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 Building perl from source requires an ANSI compliant C-Compiler.
40 A minimum of C89 is required. Some features available in C99 will
41 be probed for and used when found. The perl build process does not
42 rely on anything more than C89.
44 These options, and many more, are explained in further detail below.
46 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
47 L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
49 For information on what's new in this release, see the
50 pod/perl5132delta.pod file. For more information about how to find more
51 specific detail about changes, see the Changes file.
55 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
56 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
57 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
58 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
60 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
62 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
65 Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
66 you should probably at least skim through this document before
69 In addition to this file, check if there is a README file specific to
70 your operating system, since it may provide additional or different
71 instructions for building Perl. If there is a hint file for your
72 system (in the hints/ directory) you might also want to read it
73 for even more information.
75 For additional information about porting Perl, see the section on
76 L<"Porting information"> below, and look at the files in the Porting/
81 =head2 Changes and Incompatibilities
83 Please see pod/perl5132delta.pod for a description of the changes and
84 potential incompatibilities introduced with this release. A few of
85 the most important issues are listed below, but you should refer
86 to pod/perl5132delta.pod for more detailed information.
88 B<WARNING:> This version is not binary compatible with prior releases of Perl.
89 If you have built extensions (i.e. modules that include C code)
90 using an earlier version of Perl, you will need to rebuild and reinstall
93 Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
94 without reinstallation. See the discussion below on
95 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> for more details.
97 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
99 On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the changes
100 in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
101 pod/perl5132delta.pod for a description of what's changed. See your
102 installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly incomplete)
103 list of locally installed modules. Also see CPAN::autobundle for one
104 way to make a "bundle" of your currently installed modules.
108 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
109 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
110 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
111 almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
112 since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
115 At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
116 defaults from then on.
118 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
119 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
121 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
124 =head2 Common Configure options
126 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run
130 to get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
131 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
137 To compile with gcc, if it's not the default compiler on your
138 system, you should run
140 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
142 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or any another alternative
143 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
145 =item Installation prefix
147 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
148 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
149 and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below for
152 You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
153 directory when Configure prompts you, or by using the Configure command
154 line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
156 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
158 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
159 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
160 prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
161 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
162 for more details. Do not include a trailing slash, (i.e. /opt/perl/)
163 or you may experience odd test failures.
165 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
166 as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
167 attempt infinite recursion.
171 It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
172 find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
173 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
174 careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
175 vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing. If you insist
176 on replacing your vendor's perl, useful information on how it was
177 configured may be found with
181 (Check the output carefully, however, since this doesn't preserve
182 spaces in arguments to Configure. For that, you have to look carefully
183 at config_arg1, config_arg2, etc.)
185 By default, Configure will not try to link /usr/bin/perl to the current
186 version of perl. You can turn on that behavior by running
188 Configure -Dinstallusrbinperl
190 or by answering 'yes' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
192 In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to put
193 (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
194 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
195 obvious and convenient place.
197 =item Building a development release
199 For development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.9.x) if you want to
200 use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel to Configure,
201 because the default answer to the question "do you really want to
202 Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel skips that
207 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
212 =head2 Altering Configure variables for C compiler switches etc.
214 For most users, most of the Configure defaults are fine, or can easily
215 be set on the Configure command line. However, if Configure doesn't
216 have an option to do what you want, you can change Configure variables
217 after the platform hints have been run by using Configure's -A switch.
218 For example, here's how to add a couple of extra flags to C compiler
221 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_EXTERNAL_GLOB -DNO_HASH_SEED"
223 To clarify, those ccflags values are not Configure options; if passed to
224 Configure directly, they won't do anything useful (they will define a
225 variable in config.sh, but without taking any action based upon it).
226 But when passed to the compiler, those flags will activate #ifdefd code.
228 For more help on Configure switches, run
232 =head2 Major Configure-time Build Options
234 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
235 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
236 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
237 some of the main things you can change.
241 On some platforms, perl can be compiled with support for threads. To
244 sh Configure -Dusethreads
246 The default is to compile without thread support.
248 Perl used to have two different internal threads implementations. The current
249 model (available internally since 5.6, and as a user-level module since 5.8) is
250 called interpreter-based implementation (ithreads), with one interpreter per
251 thread, and explicit sharing of data. The (deprecated) 5.005 version
252 (5005threads) was removed for release 5.10.
254 The 'threads' module is for use with the ithreads implementation. The
255 'Thread' module emulates the old 5005threads interface on top of the current
258 When using threads, perl uses a dynamically-sized buffer for some of
259 the thread-safe library calls, such as those in the getpw*() family.
260 This buffer starts small, but it will keep growing until the result
261 fits. To get a fixed upper limit, you should compile Perl with
262 PERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE defined to be the number of bytes you want. One
263 way to do this is to run Configure with
264 C<-Accflags=-DPERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE=65536>.
266 =head3 Large file support
268 Since Perl 5.6.0, Perl has supported large files (files larger than
269 2 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
270 support is on by default.
272 This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files,
273 seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad in that if you are interfacing Perl
274 using some extension, the components you are connecting to must also
275 be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
276 parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
279 There's also one known limitation with the current large files
280 implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
281 section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer formats
282 like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
284 If you want to compile perl without large file support, use
286 sh Configure -Uuselargefiles
288 =head3 64 bit support
290 If your platform does not run natively at 64 bits, but can simulate
291 them with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>,
292 you can build a perl that uses 64 bits.
294 There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
295 using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
296 -Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
297 the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
299 The C<use64bitint> option does only as much as is required to get
300 64-bit integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long
301 longs") while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because
302 your pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint>
303 does not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it
304 might, but it doesn't have to). The C<use64bitint> simply means that
305 you will be able to have 64 bit-wide scalar values.
307 The C<use64bitall> option goes all the way by attempting to switch
308 integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
309 create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
310 resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
311 have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
314 Natively 64-bit systems need neither -Duse64bitint nor -Duse64bitall.
315 On these systems, it might be the default compilation mode, and there
316 is currently no guarantee that passing no use64bitall option to the
317 Configure process will build a 32bit perl. Implementing -Duse32bit*
318 options is planned for a future release of perl.
322 In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
323 range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
324 (that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
325 this support (if it is available).
329 You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
330 and the long double support.
332 =head3 Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Hashes
334 In Perls 5.8.0 and earlier it was easy to create degenerate hashes.
335 Processing such hashes would consume large amounts of CPU time,
336 enabling a "Denial of Service" attack against Perl. Such hashes may be
337 a problem for example for mod_perl sites, sites with Perl CGI scripts
338 and web services, that process data originating from external sources.
