3 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
7 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system are:
15 # You may also wish to add these:
16 (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
17 (cd pod && make html && mv *.html <www home dir>)
18 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
20 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
22 For information on non-Unix systems, see the section on
23 L<"Porting information"> below.
25 For information on what's new in this release, see the
26 pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
27 changes, see the Changes file.
31 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
32 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
33 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
34 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
36 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
38 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
40 You should probably at least skim through this entire document before
43 If you're building Perl on a non-Unix system, you should also read
44 the README file specific to your operating system, since this may
45 provide additional or different instructions for building Perl.
47 If there is a hint file for your system (in the hints/ directory) you
48 should also read that hint file for specific information for your
49 system. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh hint file.)
51 =head1 Space Requirements
53 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 7 MB of disk space. The
54 complete tree after completing make takes roughly 15 MB, though the
55 actual total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
56 directories need something on the order of 7 MB, though again that
57 value is system-dependent.
59 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
61 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
66 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh file. If
67 you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you change
68 systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if you are
69 experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably not
70 re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or rename it, e.g.
72 mv config.sh config.sh.old
74 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
75 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
76 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
77 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
78 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
79 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
80 probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't, presently.
81 Similarly, if you used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version
82 numbers, you will probably want to adjust them as well.
84 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. Some Linux systems
85 (such as Debian) use i386, while others may use i486 or i586. If you
86 pick up a precompiled binary, it might not use the same name.
88 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
89 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
93 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
94 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
95 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default
96 is almost always ok. At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d
97 and Configure will use the defaults from then on.
99 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
100 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
102 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h>
103 to get a listing. To compile with gcc, for example, you can run
105 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
107 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
108 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
110 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
111 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
113 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
114 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. You can specify a different 'prefix' for
115 the default installation directory, when Configure prompts you or by
116 using the Configure command line option -Dprefix='/some/directory',
119 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
121 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the directories
122 are simplified. For example, if you use prefix=/opt/perl,
123 then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
124 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/.
126 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
127 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
128 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
129 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
131 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
136 For my Solaris system, I usually use
138 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
140 =head2 GNU-style configure
142 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
143 use the supplied configure command, e.g.
147 The configure script emulates a few of the more common configure
154 Cross compiling is not supported.
156 For systems that do not distinguish the files "Configure" and
157 "configure", Perl includes a copy of configure named
162 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
163 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
164 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
165 DynaLoader, Fcntl, and IO are always built by default. Configure does
166 not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX is always built
167 by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can set the
168 Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from the
169 Configure command line. Similarly, the Opcode extension is always built
170 by default, but you can skip it by setting the Configure variable
171 useopcode=false either in a hint file for from the command line.
173 You can learn more about each of these extensions by consulting the
174 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
177 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
178 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
179 version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
181 In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
182 to turn off each extension:
185 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
186 Fcntl (Always included by default)
188 IO (Always included by default)
192 SDBM_File (Always included by default)
196 Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
198 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
200 Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
203 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
204 the extensions you want.
206 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of
207 Berkeley DB. Once Berkeley DB version 2 is released, DB_File will be
208 upgraded to work with it. Configure will automatically detect this
209 for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with version 2.
211 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern Unix systems do)
212 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
213 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
214 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
216 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
218 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
219 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
220 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
221 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
222 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
223 how to obtain the libraries.
225 Note: If your database header (.h) files are not in a
226 directory normally searched by your C compiler, then you will need to
227 include the appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by
228 Configure. If your database library (.a) files are not in a directory
229 normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to
230 include the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by
231 Configure. See the examples below.
237 =item gdbm in /usr/local
239 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
240 GDBM_File extension. This examples assumes you have gdbm.h
241 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
242 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
243 necessary steps out automatically.
245 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
246 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
248 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
251 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
252 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
255 Again, this should all happen automatically. If you want to accept the
256 defaults for all the questions and have Configure print out only terse
257 messages, then you can just run
261 and Configure should include the GDBM_File extension automatically.
263 This should actually work if you have gdbm installed in any of
264 (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu, /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
266 =item gdbm in /usr/you
268 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
269 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
270 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
271 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
272 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
273 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
274 /usr/you/lib to the list.
276 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
280 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
281 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
283 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
284 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
286 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
287 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
288 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
289 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
292 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
293 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
297 =head2 Installation Directories
299 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
300 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
301 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
303 I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
304 everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
305 process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure
306 will use the defaults from then on.
