1 If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you see.
2 It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is specially
3 designed to be readable as is.
7 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
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 perl5 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, can run Configure interactively, by
34 just typing "sh Configure" (without the -de args). You can also specify
35 any prefix location by adding "-Dprefix='/some/dir'" to Configure's args.
36 To explicitly name the perl binary, use the command
37 "make install PERLNAME=myperl".
39 These options, and many more, are explained in further detail below.
41 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
42 L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
44 For information on what's new in this release, see the
45 pod/perl5100delta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
46 changes, see the Changes file.
50 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
51 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
52 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
53 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
55 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
57 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
60 Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
61 you should probably at least skim through this document before
64 In addition to this file, check if there is a README file specific to
65 your operating system, since it may provide additional or different
66 instructions for building Perl. If there is a hint file for your
67 system (in the hints/ directory) you might also want to read it
68 for even more information.
70 For additional information about porting Perl, see the section on
71 L<"Porting information"> below, and look at the files in the Porting/
76 =head2 Changes and Incompatibilities
78 Please see pod/perl5100delta.pod for a description of the changes and
79 potential incompatibilities introduced with this release. A few of
80 the most important issues are listed below, but you should refer
81 to pod/perl5100delta.pod for more detailed information.
83 B<WARNING:> This version is not binary compatible with prior releases of Perl.
85 If you have built extensions (i.e. modules that include C code)
86 using an earlier version of Perl, you will need to rebuild and reinstall
89 Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
90 without reinstallation. See the discussion below on
91 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> for more details.
93 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
95 On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the changes
96 in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
97 pod/perl5100delta.pod for a description of what's changed. See your
98 installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly incomplete)
99 list of locally installed modules. Also see CPAN::autobundle for one
100 way to make a "bundle" of your currently installed modules.
104 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
105 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
106 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
107 almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
108 since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
111 At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
112 defaults from then on.
114 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
115 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
117 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
120 =head2 Common Configure options
122 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run
126 to get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
127 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
133 To compile with gcc, if it's not the default compiler on your
134 system, you should run
136 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
138 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or any another alternative
139 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
141 =item Installation prefix
143 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
144 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
145 and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for
148 You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
149 directory when Configure prompts you, or by using the Configure command
150 line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
152 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
154 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
155 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
156 prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
157 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
158 for more details. Do not include a trailing slash, (i.e. /opt/perl/)
159 or you may experience odd test failures.
161 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
162 as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
163 attempt infinite recursion.
167 It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
168 find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
169 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
170 careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
171 vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing. If you insist
172 on replacing your vendor's perl, useful information on how it was
173 configured may be found with
177 (Check the output carefully, however, since this doesn't preserve
178 spaces in arguments to Configure. For that, you have to look carefully
179 at config_arg1, config_arg2, etc.)
181 By default, Configure will not try to link /usr/bin/perl to the current
182 version of perl. You can turn on that behavior by running
184 Configure -Dinstallusrbinperl
186 or by answering 'yes' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
188 In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to put
189 (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
190 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
191 obvious and convenient place.
193 =item Building a development release.
195 For development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.9.x) if you want to
196 use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel to Configure,
197 because the default answer to the question "do you really want to
198 Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel skips that
203 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
208 For example for my Solaris/x86 system, I usually use
210 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
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 Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command
247 line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
249 The default is to compile without thread support.
251 Perl used to have two different internal threads implementations. The current
252 model (available internally since 5.6, and as a user-level module since 5.8) is
253 called interpreter-based implementation (ithreads), with one interpreter per
254 thread, and explicit sharing of data. The (deprecated) 5.005 version
255 (5005threads) has been removed for release 5.10.
257 The 'threads' module is for use with the ithreads implementation. The
258 'Thread' module emulates the old 5005threads interface on top of the current
261 When using threads, perl uses a dynamically-sized buffer for some of
262 the thread-safe library calls, such as those in the getpw*() family.
263 This buffer starts small, but it will keep growing until the result
264 fits. To get a fixed upper limit, you should compile Perl with
265 PERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE defined to be the number of bytes you want. One
266 way to do this is to run Configure with
267 C<-Accflags=-DPERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE=65536>.
269 =head3 Large file support
271 Since Perl 5.6.0, Perl has supported large files (files larger than
272 2 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
273 support is on by default.
275 This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files,
276 seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad in that if you are interfacing Perl
277 using some extension, the components you are connecting to must also
278 be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
279 parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
282 There's also one known limitation with the current large files
283 implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
284 section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer formats
285 like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
287 =head3 64 bit support
289 If your platform does not run natively at 64 bits, but can simulate
290 them with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>,
291 you can build a perl that uses 64 bits.
293 There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
294 using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
295 -Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
296 the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
298 The C<use64bitint> option does only as much as is required to get
299 64-bit integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long
300 longs") while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because
301 your pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint>
302 does not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it
303 might, but it doesn't have to). The C<use64bitint> simply means that
304 you will be able to have 64 bit-wide scalar values.
306 The C<use64bitall> option goes all the way by attempting to switch
307 integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
308 create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
309 resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
310 have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
313 Natively 64-bit systems need neither -Duse64bitint nor -Duse64bitall.
317 In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
318 range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
319 (that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
320 this support (if it is available).
324 You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
325 and the long double support.
327 =head3 Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Hashes
329 In Perls 5.8.0 and earlier it was easy to create degenerate hashes.
330 Processing such hashes would consume large amounts of CPU time,
331 enabling a "Denial of Service" attack against Perl. Such hashes may be
332 a problem for example for mod_perl sites, sites with Perl CGI scripts
333 and web services, that process data originating from external sources.
335 In Perl 5.8.1 a security feature was introduced to make it harder to
336 create such degenerate hashes. A visible side effect of this was that
337 the keys(), values(), and each() functions may return the hash elements
338 in different order between different runs of Perl even with the same
339 data. It also had unintended binary incompatibility issues with
340 certain modules compiled against Perl 5.8.0.
342 In Perl 5.8.2 an improved scheme was introduced. Hashes will return
343 elements in the same order as Perl 5.8.0 by default. On a hash by hash
344 basis, if pathological data is detected during a hash key insertion,
345 then that hash will switch to an alternative random hash seed. As
346 adding keys can always dramatically change returned hash element order,
347 existing programs will not be affected by this, unless they
348 specifically test for pre-recorded hash return order for contrived
349 data. (eg the list of keys generated by C<map {"\0"x$_} 0..15> trigger
350 randomisation) In effect the new implementation means that 5.8.1 scheme
351 is only being used on hashes which are under attack.
