3 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
7 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system are:
9 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
15 # You may also wish to add these:
16 (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
18 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
20 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
22 For information on non-Unix systems, see the section on
23 L<"Porting information"> below.
25 For information on what's new in this release, see the
26 pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
27 changes, see the Changes file.
29 IMPORTANT NOTE: 5.005_53 and later releases do not export unadorned
30 global symbols anymore. This means most CPAN modules probably won't
31 build under this release without adding '-DPERL_POLLUTE' to ccflags
32 in config.sh. This is not the default because we want the modules
33 to get fixed *before* the 5.006 release. pod/perldelta.pod contains
34 additional notes about this.
38 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
39 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
40 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
41 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
43 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
45 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
47 You should probably at least skim through this entire document before
50 If you're building Perl on a non-Unix system, you should also read
51 the README file specific to your operating system, since this may
52 provide additional or different instructions for building Perl.
54 If there is a hint file for your system (in the hints/ directory) you
55 should also read that hint file for specific information for your
56 system. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh hint file.)
58 =head1 WARNING: This version is not binary compatible with Perl 5.004.
60 Starting with Perl 5.004_50 there were many deep and far-reaching changes
61 to the language internals. If you have dynamically loaded extensions
62 that you built under perl 5.003 or 5.004, you can continue to use them
63 with 5.004, but you will need to rebuild and reinstall those extensions
64 to use them 5.005. See the discussions below on
65 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> and
66 L<"Upgrading from 5.004 to 5.005"> for more details.
68 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
70 In a related issue, old extensions may possibly be affected by the
71 changes in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
72 pod/perldelta.pod (and pod/perl500Xdelta.pod) for a description of
75 =head1 WARNING: This version requires a compiler that supports ANSI C.
77 If you find that your C compiler is not ANSI-capable, try obtaining
78 GCC, available from GNU mirrors worldwide (e.g. ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu).
79 Another alternative may be to use a tool like C<ansi2knr> to convert the
80 sources back to K&R style, but there is no guarantee this route will get
81 you anywhere, since the prototypes are not the only ANSI features used
82 in the Perl sources. C<ansi2knr> is usually found as part of the freely
83 available C<Ghostscript> distribution. Another similar tool is
84 C<unprotoize>, distributed with GCC. Since C<unprotoize> requires GCC to
85 run, you may have to run it on a platform where GCC is available, and move
86 the sources back to the platform without GCC.
88 If you succeed in automatically converting the sources to a K&R compatible
89 form, be sure to email perlbug@perl.com to let us know the steps you
90 followed. This will enable us to officially support this option.
92 =head1 Space Requirements
94 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 10 MB of disk space. The
95 complete tree after completing make takes roughly 20 MB, though the
96 actual total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
97 directories need something on the order of 10 MB, though again that
98 value is system-dependent.
100 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
102 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
111 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
112 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
114 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
115 files. If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
116 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
117 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
118 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or rename it, e.g.
120 mv config.sh config.sh.old
122 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
123 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
124 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
125 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
126 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
127 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
128 probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't, presently.
129 Similarly, if you used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version
130 numbers, you will probably want to adjust them as well.
132 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. Some Linux systems
133 (such as Debian) use i386, while others may use i486, i586, or i686.
134 If you pick up a precompiled binary, it might not use the same name.
136 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
137 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
139 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your
140 particular installation choices, then you can probably achieve the
141 same effect by using the new Policy.sh file. See the section on
142 L<"Site-wide Policy settings"> below.
146 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
147 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
148 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default
149 is almost always okay. At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d
150 and Configure will use the defaults from then on.
152 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
153 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
155 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h> to
156 get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
157 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
159 To compile with gcc, for example, you should run
161 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
163 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
164 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
166 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
167 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
169 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
170 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. You can specify a different 'prefix' for
171 the default installation directory, when Configure prompts you or by
172 using the Configure command line option -Dprefix='/some/directory',
175 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
177 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the directories
178 are simplified. For example, if you use prefix=/opt/perl,
179 then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
180 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/.
