3 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
7 First, make sure you are installing an up-to-date version of Perl. If
8 you didn't get your Perl source from CPAN, check the latest version at
9 <URL:http://www.cpan.org/src/>.
11 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system
12 with all the defaults are:
14 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
20 # You may also wish to add these:
21 (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
23 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
25 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
27 B<NOTE>: starting from the release 5.6.0, Perl uses a version
28 scheme where even-numbered subreleases (like 5.6 and 5.8) are stable
29 maintenance releases and odd-numbered subreleases (like 5.7) are
30 unstable development releases. Development releases should not be
31 used in production environments. Fixes and new features are first
32 carefully tested in development releases and only if they prove
33 themselves to be worthy will they be migrated to the maintenance
36 The above commands will install Perl to /usr/local (or some other
37 platform-specific directory -- see the appropriate file in hints/.)
38 If that's not okay with you, use
40 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
46 For information on non-Unix systems, see the section on L<"Porting
49 If "make install" just says "`install' is up to date" or something
50 similar, you may be on a case-insensitive filesystems such as Mac's HFS+,
51 and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion is brought to you
52 by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
54 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
55 L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
57 For information on what's new in this release, see the
58 pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
59 changes, see the Changes file.
63 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
64 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
65 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
66 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
68 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
70 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
72 Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
73 you should probably at least skim through this entire document before
76 If you're building Perl on a non-Unix system, you should also read
77 the README file specific to your operating system, since this may
78 provide additional or different instructions for building Perl. There
79 are also README files for several flavors of Unix systems, such as
80 Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX; if you have one of those systems, you should
81 also read the README file specific to that system.
83 If there is a hint file for your system (in the hints/ directory) you
84 should also read that hint file for specific information for your
85 system. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh or the svr5.sh hint file.)
86 Additional information is in the Porting/ directory.
88 =head1 WARNING: This version requires an extra step to build old extensions.
90 5.005_53 and later releases do not export unadorned
91 global symbols anymore. This means you may need to build rather old
92 extensions that have not been updated for the current naming convention
95 perl Makefile.PL POLLUTE=1
97 Alternatively, you can enable CPP symbol pollution wholesale by
98 building perl itself with:
100 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_POLLUTE
102 pod/perl56delta.pod contains more details about this.
104 =head1 WARNING: This version is not binary compatible with releases of
107 If you have built extensions (i.e. modules that include C code)
108 using an earlier version of Perl, you will need to rebuild and reinstall
111 Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
112 without reinstallation. See the discussions below on
113 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> and
114 L<"Upgrading from 5.005 or 5.6 to 5.8.0"> for more details.
116 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
118 On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the
119 changes in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
120 pod/perldelta.pod (and the earlier pod/perl5Xdelta.pod) for a description of
121 what's changed. See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod
122 file for a (possibly incomplete) list of locally installed modules.
123 Also see CPAN::autobundle for one way to make a "bundle" of your
124 currently installed modules.
126 =head1 WARNING: This version requires a compiler that supports ANSI C.
128 Most C compilers are now ANSI-compliant. However, a few current
129 computers are delivered with an older C compiler expressly for
130 rebuilding the system kernel, or for some other historical reason.
131 Alternatively, you may have an old machine which was shipped before
132 ANSI compliance became widespread. Such compilers are not suitable
135 If you find that your default C compiler is not ANSI-capable, but you
136 know that an ANSI-capable compiler is installed on your system, you
137 can tell F<Configure> to use the correct compiler by means of the
138 C<-Dcc=> command-line option -- see L<"gcc">.
140 If do not have an ANSI-capable compiler there are a couple of avenues
147 You may try obtaining GCC, available from GNU mirrors worldwide,
148 listed at <URL:http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html>. If, rather than
149 building gcc from source code, you locate a binary version configured
150 for your platform, be sure that it is compiled for the version of the
151 operating system that you are using.
155 You may purchase a commercial ANSI C compiler from your system
156 supplier or elsewhere. (Or your organization may already have
157 licensed such software -- ask your colleagues to find out how to
158 access it.) If there is a README file for your system in the Perl
159 distribution (for example, F<README.hpux>), it may contain advice on
164 Although Perl can be compiled using a C++ compiler, the Configure script
165 does not work with some C++ compilers.
167 =head1 Space Requirements
169 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 50 MB of disk space.
