3 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
7 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system are:
15 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
17 For information on non-Unix systems, see the section on
18 L<"Porting Information">, below.
22 You should probably at least skim through this entire document before
23 proceeding. Special notes specific to this release are identified
26 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
27 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
28 read it as is with any pager or editor.
30 If you're building Perl on a non-Unix system, you should also read
31 the README file specific to your operating system, since this may
32 provide additional or different instructions for building Perl.
34 =head1 Space Requirements.
36 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 7 MB of disk space.
37 The complete tree after completing C<make> takes roughly
38 15 MB, though the actual total is likely to be quite
39 system-dependent. The installation directories need something
40 on the order of 7 MB, though again that value is system-dependent.
42 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution.
44 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
49 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh file. If
50 you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you change
51 systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if you are
52 experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably I<not>
53 re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or rename it, e.g.
55 mv config.sh config.sh.old
61 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
62 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
63 you about. To accept the default, just press C<RETURN>. The default
66 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
67 F<*.SH> files and offer to run B<make depend>.
69 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h>
70 to get a listing. To compile with gcc, for example, you can run
74 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
75 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
77 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
78 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
80 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
85 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
86 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. You can specify a different 'prefix' for
87 the default installation directory, when Configure prompts you or by
88 using the Configure command line option -Dprefix='/some/directory',
91 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
93 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the directories
94 are simplified. For example, if you use prefix=/opt/perl,
95 then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
96 /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
98 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading, if
99 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
100 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or by
101 using the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
105 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
106 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
107 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
108 DynaLoader, Fcntl and FileHandle are always built by default.
109 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
110 is always built by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
111 set the Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from
112 the Configure command line. Similarly, the Opcode extension is always
113 built by default, but you can skip it by setting the Configure variable
114 useopcode=false either in a hint file for from the command line.
116 In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
117 to turn off each extension:
120 DynaLoader (Must always be included)
121 Fcntl (Always included by default)
122 FileHandle (Always included by default)
124 IO (Always included by default)
128 SDBM_File (Always included by default)
132 Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
134 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
136 Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
139 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
140 the Extensions you want.
142 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern Unix systems do)
143 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
144 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
145 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
147 =head2 GNU-style configure
149 If you prefer the GNU-style B<configure> command line interface, you can
150 use the supplied B<configure> command, e.g.
154 The B<configure> script emulates several of the more common configure
161 Cross compiling is currently not supported.
163 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
165 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
166 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
167 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
168 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
169 are B<not> included with perl. See the library documentation for
170 how to obtain the libraries.
172 I<Note:> If your database header (.h) files are not in a
173 directory normally searched by your C compiler, then you will need to
174 include the appropriate B<-I/your/directory> option when prompted by
175 Configure. If your database library (.a) files are not in a directory
176 normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to
177 include the appropriate B<-L/your/directory> option when prompted by
178 Configure. See the examples below.
184 =item gdbm in /usr/local.
186 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
187 GDBM_File extension. This examples assumes you have F<gdbm.h>
188 installed in F</usr/local/include/gdbm.h> and F<libgdbm.a> installed in
189 F</usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a>. Configure should figure all the
190 necessary steps out automatically.
192 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
193 your C compiler, you should include C<-I/usr/local/include>.
195 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
198 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
199 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
202 Again, this should all happen automatically. If you want to accept the
203 defaults for all the questions and have Configure print out only terse
204 messages, then you can just run
208 and Configure should include the GDBM_File extension automatically.
210 This should actually work if you have gdbm installed in any of
211 (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu, /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
213 =item gdbm in /usr/you
215 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
216 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
217 have F</usr/you/include/gdbm.h> and F</usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a>. You
218 still have to add B<-I/usr/you/include> to cc flags, but you have to take
219 an extra step to help Configure find F<libgdbm.a>. Specifically, when
220 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
221 F</usr/you/lib> to the list.
223 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
227 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
228 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
230 C<locincpth> is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
231 Configure will automatically add the appropriate B<-I> directives.
233 C<loclibpth> is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
234 Configure will automatically add the appropriate B<-L> directives. If
235 you have some libraries under F</usr/local/> and others under
236 F</usr/you>, then you have to include both, namely
239 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
240 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
244 =head2 Installation Directories.
246 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
247 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
248 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
250 By default, Configure uses the following directories for
251 library files (archname is a string like sun4-sunos, determined
254 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.002
255 /usr/local/lib/perl5/
256 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/archname
257 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl
259 and the following directories for manual pages:
262 /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3
264 (Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
265 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
266 instead.) The module man pages are stuck in that strange spot so that
267 they don't collide with other man pages stored in /usr/local/man/man3,
268 and so that Perl's man pages don't hide system man pages. On some
269 systems, B<man less> would end up calling up Perl's less.pm module man
270 page, rather than the B<less> program.