353 One can still revert to the old guaranteed repeatable order (and be
354 vulnerable to attack by wily crackers) by setting the environment
355 variable PERL_HASH_SEED, see L<perlrun/PERL_HASH_SEED>. Another option
356 is to add -DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT to the compilation flags (for
357 example by using C<Configure -Accflags=-DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT>), in
358 which case one has to explicitly set the PERL_HASH_SEED environment
359 variable to enable the security feature, or by adding -DNO_HASH_SEED to
360 the compilation flags to completely disable the randomisation feature.
362 B<Perl has never guaranteed any ordering of the hash keys>, and the
363 ordering has already changed several times during the lifetime of Perl
364 5. Also, the ordering of hash keys has always been, and continues to
365 be, affected by the insertion order. Note that because of this
366 randomisation for example the Data::Dumper results will be different
367 between different runs of Perl, since Data::Dumper by default dumps
368 hashes "unordered". The use of the Data::Dumper C<Sortkeys> option is
373 Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
374 TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
375 access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
376 Version 5. You can find more about SOCKS from http://www.socks.nec.com/
378 =head3 Dynamic Loading
380 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
381 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
382 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
383 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
385 =head3 Building a shared Perl library
387 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
388 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
389 extensions, and various extra libraries, such as -lm.
391 On systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
392 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
393 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
394 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
395 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
396 can share the same library.
398 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
399 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
400 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
403 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
404 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
405 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
408 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
409 libperl.so.5.8.8 (for Perl 5.8.8), or libperl.so.588, or simply
410 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
411 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
412 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
413 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
415 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
417 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
419 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
420 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
421 NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
422 for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
423 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
424 be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
425 library search settings. You can find the name of the environment
426 variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
428 grep ldlibpthname config.sh
430 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
431 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
432 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
435 cd t; ./perl -MTestInit misc/failing_test.t
439 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
441 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
444 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
446 for Bourne-style shells, or
448 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
450 for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
451 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And
452 again, it may be something other than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
454 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
455 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
458 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
460 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
461 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
462 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
463 install a standard Perl 5.10.0 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
464 try to build Perl 5.10.0 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
465 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
466 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
467 libperl.so.8 rather with the installed libperl.so.8? The answer is
468 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
469 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
470 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
471 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux, you can only override at runtime via
472 LD_PRELOAD, specifying the exact filename you wish to be used; and on
473 Digital Unix, you can override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the
474 _RLD_ROOT environment variable to point to the perl build directory.
476 In other words, it is generally not a good idea to try to build a perl
477 with a shared library if $archlib/CORE/$libperl already exists from a
480 A good workaround is to specify a different directory for the
481 architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING version of perl.
482 You can do this by changing all the *archlib* variables in config.sh to
483 point to your new architecture-dependent library.
485 =head3 Environment access
487 Perl often needs to write to the program's environment, such as when C<%ENV>
488 is assigned to. Many implementations of the C library function C<putenv()>
489 leak memory, so where possible perl will manipulate the environment directly
490 to avoid these leaks. The default is now to perform direct manipulation
491 whenever perl is running as a stand alone interpreter, and to call the safe
492 but potentially leaky C<putenv()> function when the perl interpreter is
493 embedded in another application. You can force perl to always use C<putenv()>
494 by compiling with -DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV. You can force an embedded perl to
495 use direct manipulation by setting C<PL_use_safe_putenv = 0;> after the
496 C<perl_construct()> call.
498 =head2 Installation Directories
500 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
501 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the installation
502 questions are near the beginning of Configure. Do not include trailing
503 slashes on directory names. At any point during the Configure process,
504 you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use the defaults
505 from then on. Alternatively, you can
507 grep '^install' config.sh
509 after Configure has run to verify the installation paths.
511 The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
512 people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
513 distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
514 need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
515 you can safely skip the next section.
517 The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
521 =item Directories for the perl distribution
523 By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.10.0.
524 $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
525 5.10.0 or 5.9.5, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
526 determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
527 variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
529 Configure variable Default value
530 $prefixexp /usr/local
531 $binexp $prefixexp/bin
532 $scriptdirexp $prefixexp/bin
533 $privlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version
534 $archlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
535 $man1direxp $prefixexp/man/man1
536 $man3direxp $prefixexp/man/man3
540 $prefixexp is generated from $prefix, with ~ expansion done to convert home
541 directories into absolute paths. Similarly for the other variables listed. As
542 file system calls do not do this, you should always reference the ...exp
543 variables, to support users who build perl in their home directory.
545 Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
546 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
547 instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
548 directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
549 the common style is shown here.
551 =item Directories for site-specific add-on files
553 After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
554 CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
555 be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
557 Configure variable Default value
558 $siteprefixexp $prefixexp
559 $sitebinexp $siteprefixexp/bin
560 $sitescriptexp $siteprefixexp/bin
561 $sitelibexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
562 $sitearchexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
563 $siteman1direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man1
564 $siteman3direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man3
565 $sitehtml1direxp (none)
566 $sitehtml3direxp (none)
568 By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
569 modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
571 =item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
573 Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
574 distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
575 for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
577 Configure variable Default value
578 $vendorprefixexp (none)
579 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
580 $vendorbinexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
581 $vendorscriptexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
583 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
585 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
586 $vendorman1direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man1
587 $vendorman3direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man3
588 $vendorhtml1direxp (none)
589 $vendorhtml3direxp (none)
591 These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
592 a vendor might choose the following settings:
595 $siteprefix /usr/local
598 This would have the effect of setting the following:
601 $scriptdirexp /usr/bin
602 $privlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version
603 $archlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
604 $man1direxp /usr/man/man1
605 $man3direxp /usr/man/man3
607 $sitebinexp /usr/local/bin
608 $sitescriptexp /usr/local/bin
609 $sitelibexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
610 $sitearchexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
611 $siteman1direxp /usr/local/man/man1
612 $siteman3direxp /usr/local/man/man3
614 $vendorbinexp /usr/bin
615 $vendorscriptexp /usr/bin
616 $vendorlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
617 $vendorarchexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
618 $vendorman1direxp /usr/man/man1
619 $vendorman3direxp /usr/man/man3
621 Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
622 /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
623 the /usr/local hierarchy.