340 In Perl 5.8.1 a security feature was introduced to make it harder to
341 create such degenerate hashes. A visible side effect of this was that
342 the keys(), values(), and each() functions may return the hash elements
343 in different order between different runs of Perl even with the same
344 data. It also had unintended binary incompatibility issues with
345 certain modules compiled against Perl 5.8.0.
347 In Perl 5.8.2 an improved scheme was introduced. Hashes will return
348 elements in the same order as Perl 5.8.0 by default. On a hash by hash
349 basis, if pathological data is detected during a hash key insertion,
350 then that hash will switch to an alternative random hash seed. As
351 adding keys can always dramatically change returned hash element order,
352 existing programs will not be affected by this, unless they
353 specifically test for pre-recorded hash return order for contrived
354 data. (eg the list of keys generated by C<map {"\0"x$_} 0..15> trigger
355 randomisation) In effect the new implementation means that 5.8.1 scheme
356 is only being used on hashes which are under attack.
358 One can still revert to the old guaranteed repeatable order (and be
359 vulnerable to attack by wily crackers) by setting the environment
360 variable PERL_HASH_SEED, see L<perlrun/PERL_HASH_SEED>. Another option
361 is to add -DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT to the compilation flags (for
362 example by using C<Configure -Accflags=-DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT>), in
363 which case one has to explicitly set the PERL_HASH_SEED environment
364 variable to enable the security feature, or by adding -DNO_HASH_SEED to
365 the compilation flags to completely disable the randomisation feature.
367 B<Perl has never guaranteed any ordering of the hash keys>, and the
368 ordering has already changed several times during the lifetime of Perl
369 5. Also, the ordering of hash keys has always been, and continues to
370 be, affected by the insertion order. Note that because of this
371 randomisation for example the Data::Dumper results will be different
372 between different runs of Perl, since Data::Dumper by default dumps
373 hashes "unordered". The use of the Data::Dumper C<Sortkeys> option is
378 Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
379 TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
380 access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
381 Version 5. The corresponding Configure option is -Dusesocks.
382 You can find more about SOCKS from wikipedia at
383 L<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOCKS>.
385 =head3 Dynamic Loading
387 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading.
388 If you want to force perl to be compiled completely
389 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
390 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
391 With this option, you won't be able to use any new extension
392 (XS) module without recompiling perl itself.
394 =head3 Building a shared Perl library
396 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
397 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
398 extensions, and various extra libraries, such as -lm.
400 On systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
401 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
402 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
403 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
404 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
405 can share the same library.
407 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
408 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
409 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
412 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
413 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
414 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
417 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
418 libperl.so.5.8.8 (for Perl 5.8.8), or libperl.so.588, or simply
419 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
420 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
421 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
422 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
424 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
426 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
428 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
429 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
430 NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
431 for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
432 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
433 be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
434 library search settings. You can find the name of the environment
435 variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
437 grep ldlibpthname config.sh
439 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
440 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
441 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
444 cd t; ./perl -MTestInit misc/failing_test.t
448 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
450 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
453 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
455 for Bourne-style shells, or
457 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
459 for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
460 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And
461 again, it may be something other than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
463 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
464 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
467 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
469 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
470 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
471 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
472 install a standard Perl 5.10.0 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
473 try to build Perl 5.10.0 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
474 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
475 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
476 libperl.so.8 rather with the installed libperl.so.8? The answer is
477 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
478 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
479 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
480 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux, you can only override at runtime via
481 LD_PRELOAD, specifying the exact filename you wish to be used; and on
482 Digital Unix, you can override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the
483 _RLD_ROOT environment variable to point to the perl build directory.
485 In other words, it is generally not a good idea to try to build a perl
486 with a shared library if $archlib/CORE/$libperl already exists from a
489 A good workaround is to specify a different directory for the
490 architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING version of perl.
491 You can do this by changing all the *archlib* variables in config.sh to
492 point to your new architecture-dependent library.
494 =head3 Environment access
496 Perl often needs to write to the program's environment, such as when C<%ENV>
497 is assigned to. Many implementations of the C library function C<putenv()>
498 leak memory, so where possible perl will manipulate the environment directly
499 to avoid these leaks. The default is now to perform direct manipulation
500 whenever perl is running as a stand alone interpreter, and to call the safe
501 but potentially leaky C<putenv()> function when the perl interpreter is
502 embedded in another application. You can force perl to always use C<putenv()>
503 by compiling with -DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV. You can force an embedded perl to
504 use direct manipulation by setting C<PL_use_safe_putenv = 0;> after the
505 C<perl_construct()> call.
507 =head2 Installation Directories
509 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
510 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the installation
511 questions are near the beginning of Configure. Do not include trailing
512 slashes on directory names. At any point during the Configure process,
513 you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use the defaults
514 from then on. Alternatively, you can
516 grep '^install' config.sh
518 after Configure has run to verify the installation paths.
520 The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
521 people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
522 distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
523 need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
524 you can safely skip the next section.
526 The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
530 =item Directories for the perl distribution
532 By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.13.1.
533 $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
534 5.13.1 or 5.9.5, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
535 determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
536 variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
538 Configure variable Default value
539 $prefixexp /usr/local
540 $binexp $prefixexp/bin
541 $scriptdirexp $prefixexp/bin
542 $privlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version
543 $archlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
544 $man1direxp $prefixexp/man/man1
545 $man3direxp $prefixexp/man/man3
549 $prefixexp is generated from $prefix, with ~ expansion done to convert home
550 directories into absolute paths. Similarly for the other variables listed. As
551 file system calls do not do this, you should always reference the ...exp
552 variables, to support users who build perl in their home directory.
554 Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
555 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
556 instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
557 directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
558 the common style is shown here.
560 =item Directories for site-specific add-on files
562 After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
563 CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
564 be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
566 Configure variable Default value
567 $siteprefixexp $prefixexp
568 $sitebinexp $siteprefixexp/bin
569 $sitescriptexp $siteprefixexp/bin
570 $sitelibexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
571 $sitearchexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
572 $siteman1direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man1
573 $siteman3direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man3
574 $sitehtml1direxp (none)
575 $sitehtml3direxp (none)
577 By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
578 modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
580 =item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
582 Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
583 distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
584 for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
586 Configure variable Default value
587 $vendorprefixexp (none)
588 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
589 $vendorbinexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
590 $vendorscriptexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
592 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
594 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
595 $vendorman1direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man1
596 $vendorman3direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man3
597 $vendorhtml1direxp (none)
598 $vendorhtml3direxp (none)
600 These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
601 a vendor might choose the following settings:
604 $siteprefix /usr/local
607 This would have the effect of setting the following:
610 $scriptdirexp /usr/bin
611 $privlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version
612 $archlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
613 $man1direxp /usr/man/man1
614 $man3direxp /usr/man/man3
616 $sitebinexp /usr/local/bin
617 $sitescriptexp /usr/local/bin
618 $sitelibexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
619 $sitearchexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
620 $siteman1direxp /usr/local/man/man1
621 $siteman3direxp /usr/local/man/man3
623 $vendorbinexp /usr/bin
624 $vendorscriptexp /usr/bin
625 $vendorlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
626 $vendorarchexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
627 $vendorman1direxp /usr/man/man1
628 $vendorman3direxp /usr/man/man3
630 Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
631 /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
632 the /usr/local hierarchy.