272 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
273 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you Configure
274 with -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the defaults are
276 /opt/perl/lib/archname/5.002
278 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/archname
279 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl
284 The perl executable will search the libraries in the order given
287 The directories site_perl and site_perl/archname are empty, but are
288 intended to be used for installing local or site-wide extensions. Perl
289 will automatically look in these directories. Previously, most sites
290 just put their local extensions in with the standard distribution.
292 In order to support using things like #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.002 after
293 a later version is released, architecture-dependent libraries are
294 stored in a version-specific directory, such as
295 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.002/. In 5.000 and 5.001, these files
296 were just stored in /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/. If you will not be
297 using 5.001 binaries, you can delete the standard extensions from the
298 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/ directory. Locally-added extensions can
299 be moved to the site_perl and site_perl/archname directories.
301 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
304 =head2 Changing the installation directory
306 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
307 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
308 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
309 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
310 However, sites that use software such as B<depot> to manage software
311 packages may also wish to install perl into a different directory and
312 use that management software to move perl to its final destination.
313 This section describes how to do this. Someday, Configure may support
314 an option C<-Dinstallprefix=/foo> to simplify this.
316 Suppose you want to install perl under the F</tmp/perl5> directory.
317 You can edit F<config.sh> and change all the install* variables to
318 point to F</tmp/perl5> instead of F</usr/local/wherever>. You could
319 also set them all from the Configure command line. Or, you can
320 automate this process by placing the following lines in a file
321 F<config.over> B<before> you run Configure (replace /tmp/perl5 by a
322 directory of your choice):
324 installprefix=/tmp/perl5
325 test -d $installprefix || mkdir $installprefix
326 test -d $installprefix/bin || mkdir $installprefix/bin
327 installarchlib=`echo $installarchlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
328 installbin=`echo $installbin | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
329 installman1dir=`echo $installman1dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
330 installman3dir=`echo $installman3dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
331 installprivlib=`echo $installprivlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
332 installscript=`echo $installscript | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
333 installsitelib=`echo $installsitelib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
334 installsitearch=`echo $installsitearch | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
336 Then, you can Configure and install in the usual way:
343 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
345 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
346 convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
347 installed on multiple systems. Here's one way to do that:
349 # Set up config.over to install perl into a different directory,
350 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
356 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
357 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
358 cd /usr/local # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
359 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
361 =head2 Building a shared libperl.so Perl library.
363 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
364 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
365 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
368 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
369 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
370 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
371 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
372 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
373 can share the same library.
375 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
376 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
377 meachanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
380 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
381 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
382 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
385 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
386 libperl.so.3.2 (for perl5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
387 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
388 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
389 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
390 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
392 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
393 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
395 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
397 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
399 To actually build perl, you must add the current working directory to your
400 LD_LIBRARY_PATH environtment variable before running make. You can do
403 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
405 for Bourne-style shells, or
407 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
409 for Csh-style shells. You *MUST* do this before running make.
410 Folks running NeXT OPENSTEP must substitute DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
411 LD_LIBRARY_PATH above.
413 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
414 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
415 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
416 install a standard perl5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
417 try to build perl5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
418 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
419 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
420 libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is
421 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
422 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable. On
423 Solaris, you can override that with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you
426 The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different
427 directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING
428 version of perl. You can do this with by changing all the *archlib*
429 variables in config.sh, namely archlib, archlib_exp, and
430 installarchlib, to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
432 =head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
434 Previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in
435 <stdio.h>. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl allow alternate IO
436 mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but the stdio mechanism is still
437 the default and is the only supported mechanism.
439 This PerlIO abstraction can be enabled either on the Configure command
442 sh Configure -Duseperlio
444 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
446 If you choose to use the PerlIO abstraction layer, there are two
447 (experimental) possibilities for the underlying IO calls. These have been
448 tested to some extent on some platforms, but are not guaranteed to work
455 AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance to <stdio.h> in many
456 cases, and is extensible by the use of "disipline" modules. Sfio
457 currently only builds on a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports.
458 Because the data structures are completely different from stdio, perl
459 extension modules or external libraries may not work. This
460 configuration exists to allow these issues to be worked on.
462 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
463 A (fairly old) version of sfio is in CPAN, and work is in progress to make
464 it more easily buildable by adding Configure support.