625 The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
626 version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
627 However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
628 installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
629 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for more details
630 on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
632 Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
633 example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
634 are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
635 site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
636 network. One way to do that would be something like
638 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
642 As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
643 variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
644 directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
645 Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
646 version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
648 For example, if you have a bundle of perl libraries from a previous
649 installation, perhaps in a strange place:
651 Configure -Dotherlibdirs=/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1
655 There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
656 that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
657 separated list of directories, like this
659 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
661 The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
662 ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
663 modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
664 touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
665 version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
666 present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
667 directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
668 run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
670 =item USE_SITECUSTOMIZE
672 Run-time customization of @INC can be enabled with:
674 sh Configure -Dusesitecustomize
676 Which will define USE_SITECUSTOMIZE and $Config{usesitecustomize}.
677 When enabled, make perl run F<$sitelibexp/sitecustomize.pl> before
678 anything else. This script can then be set up to add additional
683 By default, man pages will be installed in $man1dir and $man3dir, which
684 are normally /usr/local/man/man1 and /usr/local/man/man3. If you
685 want to use a .3pm suffix for perl man pages, you can do that with
687 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
691 Currently, the standard perl installation does not do anything with
692 HTML documentation, but that may change in the future. Further, some
693 add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The html Configure
694 variables listed above are provided if you wish to specify where such
695 documents should be placed. The default is "none", but will likely
696 eventually change to something useful based on user feedback.
700 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
701 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
704 Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
705 directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
708 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
709 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
710 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below.
712 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
713 library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
714 suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
716 Thus, for example, if you Configure with
717 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.9.0 are
719 Configure variable Default value
720 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0
721 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0/$archname
722 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0
723 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0/$archname
725 =head2 Changing the installation directory
727 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
728 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
729 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
730 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
731 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
732 packages, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
733 wish to install perl into a different directory and use that
734 management software to move perl to its final destination. This
735 section describes how to do that.
737 To install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory, use the following
740 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
742 (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
744 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
745 modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
746 follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with
749 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
751 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is convenient
752 to compile it once and create an archive that can be installed on
753 multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to create an
754 archive that can be installed in /opt/perl. One way to do that is by
755 using the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>. The DESTDIR is
756 automatically prepended to all the installation paths. Thus you
759 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
762 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
763 cd /tmp/perl5/opt/perl
764 tar cvf /tmp/perl5-archive.tar .
766 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
768 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
769 answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact
770 person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another
771 system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file
772 to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate
773 hint file for your system. This will work even if Policy.sh was
774 generated for another version of Perl, or on a system with a
775 different architecture and/or operating system. However, in such cases,
776 you should review the contents of the file before using it: for
777 example, your new target may not keep its man pages in the same place
778 as the system on which the file was generated.
780 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
785 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
787 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
789 If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
790 to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
791 platform-specific hints files.
793 =head2 Disabling older versions of Perl
795 Configure will search for binary compatible versions of previously
796 installed perl binaries in the tree that is specified as target tree
797 and these will be used by the perl being built.
798 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> for more details.
800 To disable this use of older perl modules, even completely valid pure perl
801 modules, you can specify to not include the paths found:
803 sh Configure -Dinc_version_list=none ...
805 When using the newer perl, you can add these paths again in the
806 $PERL5LIB environment variable or with perl's -I runtime option.
808 =head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
810 Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
811 where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
812 read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
813 architectures. You can do this (if your file system supports symbolic
816 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
817 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
818 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
820 This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
821 pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
822 unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
826 as usual, and Perl will be built in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
828 =head2 Building a debugging perl
830 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
831 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
832 you probably want to have support for perl internal debugging code
833 (activated by adding -DDEBUGGING to ccflags), and/or support for the
834 system debugger by adding -g to optimize.
836 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING
840 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING=<mode>
842 For a more eye appealing call, -DEBUGGING is defined to be an alias
843 for -DDEBUGGING. For both, the -U calls are also supported, in order
844 to be able to overrule the hints or Policy.sh settings.
850 Which is the default, and supports the old convention of
852 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
854 This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
855 to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
856 executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
857 cc -g2. Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for
858 your system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags
859 variable in config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's
860 internal state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by default
861 if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to reuse your
862 old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the optimize and
863 ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes as shown in
864 L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
866 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
867 it's convenient to have both.
873 =item -DEBUGGING=both
875 Sets both -DDEBUGGING in the ccflags, and add -g to optimize.
879 Adds -g to optimize, but does not set -DDEBUGGING.
881 =item -DEBUGGING=none
883 Removes -g from optimize, and -DDEBUGGING from ccflags.
887 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
888 versions of perl under L<Building a shared Perl library>.
892 Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
893 in the ext/ subdirectory.
895 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
896 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
897 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
898 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
899 is always built by default. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
900 set the Configure variable useposix=false from the Configure command line.
902 If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
903 running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
904 extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
905 it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
906 has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
907 extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
908 convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
909 you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
910 dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
912 If you have dynamic loading, another way of specifying extra modules
913 is described in L<"Adding extra modules to the build"> below.
915 You can learn more about each of the supplied extensions by consulting the
916 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
919 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
920 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
921 version. Configure will suggest this as the default.
923 To disable certain extensions so that they are not built, use the
924 -Dnoextensions=... and -Donlyextensions=... options. They both accept
925 a space-separated list of extensions. The extensions listed in
926 C<noextensions> are removed from the list of extensions to build, while
927 the C<onlyextensions> is rather more severe and builds only the listed
928 extensions. The latter should be used with extreme caution since
929 certain extensions are used by many other extensions and modules:
930 examples of such modules include Fcntl and IO. The order of processing
931 these options is first C<only> (if present), then C<no> (if present).
933 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
934 the extensions you want.
936 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley
937 DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect
938 this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with earlier
939 releases of version 2.
941 If you re-use an old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
942 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
943 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
946 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern systems do)
947 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
948 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
949 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
951 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
953 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
954 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
955 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
956 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
957 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
958 how to obtain the libraries.