634 The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
635 version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
636 However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
637 installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
638 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below for more details
639 on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
641 Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
642 example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
643 are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
644 site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
645 network. One way to do that would be something like
647 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
651 As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
652 variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
653 directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
654 Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
655 version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
657 For example, if you have a bundle of perl libraries from a previous
658 installation, perhaps in a strange place:
660 Configure -Dotherlibdirs=/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1
664 There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
665 that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
666 separated list of directories, like this
668 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
670 The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
671 ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
672 modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
673 touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
674 version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
675 present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
676 directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
677 run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
679 =item usesitecustomize
681 Run-time customization of @INC can be enabled with:
683 sh Configure -Dusesitecustomize
685 which will define USE_SITECUSTOMIZE and $Config{usesitecustomize}.
686 When enabled, this makes perl run F<$sitelibexp/sitecustomize.pl> before
687 anything else. This script can then be set up to add additional
692 By default, man pages will be installed in $man1dir and $man3dir, which
693 are normally /usr/local/man/man1 and /usr/local/man/man3. If you
694 want to use a .3pm suffix for perl man pages, you can do that with
696 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
700 Currently, the standard perl installation does not do anything with
701 HTML documentation, but that may change in the future. Further, some
702 add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The html Configure
703 variables listed above are provided if you wish to specify where such
704 documents should be placed. The default is "none", but will likely
705 eventually change to something useful based on user feedback.
709 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
710 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
713 Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
714 directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
717 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
718 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
719 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below.
721 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
722 library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
723 suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
725 Thus, for example, if you Configure with
726 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.9.0 are
728 Configure variable Default value
729 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0
730 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0/$archname
731 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0
732 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0/$archname
734 =head2 Changing the installation directory
736 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
737 associated files) should be installed, and the directory in which it
738 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
739 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
740 However, sites that use package management software such as rpm or
741 dpkg, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
742 wish to install perl into a different directory before moving perl
743 to its final destination. There are two ways to do that:
749 To install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory, use the following
752 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
754 (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
756 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
757 modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
758 follow this example. That's why it's usually better to use DESTDIR,
759 as shown in the next section.
763 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is convenient
764 to compile it once and create an archive that can be installed on
765 multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to create an
766 archive that can be installed in /opt/perl. One way to do that is by
767 using the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>. The DESTDIR is
768 automatically prepended to all the installation paths. Thus you
771 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
774 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
775 cd /tmp/perl5/opt/perl
776 tar cvf /tmp/perl5-archive.tar .
780 =head2 Relocatable @INC
782 To create a relocatable perl tree, use the following command line:
784 sh Configure -Duserelocatableinc
786 Then the paths in @INC (and everything else in %Config) can be
787 optionally located via the path of the perl executable.
789 That means that, if the string ".../" is found at the start of any
790 path, it's substituted with the directory of $^X. So, the relocation
791 can be configured on a per-directory basis, although the default with
792 "-Duserelocatableinc" is that everything is relocated. The initial
793 install is done to the original configured prefix.
795 This option is not compatible with the building of a shared libperl
796 ("-Duseshrplib"), because in that case perl is linked with an hard-coded
797 rpath that points at the libperl.so, that cannot be relocated.
799 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
801 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
802 answers (such as installation directories) in the Policy.sh file.
803 If you want to build perl on another system using the same policy
804 defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file to the new system's perl build
805 directory, and Configure will use it. This will work even if Policy.sh was
806 generated for another version of Perl, or on a system with a
807 different architecture and/or operating system. However, in such cases,
808 you should review the contents of the file before using it: for
809 example, your new target may not keep its man pages in the same place
810 as the system on which the file was generated.
812 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
817 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
819 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
821 If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
822 to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
823 platform-specific hints files.
825 =head2 Disabling older versions of Perl
827 Configure will search for binary compatible versions of previously
828 installed perl binaries in the tree that is specified as target tree,
829 and these will be used as locations to search for modules by the perl
830 being built. The list of perl versions found will be put in the Configure
831 variable inc_version_list.
833 To disable this use of older perl modules, even completely valid pure perl
834 modules, you can specify to not include the paths found:
836 sh Configure -Dinc_version_list=none ...
838 When using the newer perl, you can add these paths again in the
839 $PERL5LIB environment variable or with perl's -I runtime option.
841 =head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
843 Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
844 where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
845 read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
846 architectures. You can do this (if your file system supports symbolic
849 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
850 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
851 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
853 This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
854 pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
855 unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
861 as usual, and Perl will be built in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
863 =head2 Building a debugging perl
865 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
866 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
867 you probably want to have support for perl internal debugging code
868 (activated by adding -DDEBUGGING to ccflags), and/or support for the
869 system debugger by adding -g to the optimisation flags. For that,
872 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING
876 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING=<mode>
878 For a more eye appealing call, -DEBUGGING is defined to be an alias
879 for -DDEBUGGING. For both, the -U calls are also supported, in order
880 to be able to overrule the hints or Policy.sh settings.
882 Here are the DEBUGGING modes:
890 =item -DEBUGGING=both
892 Sets both -DDEBUGGING in the ccflags, and adds -g to optimize.
894 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently (see below),
895 but usually it's convenient to have both.
901 Adds -g to optimize, but does not set -DDEBUGGING.
903 (Note: Your system may actually require something like cc -g2.
904 Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for your system.)
906 =item -DEBUGGING=none
910 Removes -g from optimize, and -DDEBUGGING from ccflags.
914 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
915 versions of perl under L<Building a shared Perl library>.
917 Note that a perl built with -DDEBUGGING will be bigger and will run more
918 slowly than a standard perl.