170 After completing make, it takes up roughly 100 MB, though the actual
171 total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
172 directories need something on the order of 45 MB, though again that
173 value is system-dependent.
175 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
177 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
186 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
187 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
189 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
190 files. If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
191 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
192 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
193 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it
197 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
198 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
199 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
200 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
201 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
202 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
203 probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't.
204 Similarly, if you used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version
205 numbers, you will probably want to adjust them as well.
207 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. For example, some
208 Linux distributions use i386, while others may use i486. If you build
209 it yourself, Configure uses the output of the arch command, which
210 might be i586 or i686 instead. If you pick up a precompiled binary, or
211 compile extensions on different systems, they might not all agree on
212 the architecture name.
214 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
215 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
217 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
218 installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
219 using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
220 settings"> below. If you wish to start with a fresh distribution, you
221 also need to remove any old Policy.sh files you may have with
227 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
228 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
229 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
230 almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
231 since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
234 At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
235 defaults from then on.
237 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
238 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
240 =head2 Altering config.sh variables for C compiler switches etc.
242 For most users, all of the Configure defaults are fine. Configure
243 also has several convenient options which are described below.
244 However, if Configure doesn't have an option to do what you want,
245 you can change Configure variables after the platform hints have been
246 run, by using Configure's -A switch. For example, here's how to add
247 a couple of extra flags to C compiler invocations:
249 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_Y2KWARN -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC"
251 For more help on Configure switches, run:
255 =head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
257 Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
258 where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
259 read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
260 architectures. You can do this (if your file system supports symbolic
263 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
264 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
265 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
267 This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
268 pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
269 unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
273 and Perl will be built and tested, all in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
275 =head2 Common Configure options
277 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h> to
278 get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
279 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
285 To compile with gcc you should run
287 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
289 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
290 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
292 =item Installation prefix
294 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
295 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
296 and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for
299 You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
300 directory, when Configure prompts you or by using the Configure command
301 line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
303 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
305 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
306 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
307 prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
308 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
309 for more details. Do not include a trailing slash, (i.e. /opt/perl/)
310 or you may experience odd test failures.
312 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
313 as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
314 attempt infinite recursion.
318 It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
319 find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
320 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
321 careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
322 vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing. If you insist
323 on replacing your vendor's perl, useful information on how it was
324 configured may be found with
328 (Check the output carefully, however, since this doesn't preserve
329 spaces in arguments to Configure. For that, you have to look
330 carefully at config_arg1, config_arg2, etc.)
332 By default, Configure will not try to link /usr/bin/perl to
333 the current version of perl. You can turn on that behavior by running
335 Configure -Dinstallusrbinperl
337 or by answering 'yes' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
338 (Note that before perl 5.8.1, the default behavior was to create
339 or overwrite /usr/bin/perl even if it already existed.)
341 In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to
342 put (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
343 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
344 obvious and convenient place.
346 =item Overriding an old config.sh
348 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
349 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
353 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
358 Note: for development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.9, as opposed
359 to maintenance releases which have even subreleases, like 5.6 and 5.8)
360 if you want to use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel
361 to Configure, because the default answer to the question "do you really
362 want to Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel
363 skips that sanity check.
365 For example for my Solaris system, I usually use
367 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
369 =head2 GNU-style configure
371 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
372 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
374 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
376 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
379 ./configure.gnu --help
383 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
384 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
386 See L<Cross-compilation> below for information on cross-compiling.
388 =head2 Installation Directories
390 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
391 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
392 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
393 Do not include trailing slashes on directory names.
395 I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
396 everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
397 process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use
398 the defaults from then on. Alternatively, you can
400 grep '^install' config.sh
402 after Configure has run to verify the installation paths.
404 The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
405 people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
406 distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
407 need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
408 you can safely skip the next section.
410 The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
414 =item Directories for the perl distribution
416 By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.8.0.
417 $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
418 5.8.0 or 5.8.1, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
419 determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
420 variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
422 Configure variable Default value
425 $scriptdir $prefix/bin
426 $privlib $prefix/lib/perl5/$version
427 $archlib $prefix/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
428 $man1dir $prefix/man/man1
429 $man3dir $prefix/man/man3
433 Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
434 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
435 instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
436 directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
437 the common style is shown here.
