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/perl5113delta.pod file. For more information about how to find more
46 specific detail about 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/perl5113delta.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/perl5113delta.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/perl5113delta.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) was 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.
310 On these systems, it might be the default compilation mode, and there
311 is currently no guarantee that passing no use64bitall option to the
312 Configure process will build a 32bit perl. Implementing -Duse32bit*
313 options is planned for perl 5.12.
317 In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
318 range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
319 (that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
320 this support (if it is available).
324 You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
325 and the long double support.
327 =head3 Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Hashes
329 In Perls 5.8.0 and earlier it was easy to create degenerate hashes.
330 Processing such hashes would consume large amounts of CPU time,
331 enabling a "Denial of Service" attack against Perl. Such hashes may be
332 a problem for example for mod_perl sites, sites with Perl CGI scripts
333 and web services, that process data originating from external sources.
335 In Perl 5.8.1 a security feature was introduced to make it harder to
336 create such degenerate hashes. A visible side effect of this was that
337 the keys(), values(), and each() functions may return the hash elements
338 in different order between different runs of Perl even with the same
339 data. It also had unintended binary incompatibility issues with
340 certain modules compiled against Perl 5.8.0.
342 In Perl 5.8.2 an improved scheme was introduced. Hashes will return
343 elements in the same order as Perl 5.8.0 by default. On a hash by hash
344 basis, if pathological data is detected during a hash key insertion,
345 then that hash will switch to an alternative random hash seed. As
346 adding keys can always dramatically change returned hash element order,
347 existing programs will not be affected by this, unless they
348 specifically test for pre-recorded hash return order for contrived
349 data. (eg the list of keys generated by C<map {"\0"x$_} 0..15> trigger
350 randomisation) In effect the new implementation means that 5.8.1 scheme
351 is only being used on hashes which are under attack.
353 One can still revert to the old guaranteed repeatable order (and be
354 vulnerable to attack by wily crackers) by setting the environment
355 variable PERL_HASH_SEED, see L<perlrun/PERL_HASH_SEED>. Another option
356 is to add -DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT to the compilation flags (for
357 example by using C<Configure -Accflags=-DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT>), in
358 which case one has to explicitly set the PERL_HASH_SEED environment
359 variable to enable the security feature, or by adding -DNO_HASH_SEED to
360 the compilation flags to completely disable the randomisation feature.
362 B<Perl has never guaranteed any ordering of the hash keys>, and the
363 ordering has already changed several times during the lifetime of Perl
364 5. Also, the ordering of hash keys has always been, and continues to
365 be, affected by the insertion order. Note that because of this
366 randomisation for example the Data::Dumper results will be different
367 between different runs of Perl, since Data::Dumper by default dumps
368 hashes "unordered". The use of the Data::Dumper C<Sortkeys> option is
373 Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
374 TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
375 access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
376 Version 5. The corresponding Configure option is -Dusesocks.
377 You can find more about SOCKS from wikipedia at
378 L<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOCKS>.
380 =head3 Dynamic Loading
382 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading.
383 If you want to force perl to be compiled completely
384 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
385 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
386 With this option, you won't be able to use any new extension
387 (XS) module without recompiling perl itself.
389 =head3 Building a shared Perl library
391 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
392 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
393 extensions, and various extra libraries, such as -lm.
395 On systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
396 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
397 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
398 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
399 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
400 can share the same library.
402 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
403 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
404 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
407 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
408 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
409 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
412 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
413 libperl.so.5.8.8 (for Perl 5.8.8), or libperl.so.588, or simply
414 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
415 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
416 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
417 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
419 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
421 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
423 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
424 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
425 NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
426 for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
427 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
428 be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
429 library search settings. You can find the name of the environment
430 variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
432 grep ldlibpthname config.sh
434 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
435 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
436 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
439 cd t; ./perl -MTestInit misc/failing_test.t
443 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
445 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
448 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
450 for Bourne-style shells, or
452 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
454 for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
455 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And
456 again, it may be something other than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
458 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
459 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
462 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
464 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
465 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
466 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
467 install a standard Perl 5.10.0 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
468 try to build Perl 5.10.0 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
469 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
470 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
471 libperl.so.8 rather with the installed libperl.so.8? The answer is
472 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
473 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
474 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
475 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux, you can only override at runtime via
476 LD_PRELOAD, specifying the exact filename you wish to be used; and on
477 Digital Unix, you can override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the
478 _RLD_ROOT environment variable to point to the perl build directory.
480 In other words, it is generally not a good idea to try to build a perl
481 with a shared library if $archlib/CORE/$libperl already exists from a
484 A good workaround is to specify a different directory for the
485 architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING version of perl.
486 You can do this by changing all the *archlib* variables in config.sh to
487 point to your new architecture-dependent library.
489 =head3 Environment access
491 Perl often needs to write to the program's environment, such as when C<%ENV>
492 is assigned to. Many implementations of the C library function C<putenv()>
493 leak memory, so where possible perl will manipulate the environment directly
494 to avoid these leaks. The default is now to perform direct manipulation
495 whenever perl is running as a stand alone interpreter, and to call the safe
496 but potentially leaky C<putenv()> function when the perl interpreter is
497 embedded in another application. You can force perl to always use C<putenv()>
498 by compiling with -DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV. You can force an embedded perl to
499 use direct manipulation by setting C<PL_use_safe_putenv = 0;> after the
500 C<perl_construct()> call.
502 =head2 Installation Directories
504 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
505 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the installation
506 questions are near the beginning of Configure. Do not include trailing
507 slashes on directory names. At any point during the Configure process,
508 you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use the defaults
509 from then on. Alternatively, you can
511 grep '^install' config.sh
513 after Configure has run to verify the installation paths.