182 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is below
183 your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will attempt
186 It may seem obvious to say, but Perl is useful only when users can
187 easily find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
188 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
189 careful, however, of overwriting a version of perl supplied by your
190 vendor. In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to
191 put (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
192 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
193 obvious and convenient place.
195 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
196 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
197 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
198 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
200 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
205 For my Solaris system, I usually use
207 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
209 =head2 GNU-style configure
211 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
212 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
214 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
216 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
219 ./configure.gnu --help
223 Cross compiling is not supported.
225 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
226 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
230 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
231 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
232 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
233 B, DynaLoader, Fcntl, IO, and attrs are always built by default.
234 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
235 is always built by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
236 set the Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from
237 the Configure command line. Similarly, the Opcode extension is always
238 built by default, but you can skip it by setting the Configure variable
239 useopcode=false either in a hint file for from the command line.
241 You can learn more about each of these extensions by consulting the
242 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
245 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
246 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
247 version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
249 In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
250 to turn off each extension:
252 B (Always included by default)
254 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
255 Fcntl (Always included by default)
257 IO (Always included by default)
261 SDBM_File (Always included by default)
265 attrs (Always included by default)
267 Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
269 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
271 Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
274 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
275 the extensions you want.
277 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley
278 DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect
279 this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with version 2.
281 If you re-use your old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
282 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
283 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
286 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern Unix systems do)
287 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
288 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
289 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
291 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
293 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
294 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
295 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
296 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
297 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
298 how to obtain the libraries.
300 Note: If your database header (.h) files are not in a
301 directory normally searched by your C compiler, then you will need to
302 include the appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by
303 Configure. If your database library (.a) files are not in a directory
304 normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to
305 include the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by
306 Configure. See the examples below.
312 =item gdbm in /usr/local
314 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
315 GDBM_File extension. This examples assumes you have gdbm.h
316 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
317 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
318 necessary steps out automatically.
320 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
321 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
323 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
326 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
327 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
330 Again, this should all happen automatically. If you want to accept the
331 defaults for all the questions and have Configure print out only terse
332 messages, then you can just run
336 and Configure should include the GDBM_File extension automatically.
338 This should actually work if you have gdbm installed in any of
339 (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu, /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
341 =item gdbm in /usr/you
343 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
344 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
345 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
346 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
347 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
348 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
349 /usr/you/lib to the list.
351 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
355 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
356 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
358 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
359 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
361 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
362 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
363 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
364 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
367 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
368 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
372 =head2 Installation Directories
374 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
375 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
376 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
378 I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
379 everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
380 process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure
381 will use the defaults from then on.
383 By default, Configure will use the following directories for library files
384 for 5.005 (archname is a string like sun4-sunos, determined by Configure).
386 Configure variable Default value
387 $archlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.005/archname
388 $privlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.005
389 $sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/archname
390 $sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
392 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
393 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
396 By default, Configure will use the following directories for manual pages:
398 Configure variable Default value
399 $man1dir /usr/local/man/man1
400 $man3dir /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3
402 (Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
403 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
406 The module man pages are stuck in that strange spot so that
407 they don't collide with other man pages stored in /usr/local/man/man3,
408 and so that Perl's man pages don't hide system man pages. On some
409 systems, B<man less> would end up calling up Perl's less.pm module man
410 page, rather than the less program. (This default location will likely
411 change to /usr/local/man/man3 in a future release of perl.)
413 Note: Many users prefer to store the module man pages in
414 /usr/local/man/man3. You can do this from the command line with
416 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/man/man3
418 Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
420 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
422 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
423 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you Configure with
424 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the defaults for 5.005 are
426 Configure variable Default value
427 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.005/archname
428 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.005
429 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.005/archname
430 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.005
432 $man1dir /opt/perl/man/man1
433 $man3dir /opt/perl/man/man3
435 The perl executable will search the libraries in the order given
438 The directories under site_perl are empty, but are intended to be used
439 for installing local or site-wide extensions. Perl will automatically
440 look in these directories.
