3 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
7 First, make sure you are installing an up-to-date version of Perl. If
8 you didn't get your Perl source from CPAN, check the latest version at
9 <URL:http://www.cpan.org/src/>.
11 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system
12 with all the defaults are:
14 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
20 # You may also wish to add these:
21 (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
23 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
25 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
27 B<NOTE>: starting from the release 5.6.0, Perl will use a version
28 scheme where even-numbered subreleases (like 5.6) are stable
29 maintenance releases and odd-numbered subreleases (like 5.7) are
30 unstable development releases. Development releases should not be
31 used in production environments. Fixes and new features are first
32 carefully tested in development releases and only if they prove
33 themselves to be worthy will they be migrated to the maintenance
36 The above commands will install Perl to /usr/local or /opt, depending
37 on the platform. If that's not okay with you, use
39 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
45 For information on non-Unix systems, see the section on L<"Porting
48 If "make install" just says "`install' is up to date" or something
49 similar, you may be on case-preserving filesystems such as Mac's HFS+
50 and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion brought to you
51 by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
53 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
54 L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
56 For information on what's new in this release, see the
57 pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
58 changes, see the Changes file.
62 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
63 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
64 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
65 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
67 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
69 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
71 Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
72 you should probably at least skim through this entire document before
75 If you're building Perl on a non-Unix system, you should also read
76 the README file specific to your operating system, since this may
77 provide additional or different instructions for building Perl. There
78 are also README files for several flavors of Unix systems, such as
79 Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX; if you have one of those systems, you should
80 also read the README file specific to that system.
82 If there is a hint file for your system (in the hints/ directory) you
83 should also read that hint file for specific information for your
84 system. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh hint file.) If
85 there is a README file for your platform, then you should read
86 that too. Additional information is in the Porting/ directory.
88 =head1 WARNING: This version requires an extra step to build old extensions.
90 5.005_53 and later releases do not export unadorned
91 global symbols anymore. This means you may need to build rather old
92 extensions that have not been updated for the current naming convention
95 perl Makefile.PL POLLUTE=1
97 Alternatively, you can enable CPP symbol pollution wholesale by
98 building perl itself with:
100 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_POLLUTE
102 pod/perl56delta.pod contains more details about this.
104 =head1 WARNING: This version is not binary compatible with releases of
107 If you have built extensions (ie modules that include C code)
108 using an earlier version of Perl, you will need to rebuild and reinstall
111 Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
112 without reinstallation. See the discussions below on
113 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> and
114 L<"Upgrading from 5.005 to 5.6"> for more details.
116 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
118 On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the
119 changes in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
120 pod/perldelta.pod (and the earlier pod/perl5Xdelta.pod) for a description of
121 what's changed. See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod
122 file for a (possibly incomplete) list of locally installed modules.
123 Also see CPAN::autobundle for one way to make a "bundle" of your
124 currently installed modules.
126 =head1 WARNING: This version requires a compiler that supports ANSI C.
128 Most C compilers are now ANSI-compliant. However, a few current
129 computers are delivered with an older C compiler expressly for
130 rebuilding the system kernel, or for some other historical reason.
131 Alternatively, you may have an old machine which was shipped before
132 ANSI compliance became widespread. Such compilers are not suitable
135 If you find that your default C compiler is not ANSI-capable, but you
136 know that an ANSI-capable compiler is installed on your system, you
137 can tell F<Configure> to use the correct compiler by means of the
138 C<-Dcc=> command-line option -- see L<"gcc">.
140 If do not have an ANSI-capable compiler there are several avenues open
147 You may try obtaining GCC, available from GNU mirrors worldwide,
148 listed at <URL:http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html>. If, rather than
149 building gcc from source code, you locate a binary version configured
150 for your platform, be sure that it is compiled for the version of the
151 operating system that you are using.
155 You may purchase a commercial ANSI C compiler from your system
156 supplier or elsewhere. (Or your organization may already have
157 licensed such software -- ask your colleagues to find out how to
158 access it.) If there is a README file for your system in the Perl
159 distribution (for example, F<README.hpux>), it may contain advice on
164 Another alternative may be to use a tool like ansi2knr to convert the
165 sources back to K&R style, but there is no guarantee this route will get
166 you anywhere, since the prototypes are not the only ANSI features used
167 in the Perl sources. ansi2knr is usually found as part of the freely
168 available Ghostscript distribution. Another similar tool is
169 unprotoize, distributed with GCC. Since unprotoize requires GCC to
170 run, you may have to run it on a platform where GCC is available, and move
171 the sources back to the platform without GCC.
173 If you succeed in automatically converting the sources to a K&R compatible
174 form, be sure to email perlbug@perl.org to let us know the steps you
175 followed. This will enable us to officially support this option.
179 Although Perl can be compiled using a C++ compiler, the Configure script
180 does not work with some C++ compilers.
182 =head1 Space Requirements
184 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 50 MB of disk space.
185 After completing make, it takes up roughly 100 MB, though the actual
186 total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
187 directories need something on the order of 45 MB, though again that
188 value is system-dependent.
190 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
192 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
201 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
202 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
204 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
205 files. If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
206 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
207 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
208 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it
212 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
213 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
214 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
215 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
216 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
217 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
218 probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't.
219 Similarly, if you used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version
220 numbers, you will probably want to adjust them as well.