308 By default, Configure uses the following directories for
309 library files (archname is a string like sun4-sunos, determined
312 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.004
313 /usr/local/lib/perl5/
314 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/archname
315 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl
317 and the following directories for manual pages:
320 /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3
322 (Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
323 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
324 instead.) The module man pages are stuck in that strange spot so that
325 they don't collide with other man pages stored in /usr/local/man/man3,
326 and so that Perl's man pages don't hide system man pages. On some
327 systems, B<man less> would end up calling up Perl's less.pm module man
328 page, rather than the less program. (This location may change in a
329 future release of perl.)
331 Note: Many users prefer to store the module man pages in
332 /usr/local/man/man3. You can do this from the command line with
334 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/man/man3
336 Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
338 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
340 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
341 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you Configure with
342 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the defaults are
344 /opt/perl/lib/archname/5.004
346 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/archname
347 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl
352 The perl executable will search the libraries in the order given
355 The directories site_perl and site_perl/archname are empty, but are
356 intended to be used for installing local or site-wide extensions. Perl
357 will automatically look in these directories. Previously, most sites
358 just put their local extensions in with the standard distribution.
360 In order to support using things like #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.004 after
361 a later version is released, architecture-dependent libraries are
362 stored in a version-specific directory, such as
363 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.004/. In Perl 5.000 and 5.001, these
364 files were just stored in /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/. If you will
365 not be using 5.001 binaries, you can delete the standard extensions from
366 the /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/ directory. Locally-added extensions
367 can be moved to the site_perl and site_perl/archname directories.
369 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
372 =head2 Changing the installation directory
374 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
375 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
376 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
377 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
378 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
379 packages may also wish to install perl into a different directory and
380 use that management software to move perl to its final destination.
381 This section describes how to do this. Someday, Configure may support
382 an option -Dinstallprefix=/foo to simplify this.
384 Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory.
385 You can edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to
386 point to /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local/wherever. You could
387 also set them all from the Configure command line. Or, you can
388 automate this process by placing the following lines in a file
389 config.over before you run Configure (replace /tmp/perl5 by a
390 directory of your choice):
392 installprefix=/tmp/perl5
393 test -d $installprefix || mkdir $installprefix
394 test -d $installprefix/bin || mkdir $installprefix/bin
395 installarchlib=`echo $installarchlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
396 installbin=`echo $installbin | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
397 installman1dir=`echo $installman1dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
398 installman3dir=`echo $installman3dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
399 installprivlib=`echo $installprivlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
400 installscript=`echo $installscript | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
401 installsitelib=`echo $installsitelib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
402 installsitearch=`echo $installsitearch | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
404 Then, you can Configure and install in the usual way:
411 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
413 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
414 convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
415 installed on multiple systems. Here's one way to do that:
417 # Set up config.over to install perl into a different directory,
418 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
424 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
425 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
426 cd /usr/local # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
427 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
429 =head2 Configure-time Options
431 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
432 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
433 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
434 some of the main things you can change.
436 =head2 Binary Compatibility With Earlier Versions of Perl 5
438 If you have dynamically loaded extensions that you built under
439 perl 5.003 and that you wish to continue to use with perl 5.004, then you
440 need to ensure that 5.004 remains binary compatible with 5.003.
442 Starting with Perl 5.003, all functions in the Perl C source code have
443 been protected by default by the prefix Perl_ (or perl_) so that you
444 may link with third-party libraries without fear of namespace
445 collisions. This change broke compatibility with version 5.002, so
446 installing 5.003 or 5.004 over 5.002 or earlier will force you to
447 re-build and install all of your dynamically loadable extensions.
448 (The standard extensions supplied with Perl are handled
449 automatically). You can turn off this namespace protection by adding
450 -DNO_EMBED to your ccflags variable in config.sh.
452 Perl 5.003's namespace protection was incomplete, but this has
453 been fixed in 5.004. However, some sites may need to maintain
454 complete binary compatibility with Perl 5.003. If you are building
455 Perl for such a site, then when Configure asks if you want binary
456 compatibility, answer "y".
458 On the other hand, if you are embedding perl into another application
459 and want the maximum namespace protection, then you probably ought to
460 answer "n" when Configure asks if you want binary compatibility.
462 The default answer of "y" to maintain binary compatibility is probably
463 appropriate for almost everyone.
465 In a related issue, old extensions may possibly be affected by the changes
466 in the Perl language in the current release. Please see pod/perldelta for
467 a description of what's changed.