960 If your database header (.h) files are not in a directory normally
961 searched by your C compiler, then you will need to include the
962 appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by Configure. If
963 your database libraries are not in a directory normally
964 searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to include
965 the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by Configure.
966 See the examples below.
972 =item gdbm in /usr/local
974 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
975 GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
976 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
977 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
978 necessary steps out automatically.
980 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
981 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
983 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
986 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
987 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
990 Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
991 you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
992 /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
994 =item gdbm in /usr/you
996 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
997 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
998 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
999 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
1000 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
1001 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
1002 /usr/you/lib to the list.
1004 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
1008 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
1009 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
1011 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1012 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1014 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
1015 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
1016 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
1017 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
1020 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
1021 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
1025 =head2 Building DB, NDBM, and ODBM interfaces with Berkeley DB 3
1027 A Perl interface for DB3 is part of Berkeley DB, but if you want to
1028 compile the standard Perl DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you must follow
1029 following instructions.
1031 Berkeley DB3 from Sleepycat Software is by default installed without
1032 DB1 compatibility code (needed for the DB_File interface) and without
1033 links to compatibility files. So if you want to use packages written
1034 for the DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you need to configure DB3 with
1035 --enable-compat185 (and optionally with --enable-dump185) and create
1036 additional references (suppose you are installing DB3 with
1039 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdbm.so
1040 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libndbm.so
1041 echo '#define DB_DBM_HSEARCH 1' >dbm.h
1042 echo '#include <db.h>' >>dbm.h
1043 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/dbm.h
1044 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/ndbm.h
1046 Optionally, if you have compiled with --enable-compat185 (not needed
1049 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb1.so
1050 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb.so
1052 ODBM emulation seems not to be perfect, but is quite usable,
1055 lib/odbm.............FAILED at test 9
1056 Failed 1/64 tests, 98.44% okay
1058 =head2 Overriding an old config.sh
1060 If you want to use an old config.sh produced by a previous run of
1061 Configure, but override some of the items with command line options, you
1062 need to use B<Configure -O>.
1064 =head2 GNU-style configure
1066 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
1067 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
1069 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
1071 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
1074 ./configure.gnu --help
1078 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
1079 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
1081 See L<Cross-compilation> below for information on cross-compiling.
1083 =head2 Malloc Issues
1085 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
1086 so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
1087 the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
1088 version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
1089 perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
1090 than your system malloc.
1092 However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
1093 experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
1094 that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
1095 (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
1099 =item Using the system malloc
1101 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
1103 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
1105 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
1107 =item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
1109 NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you just
1110 run Configure to accept all the defaults on those platforms.
1112 Perl's malloc family of functions are normally called Perl_malloc(),
1113 Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree().
1114 These names do not clash with the system versions of these functions.
1116 If this flag is enabled, however, Perl's malloc family of functions
1117 will have the same names as the system versions. This may be required
1118 sometimes if you have libraries that like to free() data that may have
1119 been allocated by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1121 Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1122 from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1123 does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1126 =item -DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS
1128 This flag enables debugging mstats, which is required to use the
1129 Devel::Peek::mstat() function. You cannot enable this unless you are
1130 using Perl's malloc, so a typical Configure command would be
1132 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS -Dusemymalloc='y'
1134 to enable this option.
1138 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1140 If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1141 If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1145 =item Running Configure Interactively
1147 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1148 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1151 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1152 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1153 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1154 will use the defaults from then on.
1156 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1157 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1158 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1162 Hint files tell Configure about a number of things:
1168 The peculiarities or conventions of particular platforms -- non-standard
1169 library locations and names, default installation locations for binaries,
1174 The deficiencies of the platform -- for example, library functions that,
1175 although present, are too badly broken to be usable; or limits on
1176 resources that are generously available on most platforms.
1180 How best to optimize for the platform, both in terms of binary size and/or
1181 speed, and for Perl feature support. Because of wide variations in the
1182 implementation of shared libraries and of threading, for example, Configure
1183 often needs hints in order to be able to use these features.
1187 The perl distribution includes many system-specific hints files
1188 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1189 will offer to use that hint file. Unless you have a very good reason
1190 not to, you should accept its offer.
1192 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1193 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1194 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1195 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
1196 file, which also explains hint files known as callback-units.
1198 Note that any hint file is read before any Policy file, meaning that
1199 Policy overrides hints -- see L</Site-wide Policy settings>.
1201 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1203 If you are re-using an old config.sh, it's possible that Configure detects
1204 different values from the ones specified in this file. You will almost
1205 always want to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something
1208 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1209 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1210 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1211 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1214 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1215 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1216 Keep the previous value? [y]
1218 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1219 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1220 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1222 =item Changing Compilers
1224 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1225 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1226 rename it, then rerun Configure with the options you want to use.
1228 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1230 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1231 them to all the .SH files by running
1235 You will then have to rebuild by running
1240 =item config.over and config.arch
1242 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride
1243 Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1244 before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1245 however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1246 This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1248 There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1249 config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1250 architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1251 hints file that creates the config.arch.
1255 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1256 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1257 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1259 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1260 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1265 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1266 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1267 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1268 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1269 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1270 lost the next time you run Configure.
1272 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1273 see the file hints/README.hints.
1275 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1276 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1283 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1284 Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1285 system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1286 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1289 =item Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX and BIN_SH
1291 In Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX, Configure might abort with
1293 Build a threading Perl? [n]
1294 Configure[2437]: Syntax error at line 1 : `config.sh' is not expected.
1296 This indicates that Configure is being run with a broken Korn shell
1297 (even though you think you are using a Bourne shell by using
1298 "sh Configure" or "./Configure"). The Korn shell bug has been reported
1299 to Compaq as of February 1999 but in the meanwhile, the reason ksh is
1300 being used is that you have the environment variable BIN_SH set to
1301 'xpg4'. This causes /bin/sh to delegate its duties to /bin/posix/sh
1302 (a ksh). Unset the environment variable and rerun Configure.