222 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. For example, some
223 Linux distributions use i386, while others may use i486. If you build
224 it yourself, Configure uses the output of the arch command, which
225 might be i586 or i686 instead. If you pick up a precompiled binary, or
226 compile extensions on different systems, they might not all agree on
227 the architecture name.
229 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
230 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
232 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
233 installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
234 using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
235 settings"> below. If you wish to start with a fresh distribution, you
236 also need to remove any old Policy.sh files you may have with
242 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
243 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
244 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
245 almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
246 since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
249 At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
250 defaults from then on.
252 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
253 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
255 =head2 Altering config.sh variables for C compiler switches etc.
257 For most users, all of the Configure defaults are fine. Configure
258 also has several convenient options which are all described below.
259 However, if Configure doesn't have an option to do what you want,
260 you can change Configure variables after the platform hints have been
261 run, by using Configure's -A switch. For example, here's how to add
262 a couple of extra flags to C compiler invocations:
264 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_Y2KWARN -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC"
266 For more help on Configure switches, run:
270 =head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
272 Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
273 where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
274 read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
277 Starting from Perl 5.6.1 you can do this (if your file system supports
280 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
281 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
282 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
284 This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
285 pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
286 unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
290 and Perl will be built and tested, all in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
292 =head2 Common Configure options
294 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h> to
295 get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
296 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
302 To compile with gcc you should run
304 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
306 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
307 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
309 =item Installation prefix
311 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
312 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
313 and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for
316 You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
317 directory, when Configure prompts you or by using the Configure command
318 line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
320 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
322 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
323 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
324 prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
325 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
326 for more details. Do not include a trailing slash, (i.e. /opt/perl/)
327 or you may experience odd test failures.
329 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
330 as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
331 attempt infinite recursion.
335 It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
336 find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
337 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
338 careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
339 vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing.
341 By default, Configure will arrange for /usr/bin/perl to be linked to
342 the current version of perl. You can turn off that behavior by running
344 Configure -Uinstallusrbinperl
346 or by answering 'no' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
348 In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to
349 put (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
350 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
351 obvious and convenient place.
353 =item Overriding an old config.sh
355 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
356 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
360 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
365 Note: for development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.7, as opposed
366 to maintenance releases which have even subreleases, like 5.6)
367 if you want to use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel
368 to Configure, because the default answer to the question "do you really
369 want to Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel
370 skips that sanity check.
372 For example for my Solaris system, I usually use
374 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
376 =head2 GNU-style configure
378 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
379 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
381 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
383 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
386 ./configure.gnu --help
390 Cross compiling and compiling in a different directory are not supported.
392 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
393 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
395 =head2 Installation Directories
397 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
398 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
399 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
400 Further, there are a number of additions to the installation
401 directories since 5.005, so reusing your old config.sh may not
402 be sufficient to put everything where you want it. Do not include
403 trailing slashes on directory names.
405 I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
406 everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
407 process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use
408 the defaults from then on.
410 The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
411 people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
412 distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
413 need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
414 you can safely skip the next section.
416 The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
420 =item Directories for the perl distribution
422 By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.6.0.
423 $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
424 5.6.0 or 5.6.1, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
425 determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
426 variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
428 Configure variable Default value
431 $scriptdir $prefix/bin
432 $privlib $prefix/lib/perl5/$version
433 $archlib $prefix/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
434 $man1dir $prefix/man/man1
435 $man3dir $prefix/man/man3
439 Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
440 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
441 instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
442 directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
443 the common style is shown here.
445 =item Directories for site-specific add-on files
447 After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
448 CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
449 be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
451 Configure variable Default value
453 $sitebin $siteprefix/bin
454 $sitescript $siteprefix/bin
455 $sitelib $siteprefix/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
456 $sitearch $siteprefix/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
457 $siteman1 $siteprefix/man/man1
458 $siteman3 $siteprefix/man/man3
462 By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
463 modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
465 =item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
467 Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
468 distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
469 for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
471 Configure variable Default value
473 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
474 $vendorbin $vendorprefix/bin
475 $vendorscript $vendorprefix/bin
476 $vendorlib $vendorprefix/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
477 $vendorarch $vendorprefix/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
478 $vendorman1 $vendorprefix/man/man1
479 $vendorman3 $vendorprefix/man/man3
483 These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
484 a vendor might choose the following settings:
487 $siteprefix /usr/local
490 This would have the effect of setting the following:
494 $privlib /usr/lib/perl5/$version
495 $archlib /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
496 $man1dir /usr/man/man1
497 $man3dir /usr/man/man3
499 $sitebin /usr/local/bin
500 $sitescript /usr/local/bin
501 $sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
502 $sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
503 $siteman1 /usr/local/man/man1
504 $siteman3 /usr/local/man/man3
507 $vendorscript /usr/bin
508 $vendorlib /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
509 $vendorarch /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
510 $vendorman1 /usr/man/man1
511 $vendorman3 /usr/man/man3
513 Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
514 /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
515 the /usr/local hierarchy.
517 The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
518 version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
519 However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
520 installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
521 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for more details
522 on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
524 Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
525 example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
526 are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
527 site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
528 network. One way to do that would be something like
530 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
534 As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
535 variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
536 directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
537 Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
538 version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
542 There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
543 that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
544 separated list of directories, like this
546 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
548 The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
549 ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
550 modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
551 touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
552 version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
553 present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
554 directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
555 run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
559 In versions 5.005_57 and earlier, the default was to store module man
560 pages in a version-specific directory, such as
561 /usr/local/lib/perl5/$version/man/man3. The default for 5.005_58 and
562 after is /usr/local/man/man3 so that most users can find the man pages
563 without resetting MANPATH.