469 =head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
471 Previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in
472 stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl allow alternate IO
473 mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but the stdio mechanism is still
474 the default and is the only supported mechanism.
476 This PerlIO abstraction can be enabled either on the Configure command
479 sh Configure -Duseperlio
481 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
483 If you choose to use the PerlIO abstraction layer, there are two
484 (experimental) possibilities for the underlying IO calls. These have been
485 tested to some extent on some platforms, but are not guaranteed to work
492 AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance to stdio.h in many
493 cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline" modules. Sfio
494 currently only builds on a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports.
495 Because the data structures are completely different from stdio, perl
496 extension modules or external libraries may not work. This
497 configuration exists to allow these issues to be worked on.
499 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
500 A (fairly old) version of sfio is in CPAN, and work is in progress to make
501 it more easily buildable by adding Configure support.
503 You select this option by
505 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
507 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
508 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
511 Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails
512 to detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent).
513 Apparently, this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux
516 You can test if you have this problem by trying the following shell
517 script. (You may have to add some extra cflags and libraries. A
518 portable version of this may eventually make its way into Configure.)
523 main() { printf("42\n"); }
525 cc -o try try.c -lsfio
527 if test X$val = X42; then
528 echo "Your sfio looks ok"
530 echo "Your sfio has the exit problem."
533 If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to your sfio sources
534 and correct iffe's guess about atexit (or whatever is appropriate for
537 There also might be a more recent release of Sfio that fixes your
542 Normal stdio IO, but with all IO going through calls to the PerlIO
543 abstraction layer. This configuration can be used to check that perl and
544 extension modules have been correctly converted to use the PerlIO
547 This configuration should work on all platforms (but might not).
549 You select this option via:
551 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Uusesfio
553 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure does not
554 detect sfio, then this will be the default suggested by Configure.
558 =head2 Building a shared libperl.so Perl library
560 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
561 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
562 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
565 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
566 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
567 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
568 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
569 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
570 can share the same library.
572 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
573 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
574 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
577 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
578 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
579 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
582 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
583 libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
584 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
585 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
586 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
587 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
589 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
590 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
592 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
594 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
596 To actually build perl, you must add the current working directory to your
597 LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable before running make. You can do
600 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
602 for Bourne-style shells, or
604 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
606 for Csh-style shells. You *MUST* do this before running make.
607 Folks running NeXT OPENSTEP must substitute DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
608 LD_LIBRARY_PATH above.
610 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
611 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
612 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
613 install a standard Perl 5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
614 try to build Perl 5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
615 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
616 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
617 libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is
618 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
619 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
620 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
621 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't. On Digital Unix, you can
622 ovveride LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the _RLD_ROOT environment variable
623 to point to the perl build directory.
625 The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different
626 directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING
627 version of perl. You can do this with by changing all the *archlib*
628 variables in config.sh, namely archlib, archlib_exp, and
629 installarchlib, to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
633 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed, so
634 perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
635 the malloc function on your system.
637 The perl source is shipped with a version of malloc that is very fast
638 but somewhat wasteful of space. On the other hand, your system's
639 malloc() function is probably a bit slower but also a bit more frugal.
641 For many uses, speed is probably the most important consideration, so
642 the default behavior (for most systems) is to use the malloc supplied
643 with perl. However, if you will be running very large applications
644 (e.g. Tk or PDL) or if your system already has an excellent malloc, or
645 if you are experiencing difficulties with extensions that use
646 third-party libraries that call malloc, then you might wish to use
647 your system's malloc. (Or, you might wish to explore the experimental
648 malloc flags discussed below.)
650 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
652 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
654 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
656 =head2 Malloc Performance Flags
658 If you are using Perl's malloc, you may add one or
659 more of the following items to your cflags config.sh variable
660 to change its behavior in potentially useful ways. You can find out
661 more about these flags by reading the malloc.c source.
662 In a future version of perl, these might be enabled by default.
666 =item -DDEBUGGING_MSTATS
668 If DEBUGGING_MSTATS is defined, you can extract malloc
669 statistics from the Perl interpreter. The overhead this imposes is not
670 large (perl just twiddles integers at malloc/free/sbrk time). When you
671 run perl with the environment variable PERL_DEBUG_MSTATS set to
672 either 1 or 2, the interpreter will dump statistics to stderr at exit
673 time and (with a value of 2) after compilation. If you install the
674 Devel::Peek module you can get the statistics whenever you like by
675 invoking its mstat() function.