515 The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
516 people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
517 distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
518 need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
519 you can safely skip the next section.
521 The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
525 =item Directories for the perl distribution
527 By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.11.3.
528 $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
529 5.11.3 or 5.9.5, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
530 determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
531 variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
533 Configure variable Default value
534 $prefixexp /usr/local
535 $binexp $prefixexp/bin
536 $scriptdirexp $prefixexp/bin
537 $privlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version
538 $archlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
539 $man1direxp $prefixexp/man/man1
540 $man3direxp $prefixexp/man/man3
544 $prefixexp is generated from $prefix, with ~ expansion done to convert home
545 directories into absolute paths. Similarly for the other variables listed. As
546 file system calls do not do this, you should always reference the ...exp
547 variables, to support users who build perl in their home directory.
549 Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
550 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
551 instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
552 directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
553 the common style is shown here.
555 =item Directories for site-specific add-on files
557 After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
558 CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
559 be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
561 Configure variable Default value
562 $siteprefixexp $prefixexp
563 $sitebinexp $siteprefixexp/bin
564 $sitescriptexp $siteprefixexp/bin
565 $sitelibexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
566 $sitearchexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
567 $siteman1direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man1
568 $siteman3direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man3
569 $sitehtml1direxp (none)
570 $sitehtml3direxp (none)
572 By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
573 modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
575 =item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
577 Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
578 distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
579 for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
581 Configure variable Default value
582 $vendorprefixexp (none)
583 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
584 $vendorbinexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
585 $vendorscriptexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
587 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
589 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
590 $vendorman1direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man1
591 $vendorman3direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man3
592 $vendorhtml1direxp (none)
593 $vendorhtml3direxp (none)
595 These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
596 a vendor might choose the following settings:
599 $siteprefix /usr/local
602 This would have the effect of setting the following:
605 $scriptdirexp /usr/bin
606 $privlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version
607 $archlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
608 $man1direxp /usr/man/man1
609 $man3direxp /usr/man/man3
611 $sitebinexp /usr/local/bin
612 $sitescriptexp /usr/local/bin
613 $sitelibexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
614 $sitearchexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
615 $siteman1direxp /usr/local/man/man1
616 $siteman3direxp /usr/local/man/man3
618 $vendorbinexp /usr/bin
619 $vendorscriptexp /usr/bin
620 $vendorlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
621 $vendorarchexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
622 $vendorman1direxp /usr/man/man1
623 $vendorman3direxp /usr/man/man3
625 Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
626 /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
627 the /usr/local hierarchy.
629 The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
630 version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
631 However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
632 installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
633 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below for more details
634 on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
636 Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
637 example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
638 are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
639 site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
640 network. One way to do that would be something like
642 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
646 As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
647 variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
648 directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
649 Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
650 version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
652 For example, if you have a bundle of perl libraries from a previous
653 installation, perhaps in a strange place:
655 Configure -Dotherlibdirs=/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1
659 There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
660 that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
661 separated list of directories, like this
663 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
665 The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
666 ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
667 modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
668 touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
669 version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
670 present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
671 directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
672 run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
674 =item usesitecustomize
676 Run-time customization of @INC can be enabled with:
678 sh Configure -Dusesitecustomize
680 which will define USE_SITECUSTOMIZE and $Config{usesitecustomize}.
681 When enabled, this makes perl run F<$sitelibexp/sitecustomize.pl> before
682 anything else. This script can then be set up to add additional
687 By default, man pages will be installed in $man1dir and $man3dir, which
688 are normally /usr/local/man/man1 and /usr/local/man/man3. If you
689 want to use a .3pm suffix for perl man pages, you can do that with
691 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
695 Currently, the standard perl installation does not do anything with
696 HTML documentation, but that may change in the future. Further, some
697 add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The html Configure
698 variables listed above are provided if you wish to specify where such
699 documents should be placed. The default is "none", but will likely
700 eventually change to something useful based on user feedback.
704 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
705 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
708 Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
709 directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
712 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
713 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
714 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below.
716 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
717 library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
718 suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
720 Thus, for example, if you Configure with
721 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.9.0 are
723 Configure variable Default value
724 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0
725 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0/$archname
726 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0
727 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0/$archname
729 =head2 Changing the installation directory
731 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
732 associated files) should be installed, and the directory in which it
733 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
734 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
735 However, sites that use package management software such as rpm or
736 dpkg, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
737 wish to install perl into a different directory before moving perl
738 to its final destination. There are two ways to do that:
744 To install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory, use the following
747 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
749 (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
751 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
752 modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
753 follow this example. That's why it's usually better to use DESTDIR,
754 as shown in the next section.
758 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is convenient
759 to compile it once and create an archive that can be installed on
760 multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to create an
761 archive that can be installed in /opt/perl. One way to do that is by
762 using the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>. The DESTDIR is
763 automatically prepended to all the installation paths. Thus you
766 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
769 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
770 cd /tmp/perl5/opt/perl
771 tar cvf /tmp/perl5-archive.tar .
775 =head2 Relocatable @INC
777 To create a relocatable perl tree, use the following command line:
779 sh Configure -Duserelocatableinc
781 Then the paths in @INC (and everything else in %Config) can be
782 optionally located via the path of the perl executable.
784 That means that, if the string ".../" is found at the start of any
785 path, it's substituted with the directory of $^X. So, the relocation
786 can be configured on a per-directory basis, although the default with
787 "-Duserelocatableinc" is that everything is relocated. The initial
788 install is done to the original configured prefix.
790 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
792 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
793 answers (such as installation directories) in the Policy.sh file.