565 You can continue to use the old default from the command line with
567 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/man/man3
569 Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
571 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
573 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
578 As of perl5.005_57, the standard perl installation does not do
579 anything with HTML documentation, but that may change in the future.
580 Further, some add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The
581 html Configure variables listed above are provided if you wish to
582 specify where such documents should be placed. The default is "none",
583 but will likely eventually change to something useful based on user
588 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
589 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
592 Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
593 directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
596 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
597 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
598 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below.
600 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
601 library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
602 suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
604 Thus, for example, if you Configure with
605 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.6.0 are
607 Configure variable Default value
608 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.6.0
609 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.6.0/$archname
610 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.0
611 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
613 =head2 Changing the installation directory
615 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
616 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
617 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
618 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
619 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
620 packages, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
621 wish to install perl into a different directory and use that
622 management software to move perl to its final destination. This
623 section describes how to do that.
625 Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You
626 could edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to
627 /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local, or you could simply use the
628 following command line:
630 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
632 (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
634 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
635 modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
636 follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with
639 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
641 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
642 convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
643 installed on multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to
644 create an archive that can be installed in /opt/perl.
645 Here's one way to do that:
647 # Set up to install perl into a different directory,
648 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
649 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5 -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
652 make install # This will install everything into /tmp/perl5.
654 # Edit $archlib/Config.pm and $archlib/.packlist to change all the
655 # install* variables back to reflect where everything will
656 # really be installed. (That is, change /tmp/perl5 to /opt/perl
657 # everywhere in those files.)
658 # Check the scripts in $scriptdir to make sure they have the correct
659 # #!/wherever/perl line.
660 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
661 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
662 cd /opt/perl # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
663 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
665 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
667 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
668 answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact
669 person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another
670 system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file
671 to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate
672 hint file for your system.
674 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
679 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
681 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
683 If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
684 to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
685 platform-specific hints files.
687 Note: Since the directory hierarchy for 5.6.0 contains a number of
688 new vendor* and site* entries, your Policy.sh file will probably not
689 set them to your desired values. I encourage you to run Configure
690 interactively to be sure it puts things where you want them.
692 =head2 Configure-time Options
694 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
695 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
696 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
697 some of the main things you can change.
701 On some platforms, perl5.005 and later can be compiled with
702 experimental support for threads. To enable this, read the file
703 ext/threads/threads.pm, and then try:
705 sh Configure -Dusethreads
707 Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command
708 line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
710 The default is to compile without thread support.
712 Perl has two different internal threads implementations. The current
713 model (available internally since 5.6, and as a user-level module
714 since 5.8) is called interpreter-based implementation (ithreads),
715 with one interpreter per thread, and explicit sharing of data.
717 The 5.005 version (5005threads) is considered obsolete, buggy, and
720 By default, Configure selects ithreads if -Dusethreads is specified.
722 (You need to use also the PerlIO layer, explained later, if you decide
723 to use ithreads, to guarantee the good interworking of threads and I/O.)
725 However, you can select the old 5005threads behavior
727 sh Configure -Dusethreads -Duse5005threads
729 If you decide to use ithreads, the 'threads' module allows their use,
730 and the 'Thread' module offers an interface to both 5005threads and
731 ithreads (whichever has been configured).
733 =head2 Large file support.
735 Since Perl 5.6.0, Perl has supported large files (files larger than
736 2 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
737 support is on by default.
739 This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files,
740 seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad in that if you are interfacing Perl
741 using some extension, the components you are connecting to must also
742 be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
743 parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
744 will happen. One popular extension suffering from this ailment is the
745 Apache extension mod_perl.
747 There's also one known limitation with the current large files
748 implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
749 section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer
750 formats like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
752 =head2 64 bit support.
754 If your platform does not have 64 bits natively, but can simulate them
755 with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>, you can build a
756 perl that uses 64 bits.
758 There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
759 using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
760 -Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
761 the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
763 The C<use64bitint> does only as much as is required to get 64-bit
764 integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long longs")
765 while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because your
766 pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint> does
767 not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it might,
768 but it doesn't have to): the C<use64bitint> means that you will be
769 able to have 64 bits wide scalar values.
771 The C<use64bitall> goes all the way by attempting to switch also
772 integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
773 create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
774 resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
775 have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
778 Natively 64-bit systems like Alpha and Cray need neither -Duse64bitint
781 NOTE: 64-bit support is still experimental on most platforms.
782 Existing support only covers the LP64 data model. In particular, the
783 LLP64 data model is not yet supported. 64-bit libraries and system
784 APIs on many platforms have not stabilized--your mileage may vary.
788 In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
789 range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
790 (that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
791 this support (if it is available).
795 You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
796 and the long double support.
798 Note that on some platforms the gcc 3.1 compiler has been reported
799 to refuse to compile the Time::Hires module when using -Dusemorebits
800 or an equivalent setting.
802 =head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
804 Executive summary: in Perl 5.8, you should use the default "PerlIO"
805 as the IO mechanism unless you have a good reason not to.
807 In more detail: previous versions of perl used the standard IO
808 mechanisms as defined in stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl
809 introduced alternate IO mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but up
810 until and including Perl 5.6, the stdio mechanism was still the default
811 and the only supported mechanism.