677 =item -DEMERGENCY_SBRK
679 If EMERGENCY_SBRK is defined, running out of memory need not be a
680 fatal error: a memory pool can allocated by assigning to the special
681 variable $^M. See perlvar(1) for more details.
685 If PACK_MALLOC is defined, malloc.c uses a slightly different
686 algorithm for small allocations (up to 64 bytes long). Such small
687 allocations are quite common in typical Perl scripts.
689 The expected memory savings (with 8-byte alignment in $alignbytes) is
690 about 20% for typical Perl usage. The expected slowdown due to the
691 additional malloc overhead is in fractions of a percent. (It is hard
692 to measure because of the effect of the saved memory on speed).
694 =item -DTWO_POT_OPTIMIZE
696 If TWO_POT_OPTIMIZE is defined, malloc.c uses a slightly different
697 algorithm for large allocations that are close to a power of two
698 (starting with 16K). Such allocations are typical for big hashes and
699 special-purpose scripts, especially image processing. If you will be
700 manipulating very large blocks with sizes close to powers of two, it
701 might be wise to define this macro.
703 The expected saving of memory is 0-100% (100% in applications which
704 require most memory in such 2**n chunks). The expected slowdown is
709 =head2 Building a debugging perl
711 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
712 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
713 you probably want to do
715 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
717 This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
718 to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
719 executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
720 cc -g2. Check you man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for your
721 system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags variable in
722 config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's internal
723 state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by
724 default if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to
725 reuse your old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the
726 optimize and ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes
727 as shown in L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
729 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
730 it's convenient to have both.
732 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
733 versions of perl under L<Building a shared libperl.so Perl library>.
735 =head2 Other Compiler Flags
737 For most users, all of the Configure defaults are fine. However,
738 you can change a number of factors in the way perl is built
739 by adding appropriate -D directives to your ccflags variable in
742 For example, you can replace the rand() and srand() functions in the
743 perl source by any other random number generator by a trick such as the
746 sh Configure -Dccflags='-Drand=random -Dsrand=srandom'
748 or by adding -Drand=random and -Dsrand=srandom to your ccflags
749 at the appropriate Configure prompt. (Note: Although this worked for
750 me, it might not work for you if your system's header files give
751 different prototypes for rand() and random() or srand() and srandom().)
753 You should also run Configure interactively to verify that a hint file
754 doesn't inadvertently override your ccflags setting. (Hints files
755 shouldn't do that, but some might.)
757 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
761 =item Running Configure Interactively
763 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
764 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
767 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
768 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
769 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
770 will use the defaults from then on.
772 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
773 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
774 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
778 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
779 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
780 will offer to use that hint file.
782 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
783 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint
784 file for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an
787 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
789 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
790 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
791 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
794 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
795 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
796 Keep the recommended value? [y]
798 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
799 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
802 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
803 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
804 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
807 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
808 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
809 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
810 Now, Configure will find your gdbm library and will issue a message:
812 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
813 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
814 Keep the previous value? [y]
816 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
817 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
818 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
820 =item Changing Compilers
822 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
823 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
824 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
825 with the options you want to use.
827 This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
828 gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
830 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
832 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
833 them to all the .SH files by running
837 You will then have to rebuild by running
844 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride Configure's
845 guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just before config.sh
846 is created. You have to be careful with this, however, as Configure
847 does no checking that your changes make sense. See the section on
848 L<"Changing the installation directory"> for an example.
852 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
853 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
854 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
856 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
857 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
862 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
863 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
864 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
865 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
866 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
867 lost the next time you run Configure.
869 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh
870 and change either $ccflags or $optimize,
878 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file config_H to
879 config.h and edit the config.h to reflect your system's peculiarities.
880 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
883 =item Porting information
885 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
886 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
887 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
890 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
891 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports for current information on ports to
892 various other operating systems.
898 This will look for all the includes.
899 The output is stored in makefile. The only difference between
900 Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at the bottom of
901 makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
902 makefile, not Makefile since the Unix make command reads
903 makefile first. (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in
904 a different file. Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh
907 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
912 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
914 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
915 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
916 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help, you can
917 send a message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
918 perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
919 See L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
925 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
926 for further tips and information.
930 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
931 during the building of extensions, you should run
935 to test your version of miniperl.
939 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try
940 unsetting them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang
941 while running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C
942 locale. See the discussion under L<make test> below about locales.