466 You select this option by
468 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
470 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
471 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
476 Normal stdio IO, but with all IO going through calls to the PerlIO
477 abstraction layer. This configuration can be used to check that perl and
478 extension modules have been correctly converted to use the PerlIO
481 This configuration should work on all platforms (but currently does not).
483 You select this option via :
485 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Uusesfio
487 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure does not
488 detect sfio, then this will be the default suggested by Configure.
492 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
496 =item Running Configure Interactively
498 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
499 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
502 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
503 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler &
504 flags) you can type C<&-d> at the next Configure prompt and Configure
505 will use the defaults from then on.
507 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
508 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
509 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
513 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
514 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
515 will offer to use that hint file.
517 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
518 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint
519 file for further information. See F<hints/solaris_2.sh> for an
522 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
524 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
525 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
526 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
529 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
530 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
531 Keep the recommended value? [y]
533 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
534 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
537 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
538 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
539 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
542 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
543 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
544 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
545 Now, Configure will find your gdbm library and will issue a message:
547 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
548 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
549 Keep the previous value? [y]
551 In this case, you do I<not> want to keep the previous value, so you
552 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
553 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
555 =item Changing Compilers
557 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
558 probably I<not> re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
559 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
560 with the options you want to use.
562 This is a common source of problems. If you change from B<cc> to
563 B<gcc>, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
565 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
567 If you later make any changes to F<config.sh>, you should propagate
568 them to all the .SH files by running B<sh Configure -S>. You will
569 then have to rebuild by running
576 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride Configure's
577 guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just before config.sh
578 is created. You have to be careful with this, however, as Configure
579 does no checking that your changes make sense. See the section on
580 L<"Changing the installation directory"> for an example.
584 Many of the system dependencies are contained in F<config.h>.
585 F<Configure> builds F<config.h> by running the F<config_h.SH> script.
586 The values for the variables are taken from F<config.sh>.
588 If there are any problems, you can edit F<config.h> directly. Beware,
589 though, that the next time you run B<Configure>, your changes will be
594 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
595 line, they can be made in F<cflags.SH>. For instance, to turn off the
596 optimizer on F<toke.c>, find the line in the switch structure for
597 F<toke.c> and put the command C<optimize='-g'> before the C<;;>. You
598 can also edit F<cflags> directly, but beware that your changes will be
599 lost the next time you run B<Configure>.
601 To change the C flags for all the files, edit F<config.sh>
602 and change either C<$ccflags> or C<$optimize>,
603 and then re-run B<sh Configure -S ; make depend>.
607 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file config_H to
608 config.h and edit the config.h to reflect your system's peculiarities.
609 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
612 =item Porting information
614 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan9, and VMS ports are in the
615 corresponing subdirectories. Additional information, including
616 a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
619 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
620 L<"http:/www.perl.com/CPAN/ports"> for current information on ports to
621 various other operating systems.
627 This will look for all the includes.
628 The output is stored in F<makefile>. The only difference between
629 F<Makefile> and F<makefile> is the dependencies at the bottom of
630 F<makefile>. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
631 F<makefile>, not F<Makefile> since the Unix B<make> command reads
632 F<makefile> first. (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in
633 a different file. Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh
636 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
641 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
643 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
644 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
645 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help, you can
646 send a message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
647 perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
648 Please include the I<output> of the B<./myconfig> shell script
649 that comes with the distribution.
651 [The B<perlbug> program that comes with the perl distribution is
652 useful for sending in such reports, but you need to have
653 perl compiled and installed before you can use it.]
659 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
660 for further tips and information.
664 If you can successfully build F<miniperl>, but the process crashes
665 during the building of extensions, you should run
669 to test your version of miniperl.
673 If you get duplicates upon linking for malloc et al, say -DHIDEMYMALLOC.
677 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
678 correctly. When using gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define'
679 and i_varargs='undef' in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by
680 running fixincludes correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't
681 forget to propagate your changes (see
682 L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
683 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
687 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
688 numbers will vary in different versions of perl):
690 util.c: In function `Perl_croak':
691 util.c:962: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
692 proto.h:45: prototype declaration
694 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
695 previous L<"varargs"> item.
697 =item Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading
699 If you have problems with dynamic loading using gcc on SunOS or
700 Solaris, and you are using GNU as and GNU ld, you may need to add
701 B<-B/bin/> (for SunOS) or B<-B/usr/ccs/bin/> (for Solaris) to your
702 $ccflags, $ldflags, and $lddlflags so that the system's versions of as
703 and ld are used. Alternatively, you can use the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX
704 environment variable to ensure that Sun's as and ld are used. Consult
705 your gcc documentation for further information on the B<-B> option and
706 the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX variable.