1304 =item HP-UX 11, pthreads, and libgdbm
1306 If you are running Configure with -Dusethreads in HP-UX 11, be warned
1307 that POSIX threads and libgdbm (the GNU dbm library) compiled before
1308 HP-UX 11 do not mix. This will cause a basic test run by Configure to
1311 Pthread internal error: message: __libc_reinit() failed, file: ../pthreads/pthread.c, line: 1096
1312 Return Pointer is 0xc082bf33
1313 sh: 5345 Quit(coredump)
1315 and Configure will give up. The cure is to recompile and install
1316 libgdbm under HP-UX 11.
1318 =item Porting information
1320 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan 9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1321 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1322 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1323 subdirectory. Porting/Glossary should especially come in handy.
1325 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1326 http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
1327 various other operating systems.
1329 If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture, study carefully the
1330 section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1331 in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file Porting/patching.pod.
1332 Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1336 =head2 Adding extra modules to the build
1338 You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1339 CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1340 command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1342 Configure -Dextras="Bundle::LWP DBI"
1344 or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
1345 then answer "Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
1346 The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
1347 This will only work if those modules are to be built as dynamic
1348 extensions. If you wish to include those extra modules as static
1349 extensions, see L<"Extensions"> above.
1351 Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1352 modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1353 or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1354 do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1356 Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1357 dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
1358 For example: you will need to have the Foo database specific
1359 headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1360 process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1364 suidperl is an optional component, which is normally neither built
1365 nor installed by default. From perlfaq1:
1367 On some systems, setuid and setgid scripts (scripts written
1368 in the C shell, Bourne shell, or Perl, for example, with the
1369 set user or group ID permissions enabled) are insecure due to
1370 a race condition in the kernel. For those systems, Perl versions
1371 5 and 4 attempt to work around this vulnerability with an optional
1372 component, a special program named suidperl, also known as sperl.
1373 This program attempts to emulate the set-user-ID and set-group-ID
1374 features of the kernel.
1376 Because of the buggy history of suidperl, and the difficulty
1377 of properly security auditing as large and complex piece of
1378 software as Perl, we cannot recommend using suidperl and the feature
1379 should be considered deprecated.
1381 Instead, use a tool specifically designed to handle changes in
1382 privileges, such as B<sudo>.
1386 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1387 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1388 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1389 makefile, not Makefile, since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1390 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1391 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1393 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1398 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1400 =head2 Expected errors
1402 These errors are normal, and can be ignored:
1405 make: [extra.pods] Error 1 (ignored)
1407 make: [extras.make] Error 1 (ignored)
1409 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1411 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1412 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1413 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1414 then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1420 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1421 for further tips and information.
1425 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1426 during the building of extensions, run
1430 to test your version of miniperl.
1434 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1435 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1436 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1437 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1438 whole L<perllocale/"LOCALE PROBLEMS"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1439 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1441 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1442 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1445 are supported and installed on your system.
1446 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1452 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1453 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1454 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1455 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by installing gcc
1456 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1457 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1458 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1462 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1463 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1465 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1466 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1467 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1469 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1470 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1472 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1474 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1475 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1476 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1477 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1478 of your local set-up.
1482 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1483 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1486 sh Configure -Uusenm
1488 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1489 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1492 =item umask not found
1494 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1495 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1496 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1497 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1498 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1502 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1503 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1504 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1505 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1506 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1510 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1511 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1512 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1516 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1517 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1518 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1519 on L<"nm extraction">.
1521 =item __inet_* errors
1523 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1524 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1525 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1526 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1527 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1528 newer version of BIND (and remove the files the old one left behind).
1529 If you can't, you can either link with the updated resolver library provided
1530 with BIND 8.1 or rename /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and
1531 test process to avoid the problem.
1533 =item *_r() prototype NOT found
1535 On a related note, if you see a bunch of complaints like the above about
1536 reentrant functions - specifically networking-related ones - being present
1537 but without prototypes available, check to see if BIND 8.1 (or possibly
1538 other BIND 8 versions) is (or has been) installed. They install
1539 header files such as netdb.h into places such as /usr/local/include (or into
1540 another directory as specified at build/install time), at least optionally.
1541 Remove them or put them in someplace that isn't in the C preprocessor's
1542 header file include search path (determined by -I options plus defaults,
1543 normally /usr/include).
1545 =item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1547 This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1548 gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1549 changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1550 rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1551 update your gcc installation.
1555 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1556 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1564 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1565 with B<make depend; make>.
1567 =item Missing functions and Undefined symbols
1569 If the build of miniperl fails with a long list of missing functions or
1570 undefined symbols, check the libs variable in the config.sh file. It
1571 should look something like
1573 libs='-lsocket -lnsl -ldl -lm -lc'
1575 The exact libraries will vary from system to system, but you typically
1576 need to include at least the math library -lm. Normally, Configure
1577 will suggest the correct defaults. If the libs variable is empty, you
1578 need to start all over again. Run
1582 and start from the very beginning. This time, unless you are sure of
1583 what you are doing, accept the default list of libraries suggested by
1586 If the libs variable looks correct, you might have the
1587 L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1589 If you stil have missing routines or undefined symbols, you probably
1590 need to add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature
1591 that Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete. If
1592 you used a hint file, see if it has any relevant advice. You can also
1593 look through through config.h for likely suspects.
1597 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1598 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1599 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1600 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1601 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1604 =item Missing dbmclose
1606 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1607 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1609 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1611 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1612 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1613 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1614 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1615 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1616 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1617 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1618 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1619 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1620 process is continuing.
1622 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1625 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1627 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1628 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1629 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1631 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1632 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1633 quite that tightly coordinated.
1635 =item sh: ar: not found
1637 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1638 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1639 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1640 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1643 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1645 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1646 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1647 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1649 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1651 If you get this error message from the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem test, your System
1652 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1653 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1654 to include the System V semaphores.
1656 =item ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem........semget: No space left on device
1658 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1659 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1660 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1661 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1666 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1667 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1668 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1669 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1670 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1671 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1672 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1673 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1675 =item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1677 The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1678 make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1679 archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1680 C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1681 archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1682 incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1683 official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1684 that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1685 archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1687 =item invalid token: ##
1689 You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. To compile Perl, you
1690 need to use a compiler that supports ANSI C. If there is a README
1691 file for your system, it may have further details on your compiler
1696 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1698 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1700 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1702 UTS may need one or more of -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1704 FreeBSD can fail the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1705 configured in the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1706 you will get a message telling you what to do.