920 =head2 DTrace support
922 On platforms where DTrace is available, it may be enabled by
923 using the -Dusedtrace option to Configure. DTrace probes are available for
924 subroutine entry (sub-entry) and subroutine exit (sub-exit). Here's a
925 simple D script that uses them:
927 perl$target:::sub-entry, perl$target:::sub-return {
928 printf("%s %s (%s:%d)\n", probename == "sub-entry" ? "->" : "<-",
929 copyinstr(arg0), copyinstr(arg1), arg2);
935 Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
936 in the ext/ subdirectory.
938 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
939 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
940 only if it is able to find the gdbm library.
942 To disable certain extensions so that they are not built, use the
943 -Dnoextensions=... and -Donlyextensions=... options. They both accept
944 a space-separated list of extensions, such as C<IPC/SysV>. The extensions
946 C<noextensions> are removed from the list of extensions to build, while
947 the C<onlyextensions> is rather more severe and builds only the listed
948 extensions. The latter should be used with extreme caution since
949 certain extensions are used by many other extensions and modules:
950 examples of such modules include Fcntl and IO. The order of processing
951 these options is first C<only> (if present), then C<no> (if present).
953 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
954 the extensions you want.
956 If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
957 running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
958 extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
959 it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
960 has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
961 extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
962 convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
963 you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
964 dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
965 Another way of specifying extra modules is described in
966 L<"Adding extra modules to the build"> below.
968 If you re-use an old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
969 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
970 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
973 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
975 Perl comes with interfaces to number of libraries, including threads,
976 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For the *db* extension, if
977 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
978 automatically include that extension. The threading extension needs
979 to be specified explicitely (see L<Threads>).
981 Those libraries are not distributed with perl. If your header (.h) files
982 for those libraries are not in a directory normally searched by your C
983 compiler, then you will need to include the appropriate -I/your/directory
984 option when prompted by Configure. If your libraries are not in a
985 directory normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will
986 need to include the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted
987 by Configure. See the examples below.
993 =item gdbm in /usr/local
995 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
996 GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
997 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
998 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
999 necessary steps out automatically.
1001 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1002 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include, if it's
1003 not here yet. Similarly, when Configure prompts you for linker flags,
1004 you should include -L/usr/local/lib.
1006 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
1007 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1010 Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1011 you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1012 /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
1014 =item BerkeleyDB in /usr/local/BerkeleyDB
1016 The version of BerkeleyDB distributed by sleepycat.com installs in a
1017 version-specific directory by default, typically something like
1018 /usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7. To have Configure find that, you need to add
1019 -I/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/include to cc flags, as in the previous example,
1020 and you will also have to take extra steps to help Configure find -ldb.
1021 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for library directories,
1022 add /usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib to the list. Also, you will need to
1023 add appropriate linker flags to tell the runtime linker where to find the
1024 BerkeleyDB shared libraries.
1026 It is possible to specify this from the command line (all on one
1030 -Dlocincpth='/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/include /usr/local/include' \
1031 -Dloclibpth='/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib /usr/local/lib' \
1032 -Aldflags='-R/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib'
1034 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1035 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1037 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
1038 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives.
1040 The addition to ldflags is so that the dynamic linker knows where to find
1041 the BerkeleyDB libraries. For Linux and Solaris, the -R option does that.
1042 Other systems may use different flags. Use the appropriate flag for your
1047 =head2 Overriding an old config.sh
1049 If you want to use an old config.sh produced by a previous run of
1050 Configure, but override some of the items with command line options, you
1051 need to use B<Configure -O>.
1053 =head2 GNU-style configure
1055 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
1056 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
1058 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
1060 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
1063 ./configure.gnu --help
1067 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
1068 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
1070 =head2 Malloc Issues
1072 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
1073 so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
1074 the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
1075 version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
1076 perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
1077 than your system malloc.
1079 However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
1080 experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
1081 that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
1082 (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
1086 =item Using the system malloc
1088 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
1090 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
1092 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
1094 Note that Perl's malloc isn't always used by default; that actually
1095 depends on your system. For example, on Linux and FreeBSD (and many more
1096 systems), Configure chooses to use the system's malloc by default.
1097 See the appropriate file in the F<hints/> directory to see how the
1100 =item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
1102 NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you just
1103 run Configure to accept all the defaults.
1105 Perl's malloc family of functions are normally called Perl_malloc(),
1106 Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree().
1107 These names do not clash with the system versions of these functions.
1109 If this flag is enabled, however, Perl's malloc family of functions
1110 will have the same names as the system versions. This may be required
1111 sometimes if you have libraries that like to free() data that may have
1112 been allocated by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1114 Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1115 from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1116 does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1119 =item -DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS
1121 This flag enables debugging mstats, which is required to use the
1122 Devel::Peek::mstat() function. You cannot enable this unless you are
1123 using Perl's malloc, so a typical Configure command would be
1125 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS -Dusemymalloc
1127 to enable this option.
1131 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1133 If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1134 If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1138 =item Running Configure Interactively
1140 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1141 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1144 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1145 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1146 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1147 will use the defaults from then on.
1149 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1150 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1151 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1155 Hint files tell Configure about a number of things:
1161 The peculiarities or conventions of particular platforms -- non-standard
1162 library locations and names, default installation locations for binaries,
1167 The deficiencies of the platform -- for example, library functions that,
1168 although present, are too badly broken to be usable; or limits on
1169 resources that are generously available on most platforms.
1173 How best to optimize for the platform, both in terms of binary size and/or
1174 speed, and for Perl feature support. Because of wide variations in the
1175 implementation of shared libraries and of threading, for example, Configure
1176 often needs hints in order to be able to use these features.
1180 The perl distribution includes many system-specific hints files
1181 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1182 will offer to use that hint file. Unless you have a very good reason
1183 not to, you should accept its offer.
1185 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1186 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1187 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1188 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
1189 file, which also explains hint files known as callback-units.
1191 Note that any hint file is read before any Policy file, meaning that
1192 Policy overrides hints -- see L</Site-wide Policy settings>.
1196 If you are re-using an old config.sh, it's possible that Configure detects
1197 different values from the ones specified in this file. You will almost
1198 always want to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something
1201 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1202 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1203 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1204 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1207 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1208 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1209 Keep the previous value? [y]
1211 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1212 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1213 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1215 =item Changing Compilers
1217 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1218 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1219 rename it, then rerun Configure with the options you want to use.
1221 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1223 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1224 them to all the .SH files by running
1228 You will then have to rebuild by running
1233 =item config.over and config.arch
1235 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride
1236 Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1237 before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1238 however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1239 This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1241 There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1242 config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1243 architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1244 hints file that creates the config.arch.
1248 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1249 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1250 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1252 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1253 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1258 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1259 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1260 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1261 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1262 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1263 lost the next time you run Configure.
1265 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1266 see the file hints/README.hints.