813 Starting from Perl 5.8, the default mechanism is to use the PerlIO
814 abstraction, because it allows better control of I/O mechanisms,
815 instead of having to work with (often, work around) vendors' I/O
818 This PerlIO abstraction can be (but again, unless you know what you
819 are doing, should not be) disabled either on the Configure command
822 sh Configure -Uuseperlio
824 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
826 With the PerlIO abstraction layer, there is another possibility for
827 the underlying IO calls, AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance
828 to stdio.h in many cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline"
829 modules ("Native" PerlIO has them too). Sfio currently only builds on
830 a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports. Because the data
831 structures are completely different from stdio, perl extension modules
832 or external libraries may not work. This configuration exists to
833 allow these issues to be worked on.
835 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
836 The latest sfio is available from http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/sfio/
838 You select this option by
840 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
842 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
843 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
846 Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails to
847 detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent). Apparently,
848 this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux and SunOS 4.
849 Configure should detect this problem and warn you about problems with
850 _exit vs. exit. If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to
851 your sfio sources and correct iffe's guess about atexit.
855 Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
856 TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
857 access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
858 Version 5. You can find more about SOCKS from http://www.socks.nec.com/
860 =head2 Dynamic Loading
862 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
863 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
864 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
865 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
867 =head2 Building a shared Perl library
869 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
870 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
871 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
874 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
875 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
876 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
877 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
878 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
879 can share the same library.
881 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
882 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
883 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
886 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
887 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
888 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
891 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
892 libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
893 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
894 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
895 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
896 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
898 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
899 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
901 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
903 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
905 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
906 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
907 NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
908 for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
909 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
910 be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
911 library search settings. You can find the name of the environment
912 variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
914 grep ldlibpthname config.sh
916 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
917 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
918 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
921 cd t; ./perl misc/failing_test.t
923 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
925 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
928 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
930 for Bourne-style shells, or
932 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
934 for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
935 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And
936 again, it may be something other than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
938 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
939 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
941 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
943 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
944 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
945 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
946 install a standard Perl 5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
947 try to build Perl 5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
948 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
949 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
950 libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is
951 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
952 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
953 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
954 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't. On Digital Unix, you can
955 override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the _RLD_ROOT environment variable
956 to point to the perl build directory.
958 The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different
959 directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING
960 version of perl. You can do this by changing all the *archlib*
961 variables in config.sh to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
965 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
966 so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
967 the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
968 version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
969 perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
970 than your system malloc.
972 However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
973 experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
974 that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
975 (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
979 =item Using the system malloc
981 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
983 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
985 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
987 =item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
989 NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you just
990 run Configure to accept all the defaults on those platforms.
992 Perl's malloc family of functions are normally called Perl_malloc(),
993 Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree().
994 These names do not clash with the system versions of these functions.
996 If this flag is enabled, however, Perl's malloc family of functions
997 will have the same names as the system versions. This may be required
998 sometimes if you have libraries that like to free() data that may have
999 been allocated by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1001 Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1002 from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1003 does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1008 =head2 Building a debugging perl
1010 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
1011 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
1012 you probably want to do
1014 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
1016 This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
1017 to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
1018 executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
1019 cc -g2. Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for
1020 your system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags
1021 variable in config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's
1022 internal state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by default
1023 if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to reuse your
1024 old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the optimize and
1025 ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes as shown in
1026 L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
1028 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
1029 it's convenient to have both.
1031 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
1032 versions of perl under L<Building a shared libperl.so Perl library>.
1036 Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
1037 in the ext/ subdirectory.
1039 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
1040 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
1041 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
1042 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
1043 is always built by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
1044 set the Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from
1045 the Configure command line.
1047 If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
1048 running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
1049 extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
1050 it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
1051 has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
1052 extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
1053 convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
1054 you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
1055 dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
1057 You can learn more about each of the supplied extensions by consulting the
1058 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
1061 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
1062 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
1063 version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
1065 In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
1066 to turn off various extensions. All others are included by default.
1069 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
1076 Threads use5005threads
1078 Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
1080 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
1082 Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
1085 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
1086 the extensions you want.
1088 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley
1089 DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect
1090 this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with earlier
1091 releases of version 2.
1093 If you re-use your old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
1094 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
1095 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
1098 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern systems do)
1099 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
1100 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
1101 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
1103 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
1105 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
1106 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
1107 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
1108 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
1109 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
1110 how to obtain the libraries.
1112 If your database header (.h) files are not in a directory normally
1113 searched by your C compiler, then you will need to include the
1114 appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by Configure. If
1115 your database library (.a) files are not in a directory normally
1116 searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to include
1117 the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by Configure.
1118 See the examples below.
1124 =item gdbm in /usr/local
1126 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
1127 GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
1128 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
1129 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
1130 necessary steps out automatically.
1132 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1133 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
1135 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
1138 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
1139 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1142 Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1143 you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1144 /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
1146 =item gdbm in /usr/you
1148 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
1149 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
1150 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
1151 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
1152 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
1153 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
1154 /usr/you/lib to the list.
1156 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
1160 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
1161 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
1163 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1164 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1166 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
1167 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
1168 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
1169 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
1172 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
1173 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
1177 =head2 Building DB, NDBM, and ODBM interfaces with Berkeley DB 3
1179 Perl interface for DB3 is part of Berkeley DB, but if you want to
1180 compile standard Perl DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you must follow
1181 following instructions.