442 In order to support using things like #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.005 after
443 a later version is released, architecture-dependent libraries are
444 stored in a version-specific directory, such as
445 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.005/.
447 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
448 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
449 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below.
451 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
454 =head2 Changing the installation directory
456 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
457 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
458 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
459 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
460 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
461 packages may also wish to install perl into a different directory and
462 use that management software to move perl to its final destination.
463 This section describes how to do this. Someday, Configure may support
464 an option -Dinstallprefix=/foo to simplify this.
466 Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You
467 can edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to
468 /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local/wherever. Or, you can automate this
469 process by placing the following lines in a file config.over before you
470 run Configure (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice):
472 installprefix=/tmp/perl5
473 test -d $installprefix || mkdir $installprefix
474 test -d $installprefix/bin || mkdir $installprefix/bin
475 installarchlib=`echo $installarchlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
476 installbin=`echo $installbin | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
477 installman1dir=`echo $installman1dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
478 installman3dir=`echo $installman3dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
479 installprivlib=`echo $installprivlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
480 installscript=`echo $installscript | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
481 installsitelib=`echo $installsitelib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
482 installsitearch=`echo $installsitearch | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
484 Then, you can Configure and install in the usual way:
491 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
492 extensions, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
493 follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with
496 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
498 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
499 convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
500 installed on multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to
501 create an archive that can be installed in /opt/perl.
502 Here's one way to do that:
504 # Set up config.over to install perl into a different directory,
505 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
506 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
509 make install # This will install everything into /tmp/perl5.
511 # Edit $archlib/Config.pm and $archlib/.packlist to change all the
512 # install* variables back to reflect where everything will
513 # really be installed. (That is, change /tmp/perl5 to /opt/perl
514 # everywhere in those files.)
515 # Check the scripts in $scriptdir to make sure they have the correct
516 # #!/wherever/perl line.
517 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
518 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
519 cd /opt/perl # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
520 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
522 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
524 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
525 answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact
526 person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another
527 system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file
528 to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate
529 hint file for your system.
531 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
536 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
538 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
540 =head2 Configure-time Options
542 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
543 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
544 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
545 some of the main things you can change.
549 On some platforms, perl5.005 can be compiled to use threads. To
550 enable this, read the file README.threads, and then try
552 sh Configure -Dusethreads
554 Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command
555 line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
557 The default is to compile without thread support.
559 =head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
561 Previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in
562 stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl allow alternate IO
563 mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but the stdio mechanism is still
564 the default and is the only supported mechanism.
566 This PerlIO abstraction can be enabled either on the Configure command
569 sh Configure -Duseperlio
571 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
573 If you choose to use the PerlIO abstraction layer, there are two
574 (experimental) possibilities for the underlying IO calls. These have been
575 tested to some extent on some platforms, but are not guaranteed to work
582 AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance to stdio.h in many
583 cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline" modules. Sfio
584 currently only builds on a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports.
585 Because the data structures are completely different from stdio, perl
586 extension modules or external libraries may not work. This
587 configuration exists to allow these issues to be worked on.
589 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
590 A (fairly old) version of sfio is in CPAN.
592 You select this option by
594 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
596 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
597 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
600 Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails
601 to detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent).
602 Apparently, this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux
605 You can test if you have this problem by trying the following shell
606 script. (You may have to add some extra cflags and libraries. A
607 portable version of this may eventually make its way into Configure.)
612 main() { printf("42\n"); }
614 cc -o try try.c -lsfio
616 if test X$val = X42; then
617 echo "Your sfio looks ok"
619 echo "Your sfio has the exit problem."
622 If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to your sfio sources
623 and correct iffe's guess about atexit.
625 There also might be a more recent release of Sfio that fixes your
630 Normal stdio IO, but with all IO going through calls to the PerlIO
631 abstraction layer. This configuration can be used to check that perl and
632 extension modules have been correctly converted to use the PerlIO
635 This configuration should work on all platforms (but might not).
637 You select this option via:
639 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Uusesfio
641 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure does not
642 detect sfio, then this will be the default suggested by Configure.