1268 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1269 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1276 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1277 Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1278 system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1279 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1282 =item Porting information
1284 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan 9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1285 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1286 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1287 subdirectory. Porting/Glossary should especially come in handy.
1289 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1290 http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
1291 various other operating systems.
1293 If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture, study carefully the
1294 section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1295 in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file pod/perlrepository.pod.
1296 Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1300 =head2 Adding extra modules to the build
1302 You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1303 CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1304 command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1306 Configure -Dextras="Bundle::LWP DBI"
1308 or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
1309 then answer "Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
1310 The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
1311 This will only work if those modules are to be built as dynamic
1312 extensions. If you wish to include those extra modules as static
1313 extensions, see L<"Extensions"> above.
1315 Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1316 modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1317 or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1318 do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1320 Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1321 dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
1322 For example: you will need to have the Foo database specific
1323 headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1324 process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1328 suidperl was an optional component of earlier releases of perl. It is no
1329 longer available. Instead, use a tool specifically designed to handle
1330 changes in privileges, such as B<sudo>.
1334 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1335 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1336 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1337 makefile, not Makefile, since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1338 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1339 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1341 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1346 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1348 =head2 Expected errors
1350 These error reports are normal, and can be ignored:
1353 make: [extra.pods] Error 1 (ignored)
1355 make: [extras.make] Error 1 (ignored)
1357 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1359 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1360 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1361 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1362 then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1368 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1369 for further tips and information.
1373 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1374 during the building of extensions, run
1378 to test your version of miniperl.
1382 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1383 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1384 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1385 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1386 whole L<perllocale/"LOCALE PROBLEMS"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1387 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1389 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1390 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1393 are supported and installed on your system.
1394 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1398 =item other environment variables
1400 Configure does not check for environment variables that can sometimes
1401 have a major influence on how perl is built or tested. For example,
1402 OBJECT_MODE on AIX determines the way the compiler and linker deal with
1403 their objects, but this is a variable that only influences build-time
1404 behaviour, and should not affect the perl scripts that are eventually
1405 executed by the perl binary. Other variables, like PERL_UNICODE,
1406 PERL5LIB, and PERL5OPT will influence the behaviour of the test suite.
1407 So if you are getting strange test failures, you may want to try
1408 retesting with the various PERL variables unset.
1412 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1413 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1414 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1415 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by installing gcc
1416 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1417 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1418 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1422 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1423 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1425 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1426 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1427 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1429 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1430 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1432 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1434 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1435 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1436 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1437 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1438 of your local set-up.
1442 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1443 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1446 sh Configure -Uusenm
1448 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1449 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1452 =item umask not found
1454 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1455 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1456 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1457 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1458 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1462 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1463 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1464 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1465 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1466 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1470 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1471 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1472 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1476 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1477 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1478 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1479 on L<"nm extraction">.
1481 =item __inet_* errors
1483 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1484 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1485 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1486 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1487 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1488 newer version of BIND (and remove the files the old one left behind).
1489 If you can't, you can either link with the updated resolver library provided
1490 with BIND 8.1 or rename /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and
1491 test process to avoid the problem.
1493 =item .*_r() prototype NOT found
1495 On a related note, if you see a bunch of complaints like the above about
1496 reentrant functions - specifically networking-related ones - being present
1497 but without prototypes available, check to see if BIND 8.1 (or possibly
1498 other BIND 8 versions) is (or has been) installed. They install
1499 header files such as netdb.h into places such as /usr/local/include (or into
1500 another directory as specified at build/install time), at least optionally.
1501 Remove them or put them in someplace that isn't in the C preprocessor's
1502 header file include search path (determined by -I options plus defaults,
1503 normally /usr/include).
1505 =item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1507 This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1508 gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1509 changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1510 rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1511 update your gcc installation.
1515 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1516 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1524 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1525 with B<make depend; make>.
1527 =item Missing functions and Undefined symbols
1529 If the build of miniperl fails with a long list of missing functions or
1530 undefined symbols, check the libs variable in the config.sh file. It
1531 should look something like
1533 libs='-lsocket -lnsl -ldl -lm -lc'
1535 The exact libraries will vary from system to system, but you typically
1536 need to include at least the math library -lm. Normally, Configure
1537 will suggest the correct defaults. If the libs variable is empty, you
1538 need to start all over again. Run
1542 and start from the very beginning. This time, unless you are sure of
1543 what you are doing, accept the default list of libraries suggested by
1546 If the libs variable looks correct, you might have the
1547 L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1549 If you stil have missing routines or undefined symbols, you probably
1550 need to add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature
1551 that Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete. If
1552 you used a hint file, see if it has any relevant advice. You can also
1553 look through through config.h for likely suspects.
1557 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1558 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1559 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1560 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1561 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1564 =item Missing dbmclose
1566 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1567 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1569 =item error: too few arguments to function 'dbmclose'
1571 Building ODBM_File on some (Open)SUSE distributions might run into this
1572 error, as the header file is broken. There are two ways to deal with this
1574 1. Disable the use of ODBM_FILE
1576 Configure ... -Dnoextensions=ODBM_File
1578 2. Fix the header file, somewhat like this:
1580 --- a/usr/include/dbm.h 2010-03-24 08:54:59.000000000 +0100
1581 +++ b/usr/include/dbm.h 2010-03-24 08:55:15.000000000 +0100
1582 @@ -59,4 +59,4 @@ extern datum firstkey __P((void));
1584 extern datum nextkey __P((datum key));
1586 -extern int dbmclose __P((DBM *));
1587 +extern int dbmclose __P((void));
1589 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1591 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1592 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1593 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1594 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1595 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1596 Most users will see warnings for the ones they don't have. The
1597 phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to reassure you that nothing
1598 unusual is happening, and the build process is continuing.
1600 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1603 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1605 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1606 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1607 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1609 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1610 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1611 quite that tightly coordinated.
1613 =item sh: ar: not found
1615 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1616 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1617 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1618 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1621 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1623 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1624 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1625 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1627 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1629 If you get this error message from the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem test, your System
1630 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1631 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1632 to include the System V semaphores.
1634 =item ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem........semget: No space left on device
1636 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1637 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1638 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1639 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1644 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1645 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1646 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1647 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1648 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1649 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1650 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1651 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1653 =item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1655 The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1656 make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1657 archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1658 C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1659 archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1660 incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1661 official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1662 that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1663 archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1665 =item invalid token: ##
1667 You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. To compile Perl, you
1668 need to use a compiler that supports ANSI C. If there is a README
1669 file for your system, it may have further details on your compiler
1674 Some additional things that have been reported:
1676 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1678 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1680 UTS may need one or more of -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1682 FreeBSD can fail the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1683 configured in the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1684 you will get a message telling you what to do.