1183 Berkeley DB3 from Sleepycat Software is by default installed without
1184 DB1 compatibility code (needed for DB_File interface) and without
1185 links to compatibility files. So if you want to use packages written
1186 for DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you need to configure DB3 with
1187 --enable-compat185 (and optionally with --enable-dump185) and create
1188 additional references (suppose you are installing DB3 with
1191 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdbm.so
1192 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libndbm.so
1193 echo '#define DB_DBM_HSEARCH 1' >dbm.h
1194 echo '#include <db.h>' >>dbm.h
1195 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/dbm.h
1196 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/ndbm.h
1198 Optionally, if you have compiled with --enable-compat185 (not needed
1201 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb1.so
1202 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb.so
1204 ODBM emulation seems not to be perfect, but is quite usable,
1207 lib/odbm.............FAILED at test 9
1208 Failed 1/64 tests, 98.44% okay
1210 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1212 If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1213 If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1217 =item Running Configure Interactively
1219 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1220 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1223 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1224 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1225 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1226 will use the defaults from then on.
1228 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1229 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1230 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1234 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
1235 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1236 will offer to use that hint file.
1238 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1239 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1240 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1241 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
1244 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1246 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
1247 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
1248 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
1251 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1252 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
1253 Keep the recommended value? [y]
1255 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
1256 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
1259 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
1260 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
1261 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
1264 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1265 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1266 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1267 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1270 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1271 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1272 Keep the previous value? [y]
1274 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1275 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1276 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1278 =item Changing Compilers
1280 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1281 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1282 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
1283 with the options you want to use.
1285 This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
1286 gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
1288 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1290 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1291 them to all the .SH files by running
1295 You will then have to rebuild by running
1300 =item config.over and config.arch
1302 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride
1303 Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1304 before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1305 however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1306 This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1308 There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1309 config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1310 architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1311 hints file that creates the config.arch.
1315 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1316 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1317 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1319 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1320 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1325 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1326 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1327 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1328 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1329 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1330 lost the next time you run Configure.
1332 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1333 see the file hints/README.hints.
1335 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1336 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1343 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1344 Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1345 system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1346 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1349 =item Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX and BIN_SH
1351 In Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX, Configure might abort with
1353 Build a threading Perl? [n]
1354 Configure[2437]: Syntax error at line 1 : `config.sh' is not expected.
1356 This indicates that Configure is being run with a broken Korn shell
1357 (even though you think you are using a Bourne shell by using
1358 "sh Configure" or "./Configure"). The Korn shell bug has been reported
1359 to Compaq as of February 1999 but in the meanwhile, the reason ksh is
1360 being used is that you have the environment variable BIN_SH set to
1361 'xpg4'. This causes /bin/sh to delegate its duties to /bin/posix/sh
1362 (a ksh). Unset the environment variable and rerun Configure.
1364 =item HP-UX 11, pthreads, and libgdbm
1366 If you are running Configure with -Dusethreads in HP-UX 11, be warned
1367 that POSIX threads and libgdbm (the GNU dbm library) compiled before
1368 HP-UX 11 do not mix. This will cause a basic test run by Configure to
1371 Pthread internal error: message: __libc_reinit() failed, file: ../pthreads/pthread.c, line: 1096
1372 Return Pointer is 0xc082bf33
1373 sh: 5345 Quit(coredump)
1375 and Configure will give up. The cure is to recompile and install
1376 libgdbm under HP-UX 11.
1378 =item Porting information
1380 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan 9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1381 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1382 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1383 subdirectory. Especially Porting/Glossary should come in handy.
1385 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1386 http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
1387 various other operating systems.
1389 If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture study carefully the
1390 section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1391 in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file Porting/patching.pod.
1392 Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1396 =head1 Adding extra modules to the build
1398 You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1399 CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1400 command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1402 Configure -Dextras="Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI"
1404 or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
1405 then answer "Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
1406 The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
1408 Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1409 modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1410 or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1411 do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1413 Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1414 dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
1415 For example: you will need to have the zlib.h header and the libz
1416 library installed for the Compress::Zlib, or the Foo database specific
1417 headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1418 process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1422 suidperl is an optional component, which is built or installed by default.
1425 On some systems, setuid and setgid scripts (scripts written
1426 in the C shell, Bourne shell, or Perl, for example, with the
1427 set user or group ID permissions enabled) are insecure due to
1428 a race condition in the kernel. For those systems, Perl versions
1429 5 and 4 attempt to work around this vulnerability with an optional
1430 component, a special program named suidperl, also known as sperl.
1431 This program attempts to emulate the set-user-ID and set-group-ID
1432 features of the kernel.
1434 Because of the buggy history of suidperl, and the difficulty
1435 of properly security auditing as large and complex piece of
1436 software as Perl, we cannot recommend using suidperl and the feature
1437 should be considered deprecated.
1438 Instead use for example 'sudo': http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/
1442 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1443 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1444 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1445 makefile, not Makefile since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1446 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1447 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1449 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1454 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1456 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1458 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1459 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1460 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1461 then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1467 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1468 for further tips and information.
1472 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1473 during the building of extensions, you should run
1477 to test your version of miniperl.
1481 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1482 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1483 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1484 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1485 whole L<"Locale problems"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1486 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1488 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1489 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1492 are supported and installed on your system.
1493 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1499 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1500 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1501 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1502 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by running fixincludes
1503 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1504 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1505 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1509 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1510 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1512 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1513 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1514 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1516 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1517 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1519 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1521 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1522 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1523 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1524 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1525 of your local set-up.
