2231 of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2232 hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2233 For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2236 =head1 installhtml --help
2238 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2239 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2240 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2242 Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2243 html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2245 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2250 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2252 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2253 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2254 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2255 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2256 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
2259 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2260 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2261 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2262 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2263 (and would welcome patches for them).
2265 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2266 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2268 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2270 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2271 available in TeX format. Type
2273 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2275 =head1 Starting all over again
2277 If you wish to re-build perl from the same build directory, you should
2278 clean it out with the command
2286 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
2287 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
2289 If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
2290 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
2291 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
2292 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it:
2296 If you wish to re-use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
2297 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
2298 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
2299 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
2300 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
2301 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Similarly, if you used
2302 a shared libperl.so (see below) with version numbers, you will probably
2303 want to adjust them as well.
2305 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. For example, some
2306 Linux distributions use i386, but Configure uses the output of the arch
2307 command, which might be i686 instead. If you pick up a precompiled
2308 binary, or compile extensions on different systems, they might not all
2309 agree on the architecture name.
2311 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
2312 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
2314 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
2315 installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
2316 using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
2317 settings"> above. If you wish to start with a fresh distribution, you
2318 also need to remove any old Policy.sh files you may have with
2322 =head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2324 The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2325 Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2326 operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2328 Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way:
2329 Encode, with its big conversion tables, consumes a lot of
2330 space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything. The
2331 Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network
2332 programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all
2333 depends on what do you need to do.
2335 In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2336 recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2337 depends on what you need.
2339 Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2343 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2347 in Linux is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
2350 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/strict.pm
2351 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/warnings.pm
2352 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/File/Glob.pm
2353 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/XSLoader.pm
2354 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2356 Secondly, Debian perl-base package contains the following files,
2357 size about 1.9MB in its i386 version:
2362 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B.pm
2363 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B/Deparse.pm
2364 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Config.pm
2365 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Cwd.pm
2366 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Data/Dumper.pm
2367 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/DynaLoader.pm
2368 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Errno.pm
2369 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Fcntl.pm
2370 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/File/Glob.pm
2371 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO.pm
2372 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/File.pm
2373 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Handle.pm
2374 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Pipe.pm
2375 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Seekable.pm
2376 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Select.pm
2377 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket.pm
2378 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/POSIX.pm
2379 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Socket.pm
2380 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/XSLoader.pm
2381 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.bs
2382 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.so
2383 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.bs
2384 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.so
2385 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a
2386 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2387 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2388 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2389 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2390 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/extralibs.ld
2391 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs
2392 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2393 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.bs
2394 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2395 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.bs
2396 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.so
2397 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.bs
2398 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2399 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2400 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2401 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.bs
2402 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2403 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/lib.pm
2404 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/re.pm
2405 /usr/share/doc/perl-base
2406 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
2407 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2408 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian.gz
2409 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
2410 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
2411 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
2413 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/AutoLoader.pm
2414 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp.pm
2415 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp/Heavy.pm
2416 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter.pm
2417 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2418 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec.pm
2419 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2420 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/FileHandle.pm
2421 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Getopt/Long.pm
2422 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2423 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2424 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open2.pm
2425 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open3.pm
2426 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/List/Util.pm
2427 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Scalar/Util.pm
2428 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/SelectSaver.pm
2429 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Symbol.pm
2430 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/ParseWords.pm
2431 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Tabs.pm
2432 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Wrap.pm
2433 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/attributes.pm
2434 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/base.pm
2435 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes.pm
2436 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes_heavy.pl
2437 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/constant.pm
2438 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/fields.pm
2439 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/integer.pm
2440 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/locale.pm
2441 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/overload.pm
2442 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/strict.pm
2443 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8.pm
2444 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8_heavy.pl
2445 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/vars.pm
2446 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings.pm
2447 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings/register.pm
2449 A nice trick to find out the minimal set of Perl library files you will
2450 need to run a Perl program is
2452 perl -e 'do "prog.pl"; END { print "$_\n" for sort keys %INC }'
2454 (this will not find libraries required in runtime, unfortunately, but
2455 it's a minimal set) and if you want to find out all the files you can
2456 use something like the below
2458 strace perl -le 'do "x.pl"' 2>&1 | perl -nle '/^open\(\"(.+?)"/ && print $1'
2460 (The 'strace' is Linux-specific, other similar utilities include 'truss'
2463 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
2465 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2466 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
2467 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
2468 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2469 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
2471 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
2472 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and
2475 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
2476 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
2478 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
2479 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
2482 Note that you must have performed the installation already before running
2483 the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate
2488 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2489 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2490 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
2492 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2493 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2495 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2497 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2498 the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2499 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2500 a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2501 and the contact information to match your distribution.