794 If you want to build perl on another system using the same policy
795 defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file to the new system's perl build
796 directory, and Configure will use it. This will work even if Policy.sh was
797 generated for another version of Perl, or on a system with a
798 different architecture and/or operating system. However, in such cases,
799 you should review the contents of the file before using it: for
800 example, your new target may not keep its man pages in the same place
801 as the system on which the file was generated.
803 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
808 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
810 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
812 If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
813 to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
814 platform-specific hints files.
816 =head2 Disabling older versions of Perl
818 Configure will search for binary compatible versions of previously
819 installed perl binaries in the tree that is specified as target tree,
820 and these will be used as locations to search for modules by the perl
821 being built. The list of perl versions found will be put in the Configure
822 variable inc_version_list.
824 To disable this use of older perl modules, even completely valid pure perl
825 modules, you can specify to not include the paths found:
827 sh Configure -Dinc_version_list=none ...
829 When using the newer perl, you can add these paths again in the
830 $PERL5LIB environment variable or with perl's -I runtime option.
832 =head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
834 Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
835 where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
836 read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
837 architectures. You can do this (if your file system supports symbolic
840 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
841 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
842 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
844 This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
845 pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
846 unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
852 as usual, and Perl will be built in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
854 =head2 Building a debugging perl
856 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
857 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
858 you probably want to have support for perl internal debugging code
859 (activated by adding -DDEBUGGING to ccflags), and/or support for the
860 system debugger by adding -g to the optimisation flags. For that,
863 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING
867 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING=<mode>
869 For a more eye appealing call, -DEBUGGING is defined to be an alias
870 for -DDEBUGGING. For both, the -U calls are also supported, in order
871 to be able to overrule the hints or Policy.sh settings.
873 Here are the DEBUGGING modes:
881 =item -DEBUGGING=both
883 Sets both -DDEBUGGING in the ccflags, and adds -g to optimize.
885 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently (see below),
886 but usually it's convenient to have both.
892 Adds -g to optimize, but does not set -DDEBUGGING.
894 (Note: Your system may actually require something like cc -g2.
895 Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for your system.)
897 =item -DEBUGGING=none
901 Removes -g from optimize, and -DDEBUGGING from ccflags.
905 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
906 versions of perl under L<Building a shared Perl library>.
908 Note that a perl built with -DDEBUGGING will be bigger and will run more
909 slowly than a standard perl.
911 =head2 DTrace support
913 On platforms where DTrace is available, it may be enabled by
914 using the -Dusedtrace option to Configure. DTrace probes are available for
915 subroutine entry (sub-entry) and subroutine exit (sub-exit). Here's a
916 simple D script that uses them:
918 perl$target:::sub-entry, perl$target:::sub-return {
919 printf("%s %s (%s:%d)\n", probename == "sub-entry" ? "->" : "<-",
920 copyinstr(arg0), copyinstr(arg1), arg2);
926 Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
927 in the ext/ subdirectory.
929 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
930 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
931 only if it is able to find the gdbm library.
933 To disable certain extensions so that they are not built, use the
934 -Dnoextensions=... and -Donlyextensions=... options. They both accept
935 a space-separated list of extensions. The extensions listed in
936 C<noextensions> are removed from the list of extensions to build, while
937 the C<onlyextensions> is rather more severe and builds only the listed
938 extensions. The latter should be used with extreme caution since
939 certain extensions are used by many other extensions and modules:
940 examples of such modules include Fcntl and IO. The order of processing
941 these options is first C<only> (if present), then C<no> (if present).
943 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
944 the extensions you want.
946 If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
947 running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
948 extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
949 it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
950 has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
951 extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
952 convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
953 you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
954 dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
955 Another way of specifying extra modules is described in
956 L<"Adding extra modules to the build"> below.
958 If you re-use an old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
959 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
960 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
963 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
965 Perl comes with interfaces to number of libraries, including threads,
966 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For the *db* extension, if
967 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
968 automatically include that extension. The threading extension needs
969 to be specified explicitely (see L<Threads>).
971 Those libraries are not distributed with perl. If your header (.h) files
972 for those libraries are not in a directory normally searched by your C
973 compiler, then you will need to include the appropriate -I/your/directory
974 option when prompted by Configure. If your libraries are not in a
975 directory normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will
976 need to include the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted
977 by Configure. See the examples below.
983 =item gdbm in /usr/local
985 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
986 GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
987 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
988 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
989 necessary steps out automatically.
991 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
992 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include, if it's
993 not here yet. Similarly, when Configure prompts you for linker flags,
994 you should include -L/usr/local/lib.
996 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
997 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1000 Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1001 you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1002 /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
1004 =item BerkeleyDB in /usr/local/BerkeleyDB
1006 The version of BerkeleyDB distributed by sleepycat.com installs in a
1007 version-specific directory by default, typically something like
1008 /usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7. To have Configure find that, you need to add
1009 -I/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/include to cc flags, as in the previous example,
1010 and you will also have to take extra steps to help Configure find -ldb.
1011 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for library directories,
1012 add /usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib to the list. Also, you will need to
1013 add appropriate linker flags to tell the runtime linker where to find the
1014 BerkeleyDB shared libraries.
1016 It is possible to specify this from the command line (all on one
1020 -Dlocincpth='/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/include /usr/local/include' \
1021 -Dloclibpth='/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib /usr/local/lib' \
1022 -Aldflags='-R/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib'
1024 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1025 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1027 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
1028 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives.
1030 The addition to ldflags is so that the dynamic linker knows where to find
1031 the BerkeleyDB libraries. For Linux and Solaris, the -R option does that.
1032 Other systems may use different flags. Use the appropriate flag for your
1037 =head2 Overriding an old config.sh
1039 If you want to use an old config.sh produced by a previous run of
1040 Configure, but override some of the items with command line options, you
1041 need to use B<Configure -O>.