1529 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1530 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1533 sh Configure -Uusenm
1535 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1536 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1539 =item umask not found
1541 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1542 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1543 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1544 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1545 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1549 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1550 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1551 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1552 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1553 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1557 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1558 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1559 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1563 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1564 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1565 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1566 on L<"nm extraction">.
1568 =item __inet_* errors
1570 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1571 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1572 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1573 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1574 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1575 newer version of BIND. If you can't, you can either link with the
1576 updated resolver library provided with BIND 8.1 or rename
1577 /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and test process to
1580 =item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1582 This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1583 gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1584 changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1585 rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1586 update your gcc installation.
1590 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1591 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1599 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1600 with B<make depend; make>.
1602 =item Missing functions
1604 If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
1605 other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
1606 there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
1607 likely suspects. If Configure guessed wrong on a number of functions,
1608 you might have the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1612 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1613 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1614 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1615 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1616 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1619 =item Missing dbmclose
1621 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1622 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1624 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1626 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1627 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1628 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1629 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1630 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1631 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1632 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1633 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1634 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1635 process is continuing.
1637 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1640 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1642 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1643 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1644 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1646 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1647 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1648 quite that tightly coordinated.
1650 =item sh: ar: not found
1652 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1653 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1654 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1655 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1658 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1660 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1661 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1662 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1664 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1666 If you get this error message from the lib/ipc_sysv test, your System
1667 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1668 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1669 to include the System V semaphores.
1671 =item lib/ipc_sysv........semget: No space left on device
1673 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1674 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1675 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1676 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1681 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1682 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1683 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1684 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1685 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1686 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1687 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1688 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1690 =item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1692 The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1693 make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1694 archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1695 C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1696 archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1697 incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1698 official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1699 that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1700 archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1702 =item invalid token: ##
1704 You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. See L<WARNING: This
1705 version requires a compiler that supports ANSI C>.
1709 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1711 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1713 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1715 UTS may need one or more of -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1717 FreeBSD can fail the lib/ipc_sysv.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1718 configured in the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1719 you will get a message telling what to do.
1721 HP-UX 11 Y2K patch "Y2K-1100 B.11.00.B0125 HP-UX Core OS Year 2000
1722 Patch Bundle" has been reported to break the io/fs test #18 which
1723 tests whether utime() can change timestamps. The Y2K patch seems to
1724 break utime() so that over NFS the timestamps do not get changed
1725 (on local filesystems utime() still works).
1729 =head2 Cross-compilation
1731 Starting from Perl 5.8 Perl has the beginnings of cross-compilation
1732 support. What is known to work is running Configure in a
1733 cross-compilation environment and building the miniperl executable.
1734 What is known not to work is building the perl executable because
1735 that would require building extensions: Dynaloader statically and
1736 File::Glob dynamically, for extensions one needs MakeMaker and
1737 MakeMaker is not yet cross-compilation aware, and neither is
1740 Since the functionality is so lacking, it must be considered
1741 highly experimental. It is so experimental that it is not even
1742 mentioned during an interactive Configure session, a direct command
1743 line invocation (detailed shortly) is required to access the
1746 NOTE: Perl is routinely built using cross-compilation
1747 in the EPOC environment but the solutions from there
1748 can't directly be used elsewhere.
1750 The one environment where cross-compilation has successfully been used
1751 as of this writing is the Compaq iPAQ running ARM Linux. The build
1752 host was Intel Linux, the networking setup was PPP + SSH. The exact
1753 setup details are beyond the scope of this document, see
1754 http://www.handhelds.org/ for more information.
1756 To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch is
1757 C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
1759 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1761 This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
1762 symbol C<usecrosscompile> available.
1764 During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1765 into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1766 cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1767 target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1768 transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1769 the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1770 methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1771 F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1773 To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1774 the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1775 happens), supply Configure with
1777 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1779 The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
1780 must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1781 You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
1785 but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
1787 Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
1788 which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
1789 This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
1790 In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
1793 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
1795 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1796 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1797 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
1799 If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
1800 compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
1801 C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
1802 (The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
1803 as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
1804 will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
1805 in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
1807 In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
1808 choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
1811 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
1813 Putting it all together:
1815 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1816 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1817 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
1819 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
1820 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1821 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1822 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1823 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
1826 or if you are happy with the defaults
1828 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1829 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1830 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1835 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
1836 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
1837 wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1839 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1840 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1841 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1843 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1845 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1846 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1847 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1851 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1852 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1856 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1857 complicated constructs). For extension and library tests you
1858 need a little bit more: you need to setup your environment variable
1859 PERL_CORE to a true value (like "1"), and you need to supply the
1860 right Perl library path:
1863 ./perl -I../lib ../ext/Socket/Socket.t
1864 ./perl -I../lib ../lib/less.t
1866 (For csh-like shells on UNIX; adjust appropriately for other platforms.)
1867 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1868 comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
1869 shared library path if you get errors like:
1871 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
1873 See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
1879 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1880 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1881 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1882 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1883 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1884 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1886 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1892 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1894 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1895 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1896 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1897 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1898 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1899 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1902 =item Timing problems
1904 Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
1905 sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
1906 If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough,
1907 these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again
1908 with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive
1909 and load-sensitive tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
1910 F<ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t>, F<lib/Benchmark.t>,
1911 F<lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t>, and F<lib/Memoize/t/speed.t>.
1915 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1916 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
1917 For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
1918 test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
1920 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1922 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
1924 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1925 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1926 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1927 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1929 =item Test failures from lib/ftmp-security saying "system possibly insecure"
1931 Firstly, test failures from the ftmp-security are not necessarily
1932 serious or indicative of a real security threat. That being said,
1933 they bear investigating.