1686 Building Perl on a system that has also BIND (headers and libraries)
1687 installed may run into troubles because BIND installs its own netdb.h
1688 and socket.h, which may not agree with the operating system's ideas of
1689 the same files. Similarly, including -lbind may conflict with libc's
1690 view of the world. You may have to tweak -Dlocincpth and -Dloclibpth
1695 =head2 Cross-compilation
1697 Perl can be cross-compiled. It is just not trivial, cross-compilation
1698 rarely is. Perl is routinely cross-compiled for many platforms (as of
1699 June 2005 at least PocketPC aka WinCE, Open Zaurus, EPOC, Symbian, and
1700 the IBM OS/400). These platforms are known as the B<target> platforms,
1701 while the systems where the compilation takes place are the B<host>
1704 What makes the situation difficult is that first of all,
1705 cross-compilation environments vary significantly in how they are set
1706 up and used, and secondly because the primary way of configuring Perl
1707 (using the rather large Unix-tool-dependent Configure script) is not
1708 awfully well suited for cross-compilation. However, starting from
1709 version 5.8.0, the Configure script also knows one way of supporting
1710 cross-compilation support, please keep reading.
1712 See the following files for more information about compiling Perl for
1713 the particular platforms:
1717 =item WinCE/PocketPC
1739 Packaging and transferring either the core Perl modules or CPAN
1740 modules to the target platform is also left up to the each
1741 cross-compilation environment. Often the cross-compilation target
1742 platforms are somewhat limited in diskspace: see the section
1743 L<Minimizing the Perl installation> to learn more of the minimal set
1744 of files required for a functional Perl installation.
1746 For some cross-compilation environments the Configure option
1747 C<-Dinstallprefix=...> might be handy, see L<Changing the installation
1750 About the cross-compilation support of Configure: what is known to
1751 work is running Configure in a cross-compilation environment and
1752 building the miniperl executable. What is known not to work is
1753 building the perl executable because that would require building
1754 extensions: Dynaloader statically and File::Glob dynamically, for
1755 extensions one needs MakeMaker and MakeMaker is not yet
1756 cross-compilation aware, and neither is the main Makefile.
1758 The cross-compilation setup of Configure has successfully been used in
1759 at least two Linux cross-compilation environments. The setups were
1760 both such that the host system was Intel Linux with a gcc built for
1761 cross-compiling into ARM Linux, and there was a SSH connection to the
1764 To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch that
1765 has to be used is C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
1767 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1769 This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
1770 symbol C<usecrosscompile> available, and C<xconfig.h> will be used
1771 for cross-compilation.
1773 During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1774 into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1775 cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1776 target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1777 transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1778 the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1779 methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1780 F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1782 To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1783 the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1784 happens), supply Configure with
1786 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1788 The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
1789 must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1790 You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
1794 but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
1796 Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
1797 which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
1798 This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
1799 In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
1802 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
1804 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1805 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1806 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
1808 If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
1809 compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
1810 C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
1811 (The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
1812 as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
1813 will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
1814 in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
1816 In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
1817 choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
1820 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
1822 Putting it all together:
1824 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1825 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1826 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
1828 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
1829 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1830 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1831 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1832 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
1835 or if you are happy with the defaults:
1837 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1838 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1839 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1842 Another example where the cross-compiler has been installed under
1843 F</usr/local/arm/2.95.5>:
1845 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1846 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1847 -Dcc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/bin/arm-linux-gcc \
1848 -Dincpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
1849 -Dusrinc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
1850 -Dlibpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/lib
1854 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
1855 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
1856 wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1858 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1859 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1860 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1862 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1864 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1865 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1866 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1868 ./perl -MTestInit t/op/groups.t
1870 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1871 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1873 cd t ; ./perl harness <list of tests>
1875 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1876 complicated constructs). If no list of tests is provided, harness
1879 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1880 comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
1881 shared library path if you get errors like:
1883 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
1885 See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
1891 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1892 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1893 'make test' exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1894 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1895 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1896 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1898 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1904 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1906 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1907 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1908 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1909 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1910 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1911 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1914 =item Timing problems
1916 Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
1917 sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
1918 If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough,
1919 these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again
1920 with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive
1921 and load-sensitive tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
1922 F<ext/Time-HiRes/t/HiRes.t>, F<ext/threads-shared/t/waithires.t>,
1923 F<ext/threads-shared/t/stress.t>, F<lib/Benchmark.t>,
1924 F<lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t>, and F<lib/Memoize/t/speed.t>.
1926 You might also experience some failures in F<t/op/stat.t> if you build
1927 perl on an NFS filesystem, if the remote clock and the system clock are
1932 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1933 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
1934 For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
1935 test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
1937 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1939 cd t; ./perl -MTestInit op/pat.t
1941 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1942 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1943 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1944 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1946 =item libgcc_s.so.1: cannot open shared object file
1948 This message has been reported on gcc-3.2.3 and earlier installed with
1949 a non-standard prefix. Setting the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable
1950 (or equivalent) to include gcc's lib/ directory with the libgcc_s.so.1
1951 shared library should fix the problem.
1953 =item Failures from lib/File/Temp/t/security saying "system possibly insecure"
1955 First, such warnings are not necessarily serious or indicative of a
1956 real security threat. That being said, they bear investigating.
1958 Note that each of the tests is run twice. The first time is in the
1959 directory returned by File::Spec->tmpdir() (often /tmp on Unix
1960 systems), and the second time in the directory from which the test was
1961 run (usually the 't' directory, if the test was run as part of 'make
1964 The tests may fail for the following reasons:
1966 (1) If the directory the tests are being run in is owned by somebody
1967 other than the user running the tests, or by root (uid 0).
1969 This failure can happen if the Perl source code distribution is
1970 unpacked in such a way that the user ids in the distribution package
1971 are used as-is. Some tar programs do this.
1973 (2) If the directory the tests are being run in is writable by group or
1974 by others, and there is no sticky bit set for the directory. (With
1975 UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to a directory means the right to
1976 add or remove files in that directory. The 'sticky bit' is a feature
1977 used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if the bit is
1978 set for a directory, no one but the owner (or root) can remove that
1979 file even if the permissions would otherwise allow file removal by
1982 This failure may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the
1983 permissions policy used on this particular system. This failure can
1984 also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit (this
1985 is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle File::Temp
1986 should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or if the system
1987 supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons it is not being
1988 used. This is, for example, the case with HP-UX: as of HP-UX release
1989 11.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX doesn't use it
1990 on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also, as with the permissions, some
1991 local policy might dictate that the stickiness is not used.