1043 =head2 GNU-style configure
1045 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
1046 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
1048 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
1050 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
1053 ./configure.gnu --help
1057 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
1058 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
1060 =head2 Malloc Issues
1062 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
1063 so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
1064 the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
1065 version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
1066 perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
1067 than your system malloc.
1069 However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
1070 experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
1071 that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
1072 (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
1076 =item Using the system malloc
1078 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
1080 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
1082 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
1084 Note that Perl's malloc isn't always used by default; that actually
1085 depends on your system. For example, on Linux and FreeBSD (and many more
1086 systems), Configure chooses to use the system's malloc by default.
1087 See the appropriate file in the F<hints/> directory to see how the
1090 =item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
1092 NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you just
1093 run Configure to accept all the defaults.
1095 Perl's malloc family of functions are normally called Perl_malloc(),
1096 Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree().
1097 These names do not clash with the system versions of these functions.
1099 If this flag is enabled, however, Perl's malloc family of functions
1100 will have the same names as the system versions. This may be required
1101 sometimes if you have libraries that like to free() data that may have
1102 been allocated by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1104 Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1105 from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1106 does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1109 =item -DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS
1111 This flag enables debugging mstats, which is required to use the
1112 Devel::Peek::mstat() function. You cannot enable this unless you are
1113 using Perl's malloc, so a typical Configure command would be
1115 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS -Dusemymalloc
1117 to enable this option.
1121 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1123 If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1124 If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1128 =item Running Configure Interactively
1130 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1131 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1134 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1135 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1136 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1137 will use the defaults from then on.
1139 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1140 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1141 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1145 Hint files tell Configure about a number of things:
1151 The peculiarities or conventions of particular platforms -- non-standard
1152 library locations and names, default installation locations for binaries,
1157 The deficiencies of the platform -- for example, library functions that,
1158 although present, are too badly broken to be usable; or limits on
1159 resources that are generously available on most platforms.
1163 How best to optimize for the platform, both in terms of binary size and/or
1164 speed, and for Perl feature support. Because of wide variations in the
1165 implementation of shared libraries and of threading, for example, Configure
1166 often needs hints in order to be able to use these features.
1170 The perl distribution includes many system-specific hints files
1171 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1172 will offer to use that hint file. Unless you have a very good reason
1173 not to, you should accept its offer.
1175 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1176 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1177 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1178 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
1179 file, which also explains hint files known as callback-units.
1181 Note that any hint file is read before any Policy file, meaning that
1182 Policy overrides hints -- see L</Site-wide Policy settings>.
1186 If you are re-using an old config.sh, it's possible that Configure detects
1187 different values from the ones specified in this file. You will almost
1188 always want to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something
1191 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1192 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1193 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1194 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1197 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1198 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1199 Keep the previous value? [y]
1201 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1202 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1203 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1205 =item Changing Compilers
1207 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1208 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1209 rename it, then rerun Configure with the options you want to use.
1211 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1213 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1214 them to all the .SH files by running
1218 You will then have to rebuild by running
1223 =item config.over and config.arch
1225 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride
1226 Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1227 before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1228 however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1229 This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1231 There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1232 config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1233 architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1234 hints file that creates the config.arch.
1238 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1239 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1240 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1242 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1243 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1248 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1249 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1250 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1251 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1252 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1253 lost the next time you run Configure.
1255 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1256 see the file hints/README.hints.
1258 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1259 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1266 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1267 Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1268 system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1269 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1272 =item Porting information
1274 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan 9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1275 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1276 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1277 subdirectory. Porting/Glossary should especially come in handy.
1279 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1280 http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
1281 various other operating systems.
1283 If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture, study carefully the
1284 section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1285 in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file pod/perlrepository.pod.
1286 Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1290 =head2 Adding extra modules to the build
1292 You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1293 CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1294 command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1296 Configure -Dextras="Bundle::LWP DBI"
1298 or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
1299 then answer "Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
1300 The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
1301 This will only work if those modules are to be built as dynamic
1302 extensions. If you wish to include those extra modules as static
1303 extensions, see L<"Extensions"> above.
1305 Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1306 modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1307 or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1308 do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1310 Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1311 dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
1312 For example: you will need to have the Foo database specific
1313 headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1314 process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1318 suidperl was an optional component of earlier releases of perl. It is no
1319 longer available. Instead, use a tool specifically designed to handle
1320 changes in privileges, such as B<sudo>.
1324 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1325 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1326 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1327 makefile, not Makefile, since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1328 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1329 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1331 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1336 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1338 =head2 Expected errors
1340 These error reports are normal, and can be ignored:
1343 make: [extra.pods] Error 1 (ignored)
1345 make: [extras.make] Error 1 (ignored)
1347 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1349 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1350 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1351 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1352 then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1358 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1359 for further tips and information.
1363 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1364 during the building of extensions, run
1368 to test your version of miniperl.
1372 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1373 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1374 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1375 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1376 whole L<perllocale/"LOCALE PROBLEMS"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1377 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1379 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1380 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1383 are supported and installed on your system.
1384 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1388 =item other environment variables
1390 Configure does not check for environment variables that can sometimes
1391 have a major influence on how perl is built or tested. For example,
1392 OBJECT_MODE on AIX determines the way the compiler and linker deal with
1393 their objects, but this is a variable that only influences build-time
1394 behaviour, and should not affect the perl scripts that are eventually
1395 executed by the perl binary. Other variables, like PERL_UNICODE,
1396 PERL5LIB, and PERL5OPT will influence the behaviour of the test suite.
1397 So if you are getting strange test failures, you may want to try
1398 retesting with the various PERL variables unset.
1402 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1403 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1404 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1405 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by installing gcc
1406 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1407 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1408 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1412 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1413 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1415 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1416 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1417 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1419 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1420 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1422 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1424 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1425 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1426 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1427 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1428 of your local set-up.