1935 The tests may fail for the following reasons. Note that each of the
1936 tests is run both in the building directory and the temporary
1937 directory, as returned by File::Spec->tmpdir().
1939 (1) If the directory the tests are being run is owned by somebody else
1940 than the user running the tests, or root (uid 0). This failure can
1941 happen if the Perl source code distribution is unpacked in a way that
1942 the user ids in the distribution package are used as-is. Some tar
1945 (2) If the directory the tests are being run in is writable by group
1946 or by others (remember: with UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to
1947 a directory means the right to add/remove files in that directory),
1948 and there is no sticky bit set in the directory. 'Sticky bit' is
1949 a feature used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if
1950 the bit is on a directory, no one but the owner (or the root) can remove
1951 that file even if the permissions of the directory would allow file
1952 removal by others. This failure can happen if the permissions in the
1953 directory simply are a bit too liberal for the tests' liking. This
1954 may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the permissions policy
1955 used on this particular directory/project/system/site. This failure
1956 can also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit
1957 (this is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle
1958 File::Temp should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or
1959 if the system supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons
1960 it is not being used. This is for example the case with HP-UX: as of
1961 HP-UX release 11.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX
1962 doesn't use it on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also, as with the
1963 permissions, some local policy might dictate that the stickiness is
1966 (3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
1967 any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
1968 directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
1971 See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
1972 about the various security aspects.
1978 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1979 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
1980 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
1981 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
1982 are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
1983 ignore any messages about chown not working.
1985 =head2 Installing perl under different names
1987 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
1988 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
1989 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
1991 make install PERLNAME=myperl
1993 You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
1994 "perl5.005") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
1996 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
1998 This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (e.g. to
1999 avoid conflicts with an ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor).
2000 Without this the versioned binary would be called "perl55.005".
2002 =head2 Installed files
2004 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
2005 anything, you can run
2007 ./perl installperl -n
2008 ./perl installman -n
2010 make install will install the following:
2015 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
2016 will be a link to perl.
2018 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
2019 a2p awk-to-perl translator
2023 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
2025 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
2026 s2p sed-to-perl translator
2027 find2perl find-to-perl translator
2028 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
2029 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
2030 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
2031 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
2032 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
2033 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
2034 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
2040 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
2041 dprofpp Perl code profile post-processor
2045 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
2046 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
2050 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2052 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
2053 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2055 Installperl will also create the directories listed above
2056 in L<"Installation Directories">.
2058 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
2059 under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
2060 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2061 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
2063 Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2064 installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
2065 perl alongside an already installed production version of perl without
2066 disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2067 To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2069 Configure -Dversiononly
2071 or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2072 you can just manually run
2074 ./perl installperl -v
2076 and skip installman altogether.
2077 See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2080 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
2082 Perl 5.8 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
2083 In other words, you have to recompile your XS modules.
2085 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
2086 5.004_04) to another similar version (e.g. 5.004_05) without re-compiling
2087 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
2088 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
2089 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
2090 with 5.004_04, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
2091 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
2092 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.00404.
2094 Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use
2095 with a newer version of perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
2096 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
2098 Suppose you already have version 5.005_03 installed. The directories
2099 searched by 5.005_03 are
2101 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503/$archname
2102 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503
2103 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2104 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2106 Beginning with 5.6.0 the version number in the site libraries are
2107 fully versioned. Now, suppose you install version 5.6.0. The directories
2108 searched by version 5.6.0 will be
2110 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/$archname
2111 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0
2112 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
2113 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2115 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2116 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2117 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2119 Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
2120 of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
2121 directories. This way, modules installed under 5.005_03 will continue
2122 to be usable by 5.005_03 but will also accessible to 5.6.0. Further,
2123 suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
2124 present only in 5.6.0. That new module will get installed into
2125 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0 and will be available to 5.6.0,
2126 but will not interfere with the 5.005_03 version.
2128 The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
2129 5.6.0 will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
2131 Lastly, suppose you now install version 5.6.1, which we'll assume is
2132 binary compatible with 5.6.0 and 5.005. The directories searched
2133 by 5.6.1 (if you don't change the Configure defaults) will be:
2135 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.1/$archname
2136 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.1
2137 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1/$archname
2138 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1
2140 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
2141 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2143 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2144 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2145 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2147 Assuming the users in your site are still actively using perl 5.6.0 and
2148 5.005 after you installed 5.6.1, you can continue to install add-on
2149 extensions using any of perl 5.6.1, 5.6.0, or 5.005. The installations
2150 of these different versions remain distinct, but remember that the newer
2151 versions of perl are automatically set up to search the site libraries of
2152 the older ones. This means that installing a new extension with 5.005
2153 will make it visible to all three versions. Later, if you install the
2154 same extension using, say, perl 5.6.1, it will override the 5.005-installed
2155 version, but only for perl 5.6.1.
2157 This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2158 to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2159 versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
2161 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
2163 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
2164 separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
2165 won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2166 libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2167 way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
2169 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.004
2171 and adding /opt/perl5.004/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
2172 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2173 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2175 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
2176 (e.g. 5.004 for all 5.004_0x versions), but change directory with
2179 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2180 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2181 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2184 =head2 Upgrading from 5.005 to 5.6.0
2186 Most extensions built and installed with versions of perl
2187 prior to 5.005_50 will not need to be recompiled to be used with
2188 5.6.0. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with 5.6.0,
2189 you may safely do so without disturbing the 5.005 installation.