439 =item Directories for site-specific add-on files
441 After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
442 CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
443 be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
445 Configure variable Default value
447 $sitebin $siteprefix/bin
448 $sitescript $siteprefix/bin
449 $sitelib $siteprefix/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
450 $sitearch $siteprefix/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
451 $siteman1dir $siteprefix/man/man1
452 $siteman3dir $siteprefix/man/man3
456 By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
457 modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
459 =item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
461 Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
462 distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
463 for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
465 Configure variable Default value
467 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
468 $vendorbin $vendorprefix/bin
469 $vendorscript $vendorprefix/bin
470 $vendorlib $vendorprefix/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
471 $vendorarch $vendorprefix/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
472 $vendorman1dir $vendorprefix/man/man1
473 $vendorman3dir $vendorprefix/man/man3
474 $vendorhtml1dir (none)
475 $vendorhtml3dir (none)
477 These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
478 a vendor might choose the following settings:
481 $siteprefix /usr/local
484 This would have the effect of setting the following:
488 $privlib /usr/lib/perl5/$version
489 $archlib /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
490 $man1dir /usr/man/man1
491 $man3dir /usr/man/man3
493 $sitebin /usr/local/bin
494 $sitescript /usr/local/bin
495 $sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
496 $sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
497 $siteman1dir /usr/local/man/man1
498 $siteman3dir /usr/local/man/man3
501 $vendorscript /usr/bin
502 $vendorlib /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
503 $vendorarch /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
504 $vendorman1dir /usr/man/man1
505 $vendorman3dir /usr/man/man3
507 Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
508 /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
509 the /usr/local hierarchy.
511 The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
512 version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
513 However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
514 installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
515 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for more details
516 on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
518 Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
519 example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
520 are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
521 site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
522 network. One way to do that would be something like
524 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
528 As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
529 variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
530 directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
531 Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
532 version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
534 For example, if you have a bundle of perl libraries from a previous
535 installation, perhaps in a strange place:
537 Configure -Dotherlibdirs=/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1
541 There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
542 that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
543 separated list of directories, like this
545 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
547 The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
548 ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
549 modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
550 touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
551 version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
552 present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
553 directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
554 run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
558 In versions 5.005_57 and earlier, the default was to store module man
559 pages in a version-specific directory, such as
560 /usr/local/lib/perl5/$version/man/man3. The default for 5.005_58 and
561 after is /usr/local/man/man3 so that most users can find the man pages
562 without resetting MANPATH.
564 You can continue to use the old default from the command line with
566 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0/man/man3
568 Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
570 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
572 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
577 Currently, the standard perl installation does not do anything with
578 HTML documentation, but that may change in the future. Further, some
579 add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The html Configure
580 variables listed above are provided if you wish to specify where such
581 documents should be placed. The default is "none", but will likely
582 eventually change to something useful based on user feedback.
586 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
587 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
590 Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
591 directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
594 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
595 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
596 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below.
598 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
599 library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
600 suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
602 Thus, for example, if you Configure with
603 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.8.0 are
605 Configure variable Default value
606 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.8.0
607 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.8.0/$archname
608 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.8.0
609 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.8.0/$archname
611 =head2 Changing the installation directory
613 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
614 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
615 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
616 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
617 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
618 packages, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
619 wish to install perl into a different directory and use that
620 management software to move perl to its final destination. This
621 section describes how to do that.
623 Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You
624 could edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to
625 /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local, or you could simply use the
626 following command line:
628 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
630 (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
632 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
633 modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
634 follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with
637 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
639 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
640 convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
641 installed on multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to
642 create an archive that can be installed in /opt/perl.
643 Here's one way to do that:
645 # Set up to install perl into a different directory,
646 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
647 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5 -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
650 make install # This will install everything into /tmp/perl5.
652 # Edit $archlib/Config.pm and $archlib/.packlist to change all the
653 # install* variables back to reflect where everything will
654 # really be installed. (That is, change /tmp/perl5 to /opt/perl
655 # everywhere in those files.)
656 # Check the scripts in $scriptdir to make sure they have the correct
657 # #!/wherever/perl line.
658 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
659 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
660 cd /opt/perl # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
661 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
663 Alternatively, the DESTDIR variable is honored during C<make install>.
664 The DESTDIR is automatically prepended to all the installation paths
665 (and there is no need to edit anything). With DESTDIR, the above
666 example can we written as:
668 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
671 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
672 cd /tmp/perl5/opt/perl
673 tar cvf /tmp/perl5-archive.tar .