646 =head2 Building a shared libperl.so Perl library
648 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
649 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
650 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
653 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
654 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
655 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
656 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
657 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
658 can share the same library.
660 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
661 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
662 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
665 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
666 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
667 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
670 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
671 libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
672 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
673 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
674 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
675 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
677 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
678 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
680 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
682 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
684 To actually build perl, you must add the current working directory to your
685 LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable before running make. You can do
688 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
690 for Bourne-style shells, or
692 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
694 for Csh-style shells. You *MUST* do this before running make.
695 Folks running NeXT OPENSTEP must substitute DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
696 LD_LIBRARY_PATH above.
698 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
699 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
700 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
701 install a standard Perl 5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
702 try to build Perl 5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
703 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
704 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
705 libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is
706 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
707 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
708 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
709 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't. On Digital Unix, you can
710 override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the _RLD_ROOT environment variable
711 to point to the perl build directory.
713 The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different
714 directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING
715 version of perl. You can do this by changing all the *archlib*
716 variables in config.sh, namely archlib, archlib_exp, and
717 installarchlib, to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
721 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed, so
722 perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
723 the malloc function on your system.
725 The perl source is shipped with a version of malloc that is very fast but
726 somewhat wasteful of space. On the other hand, your system's malloc
727 function may be a bit slower but also a bit more frugal. However,
728 as of 5.004_68, perl's malloc has been optimized for the typical
729 requests from perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and
732 For many uses, speed is probably the most important consideration, so
733 the default behavior (for most systems) is to use the malloc supplied
734 with perl. However, if you will be running very large applications
735 (e.g. Tk or PDL) or if your system already has an excellent malloc, or
736 if you are experiencing difficulties with extensions that use
737 third-party libraries that call malloc, then you might wish to use
738 your system's malloc. (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags
741 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
743 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
745 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
747 =head2 Malloc Performance Flags
749 If you are using Perl's malloc, you may add one or more of the following
750 items to your ccflags config.sh variable to change its behavior. You can
751 find out more about these and other flags by reading the commentary near
752 the top of the malloc.c source. The defaults should be fine for
757 =item -DNO_FANCY_MALLOC
759 Undefined by default. Defining it returns malloc to the version used
764 Undefined by default. Defining it in addition to NO_FANCY_MALLOC returns
765 malloc to the version used in Perl version 5.000.
769 =head2 Building a debugging perl
771 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
772 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
773 you probably want to do
775 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
777 This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
778 to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
779 executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
780 cc -g2. Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for your
781 system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags variable in
782 config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's internal
783 state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by
784 default if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to
785 reuse your old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the
786 optimize and ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes
787 as shown in L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
789 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
790 it's convenient to have both.
792 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
793 versions of perl under L<Building a shared libperl.so Perl library>.
795 =head2 Other Compiler Flags
797 For most users, all of the Configure defaults are fine. However,
798 you can change a number of factors in the way perl is built
799 by adding appropriate -D directives to your ccflags variable in
802 Starting from Perl 5.005_53 you no more need to replace the rand() and
803 srand() functions in the perl source by any other random number
804 generator because Configure chooses the widest one available
805 (drand48(), srandom(), or rand()).
807 You should also run Configure interactively to verify that a hint file
808 doesn't inadvertently override your ccflags setting. (Hints files
809 shouldn't do that, but some might.)
811 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
815 =item Running Configure Interactively
817 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
818 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
821 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
822 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
823 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
824 will use the defaults from then on.
826 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
827 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
828 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
832 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
833 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
834 will offer to use that hint file.
836 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
837 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
838 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
839 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
842 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
844 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
845 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
846 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
849 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
850 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
851 Keep the recommended value? [y]
853 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
854 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
857 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
858 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
859 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
862 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
863 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
864 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
865 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
868 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
869 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
870 Keep the previous value? [y]
872 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
873 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
874 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
876 =item Changing Compilers
878 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
879 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
880 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
881 with the options you want to use.