944 =item malloc duplicates
946 If you get duplicates upon linking for malloc et al, add -DHIDEMYMALLOC
947 or -DEMBEDMYMALLOC to your ccflags variable in config.sh.
951 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
952 correctly. When using gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define'
953 and i_varargs='undef' in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by
954 running fixincludes correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't
955 forget to propagate your changes (see
956 L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
957 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
961 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
962 numbers will vary in different versions of perl):
964 util.c: In function `Perl_croak':
965 util.c:962: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
966 proto.h:45: prototype declaration
968 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
969 previous L<"varargs"> item.
971 =item Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading
973 If you have problems with dynamic loading using gcc on SunOS or
974 Solaris, and you are using GNU as and GNU ld, you may need to add
975 -B/bin/ (for SunOS) or -B/usr/ccs/bin/ (for Solaris) to your
976 $ccflags, $ldflags, and $lddlflags so that the system's versions of as
977 and ld are used. Note that the trailing '/' is required.
978 Alternatively, you can use the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX
979 environment variable to ensure that Sun's as and ld are used. Consult
980 your gcc documentation for further information on the -B option and
981 the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX variable.
983 One convenient way to ensure you are not using GNU as and ld is to
984 invoke Configure with
986 sh Configure -Dcc='gcc -B/usr/ccs/bin/'
988 for Solaris systems. For a SunOS system, you must use -B/bin/
991 =item ld.so.1: ./perl: fatal: relocation error:
993 If you get this message on SunOS or Solaris, and you're using gcc,
994 it's probably the GNU as or GNU ld problem in the previous item
995 L<"Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading">.
997 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
999 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1000 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1001 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1002 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1003 of your local set-up.
1005 =item dlopen: stub interception failed
1007 The primary cause of the 'dlopen: stub interception failed' message is
1008 that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable includes a directory
1009 which is a symlink to /usr/lib (such as /lib).
1011 The reason this causes a problem is quite subtle. The file libdl.so.1.0
1012 actually *only* contains functions which generate 'stub interception
1013 failed' errors! The runtime linker intercepts links to
1014 "/usr/lib/libdl.so.1.0" and links in internal implementation of those
1015 functions instead. [Thanks to Tim Bunce for this explanation.]
1019 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1020 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1023 sh Configure -Uusenm
1025 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1026 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1031 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1032 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1033 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1034 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1035 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1039 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1040 on a number of other common functions too. You are probably better off
1041 re-running Configure without using nm extraction (see previous item).
1045 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1046 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1047 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous items
1048 on L<"vsprintf"> and L<"nm extraction">.
1052 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1053 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1061 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1062 with B<make depend; make>.
1066 If you still can't compile successfully, try adding a -DCRIPPLED_CC
1067 flag. (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it compiled right!)
1068 This simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that get
1071 =item Missing functions
1073 If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
1074 other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
1075 there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
1080 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1081 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1082 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1083 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1084 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1087 =item Missing dbmclose
1089 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1090 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1092 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1094 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1095 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1096 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1097 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1098 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1099 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1100 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1101 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1102 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1103 process is continuing.
1105 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1108 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1110 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1111 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1112 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1114 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1115 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1116 quite that tightly coordinated.
1118 =item sh: ar: not found
1120 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1121 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1122 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1123 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1126 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1128 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1129 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1130 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1134 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1136 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1138 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1140 UTS may need one or more of -DCRIPPLED_CC, -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1142 If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.
1144 Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
1150 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If it
1151 doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went wrong. See the
1152 file t/README in the t subdirectory. Note that you can't run the
1153 tests in background if this disables opening of /dev/tty.
1155 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1156 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1157 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1161 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1162 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1166 (this assumes that most tests succeed, since harness uses
1167 complicated constructs).
1169 You can also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1170 comments that apply to your system.
1172 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1173 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1174 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1175 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1176 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1177 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1179 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1185 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1187 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1188 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1189 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1190 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1191 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1192 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1197 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1198 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
1199 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
1200 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
1201 are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
1202 ignore any messages about chown not working.
1204 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
1205 anything, you can run
1207 ./perl installperl -n
1208 ./perl installman -n
1210 make install will install the following:
1213 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
1214 will be a link to perl.
1216 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
1217 a2p awk-to-perl translator
1218 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
1220 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
1221 s2p sed-to-perl translator
1222 find2perl find-to-perl translator
1223 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
1224 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
1225 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
1226 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
1227 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
1228 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
1229 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
1232 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
1234 library files in $privlib and $archlib specified to
1235 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
1236 man pages in the location specified to Configure, usually
1237 something like /usr/local/man/man1.