708 =item ld.so.1: ./perl: fatal: relocation error:
710 If you get this message on SunOS or Solaris, and you're using gcc,
711 it's probably the GNU as or GNU ld problem in the previous item
712 L<"Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading">.
716 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
717 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. Perl should build
718 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
719 of your local set-up.
721 =item dlopen: stub interception failed
723 The primary cause of the 'dlopen: stub interception failed' message is
724 that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable includes a directory
725 which is a symlink to /usr/lib (such as /lib).
727 The reason this causes a problem is quite subtle. The file libdl.so.1.0
728 actually *only* contains functions which generate 'stub interception
729 failed' errors! The runtime linker intercepts links to
730 "/usr/lib/libdl.so.1.0" and links in internal implementation of those
731 functions instead. [Thanks to Tim Bunce for this explanation.]
735 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
736 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
741 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
742 If you have previously run Configure, you should I<not> reuse your old
747 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
748 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
749 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
750 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
751 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
755 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
756 on a number of other common functions too. You are probably better off
757 re-running Configure without using nm extraction (see previous item).
761 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
762 optimizier. Edit config.sh and change the line
770 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
771 with B<make depend; make>.
775 If you can't compile successfully, try adding a C<-DCRIPPLED_CC> flag.
776 (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it compiled right!)
777 This simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that
778 get indigestion easily.
780 =item Missing functions
782 If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
783 other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
784 there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
789 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files without
790 some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or allocate larger
791 internal tables. You can customize the switches for each file in
792 F<cflags>. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
793 F<makefile> since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
796 =item Missing dbmclose
798 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
799 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
801 =item Warning (will try anyway): No library found for -lposix
803 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
804 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
805 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
806 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
807 systems; few systems will need all the possible libries listed.
808 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
809 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
810 they don't have. The message 'will try anyway' is intended to
811 reassure you that the process is continuing.
813 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
816 Warning (will try anyway): No library found for -lgdbm
818 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
819 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
820 extension without the -lgdbm library.
822 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
823 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
824 quite that tightly coordinated.
828 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
830 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
832 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
834 UTS may need one or more of B<-DCRIPPLED_CC>, B<-K> or B<-g>, and undef LSTAT.
836 If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.
838 Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
845 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If it
846 doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went wrong. See the
847 file F<t/README> in the F<t> subdirectory. Note that you can't run it
848 in background if this disables opening of /dev/tty.
850 If B<make test> bombs out, just B<cd> to the F<t> directory and run
851 B<TEST> by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
852 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
856 You can also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
857 comments that apply to your system.
859 B<Note>: one possible reason for errors is that some external programs
860 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
861 C<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
862 one or more of these environment variables set: C<LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
863 LANG>. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales are known to
864 cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors. If you have any of the
865 above environment variables set, please try C<setenv LC_ALL C> (for
866 C shell) or <LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL> (for Bourne or Korn shell) from the
867 command line and then retry C<make test>. If the tests then succeed,
868 you may have a broken program that is confusing the testing. Please run
869 the troublesome test by hand as shown above and see whether you can
870 locate the program. Look for things like:
871 C<exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...")> or C<open("...|")>.
872 All these mean that Perl is trying to run some external program.
874 =head1 INSTALLING PERL5
878 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
879 B<Configure>; by default this is F</usr/local/bin>. It will also try
880 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
881 page, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
882 are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
883 ignore any messages about chown not working.
885 You may see some harmless error messages and warnings from pod2man.
886 You may safely ignore them. (Yes, they should be fixed, but they
887 didn't seem important enough to warrant holding up the entire release.)
889 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
890 anything, you can run
892 ./perl installperl -n
895 B<make install> will install the following:
898 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
899 will be a link to perl.
901 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
902 a2p awk-to-perl translator
903 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
905 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
906 s2p sed-to-perl translator
907 find2perl find-to-perl translator
908 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
909 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
910 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
911 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
912 pod2latex, and to other useful formats.
915 library files in $privlib and $archlib specified to
916 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
917 man pages in the location specified to Configure, usually
918 something like /usr/local/man/man1.
919 module in the location specified to Configure, usually
920 man pages under /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3.
921 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
923 Installperl will also create the library directories $siteperl and
924 $sitearch listed in config.sh. Usually, these are something like
925 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
926 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$archname
927 where $archname is something like sun4-sunos. These directories
928 will be used for installing extensions.