1432 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1433 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1436 sh Configure -Uusenm
1438 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1439 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1442 =item umask not found
1444 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1445 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1446 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1447 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1448 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1452 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1453 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1454 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1455 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1456 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1460 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1461 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1462 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1466 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1467 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1468 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1469 on L<"nm extraction">.
1471 =item __inet_* errors
1473 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1474 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1475 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1476 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1477 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1478 newer version of BIND (and remove the files the old one left behind).
1479 If you can't, you can either link with the updated resolver library provided
1480 with BIND 8.1 or rename /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and
1481 test process to avoid the problem.
1483 =item .*_r() prototype NOT found
1485 On a related note, if you see a bunch of complaints like the above about
1486 reentrant functions - specifically networking-related ones - being present
1487 but without prototypes available, check to see if BIND 8.1 (or possibly
1488 other BIND 8 versions) is (or has been) installed. They install
1489 header files such as netdb.h into places such as /usr/local/include (or into
1490 another directory as specified at build/install time), at least optionally.
1491 Remove them or put them in someplace that isn't in the C preprocessor's
1492 header file include search path (determined by -I options plus defaults,
1493 normally /usr/include).
1495 =item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1497 This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1498 gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1499 changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1500 rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1501 update your gcc installation.
1505 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1506 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1514 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1515 with B<make depend; make>.
1517 =item Missing functions and Undefined symbols
1519 If the build of miniperl fails with a long list of missing functions or
1520 undefined symbols, check the libs variable in the config.sh file. It
1521 should look something like
1523 libs='-lsocket -lnsl -ldl -lm -lc'
1525 The exact libraries will vary from system to system, but you typically
1526 need to include at least the math library -lm. Normally, Configure
1527 will suggest the correct defaults. If the libs variable is empty, you
1528 need to start all over again. Run
1532 and start from the very beginning. This time, unless you are sure of
1533 what you are doing, accept the default list of libraries suggested by
1536 If the libs variable looks correct, you might have the
1537 L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1539 If you stil have missing routines or undefined symbols, you probably
1540 need to add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature
1541 that Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete. If
1542 you used a hint file, see if it has any relevant advice. You can also
1543 look through through config.h for likely suspects.
1547 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1548 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1549 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1550 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1551 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1554 =item Missing dbmclose
1556 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1557 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1559 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1561 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1562 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1563 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1564 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1565 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1566 Most users will see warnings for the ones they don't have. The
1567 phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to reassure you that nothing
1568 unusual is happening, and the build process is continuing.
1570 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1573 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1575 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1576 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1577 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1579 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1580 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1581 quite that tightly coordinated.
1583 =item sh: ar: not found
1585 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1586 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1587 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1588 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1591 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1593 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1594 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1595 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1597 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1599 If you get this error message from the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem test, your System
1600 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1601 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1602 to include the System V semaphores.
1604 =item ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem........semget: No space left on device
1606 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1607 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1608 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1609 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1614 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1615 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1616 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1617 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1618 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1619 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1620 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1621 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1623 =item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1625 The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1626 make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1627 archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1628 C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1629 archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1630 incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1631 official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1632 that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1633 archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1635 =item invalid token: ##
1637 You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. To compile Perl, you
1638 need to use a compiler that supports ANSI C. If there is a README
1639 file for your system, it may have further details on your compiler
1644 Some additional things that have been reported:
1646 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1648 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1650 UTS may need one or more of -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1652 FreeBSD can fail the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1653 configured in the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1654 you will get a message telling you what to do.
1656 Building Perl on a system that has also BIND (headers and libraries)
1657 installed may run into troubles because BIND installs its own netdb.h
1658 and socket.h, which may not agree with the operating system's ideas of
1659 the same files. Similarly, including -lbind may conflict with libc's
1660 view of the world. You may have to tweak -Dlocincpth and -Dloclibpth
1665 =head2 Cross-compilation
1667 Perl can be cross-compiled. It is just not trivial, cross-compilation
1668 rarely is. Perl is routinely cross-compiled for many platforms (as of
1669 June 2005 at least PocketPC aka WinCE, Open Zaurus, EPOC, Symbian, and
1670 the IBM OS/400). These platforms are known as the B<target> platforms,
1671 while the systems where the compilation takes place are the B<host>
1674 What makes the situation difficult is that first of all,
1675 cross-compilation environments vary significantly in how they are set
1676 up and used, and secondly because the primary way of configuring Perl
1677 (using the rather large Unix-tool-dependent Configure script) is not
1678 awfully well suited for cross-compilation. However, starting from
1679 version 5.8.0, the Configure script also knows one way of supporting
1680 cross-compilation support, please keep reading.
1682 See the following files for more information about compiling Perl for
1683 the particular platforms:
1687 =item WinCE/PocketPC
1709 Packaging and transferring either the core Perl modules or CPAN
1710 modules to the target platform is also left up to the each
1711 cross-compilation environment. Often the cross-compilation target
1712 platforms are somewhat limited in diskspace: see the section
1713 L<Minimizing the Perl installation> to learn more of the minimal set
1714 of files required for a functional Perl installation.
1716 For some cross-compilation environments the Configure option
1717 C<-Dinstallprefix=...> might be handy, see L<Changing the installation
1720 About the cross-compilation support of Configure: what is known to
1721 work is running Configure in a cross-compilation environment and
1722 building the miniperl executable. What is known not to work is
1723 building the perl executable because that would require building
1724 extensions: Dynaloader statically and File::Glob dynamically, for
1725 extensions one needs MakeMaker and MakeMaker is not yet
1726 cross-compilation aware, and neither is the main Makefile.