1993 (3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
1994 any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
1995 directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
1996 (2). For Unix systems, this is usually not an issue if you are
1997 building on a local disk. See the documentation for the File::Temp
1998 module for more information about 'chown giveaway'.
2000 See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
2001 about the various security aspects of temporary files.
2005 The core distribution can now run its regression tests in parallel on
2006 Unix-like platforms. Instead of running C<make test>, set C<TEST_JOBS> in
2007 your environment to the number of tests to run in parallel, and run
2008 C<make test_harness>. On a Bourne-like shell, this can be done as
2010 TEST_JOBS=3 make test_harness # Run 3 tests in parallel
2012 An environment variable is used, rather than parallel make itself, because
2013 L<TAP::Harness> needs to be able to schedule individual non-conflicting test
2014 scripts itself, and there is no standard interface to C<make> utilities to
2015 interact with their job schedulers.
2019 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
2020 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
2021 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
2022 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
2023 are not root, you must still have permission to install into the directories
2024 in question and you should ignore any messages about chown not working.
2026 If "make install" just says "`install' is up to date" or something
2027 similar, you may be on a case-insensitive filesystems such as Mac's HFS+,
2028 and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion is brought to you
2029 by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
2031 =head2 Installing perl under different names
2033 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
2034 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
2035 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
2037 make install PERLNAME=myperl
2039 You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
2040 "perl5.8.9") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
2042 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
2044 This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (e.g. to
2045 avoid conflicts with an ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor).
2046 Without this the versioned binary would be called "perl55.8.8".
2048 =head2 Installing perl under a different directory
2050 You can install perl under a different destination directory by using
2051 the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>, with a command like
2053 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
2055 DESTDIR is automatically prepended to all the installation paths. See
2056 the example in L<"DESTDIR"> above.
2058 =head2 Installed files
2060 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
2061 anything, you can run
2063 ./perl installperl -n
2064 ./perl installman -n
2066 make install will install the following:
2071 perl5.n.n where 5.n.n is the current release number. This
2072 will be a link to perl.
2074 sperl5.n.n If you requested setuid emulation.
2075 a2p awk-to-perl translator
2079 cppstdin This is used by the deprecated switch perl -P, if
2080 your cc -E can't read from stdin.
2081 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
2082 config_data Manage Module::Build-like module configuration
2083 corelist Shows versions of modules that come with different
2086 cpan2dist The CPANPLUS distribution creator
2087 cpanp The CPANPLUS shell
2088 cpanp-run-perl An helper for cpanp
2089 dprofpp Perl code profiler post-processor
2090 enc2xs Encoding module generator
2091 find2perl find-to-perl translator
2092 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
2093 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
2094 instmodsh A shell to examine installed modules.
2095 libnetcfg Configure libnet.
2096 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
2097 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
2098 perlivp Perl Installation Verification Procedure
2099 piconv A Perl implementation of the encoding conversion
2101 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
2102 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
2103 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
2107 podchecker POD syntax checker
2108 podselect Prints sections of POD documentation
2109 prove A command-line tool for running tests
2110 psed A Perl implementation of sed
2111 ptar A Perl implementation of tar
2112 ptardiff A diff for tar archives
2113 s2p sed-to-perl translator
2114 shasum A tool to print or check SHA checksums
2115 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
2116 xsubpp Compiler to convert Perl XS code into C code
2120 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
2121 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
2125 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2127 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
2128 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2130 installperl will also create the directories listed above
2131 in L<"Installation Directories">.
2133 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
2134 under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
2135 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2136 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
2138 =head2 Installing only version-specific parts
2140 Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2141 installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
2142 perl alongside an already installed production version without
2143 disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2144 To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2146 Configure -Dversiononly
2148 or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2149 you can just manually run
2151 ./perl installperl -v
2153 and skip installman altogether.
2155 See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2158 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2160 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2161 system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2162 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2163 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2164 library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2166 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2167 of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2168 hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2169 For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2172 =head1 installhtml --help
2174 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2175 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2176 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2178 Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2179 html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2181 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2186 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2188 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2189 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2190 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2191 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2192 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
2195 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2196 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2197 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2198 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2199 (and would welcome patches for them).
2201 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2202 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2204 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2206 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2207 available in TeX format. Type
2209 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2211 =head1 Starting all over again
2213 If you wish to re-build perl from the same build directory, you should
2214 clean it out with the command
2222 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
2223 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
2225 If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
2226 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
2227 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should not re-use
2230 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
2231 installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
2232 using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
2235 =head1 Reporting Problems
2237 Wherever possible please use the perlbug tool supplied with this Perl
2238 to report problems, as it automatically includes summary configuration
2239 information about your perl, which may help us track down problems far
2240 more quickly. But first you should read the advice in this file,
2241 carefully re-read the error message and check the relevant manual pages
2242 on your system, as these may help you find an immediate solution. If
2243 you are not sure whether what you are seeing is a bug, you can send a
2244 message describing the problem to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup to
2247 The perlbug tool is installed along with perl, so after you have
2248 completed C<make install> it should be possible to run it with plain
2249 C<perlbug>. If the install fails, or you want to report problems with
2250 C<make test> without installing perl, then you can use C<make nok> to
2251 run perlbug to report the problem, or run it by hand from this source
2252 directory with C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug>
2254 If the build fails too early to run perlbug uninstalled, then please
2255 B<run> the C<./myconfig> shell script, and mail its output along with
2256 an accurate description of your problem to perlbug@perl.org
2258 If Configure itself fails, and does not generate a config.sh file
2259 (needed to run C<./myconfig>), then please mail perlbug@perl.org the
2260 description of how Configure fails along with details of your system
2261 - for example the output from running C<uname -a>
2263 Please try to make your message brief but clear. Brief, clear bug
2264 reports tend to get answered more quickly. Please don't worry if your
2265 written English is not great - what matters is how well you describe
2266 the important technical details of the problem you have encountered,
2267 not whether your grammar and spelling is flawless.
2269 Trim out unnecessary information. Do not include large files (such as
2270 config.sh or a complete Configure or make log) unless absolutely
2271 necessary. Do not include a complete transcript of your build
2272 session. Just include the failing commands, the relevant error
2273 messages, and whatever preceding commands are necessary to give the
2274 appropriate context. Plain text should usually be sufficient--fancy
2275 attachments or encodings may actually reduce the number of people who
2276 read your message. Your message will get relayed to over 400
2277 subscribers around the world so please try to keep it brief but clear.