675 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
677 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
678 answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact
679 person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another
680 system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file
681 to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate
682 hint file for your system.
684 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
689 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
691 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
693 If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
694 to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
695 platform-specific hints files.
697 =head2 Configure-time Options
699 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
700 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
701 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
702 some of the main things you can change.
706 On some platforms, perl can be compiled with
707 support for threads. To enable this, run
709 sh Configure -Dusethreads
711 Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command
712 line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
714 The default is to compile without thread support.
716 Perl has two different internal threads implementations. The current
717 model (available internally since 5.6, and as a user-level module
718 since 5.8) is called interpreter-based implementation (ithreads),
719 with one interpreter per thread, and explicit sharing of data.
721 The 5.005 version (5005threads) is considered obsolete, buggy, and
724 By default, Configure selects ithreads if -Dusethreads is specified.
726 (You need to also use the PerlIO layer, explained later, if you decide
727 to use ithreads, to guarantee the good interworking of threads and I/O.)
729 However, if you wish, you can select the unsupported old 5005threads behavior
731 sh Configure -Dusethreads -Duse5005threads
733 If you decide to use ithreads, the 'threads' module allows their use,
734 and the 'Thread' module offers an interface to both 5005threads and
735 ithreads (whichever has been configured).
737 When building threaded for certain library calls like the getgr*() and
738 the getpw*() there is a dynamically sized result buffer: the buffer
739 starts small but Perl will keep growing the buffer until the result fits.
740 To get a fixed upper limit you will have to recompile Perl with
741 PERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE defined to be the number of bytes you want.
742 One way to do this is to run Configure with
743 C<-Accflags=-DPERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE=65536>
745 =head2 Large file support.
747 Since Perl 5.6.0, Perl has supported large files (files larger than
748 2 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
749 support is on by default.
751 This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files,
752 seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad in that if you are interfacing Perl
753 using some extension, the components you are connecting to must also
754 be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
755 parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
756 will happen. One popular extension suffering from this ailment is the
757 Apache extension mod_perl.
759 There's also one known limitation with the current large files
760 implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
761 section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer
762 formats like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
764 =head2 64 bit support.
766 If your platform does not have 64 bits natively, but can simulate them
767 with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>, you can build a
768 perl that uses 64 bits.
770 There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
771 using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
772 -Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
773 the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
775 The C<use64bitint> does only as much as is required to get 64-bit
776 integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long longs")
777 while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because your
778 pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint> does
779 not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it might,
780 but it doesn't have to): the C<use64bitint> means that you will be
781 able to have 64 bits wide scalar values.
783 The C<use64bitall> goes all the way by attempting to switch also
784 integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
785 create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
786 resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
787 have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
790 Natively 64-bit systems like Alpha and Cray need neither -Duse64bitint
793 NOTE: 64-bit support is still experimental on most platforms.
794 Existing support only covers the LP64 data model. In particular, the
795 LLP64 data model is not yet supported. 64-bit libraries and system
796 APIs on many platforms have not stabilized--your mileage may vary.
800 In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
801 range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
802 (that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
803 this support (if it is available).
807 You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
808 and the long double support.
810 =head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
812 Executive summary: in Perl 5.8, you should use the default "PerlIO"
813 as the IO mechanism unless you have a good reason not to.
815 In more detail: previous versions of perl used the standard IO
816 mechanisms as defined in stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl
817 introduced alternate IO mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but up
818 until and including Perl 5.6, the stdio mechanism was still the default
819 and the only supported mechanism.
821 Starting from Perl 5.8, the default mechanism is to use the PerlIO
822 abstraction, because it allows better control of I/O mechanisms,
823 instead of having to work with (often, work around) vendors' I/O
826 This PerlIO abstraction can be (but again, unless you know what you
827 are doing, should not be) disabled either on the Configure command
830 sh Configure -Uuseperlio
832 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
834 With the PerlIO abstraction layer, there is another possibility for
835 the underlying IO calls, AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance
836 to stdio.h in many cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline"
837 modules ("Native" PerlIO has them too). Sfio currently only builds on
838 a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports. Because the data
839 structures are completely different from stdio, perl extension modules
840 or external libraries may not work. This configuration exists to
841 allow these issues to be worked on.
843 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
844 The latest sfio is available from http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/sfio/
846 You select this option by
848 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
850 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
851 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
854 Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails to
855 detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent). Apparently,
856 this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux and SunOS 4.