1708 HP-UX 11 Y2K patch "Y2K-1100 B.11.00.B0125 HP-UX Core OS Year 2000
1709 Patch Bundle" has been reported to break the io/fs test #18 which
1710 tests whether utime() can change timestamps. The Y2K patch seems to
1711 break utime() so that over NFS the timestamps do not get changed
1712 (on local filesystems utime() still works).
1714 Building Perl on a system that has also BIND (headers and libraries)
1715 installed may run into troubles because BIND installs its own netdb.h
1716 and socket.h, which may not agree with the operating system's ideas of
1717 the same files. Similarly, including -lbind may conflict with libc's
1718 view of the world. You may have to tweak -Dlocincpth and -Dloclibpth
1723 =head2 Cross-compilation
1725 Perl can be cross-compiled. It is just not trivial, cross-compilation
1726 rarely is. Perl is routinely cross-compiled for many platforms (as of
1727 June 2005 at least PocketPC aka WinCE, Open Zaurus, EPOC, Symbian, and
1728 the IBM OS/400). These platforms are known as the B<target> platforms,
1729 while the systems where the compilation takes place are the B<host>
1732 What makes the situation difficult is that first of all,
1733 cross-compilation environments vary significantly in how they are set
1734 up and used, and secondly because the primary way of configuring Perl
1735 (using the rather large Unix-tool-dependent Configure script) is not
1736 awfully well suited for cross-compilation. However, starting from
1737 version 5.8.0, the Configure script also knows one way of supporting
1738 cross-compilation support, please keep reading.
1740 See the following files for more information about compiling Perl for
1741 the particular platforms:
1745 =item WinCE/PocketPC
1767 Packaging and transferring either the core Perl modules or CPAN
1768 modules to the target platform is also left up to the each
1769 cross-compilation environment. Often the cross-compilation target
1770 platforms are somewhat limited in diskspace: see the section
1771 L<Minimizing the Perl installation> to learn more of the minimal set
1772 of files required for a functional Perl installation.
1774 For some cross-compilation environments the Configure option
1775 C<-Dinstallprefix=...> might be handy, see L<Changing the installation
1778 About the cross-compilation support of Configure: what is known to
1779 work is running Configure in a cross-compilation environment and
1780 building the miniperl executable. What is known not to work is
1781 building the perl executable because that would require building
1782 extensions: Dynaloader statically and File::Glob dynamically, for
1783 extensions one needs MakeMaker and MakeMaker is not yet
1784 cross-compilation aware, and neither is the main Makefile.
1786 The cross-compilation setup of Configure has successfully been used in
1787 at least two Linux cross-compilation environments. The setups were
1788 both such that the host system was Intel Linux with a gcc built for
1789 cross-compiling into ARM Linux, and there was a SSH connection to the
1792 To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch that
1793 has to be used is C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
1795 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1797 This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
1798 symbol C<usecrosscompile> available, and C<xconfig.h> will be used
1799 for cross-compilation.
1801 During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1802 into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1803 cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1804 target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1805 transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1806 the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1807 methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1808 F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1810 To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1811 the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1812 happens), supply Configure with
1814 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1816 The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
1817 must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1818 You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
1822 but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
1824 Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
1825 which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
1826 This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
1827 In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
1830 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
1832 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1833 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1834 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
1836 If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
1837 compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
1838 C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
1839 (The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
1840 as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
1841 will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
1842 in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
1844 In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
1845 choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
1848 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
1850 Putting it all together:
1852 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1853 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1854 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
1856 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
1857 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1858 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1859 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1860 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
1863 or if you are happy with the defaults:
1865 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1866 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1867 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1870 Another example where the cross-compiler has been installed under
1871 F</usr/local/arm/2.95.5>:
1873 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1874 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1875 -Dcc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/bin/arm-linux-gcc \
1876 -Dincpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
1877 -Dusrinc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
1878 -Dlibpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/lib
1882 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
1883 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
1884 wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1886 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1887 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1888 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1890 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1892 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1893 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1894 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1898 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1899 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1903 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1904 complicated constructs). For extension and library tests you
1905 need a little bit more: you need to setup your environment variable
1906 PERL_CORE to a true value (like "1"), and you need to supply the
1907 right Perl library path:
1910 ./perl -I../lib ../ext/Socket/Socket.t
1911 ./perl -I../lib ../lib/less.t
1913 (For csh-like shells on UNIX; adjust appropriately for other platforms.)
1914 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1915 comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
1916 shared library path if you get errors like:
1918 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
1920 See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
1926 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1927 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1928 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1929 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1930 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1931 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1933 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1939 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1941 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1942 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1943 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1944 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1945 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1946 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1949 =item Timing problems
1951 Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
1952 sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
1953 If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough,
1954 these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again
1955 with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive
1956 and load-sensitive tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
1957 F<ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t>, F<lib/Benchmark.t>,
1958 F<lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t>, and F<lib/Memoize/t/speed.t>.
1962 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1963 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
1964 For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
1965 test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
1967 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1969 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
1971 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1972 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1973 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1974 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1976 =item Failures from lib/File/Temp/t/security saying "system possibly insecure"
1978 First, such warnings are not necessarily serious or indicative of a
1979 real security threat. That being said, they bear investigating.
1981 Note that each of the tests is run twice. The first time is in the
1982 directory returned by File::Spec->tmpdir() (often /tmp on Unix
1983 systems), and the second time in the directory from which the test was
1984 run (usually the 't' directory, if the test was run as part of 'make
1987 The tests may fail for the following reasons:
1989 (1) If the directory the tests are being run in is owned by somebody
1990 other than the user running the tests, or by root (uid 0).
1992 This failure can happen if the Perl source code distribution is
1993 unpacked in such a way that the user ids in the distribution package
1994 are used as-is. Some tar programs do this.
1996 (2) If the directory the tests are being run in is writable by group or
1997 by others, and there is no sticky bit set for the directory. (With
1998 UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to a directory means the right to
1999 add or remove files in that directory. The 'sticky bit' is a feature
2000 used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if the bit is
2001 set for a directory, no one but the owner (or root) can remove that
2002 file even if the permissions would otherwise allow file removal by
2005 This failure may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the
2006 permissions policy used on this particular system. This failure can
2007 also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit (this
2008 is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle File::Temp
2009 should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or if the system
2010 supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons it is not being
2011 used. This is, for example, the case with HP-UX: as of HP-UX release
2012 11.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX doesn't use it
2013 on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also, as with the permissions, some
2014 local policy might dictate that the stickiness is not used.