883 This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
884 gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
886 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
888 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
889 them to all the .SH files by running
893 You will then have to rebuild by running
900 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride Configure's
901 guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just before config.sh
902 is created. You have to be careful with this, however, as Configure
903 does no checking that your changes make sense. See the section on
904 L<"Changing the installation directory"> for an example.
908 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
909 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
910 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
912 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
913 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
918 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
919 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
920 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
921 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
922 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
923 lost the next time you run Configure.
925 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
926 see the file hints/README.hints.
928 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
929 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
936 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file Porting/config_H
937 to config.h and edit the config.h to reflect your system's peculiarities.
938 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
941 =item Porting information
943 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
944 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
945 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
948 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
949 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports for current information on ports to
950 various other operating systems.
956 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
957 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
958 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
959 makefile, not Makefile since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
960 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
961 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
963 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
968 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
970 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
971 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
972 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help, you can
973 send a message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
974 perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
975 See L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
981 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
982 for further tips and information.
986 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
987 during the building of extensions, you should run
991 to test your version of miniperl.
995 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
996 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
997 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
998 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
999 whole L<"Locale problems"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1000 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1002 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1003 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1006 are supported and installed on your system.
1007 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1011 =item malloc duplicates
1013 If you get duplicates upon linking for malloc et al, add -DEMBEDMYMALLOC
1014 to your ccflags variable in config.sh.
1018 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1019 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1020 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1021 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by running fixincludes
1022 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1023 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1024 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1028 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1029 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1031 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1032 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1033 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1035 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1036 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1038 =item Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading
1040 If you have problems with dynamic loading using gcc on SunOS or
1041 Solaris, and you are using GNU as and GNU ld, you may need to add
1042 -B/bin/ (for SunOS) or -B/usr/ccs/bin/ (for Solaris) to your
1043 $ccflags, $ldflags, and $lddlflags so that the system's versions of as
1044 and ld are used. Note that the trailing '/' is required.
1045 Alternatively, you can use the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX
1046 environment variable to ensure that Sun's as and ld are used. Consult
1047 your gcc documentation for further information on the -B option and
1048 the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX variable.
1050 One convenient way to ensure you are not using GNU as and ld is to
1051 invoke Configure with
1053 sh Configure -Dcc='gcc -B/usr/ccs/bin/'
1055 for Solaris systems. For a SunOS system, you must use -B/bin/
1058 Alternatively, recent versions of GNU ld reportedly work if you
1059 include C<-Wl,-export-dynamic> in the ccdlflags variable in
1062 =item ld.so.1: ./perl: fatal: relocation error:
1064 If you get this message on SunOS or Solaris, and you're using gcc,
1065 it's probably the GNU as or GNU ld problem in the previous item
1066 L<"Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading">.
1068 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1070 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1071 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1072 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1073 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1074 of your local set-up.
1076 =item dlopen: stub interception failed
1078 The primary cause of the 'dlopen: stub interception failed' message is
1079 that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable includes a directory
1080 which is a symlink to /usr/lib (such as /lib).
1082 The reason this causes a problem is quite subtle. The file libdl.so.1.0
1083 actually *only* contains functions which generate 'stub interception
1084 failed' errors! The runtime linker intercepts links to
1085 "/usr/lib/libdl.so.1.0" and links in internal implementation of those
1086 functions instead. [Thanks to Tim Bunce for this explanation.]
1090 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1091 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1094 sh Configure -Uusenm
1096 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1097 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1100 =item umask not found
1102 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1103 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1104 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1105 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1106 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1110 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1111 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1112 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1113 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1114 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1118 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1119 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1120 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1124 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1125 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1126 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1127 on L<"nm extraction">.
1129 =item __inet_* errors
1131 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1132 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1133 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1134 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1135 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1136 newer version of BIND. If you can't, you can either link with the
1137 updated resolver library provided with BIND 8.1 or rename
1138 /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and test process to
1143 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1144 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1152 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1153 with B<make depend; make>.