1728 The cross-compilation setup of Configure has successfully been used in
1729 at least two Linux cross-compilation environments. The setups were
1730 both such that the host system was Intel Linux with a gcc built for
1731 cross-compiling into ARM Linux, and there was a SSH connection to the
1734 To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch that
1735 has to be used is C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
1737 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1739 This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
1740 symbol C<usecrosscompile> available, and C<xconfig.h> will be used
1741 for cross-compilation.
1743 During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1744 into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1745 cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1746 target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1747 transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1748 the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1749 methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1750 F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1752 To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1753 the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1754 happens), supply Configure with
1756 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1758 The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
1759 must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1760 You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
1764 but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
1766 Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
1767 which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
1768 This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
1769 In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
1772 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
1774 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1775 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1776 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
1778 If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
1779 compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
1780 C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
1781 (The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
1782 as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
1783 will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
1784 in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
1786 In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
1787 choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
1790 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
1792 Putting it all together:
1794 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1795 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1796 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
1798 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
1799 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1800 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1801 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1802 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
1805 or if you are happy with the defaults:
1807 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1808 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1809 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1812 Another example where the cross-compiler has been installed under
1813 F</usr/local/arm/2.95.5>:
1815 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1816 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1817 -Dcc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/bin/arm-linux-gcc \
1818 -Dincpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
1819 -Dusrinc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
1820 -Dlibpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/lib
1824 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
1825 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
1826 wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1828 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1829 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1830 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1832 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1834 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1835 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1836 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1838 cd t ; ./perl -MTestInit op/groups.t
1840 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1841 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1843 cd t ; ./perl harness <list of tests>
1845 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1846 complicated constructs). If no list of tests is provided, harness
1849 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1850 comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
1851 shared library path if you get errors like:
1853 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
1855 See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
1861 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1862 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1863 'make test' exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1864 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1865 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1866 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1868 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1874 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1876 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1877 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1878 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1879 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1880 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1881 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1884 =item Timing problems
1886 Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
1887 sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
1888 If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough,
1889 these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again
1890 with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive
1891 and load-sensitive tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
1892 F<ext/Time-HiRes/t/HiRes.t>, F<ext/threads-shared/t/waithires.t>,
1893 F<ext/threads-shared/t/stress.t>, F<lib/Benchmark.t>,
1894 F<lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t>, and F<lib/Memoize/t/speed.t>.
1896 You might also experience some failures in F<t/op/stat.t> if you build
1897 perl on an NFS filesystem, if the remote clock and the system clock are
1902 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1903 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
1904 For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
1905 test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
1907 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1909 cd t; ./perl -MTestInit op/pat.t
1911 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1912 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1913 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1914 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1916 =item libgcc_s.so.1: cannot open shared object file
1918 This message has been reported on gcc-3.2.3 and earlier installed with
1919 a non-standard prefix. Setting the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable
1920 (or equivalent) to include gcc's lib/ directory with the libgcc_s.so.1
1921 shared library should fix the problem.
1923 =item Failures from lib/File/Temp/t/security saying "system possibly insecure"
1925 First, such warnings are not necessarily serious or indicative of a
1926 real security threat. That being said, they bear investigating.
1928 Note that each of the tests is run twice. The first time is in the
1929 directory returned by File::Spec->tmpdir() (often /tmp on Unix
1930 systems), and the second time in the directory from which the test was
1931 run (usually the 't' directory, if the test was run as part of 'make
1934 The tests may fail for the following reasons:
1936 (1) If the directory the tests are being run in is owned by somebody
1937 other than the user running the tests, or by root (uid 0).
1939 This failure can happen if the Perl source code distribution is
1940 unpacked in such a way that the user ids in the distribution package
1941 are used as-is. Some tar programs do this.
1943 (2) If the directory the tests are being run in is writable by group or
1944 by others, and there is no sticky bit set for the directory. (With
1945 UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to a directory means the right to
1946 add or remove files in that directory. The 'sticky bit' is a feature
1947 used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if the bit is
1948 set for a directory, no one but the owner (or root) can remove that
1949 file even if the permissions would otherwise allow file removal by
1952 This failure may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the
1953 permissions policy used on this particular system. This failure can
1954 also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit (this
1955 is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle File::Temp
1956 should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or if the system
1957 supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons it is not being
1958 used. This is, for example, the case with HP-UX: as of HP-UX release
1959 11.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX doesn't use it
1960 on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also, as with the permissions, some
1961 local policy might dictate that the stickiness is not used.
1963 (3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
1964 any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
1965 directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
1966 (2). For Unix systems, this is usually not an issue if you are
1967 building on a local disk. See the documentation for the File::Temp
1968 module for more information about 'chown giveaway'.
1970 See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
1971 about the various security aspects of temporary files.
1975 The core distribution can now run its regression tests in parallel on
1976 Unix-like platforms. Instead of running C<make test>, set C<TEST_JOBS> in
1977 your environment to the number of tests to run in parallel, and run
1978 C<make test_harness>. On a Bourne-like shell, this can be done as
1980 TEST_JOBS=3 make test_harness # Run 3 tests in parallel
1982 An environment variable is used, rather than parallel make itself, because
1983 L<TAP::Harness> needs to be able to schedule individual non-conflicting test
1984 scripts itself, and there is no standard interface to C<make> utilities to
1985 interact with their job schedulers.
1989 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1990 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
1991 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
1992 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
1993 are not root, you must still have permission to install into the directories
1994 in question and you should ignore any messages about chown not working.
1996 If "make install" just says "`install' is up to date" or something
1997 similar, you may be on a case-insensitive filesystems such as Mac's HFS+,
1998 and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion is brought to you
1999 by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
2001 =head2 Installing perl under different names
2003 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
2004 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
2005 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
2007 make install PERLNAME=myperl
2009 You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
2010 "perl5.8.9") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
2012 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
2014 This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (e.g. to
2015 avoid conflicts with an ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor).