2279 If the bug you are reporting has security implications, which make it
2280 inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then please send
2281 it to perl5-security-report@perl.org. This points to a closed subscription
2282 unarchived mailing list, which includes all the core committers, who be able
2283 to help assess the impact of issues, figure out a resolution, and help
2284 co-ordinate the release of patches to mitigate or fix the problem across all
2285 platforms on which Perl is supported. Please only use this address for security
2286 issues in the Perl core, not for modules independently distributed on CPAN.
2288 If you are unsure what makes a good bug report please read "How to
2289 report Bugs Effectively" by Simon Tatham:
2290 http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html
2292 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5
2294 Perl 5.12 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
2295 In other words, you will have to recompile your XS modules.
2297 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
2298 5.X.Y) to another similar minor version (e.g. 5.X.(Y+1))) without
2299 re-compiling all of your extensions. You can also safely leave the old
2300 version around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
2302 Usually, most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to be
2303 used with a newer version of Perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
2304 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
2306 Suppose you already have version 5.8.7 installed. The directories
2307 searched by 5.8.7 are typically like:
2309 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.7/$archname
2310 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.7
2311 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7/$archname
2312 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
2314 Now, suppose you install version 5.8.8. The directories
2315 searched by version 5.8.8 will be:
2317 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.8/$archname
2318 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.8
2319 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/$archname
2320 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8
2322 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7/$archname
2323 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
2324 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2326 Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
2327 of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
2328 directories. This way, modules installed under 5.8.7 will continue
2329 to be usable by 5.8.7 but will also accessible to 5.8.8. Further,
2330 suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
2331 present only in 5.8.8. That new module will get installed into
2332 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8 and will be available to 5.8.8,
2333 but will not interfere with the 5.8.7 version.
2335 The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
2336 5.6.0 and above will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
2338 Lastly, suppose you now install 5.10.0, which is not binary compatible
2339 with 5.8.x. The directories searched by 5.10.0 (if you don't change the
2340 Configure defaults) will be:
2342 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.10.0/$archname
2343 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.10.0
2344 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0/$archname
2345 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0
2347 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8
2349 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
2351 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2353 Note that the earlier $archname entries are now gone, but pure perl
2354 modules from earlier versions will still be found.
2356 This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2357 to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2358 versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
2360 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
2362 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
2363 separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
2364 won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2365 libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2366 way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
2368 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.13.1
2370 and adding /opt/perl5.13.1/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
2371 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2372 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2374 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
2375 (e.g. 5.10 for all 5.10.x versions), but change directory with
2378 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2379 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2380 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2383 =head2 Upgrading from 5.11.0 or earlier
2385 B<Perl 5.13.1 is binary incompatible with Perl 5.11.1 and any earlier
2386 Perl release.> Perl modules having binary parts
2387 (meaning that a C compiler is used) will have to be recompiled to be
2388 used with 5.13.1. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with
2389 5.13.1, you may safely do so without disturbing the older
2390 installations. (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5">
2393 See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2394 incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
2395 perllocal.pod, not perllocale.pod, for installed module information.
2397 =head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2399 The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2400 Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2401 operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2403 Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way:
2404 Encode, with its big conversion tables, consumes a lot of
2405 space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything. The
2406 Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network
2407 programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all
2408 depends on what do you need to do.
2410 In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2411 recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2412 depends on what you need.
2414 Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2418 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2422 in Linux is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
2425 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/strict.pm
2426 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/warnings.pm
2427 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/File/Glob.pm
2428 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/XSLoader.pm
2429 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2431 Secondly, Debian perl-base package contains the following files,
2432 size about 1.9MB in its i386 version:
2437 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B.pm
2438 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B/Deparse.pm
2439 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Config.pm
2440 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Cwd.pm
2441 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Data/Dumper.pm
2442 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/DynaLoader.pm
2443 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Errno.pm
2444 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Fcntl.pm
2445 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/File/Glob.pm
2446 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO.pm
2447 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/File.pm
2448 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Handle.pm
2449 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Pipe.pm
2450 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Seekable.pm
2451 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Select.pm
2452 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket.pm
2453 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/POSIX.pm
2454 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Socket.pm
2455 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/XSLoader.pm
2456 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.bs
2457 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.so
2458 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.bs
2459 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.so
2460 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a
2461 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2462 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2463 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2464 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2465 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/extralibs.ld
2466 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs
2467 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2468 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.bs
2469 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2470 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.bs
2471 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.so
2472 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.bs
2473 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2474 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2475 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2476 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.bs
2477 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2478 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/lib.pm
2479 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/re.pm
2480 /usr/share/doc/perl-base
2481 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
2482 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2483 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian.gz
2484 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
2485 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
2486 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
2488 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/AutoLoader.pm
2489 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp.pm
2490 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp/Heavy.pm
2491 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter.pm
2492 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2493 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec.pm
2494 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2495 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/FileHandle.pm
2496 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Getopt/Long.pm
2497 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2498 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2499 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open2.pm
2500 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open3.pm
2501 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/List/Util.pm
2502 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Scalar/Util.pm
2503 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/SelectSaver.pm
2504 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Symbol.pm
2505 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/ParseWords.pm
2506 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Tabs.pm
2507 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Wrap.pm
2508 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/attributes.pm
2509 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/base.pm
2510 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes.pm
2511 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes_heavy.pl
2512 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/constant.pm
2513 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/fields.pm
2514 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/integer.pm
2515 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/locale.pm
2516 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/overload.pm
2517 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/strict.pm
2518 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8.pm
2519 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8_heavy.pl
2520 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/vars.pm
2521 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings.pm
2522 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings/register.pm
2524 A nice trick to find out the minimal set of Perl library files you will
2525 need to run a Perl program is
2527 perl -e 'do "prog.pl"; END { print "$_\n" for sort keys %INC }'
2529 (this will not find libraries required in runtime, unfortunately, but
2530 it's a minimal set) and if you want to find out all the files you can
2531 use something like the below
2533 strace perl -le 'do "x.pl"' 2>&1 | perl -nle '/^open\(\"(.+?)"/ && print $1'
2535 (The 'strace' is Linux-specific, other similar utilities include 'truss'
2538 =head2 C<-DNO_MATHOMS>
2540 If you configure perl with C<-Accflags=-DNO_MATHOMS>, the functions from
2541 F<mathoms.c> will not be compiled in. Those functions are no longer used
2542 by perl itself; for source compatibility reasons, though, they weren't
2545 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
2547 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2548 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
2549 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
2550 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2551 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
2555 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2556 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2557 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
2559 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2560 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2562 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2564 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2565 the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2566 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2567 a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2568 and the contact information to match your distribution.