1157 If you still can't compile successfully, try adding a -DCRIPPLED_CC
1158 flag. (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it compiled right!)
1159 This simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that get
1162 =item Missing functions
1164 If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
1165 other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
1166 there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
1167 likely suspects. If Configure guessed wrong on a number of functions,
1168 you might have the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1172 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1173 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1174 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1175 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1176 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1179 =item Missing dbmclose
1181 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1182 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1184 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1186 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1187 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1188 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1189 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1190 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1191 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1192 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1193 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1194 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1195 process is continuing.
1197 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1200 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1202 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1203 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1204 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1206 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1207 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1208 quite that tightly coordinated.
1210 =item sh: ar: not found
1212 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1213 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1214 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1215 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1218 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1220 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1221 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1222 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1224 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1226 If you get this error message from the lib/ipc_sysv test, your System
1227 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1228 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1229 to include the System V semaphores.
1231 =item lib/ipc_sysv........semget: No space left on device
1233 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1234 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1235 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1236 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1241 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1243 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1245 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1247 UTS may need one or more of -DCRIPPLED_CC, -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1249 FreeBSD can fail the lib/ipc_sysv.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1250 configured to the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1251 you will get a message telling what to do.
1253 If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.
1255 Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
1261 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made (you
1262 should run plain 'make' before 'make test' otherwise you won't have a
1263 complete build). If 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful"
1264 then something went wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1266 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1267 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1268 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1270 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1272 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1273 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1274 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1278 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1279 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1283 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1284 complicated constructs).
1286 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1287 comments that apply to your system.
1293 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1294 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1295 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1296 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1297 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1298 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1300 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1306 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1308 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1309 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1310 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1311 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1312 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1313 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1318 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1319 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
1320 Specifically, in perl5.004_64, tests 74 and 78 have been reported to
1321 fail on some systems. On my SparcStation IPC with 8 MB of RAM, test 78
1322 will fail if the system is running any other significant tasks at the
1325 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1327 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
1329 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1330 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1331 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1332 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1338 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1339 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
1340 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
1341 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
1342 are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
1343 ignore any messages about chown not working.
1345 =head2 Installing perl under different names
1347 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
1348 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
1349 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
1351 make install PERLNAME=myperl
1353 =head2 Installed files
1355 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
1356 anything, you can run
1358 ./perl installperl -n
1359 ./perl installman -n
1361 make install will install the following:
1364 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
1365 will be a link to perl.
1367 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
1368 a2p awk-to-perl translator
1369 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
1371 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
1372 s2p sed-to-perl translator
1373 find2perl find-to-perl translator
1374 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
1375 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
1376 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
1377 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
1378 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
1379 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
1380 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
1383 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
1385 library files in $privlib and $archlib specified to
1386 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
1387 man pages in the location specified to Configure, usually
1388 something like /usr/local/man/man1.
1389 module in the location specified to Configure, usually
1390 man pages under /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3.
1391 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
1393 Installperl will also create the library directories $siteperl and
1394 $sitearch listed in config.sh. Usually, these are something like
1396 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
1397 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/archname
1399 where archname is something like sun4-sunos. These directories
1400 will be used for installing extensions.
1402 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl.a library are also installed
1403 under $archlib so that any user may later build new extensions, run the
1404 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
1405 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
1407 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
1409 WARNING: The upgrade from 5.004_0x to 5.005 is going to be a bit
1410 tricky. See L<"Upgrading from 5.004 to 5.005"> below.
1412 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
1413 5.004_04) to another similar version (e.g. 5.004_05) without re-compiling
1414 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
1415 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
1416 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
1417 with 5.004_04, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
1418 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
1419 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.00404.