1238 module in the location specified to Configure, usually
1239 man pages under /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3.
1240 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
1242 Installperl will also create the library directories $siteperl and
1243 $sitearch listed in config.sh. Usually, these are something like
1244 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
1245 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$archname
1246 where $archname is something like sun4-sunos. These directories
1247 will be used for installing extensions.
1249 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl.a library are also installed
1250 under $archlib so that any user may later build new extensions, run the
1251 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
1252 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
1254 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
1256 You can safely install the current version of perl5 and still run scripts
1257 under the old binaries for versions 5.003 and later ONLY. Instead of
1258 starting your script with #!/usr/local/bin/perl, just start it with
1259 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.003 (or whatever version you want to run.)
1260 If you want to retain a version of Perl 5 prior to 5.003, you'll
1261 need to install the current version in a separate directory tree,
1262 since some of the architecture-independent library files have changed
1263 in incompatible ways.
1265 The old architecture-dependent files are stored in a version-specific
1266 directory (such as /usr/local/lib/perl5/sun4-sunos/5.003) so that they
1267 will still be accessible even after a later version is installed.
1268 (Note: Perl 5.000 and 5.001 did not put their architecture-dependent
1269 libraries in a version-specific directory. They are simply in
1270 /usr/local/lib/perl5/$archname. If you will not be using 5.000 or
1271 5.001, you may safely remove those files.)
1273 In general, the standard library files in /usr/local/lib/perl5 should
1274 be usable by all versions of perl5. However, the diagnostics.pm module
1275 uses the /usr/local/lib/perl5/pod/perldiag.pod documentation file, so
1276 the C<use diagnostics;> pragma and the splain script will only identify
1277 and explain any warnings or errors that the most recently-installed
1278 version of perl can generate.
1280 Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use with a newer
1281 version of perl. If you do run into problems, and you want to continue
1282 to use the old version of perl along with your extension, simply move
1283 those extension files to the appropriate version directory, such as
1284 /usr/local/lib/perl/archname/5.003. Then Perl 5.003 will find your
1285 files in the 5.003 directory, and newer versions of perl will find your
1286 newer extension in the site_perl directory.
1288 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
1289 separate directories. One convenient way to do this is by
1290 using a separate prefix for each version, such as
1292 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.004
1294 and adding /opt/perl5.004/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
1295 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
1296 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
1298 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
1299 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
1300 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
1303 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
1305 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
1307 By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
1308 they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
1310 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
1311 perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
1312 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
1313 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
1314 the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036
1315 (or whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod
1316 for possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
1318 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
1320 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from
1321 the system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
1322 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
1323 by perl. These files will be placed in the architectural library directory
1324 you specified to Configure; by default this is
1325 /usr/local/lib/perl5/ARCH/VERSION, where ARCH is your architecture
1326 (such as sun4-solaris) and VERSION is the version of perl you are
1327 building (for example, 5.004).
1329 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the
1330 conversion of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have
1331 to hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse
1332 correctly. For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and
1335 =head1 cd pod && make html && mv *.html (www home dir)
1337 Some sites may wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
1338 available in HTML format. Type
1340 cd pod && make html && mv *.html <www home dir>
1342 where F<www home dir> is wherever your site keeps HTML files.
1344 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
1346 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
1347 available in TeX format. Type
1349 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
1351 =head1 Reporting Problems
1353 If you have difficulty building perl, and none of the advice in this
1354 file helps, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant
1355 manual pages on your system doesn't help either, then you should send a
1356 message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
1357 perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
1359 Please include the output of the ./myconfig shell script
1360 that comes with the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the
1361 perlbug program that comes with the perl distribution,
1362 but you need to have perl compiled and installed before you can use it.
1364 You might also find helpful information in the Porting
1365 directory of the perl distribution.
1367 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
1369 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation is
1370 in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
1371 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
1372 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This
1373 is sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
1375 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
1376 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory
1377 and running (either):
1379 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
1380 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
1382 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
1383 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
1386 Note that you must have performed the installation already before
1387 running the above, since the script collects the installed files to
1388 generate the documentation.
1392 Andy Dougherty doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu , borrowing very heavily
1393 from the original README by Larry Wall, and also with lots of helpful
1394 feedback from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
1396 =head1 LAST MODIFIED
1398 $Id: INSTALL,v 1.17 1997/05/08 21:08:15 doughera Released $