2016 (3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
2017 any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
2018 directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
2019 (2). For Unix systems, this is usually not an issue if you are
2020 building on a local disk. See the documentation for the File::Temp
2021 module for more information about 'chown giveaway'.
2023 See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
2024 about the various security aspects of temporary files.
2030 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
2031 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
2032 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
2033 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
2034 are not root, you must still have permission to install into the directories
2035 in question and you should ignore any messages about chown not working.
2037 If "make install" just says "`install' is up to date" or something
2038 similar, you may be on a case-insensitive filesystems such as Mac's HFS+,
2039 and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion is brought to you
2040 by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
2042 =head2 Installing perl under different names
2044 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
2045 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
2046 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
2048 make install PERLNAME=myperl
2050 You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
2051 "perl5.8.9") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
2053 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
2055 This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (e.g. to
2056 avoid conflicts with an ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor).
2057 Without this the versioned binary would be called "perl55.8.8".
2059 =head2 Installing perl under a different directory
2061 You can install perl under a different destination directory by using
2062 the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>, with a command like
2064 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
2066 DESTDIR is automatically prepended to all the installation paths. See
2067 the example in L<"Creating an installable tar archive"> above.
2069 =head2 Installed files
2071 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
2072 anything, you can run
2074 ./perl installperl -n
2075 ./perl installman -n
2077 make install will install the following:
2082 perl5.n.n where 5.n.n is the current release number. This
2083 will be a link to perl.
2085 sperl5.n.n If you requested setuid emulation.
2086 a2p awk-to-perl translator
2090 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
2092 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
2093 s2p sed-to-perl translator
2094 find2perl find-to-perl translator
2095 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
2096 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
2097 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
2098 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
2099 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
2100 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
2101 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
2107 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
2108 dprofpp Perl code profile post-processor
2112 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
2113 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
2117 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2119 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
2120 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2122 Installperl will also create the directories listed above
2123 in L<"Installation Directories">.
2125 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
2126 under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
2127 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2128 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
2130 Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2131 installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
2132 perl alongside an already installed production version of perl without
2133 disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2134 To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2136 Configure -Dversiononly
2138 or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2139 you can just manually run
2141 ./perl installperl -v
2143 and skip installman altogether.
2144 See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2147 =head1 Reporting Problems
2149 Wherever possible please use the perlbug tool supplied with this Perl
2150 to report problems, as it automatically includes summary configuration
2151 information about your perl, which may help us track down problems far
2152 more quickly. But first you should read the advice in this file,
2153 carefully re-read the error message and check the relevant manual pages
2154 on your system, as these may help you find an immediate solution. If
2155 you are not sure whether what you are seeing is a bug, you can send a
2156 message describing the problem to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup to
2159 The perlbug tool is installed along with perl, so after you have
2160 completed C<make install> it should be possible to run it with plain
2161 C<perlbug>. If the install fails, or you want to report problems with
2162 C<make test> without installing perl, then you can use C<make nok> to
2163 run perlbug to report the problem, or run it by hand from this source
2164 directory with C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug>
2166 If the build fails too early to run perlbug uninstalled, then please
2167 B<run> the C<./myconfig> shell script, and mail its output along with
2168 an accurate description of your problem to perlbug@perl.org
2170 If Configure itself fails, and does not generate a config.sh file
2171 (needed to run C<./myconfig>), then please mail perlbug@perl.org the
2172 description of how Configure fails along with details of your system
2173 - for example the output from running C<uname -a>
2175 Please try to make your message brief but clear. Brief, clear bug
2176 reports tend to get answered more quickly. Please don't worry if your
2177 written English is not great - what matters is how well you describe
2178 the important technical details of the problem you have encountered,
2179 not whether your grammar and spelling is flawless.
2181 Trim out unnecessary information. Do not include large files (such as
2182 config.sh or a complete Configure or make log) unless absolutely
2183 necessary. Do not include a complete transcript of your build
2184 session. Just include the failing commands, the relevant error
2185 messages, and whatever preceding commands are necessary to give the
2186 appropriate context. Plain text should usually be sufficient--fancy
2187 attachments or encodings may actually reduce the number of people who
2188 read your message. Your message will get relayed to over 400
2189 subscribers around the world so please try to keep it brief but clear.
2191 If you are unsure what makes a good bug report please read "How to
2192 report Bugs Effectively" by Simon Tatham:
2193 http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html
2195 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
2197 Perl 5.10 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
2198 In other words, you will have to recompile your XS modules.
2200 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
2201 5.8.0) to another similar version (e.g. 5.8.2) without re-compiling
2202 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
2203 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
2204 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
2205 with 5.8.2, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
2206 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
2207 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.8.2.
2209 Usually, most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to be
2210 used with a newer version of Perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
2211 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
2213 Suppose you already have version 5.005_03 installed. The directories
2214 searched by 5.005_03 are
2216 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503/$archname
2217 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503
2218 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2219 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2221 Beginning with 5.6.0 the version number in the site libraries are
2222 fully versioned. Now, suppose you install version 5.6.0. The directories
2223 searched by version 5.6.0 will be
2225 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/$archname
2226 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0
2227 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
2228 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2230 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2231 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2232 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2234 Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
2235 of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
2236 directories. This way, modules installed under 5.005_03 will continue
2237 to be usable by 5.005_03 but will also accessible to 5.6.0. Further,
2238 suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
2239 present only in 5.6.0. That new module will get installed into
2240 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0 and will be available to 5.6.0,
2241 but will not interfere with the 5.005_03 version.
2243 The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
2244 5.6.0 and above will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
2246 Lastly, suppose you now install 5.8.0, which is not binary compatible
2247 with 5.6.0. The directories searched by 5.8.0 (if you don't change the
2248 Configure defaults) will be:
2250 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0/$archname
2251 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0
2252 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/$archname
2253 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0
2255 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2257 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2259 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2261 Note that the earlier $archname entries are now gone, but pure perl
2262 modules from earlier versions will still be found.