1421 Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use
1422 with a newer version of perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
1423 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
1425 The directories searched by version 5.005 will be
1427 Configure variable Default value
1428 $archlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.005/archname
1429 $privlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.005
1430 $sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/archname
1431 $sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
1433 while the directories searched by version 5.005_01 will be
1435 $archlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00501/archname
1436 $privlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00501
1437 $sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/archname
1438 $sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
1440 When you install an add-on extension, it gets installed into $sitelib (or
1441 $sitearch if it is architecture-specific). This directory deliberately
1442 does NOT include the sub-version number (01) so that both 5.005 and
1443 5.005_01 can use the extension. Only when a perl version changes to
1444 break backwards compatibility will the default suggestions for the
1445 $sitearch and $sitelib version numbers be increased.
1447 However, if you do run into problems, and you want to continue to use the
1448 old version of perl along with your extension, move those extension files
1449 to the appropriate version directory, such as $privlib (or $archlib).
1450 (The extension's .packlist file lists the files installed with that
1451 extension. For the Tk extension, for example, the list of files installed
1452 is in $sitearch/auto/Tk/.packlist.) Then use your newer version of perl
1453 to rebuild and re-install the extension into $sitelib. This way, Perl
1454 5.005 will find your files in the 5.005 directory, and newer versions
1455 of perl will find your newer extension in the $sitelib directory.
1456 (This is also why perl searches the site-specific libraries last.)
1458 Alternatively, if you are willing to reinstall all your extensions
1459 every time you upgrade perl, then you can include the subversion
1460 number in $sitearch and $sitelib when you run Configure.
1462 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
1464 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
1465 separate directories. One convenient way to do this is by
1466 using a separate prefix for each version, such as
1468 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.004
1470 and adding /opt/perl5.004/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
1471 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
1472 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
1474 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
1475 (e.g. 5.004 for all 5.004_0x versions), but change directory with
1478 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
1479 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
1480 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
1483 =head2 Upgrading from 5.004 to 5.005
1485 Extensions built and installed with versions of perl prior to 5.004_50
1486 will need to be recompiled to be used with 5.004_50 and later. You will,
1487 however, be able to continue using 5.004 even after you install 5.005.
1488 The 5.004 binary will still be able to find the extensions built under
1489 5.004; the 5.005 binary will look in the new $sitearch and $sitelib
1490 directories, and will not find them.
1492 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
1494 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
1496 By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
1497 they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
1499 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
1500 perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
1501 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
1502 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
1503 the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036
1504 (or whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod
1505 for possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
1507 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
1509 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from
1510 the system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
1511 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
1512 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent library
1513 ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
1515 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the
1516 conversion of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have
1517 to hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse
1518 correctly. For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and
1521 =head1 installhtml --help
1523 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
1524 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
1525 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
1527 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
1532 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
1534 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
1535 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
1536 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
1537 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
1538 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
1541 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
1542 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
1543 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
1544 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
1545 (and would welcome patches for them).
1547 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
1548 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
1550 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
1552 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
1553 available in TeX format. Type
1555 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
1557 =head1 Reporting Problems
1559 If you have difficulty building perl, and none of the advice in this file
1560 helps, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant manual
1561 pages on your system doesn't help either, then you should send a message
1562 to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to perlbug@perl.com with
1563 an accurate description of your problem.
1565 Please include the output of the ./myconfig shell script that comes with
1566 the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the perlbug program that
1567 comes with the perl distribution, but you need to have perl compiled
1568 before you can use it. (If you have not installed it yet, you need to
1569 run C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug> instead of a plain C<perlbug>.)
1571 You might also find helpful information in the Porting directory of the
1574 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
1576 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
1577 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
1578 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
1579 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
1580 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
1582 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
1583 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and
1586 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
1587 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
1589 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
1590 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
1593 Note that you must have performed the installation already before running
1594 the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate
1599 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
1600 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
1601 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
1603 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
1604 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
1606 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
1608 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
1609 the same terms as perl itself.
1611 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
1612 a larger package) please do modify these installation instructions and
1613 the contact information to match your distribution.
1615 =head1 LAST MODIFIED
1617 $Id: INSTALL,v 1.42 1998/07/15 18:04:44 doughera Released $