2016 Without this the versioned binary would be called "perl55.8.8".
2018 =head2 Installing perl under a different directory
2020 You can install perl under a different destination directory by using
2021 the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>, with a command like
2023 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
2025 DESTDIR is automatically prepended to all the installation paths. See
2026 the example in L<"DESTDIR"> above.
2028 =head2 Installed files
2030 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
2031 anything, you can run
2033 ./perl installperl -n
2034 ./perl installman -n
2036 make install will install the following:
2041 perl5.n.n where 5.n.n is the current release number. This
2042 will be a link to perl.
2044 sperl5.n.n If you requested setuid emulation.
2045 a2p awk-to-perl translator
2049 cppstdin This is used by the deprecated switch perl -P, if
2050 your cc -E can't read from stdin.
2051 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
2052 config_data Manage Module::Build-like module configuration
2053 corelist Shows versions of modules that come with different
2056 cpan2dist The CPANPLUS distribution creator
2057 cpanp The CPANPLUS shell
2058 cpanp-run-perl An helper for cpanp
2059 dprofpp Perl code profiler post-processor
2060 enc2xs Encoding module generator
2061 find2perl find-to-perl translator
2062 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
2063 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
2064 instmodsh A shell to examine installed modules.
2065 libnetcfg Configure libnet.
2066 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
2067 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
2068 perlivp Perl Installation Verification Procedure
2069 piconv A Perl implementation of the encoding conversion
2071 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
2072 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
2073 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
2077 podchecker POD syntax checker
2078 podselect Prints sections of POD documentation
2079 prove A command-line tool for running tests
2080 psed A Perl implementation of sed
2081 ptar A Perl implementation of tar
2082 ptardiff A diff for tar archives
2083 s2p sed-to-perl translator
2084 shasum A tool to print or check SHA checksums
2085 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
2086 xsubpp Compiler to convert Perl XS code into C code
2090 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
2091 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
2095 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2097 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
2098 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2100 installperl will also create the directories listed above
2101 in L<"Installation Directories">.
2103 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
2104 under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
2105 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2106 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
2108 =head2 Installing only version-specific parts
2110 Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2111 installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
2112 perl alongside an already installed production version without
2113 disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2114 To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2116 Configure -Dversiononly
2118 or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2119 you can just manually run
2121 ./perl installperl -v
2123 and skip installman altogether.
2125 See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2128 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2130 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2131 system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2132 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2133 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2134 library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2136 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2137 of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2138 hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2139 For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2142 =head1 installhtml --help
2144 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2145 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2146 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2148 Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2149 html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2151 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2156 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2158 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2159 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2160 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2161 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2162 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
2165 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2166 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2167 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2168 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2169 (and would welcome patches for them).
2171 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2172 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2174 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2176 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2177 available in TeX format. Type
2179 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2181 =head1 Starting all over again
2183 If you wish to re-build perl from the same build directory, you should
2184 clean it out with the command
2192 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
2193 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
2195 If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
2196 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
2197 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should not re-use
2200 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
2201 installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
2202 using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
2205 =head1 Reporting Problems
2207 Wherever possible please use the perlbug tool supplied with this Perl
2208 to report problems, as it automatically includes summary configuration
2209 information about your perl, which may help us track down problems far
2210 more quickly. But first you should read the advice in this file,
2211 carefully re-read the error message and check the relevant manual pages
2212 on your system, as these may help you find an immediate solution. If
2213 you are not sure whether what you are seeing is a bug, you can send a
2214 message describing the problem to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup to
2217 The perlbug tool is installed along with perl, so after you have
2218 completed C<make install> it should be possible to run it with plain
2219 C<perlbug>. If the install fails, or you want to report problems with
2220 C<make test> without installing perl, then you can use C<make nok> to
2221 run perlbug to report the problem, or run it by hand from this source
2222 directory with C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug>
2224 If the build fails too early to run perlbug uninstalled, then please
2225 B<run> the C<./myconfig> shell script, and mail its output along with
2226 an accurate description of your problem to perlbug@perl.org
2228 If Configure itself fails, and does not generate a config.sh file
2229 (needed to run C<./myconfig>), then please mail perlbug@perl.org the
2230 description of how Configure fails along with details of your system
2231 - for example the output from running C<uname -a>
2233 Please try to make your message brief but clear. Brief, clear bug
2234 reports tend to get answered more quickly. Please don't worry if your
2235 written English is not great - what matters is how well you describe
2236 the important technical details of the problem you have encountered,
2237 not whether your grammar and spelling is flawless.
2239 Trim out unnecessary information. Do not include large files (such as
2240 config.sh or a complete Configure or make log) unless absolutely
2241 necessary. Do not include a complete transcript of your build
2242 session. Just include the failing commands, the relevant error
2243 messages, and whatever preceding commands are necessary to give the
2244 appropriate context. Plain text should usually be sufficient--fancy
2245 attachments or encodings may actually reduce the number of people who
2246 read your message. Your message will get relayed to over 400
2247 subscribers around the world so please try to keep it brief but clear.
2249 If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
2250 inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send
2251 it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription
2252 unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who be able
2253 to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help
2254 co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all
2255 platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for security
2256 issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently distributed on CPAN.