2264 Assuming the users in your site are still actively using perl 5.6.0 and
2265 5.005 after you installed 5.8.0, you can continue to install add-on
2266 extensions using any of perl 5.8.0, 5.6.0, or 5.005. The installations
2267 of these different versions remain distinct, but remember that the
2268 newer versions of perl are automatically set up to search the
2269 compatible site libraries of the older ones. This means that
2270 installing a new XS extension with 5.005 will make it visible to both
2271 5.005 and 5.6.0, but not to 5.8.0. Installing a pure perl module with
2272 5.005 will make it visible to all three versions. Later, if you
2273 install the same extension using, say, perl 5.8.0, it will override the
2274 5.005-installed version, but only for perl 5.8.0.
2276 This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2277 to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2278 versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
2280 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
2282 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
2283 separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
2284 won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2285 libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2286 way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
2288 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.8.2
2290 and adding /opt/perl5.8.2/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
2291 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2292 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2294 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
2295 (e.g. 5.8 for all 5.8.x versions), but change directory with
2298 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2299 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2300 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2303 =head2 Upgrading from 5.8.x or earlier
2305 B<Perl 5.10.0 is binary incompatible with Perl 5.8.x and any earlier
2306 Perl release.> Perl modules having binary parts
2307 (meaning that a C compiler is used) will have to be recompiled to be
2308 used with 5.10.0. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with
2309 5.10.0, you may safely do so without disturbing the older
2310 installations. (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5">
2313 See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2314 incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
2315 perllocal.pod, not perllocale.pod, for installed module information.
2317 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2319 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2320 system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2321 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2322 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2323 library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2325 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2326 of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2327 hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2328 For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2331 =head1 installhtml --help
2333 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2334 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2335 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2337 Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2338 html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2340 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2345 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2347 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2348 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2349 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2350 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2351 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
2354 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2355 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2356 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2357 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2358 (and would welcome patches for them).
2360 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2361 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2363 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2365 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2366 available in TeX format. Type
2368 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2370 =head1 Starting all over again
2372 If you wish to re-build perl from the same build directory, you should
2373 clean it out with the command
2381 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
2382 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
2384 If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
2385 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
2386 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
2387 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it:
2391 If you wish to re-use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
2392 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
2393 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
2394 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
2395 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
2396 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Similarly, if you used
2397 a shared libperl.so (see below) with version numbers, you will probably
2398 want to adjust them as well.
2400 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. For example, some
2401 Linux distributions use i386, but Configure uses the output of the arch
2402 command, which might be i686 instead. If you pick up a precompiled
2403 binary, or compile extensions on different systems, they might not all
2404 agree on the architecture name.
2406 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
2407 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
2409 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
2410 installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
2411 using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
2412 settings"> above. If you wish to start with a fresh distribution, you
2413 also need to remove any old Policy.sh files you may have with
2417 =head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2419 The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2420 Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2421 operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2423 Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way:
2424 Encode, with its big conversion tables, consumes a lot of
2425 space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything. The
2426 Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network
2427 programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all
2428 depends on what do you need to do.
2430 In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2431 recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2432 depends on what you need.
2434 Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2438 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2442 in Linux is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
2445 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/strict.pm
2446 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/warnings.pm
2447 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/File/Glob.pm
2448 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/XSLoader.pm
2449 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2451 Secondly, Debian perl-base package contains the following files,
2452 size about 1.9MB in its i386 version:
2457 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B.pm
2458 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B/Deparse.pm
2459 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Config.pm
2460 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Cwd.pm
2461 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Data/Dumper.pm
2462 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/DynaLoader.pm
2463 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Errno.pm
2464 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Fcntl.pm
2465 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/File/Glob.pm
2466 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO.pm
2467 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/File.pm
2468 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Handle.pm
2469 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Pipe.pm
2470 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Seekable.pm
2471 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Select.pm
2472 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket.pm
2473 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/POSIX.pm
2474 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Socket.pm
2475 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/XSLoader.pm
2476 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.bs
2477 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.so
2478 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.bs
2479 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.so
2480 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a
2481 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2482 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2483 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2484 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2485 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/extralibs.ld
2486 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs
2487 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2488 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.bs
2489 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2490 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.bs
2491 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.so
2492 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.bs
2493 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2494 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2495 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2496 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.bs
2497 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2498 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/lib.pm
2499 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/re.pm
2500 /usr/share/doc/perl-base
2501 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
2502 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2503 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian.gz
2504 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
2505 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
2506 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
2508 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/AutoLoader.pm
2509 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp.pm
2510 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp/Heavy.pm
2511 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter.pm
2512 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2513 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec.pm
2514 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2515 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/FileHandle.pm
2516 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Getopt/Long.pm
2517 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2518 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2519 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open2.pm
2520 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open3.pm
2521 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/List/Util.pm
2522 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Scalar/Util.pm
2523 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/SelectSaver.pm
2524 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Symbol.pm
2525 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/ParseWords.pm
2526 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Tabs.pm
2527 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Wrap.pm
2528 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/attributes.pm
2529 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/base.pm
2530 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes.pm
2531 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes_heavy.pl
2532 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/constant.pm
2533 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/fields.pm
2534 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/integer.pm
2535 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/locale.pm
2536 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/overload.pm
2537 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/strict.pm
2538 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8.pm
2539 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8_heavy.pl
2540 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/vars.pm
2541 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings.pm
2542 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings/register.pm
2544 A nice trick to find out the minimal set of Perl library files you will
2545 need to run a Perl program is
2547 perl -e 'do "prog.pl"; END { print "$_\n" for sort keys %INC }'
2549 (this will not find libraries required in runtime, unfortunately, but
2550 it's a minimal set) and if you want to find out all the files you can
2551 use something like the below
2553 strace perl -le 'do "x.pl"' 2>&1 | perl -nle '/^open\(\"(.+?)"/ && print $1'
2555 (The 'strace' is Linux-specific, other similar utilities include 'truss'
2558 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
2560 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2561 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
2562 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
2563 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2564 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
2566 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
2567 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and
2570 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
2571 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
2573 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
2574 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
2577 Note that you must have performed the installation already before running
2578 the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate
2583 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2584 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2585 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
2587 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2588 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2590 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2592 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2593 the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2594 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2595 a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2596 and the contact information to match your distribution.