857 Configure should detect this problem and warn you about problems with
858 _exit vs. exit. If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to
859 your sfio sources and correct iffe's guess about atexit.
861 =head2 Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Hashes
863 In Perls 5.8.0 and earlier it was easy to create degenerate hashes.
864 Processing such hashes would consume large amounts of CPU time,
865 enabling a "Denial of Service" attack against Perl. Such hashes may be
866 a problem for example for mod_perl sites, sites with Perl CGI scripts
867 and web services, that process data originating from external sources.
869 In Perl 5.8.1 a security feature was introduced to make it harder
870 to create such degenerate hashes.
872 Because of this feature the keys(), values(), and each() functions may
873 return the hash elements in different order between different runs of
874 Perl even with the same data. One can still revert to the old
875 repeatable order by setting the environment variable PERL_HASH_SEED,
876 see L<perlrun/PERL_HASH_SEED>. Another option is to add
877 -DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT to the compilation flags (for example by
878 using C<Configure -Accflags=-DUSE_HAS_SEED_EXPLICIT>), in which case
879 one has to explicitly set the PERL_HASH_SEED environment variable to
880 enable the security feature, or by adding -DNO_HASH_SEED to the compilation
881 flags to completely disable the randomisation feature.
883 B<Perl has never guaranteed any ordering of the hash keys>, and the
884 ordering has already changed several times during the lifetime of
885 Perl 5. Also, the ordering of hash keys has always been, and
886 continues to be, affected by the insertion order.
888 Note that because of this randomisation for example the Data::Dumper
889 results will be different between different runs of Perl since
890 Data::Dumper by default dumps hashes "unordered". The use of the
891 Data::Dumper C<Sortkeys> option is recommended.
895 Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
896 TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
897 access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
898 Version 5. You can find more about SOCKS from http://www.socks.nec.com/
900 =head2 Dynamic Loading
902 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
903 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
904 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
905 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
907 =head2 Building a shared Perl library
909 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
910 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
911 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
914 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
915 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
916 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
917 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
918 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
919 can share the same library.
921 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
922 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
923 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
926 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
927 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
928 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
931 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
932 libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
933 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
934 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
935 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
936 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
938 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
939 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
941 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
943 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
945 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
946 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
947 NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
948 for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
949 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
950 be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
951 library search settings. You can find the name of the environment
952 variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
954 grep ldlibpthname config.sh
956 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
957 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
958 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
961 cd t; ./perl misc/failing_test.t
963 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
965 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
968 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
970 for Bourne-style shells, or
972 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
974 for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
975 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And
976 again, it may be something other than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
978 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
979 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
981 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
983 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
984 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
985 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
986 install a standard Perl 5.8.0 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
987 try to build Perl 5.8.0 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
988 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
989 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
990 libperl.so.8 rather with the installed libperl.so.8? The answer is
991 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
992 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
993 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
994 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux, you can only override at runtime via
995 LD_PRELOAD, specifying the exact filename you wish to be used; and on
996 Digital Unix, you can override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the
997 _RLD_ROOT environment variable to point to the perl build directory.
999 In other words, it is generally not a good idea to try to build a perl
1000 with a shared library if $archlib/CORE/$libperl already exists from a
1003 A good workaround is to specify a different directory for the
1004 architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING version of perl.
1005 You can do this by changing all the *archlib* variables in config.sh to
1006 point to your new architecture-dependent library.
1008 =head2 Malloc Issues
1010 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
1011 so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
1012 the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
1013 version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
1014 perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
1015 than your system malloc.
1017 However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
1018 experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
1019 that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
1020 (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
1024 =item Using the system malloc
1026 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
1028 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
1030 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
1032 =item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
1034 NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you just
1035 run Configure to accept all the defaults on those platforms.
1037 Perl's malloc family of functions are normally called Perl_malloc(),
1038 Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree().
1039 These names do not clash with the system versions of these functions.
1041 If this flag is enabled, however, Perl's malloc family of functions
1042 will have the same names as the system versions. This may be required
1043 sometimes if you have libraries that like to free() data that may have
1044 been allocated by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1046 Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1047 from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1048 does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1051 =item -DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS
1053 This flag enables debugging mstats, which is required to use the
1054 Devel::Peek::mstat() function. You cannot enable this unless you are
1055 using Perl's malloc, so a typical Configure command would be
1057 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS -Dusemymalloc='y'
1059 to enable this option.