2258 If you are unsure what makes a good bug report please read "How to
2259 report Bugs Effectively" by Simon Tatham:
2260 http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html
2262 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5
2264 Perl 5.11 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
2265 In other words, you will have to recompile your XS modules.
2267 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
2268 5.X.Y) to another similar minor version (e.g. 5.X.(Y+1))) without
2269 re-compiling all of your extensions. You can also safely leave the old
2270 version around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
2272 Usually, most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to be
2273 used with a newer version of Perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
2274 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
2276 Suppose you already have version 5.8.7 installed. The directories
2277 searched by 5.8.7 are typically like:
2279 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.7/$archname
2280 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.7
2281 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7/$archname
2282 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
2284 Now, suppose you install version 5.8.8. The directories
2285 searched by version 5.8.8 will be:
2287 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.8/$archname
2288 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.8
2289 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/$archname
2290 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8
2292 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7/$archname
2293 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
2294 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2296 Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
2297 of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
2298 directories. This way, modules installed under 5.8.7 will continue
2299 to be usable by 5.8.7 but will also accessible to 5.8.8. Further,
2300 suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
2301 present only in 5.8.8. That new module will get installed into
2302 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8 and will be available to 5.8.8,
2303 but will not interfere with the 5.8.7 version.
2305 The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
2306 5.6.0 and above will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
2308 Lastly, suppose you now install 5.10.0, which is not binary compatible
2309 with 5.8.x. The directories searched by 5.10.0 (if you don't change the
2310 Configure defaults) will be:
2312 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.10.0/$archname
2313 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.10.0
2314 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0/$archname
2315 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0
2317 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8
2319 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
2321 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2323 Note that the earlier $archname entries are now gone, but pure perl
2324 modules from earlier versions will still be found.
2326 This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2327 to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2328 versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
2330 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
2332 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
2333 separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
2334 won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2335 libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2336 way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
2338 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.11.3
2340 and adding /opt/perl5.11.3/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
2341 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2342 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2344 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
2345 (e.g. 5.10 for all 5.10.x versions), but change directory with
2348 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2349 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2350 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2353 =head2 Upgrading from 5.11.0 or earlier
2355 B<Perl 5.11.3 is binary incompatible with Perl 5.11.1 and any earlier
2356 Perl release.> Perl modules having binary parts
2357 (meaning that a C compiler is used) will have to be recompiled to be
2358 used with 5.11.3. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with
2359 5.11.3, you may safely do so without disturbing the older
2360 installations. (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5">
2363 See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2364 incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
2365 perllocal.pod, not perllocale.pod, for installed module information.
2367 =head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2369 The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2370 Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2371 operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2373 Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way:
2374 Encode, with its big conversion tables, consumes a lot of
2375 space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything. The
2376 Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network
2377 programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all
2378 depends on what do you need to do.
2380 In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2381 recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2382 depends on what you need.
2384 Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2388 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2392 in Linux is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
2395 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/strict.pm
2396 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/warnings.pm
2397 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/File/Glob.pm
2398 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/XSLoader.pm
2399 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2401 Secondly, Debian perl-base package contains the following files,
2402 size about 1.9MB in its i386 version:
2407 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B.pm
2408 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B/Deparse.pm
2409 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Config.pm
2410 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Cwd.pm
2411 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Data/Dumper.pm
2412 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/DynaLoader.pm
2413 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Errno.pm
2414 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Fcntl.pm
2415 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/File/Glob.pm
2416 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO.pm
2417 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/File.pm
2418 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Handle.pm
2419 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Pipe.pm
2420 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Seekable.pm
2421 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Select.pm
2422 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket.pm
2423 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/POSIX.pm
2424 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Socket.pm
2425 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/XSLoader.pm
2426 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.bs
2427 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.so
2428 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.bs
2429 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.so
2430 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a
2431 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2432 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2433 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2434 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2435 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/extralibs.ld
2436 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs
2437 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2438 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.bs
2439 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2440 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.bs
2441 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.so
2442 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.bs
2443 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2444 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2445 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2446 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.bs
2447 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2448 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/lib.pm
2449 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/re.pm
2450 /usr/share/doc/perl-base
2451 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
2452 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2453 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian.gz
2454 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
2455 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
2456 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
2458 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/AutoLoader.pm
2459 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp.pm
2460 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp/Heavy.pm
2461 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter.pm
2462 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2463 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec.pm
2464 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2465 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/FileHandle.pm
2466 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Getopt/Long.pm
2467 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2468 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2469 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open2.pm
2470 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open3.pm
2471 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/List/Util.pm
2472 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Scalar/Util.pm
2473 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/SelectSaver.pm
2474 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Symbol.pm
2475 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/ParseWords.pm
2476 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Tabs.pm
2477 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Wrap.pm
2478 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/attributes.pm
2479 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/base.pm
2480 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes.pm
2481 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes_heavy.pl
2482 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/constant.pm
2483 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/fields.pm
2484 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/integer.pm
2485 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/locale.pm
2486 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/overload.pm
2487 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/strict.pm
2488 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8.pm
2489 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8_heavy.pl
2490 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/vars.pm
2491 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings.pm
2492 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings/register.pm
2494 A nice trick to find out the minimal set of Perl library files you will
2495 need to run a Perl program is
2497 perl -e 'do "prog.pl"; END { print "$_\n" for sort keys %INC }'
2499 (this will not find libraries required in runtime, unfortunately, but
2500 it's a minimal set) and if you want to find out all the files you can
2501 use something like the below
2503 strace perl -le 'do "x.pl"' 2>&1 | perl -nle '/^open\(\"(.+?)"/ && print $1'
2505 (The 'strace' is Linux-specific, other similar utilities include 'truss'
2508 =head2 C<-DNO_MATHOMS>
2510 If you configure perl with C<-Accflags=-DNO_MATHOMS>, the functions from
2511 F<mathoms.c> will not be compiled in. Those functions are no longer used
2512 by perl itself; for source compatibility reasons, though, they weren't
2515 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
2517 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2518 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
2519 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
2520 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2521 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
2525 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2526 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2527 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
2529 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2530 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2532 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2534 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2535 the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2536 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2537 a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2538 and the contact information to match your distribution.