930 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl.a library are also
931 installed under $archlib so that any user may later build new
932 extensions even if the Perl source is no longer available.
934 The libperl.a library is only needed for building new
935 extensions and linking them statically into a new perl executable.
936 If you will not be doing that, then you may safely delete
937 $archlib/libperl.a after perl is installed.
939 make install may also offer to install perl in a "standard" location.
941 Most of the documentation in the pod/ directory is also available
942 in HTML and LaTeX format. Type
944 cd pod; make html; cd ..
946 to generate the html versions, and
948 cd pod; make tex; cd ..
950 to generate the LaTeX versions.
952 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
954 Some of the perl library files need to be able to obtain information from
955 the system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
956 header files in F</usr/include> into files that can be easily interpreted
957 by perl. These files will be placed in architectural library directory
958 you specified to B<Configure>; by default this is
959 F</usr/local/lib/perl5/ARCH/VERSION>, where B<ARCH> is your architecture
960 (such as C<sun4-solaris>) and B<VERSION> is the version of perl you are
961 building (for example, C<5.003>).
963 B<NOTE:> Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion of
964 the header files in not perfect. You may have to hand edit some of the
965 converted files to get them to parse correctly. For example, it breaks
966 spectacularly on type casting and certain structures.
968 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5.
970 You can safely install the current version of perl5 and still run scripts
971 under the old binaries for versions 5.002 and later ONLY. Instead of
972 starting your script with #!/usr/local/bin/perl, just start it with
973 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.001 (or whatever version you want to run.)
974 If you want to retain a version of perl5 prior to perl5.002, you'll
975 need to install the current version in a separate directory tree,
976 since some of the architecture-independent library files have changed
977 in incompatible ways.
979 The architecture-dependent files are stored in a version-specific
980 directory (such as F</usr/local/lib/perl5/sun4-sunos/5.002>) so that
981 they are still accessible. I<Note:> perl5.000 and perl5.001 did not
982 put their architecture-dependent libraries in a version-specific
983 directory. They are simply in F</usr/local/lib/perl5/$archname>. If
984 you will not be using 5.000 or 5.001, you may safely remove those
987 The standard library files in F</usr/local/lib/perl5>
988 should be usable by all versions of perl5.
990 Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use with a newer
991 version of perl. If you do run into problems, and you want to continue
992 to use the old version of perl along with your extension, simply move
993 those extension files to the appropriate version directory, such as
994 F</usr/local/lib/perl/archname/5.002>. Then perl5.002 will find your
995 files in the 5.002 directory, and newer versions of perl will find your
996 newer extension in the site_perl directory.
998 Some users may prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
999 separate directories. One convenient way to do this is by
1000 using a separate prefix for each version, such as
1002 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.002
1004 and adding /opt/perl5.002/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
1005 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
1006 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
1008 B<NOTE>: Starting with 5.002_01, all functions in the perl C source
1009 code are protected by default by the prefix Perl_ (or perl_) so that
1010 you may link with third-party libraries without fear of namespace
1011 collisons. This breaks compatability with the initially released
1012 version of 5.002, so once you install 5.002_01 (or higher) you will
1013 need to re-build and install all of your dynamically loadable
1014 extensions. (The standard extensions supplied with Perl are handled
1015 automatically). You can turn off this namespace protection by adding
1016 -DNO_EMBED to your ccflags variable in config.sh. This is a one-time
1017 change. In the future, we certainly hope that most extensions won't
1018 need to be recompiled for use with a newer version of perl.
1020 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
1022 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
1024 By default, the perl5 libraries go into F</usr/local/lib/perl5/>, so
1025 they don't override the perl4 libraries in F</usr/local/lib/perl/>.
1027 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
1028 F<perl4.036>. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
1029 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
1030 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
1031 the C<#!> line at the top of them by C<#!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036>
1032 (or whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod
1033 for possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
1035 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
1037 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation is
1038 in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
1039 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
1040 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied B<perldoc> script. This
1041 is sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
1045 Andy Dougherty <doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu>, borrowing I<very> heavily
1046 from the original README by Larry Wall.
1048 =head1 LAST MODIFIED
1052 > > Warning (will try anyway): No library found for -lucb
1053 > Don't worry about these. It tried anyway and succeeded. If you can think
1054 > of a better way to word the message, please feel free to suggest one.
1056 I figured that Configure should be able to figure out that there are no
1057 -lucb/-lposix/-lcposix libraries so that ExtUtils::Liblist won't have
1058 to check for them. Okay, I'll stop worrying. :)