2190 (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> above.)
2192 See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2193 incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
2194 perllocal.pod not perllocale.pod for installed module information.
2196 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
2198 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
2200 By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
2201 they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
2203 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
2204 perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
2205 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
2206 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
2207 the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036 (or
2208 whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod for
2209 possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
2211 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2213 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2214 system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2215 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2216 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2217 library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2219 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2220 of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2221 hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2222 For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2225 =head1 installhtml --help
2227 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2228 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2229 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2231 Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2232 html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2234 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2239 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2241 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2242 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2243 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2244 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2245 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
2248 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2249 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2250 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2251 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2252 (and would welcome patches for them).
2254 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2255 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2257 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2259 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2260 available in TeX format. Type
2262 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2264 =head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2266 The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2267 Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2268 operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2270 Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way:
2271 Encode, with its big conversion tables, consumes a lot of
2272 space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything. The
2273 Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network
2274 programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all
2275 depends on what do you need to do.
2277 In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2278 recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2279 depends on what you need.
2281 Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2285 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2289 in Solaris is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
2292 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2293 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2294 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2295 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2296 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2297 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/File/Glob/autosplit.ix
2298 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/Config.pm
2299 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/XSLoader.pm
2300 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/DynaLoader.pm
2301 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/CORE/libperl.so
2302 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/strict.pm
2303 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/warnings.pm
2304 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Carp.pm
2305 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Exporter.pm
2306 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/File/Glob.pm
2307 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/AutoLoader.pm
2308 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/vars.pm
2309 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/warnings/register.pm
2310 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Carp/Heavy.pm
2311 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2313 Secondly, Debian perl-base package contains the following files,
2314 size about 1.2MB in its i386 version:
2316 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2317 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian
2318 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
2319 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
2320 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
2321 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
2322 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/AutoLoader.pm
2323 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Carp.pm
2324 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Carp/Heavy.pm
2325 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Cwd.pm
2326 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Exporter.pm
2327 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2328 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/File/Spec.pm
2329 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2330 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/FileHandle.pm
2331 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Getopt/Long.pm
2332 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2333 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2334 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IPC/Open2.pm
2335 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IPC/Open3.pm
2336 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/SelectSaver.pm
2337 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Symbol.pm
2338 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Text/Tabs.pm
2339 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Text/Wrap.pm
2340 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/attributes.pm
2341 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/GetOptions.al
2342 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/FindOption.al
2343 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/Configure.al
2344 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/config.al
2345 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/Croak.al
2346 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/autosplit.ix
2347 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/base.pm
2348 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/constant.pm
2349 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/fields.pm
2350 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/integer.pm
2351 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/lib.pm
2352 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/locale.pm
2353 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/overload.pm
2354 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/strict.pm
2355 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/vars.pm
2356 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/warnings.pm
2357 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/warnings/register.pm
2359 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Config.pm
2360 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Data/Dumper.pm
2361 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/DynaLoader.pm
2362 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Errno.pm
2363 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Fcntl.pm
2364 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/File/Glob.pm
2365 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO.pm
2366 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/File.pm
2367 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Handle.pm
2368 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Pipe.pm
2369 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Seekable.pm
2370 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Select.pm
2371 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket.pm
2372 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/POSIX.pm
2373 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Socket.pm
2374 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/XSLoader.pm
2375 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.so
2376 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.bs
2377 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2378 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2379 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2380 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2381 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a
2382 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/extralibs.ld
2383 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2384 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs
2385 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/Glob.bs
2386 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2387 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/autosplit.ix
2388 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/IO/IO.so
2389 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/IO/IO.bs
2390 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/POSIX.bs
2391 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2392 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2393 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2394 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2395 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Socket/Socket.bs
2397 =head1 Reporting Problems
2399 If you have difficulty building perl, and none of the advice in this file
2400 helps, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant manual
2401 pages on your system doesn't help either, then you should send a message
2402 to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to perlbug@perl.org with
2403 an accurate description of your problem.
2405 Please include the output of the ./myconfig shell script that comes with
2406 the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the perlbug program that
2407 comes with the perl distribution, but you need to have perl compiled
2408 before you can use it. (If you have not installed it yet, you need to
2409 run C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug> instead of a plain C<perlbug>.)
2411 Please try to make your message brief but clear. Trim out unnecessary
2412 information. Do not include large files (such as config.sh or a complete
2413 Configure or make log) unless absolutely necessary. Do not include a
2414 complete transcript of your build session. Just include the failing
2415 commands, the relevant error messages, and whatever preceding commands
2416 are necessary to give the appropriate context. Plain text should
2417 usually be sufficient--fancy attachments or encodings may actually
2418 reduce the number of people who read your message. Your message
2419 will get relayed to over 400 subscribers around the world so please
2420 try to keep it brief but clear.
2422 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
2424 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2425 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
2426 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
2427 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2428 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
2430 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
2431 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and
2434 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
2435 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
2437 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
2438 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
2441 Note that you must have performed the installation already before running
2442 the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate
2447 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2448 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2449 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
2451 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2452 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2454 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2456 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2457 the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2458 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2459 a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2460 and the contact information to match your distribution.