1063 =head2 Building a debugging perl
1065 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
1066 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
1067 you probably want to do
1069 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
1071 This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
1072 to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
1073 executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
1074 cc -g2. Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for
1075 your system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags
1076 variable in config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's
1077 internal state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by default
1078 if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to reuse your
1079 old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the optimize and
1080 ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes as shown in
1081 L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
1083 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
1084 it's convenient to have both.
1086 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
1087 versions of perl under L<Building a shared libperl.so Perl library>.
1091 Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
1092 in the ext/ subdirectory.
1094 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
1095 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
1096 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
1097 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
1098 is always built by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
1099 set the Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from
1100 the Configure command line.
1102 If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
1103 running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
1104 extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
1105 it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
1106 has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
1107 extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
1108 convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
1109 you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
1110 dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
1112 You can learn more about each of the supplied extensions by consulting the
1113 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
1116 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
1117 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
1118 version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
1120 To disable certain extensions so that they are not built, use
1121 the -Dnoextensions=... and -Donlyextensions=... options. They both
1122 accept a space-separated list of extensions. The extensions listed
1123 in C<noextensions> are removed from the list of extensions to build,
1124 while the C<onlyextensions> is rather more severe and builds only
1125 the listed extensions. The latter should be used with extreme caution
1126 since certain extensions are used by many other extensions and modules:
1127 such modules include Fcntl and IO. The order of processing these
1128 options is first C<only> (if present), then C<no> (if present).
1130 Another, older way to turn off various extensions (which is still good
1131 to know if you have to work with older Perl) exists. Here are the
1132 Configure command-line variables you can set to turn off various
1133 extensions. All others are included by default.
1136 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
1143 Threads use5005threads
1145 Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
1147 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
1149 Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
1152 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
1153 the extensions you want.
1155 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley
1156 DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect
1157 this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with earlier
1158 releases of version 2.
1160 If you re-use your old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
1161 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
1162 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
1165 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern systems do)
1166 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
1167 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
1168 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
1170 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
1172 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
1173 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
1174 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
1175 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
1176 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
1177 how to obtain the libraries.
1179 If your database header (.h) files are not in a directory normally
1180 searched by your C compiler, then you will need to include the
1181 appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by Configure. If
1182 your database library (.a) files are not in a directory normally
1183 searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to include
1184 the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by Configure.
1185 See the examples below.
1191 =item gdbm in /usr/local
1193 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
1194 GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
1195 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
1196 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
1197 necessary steps out automatically.
1199 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1200 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
1202 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
1205 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
1206 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1209 Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1210 you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1211 /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
1213 =item gdbm in /usr/you
1215 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
1216 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
1217 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
1218 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
1219 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
1220 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
1221 /usr/you/lib to the list.
1223 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
1227 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
1228 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
1230 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1231 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1233 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
1234 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
1235 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
1236 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
1239 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
1240 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
1244 =head2 Building DB, NDBM, and ODBM interfaces with Berkeley DB 3
1246 Perl interface for DB3 is part of Berkeley DB, but if you want to
1247 compile standard Perl DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you must follow
1248 following instructions.
1250 Berkeley DB3 from Sleepycat Software is by default installed without
1251 DB1 compatibility code (needed for DB_File interface) and without
1252 links to compatibility files. So if you want to use packages written
1253 for DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you need to configure DB3 with
1254 --enable-compat185 (and optionally with --enable-dump185) and create
1255 additional references (suppose you are installing DB3 with
1258 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdbm.so
1259 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libndbm.so
1260 echo '#define DB_DBM_HSEARCH 1' >dbm.h
1261 echo '#include <db.h>' >>dbm.h
1262 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/dbm.h
1263 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/ndbm.h
1265 Optionally, if you have compiled with --enable-compat185 (not needed
1268 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb1.so
1269 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb.so
1271 ODBM emulation seems not to be perfect, but is quite usable,
1274 lib/odbm.............FAILED at test 9
1275 Failed 1/64 tests, 98.44% okay
1277 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1279 If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1280 If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1284 =item Running Configure Interactively
1286 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1287 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1290 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1291 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1292 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1293 will use the defaults from then on.
1295 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1296 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1297 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1301 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
1302 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1303 will offer to use that hint file.
1305 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1306 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1307 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1308 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
1311 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1313 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
1314 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
1315 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
1318 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1319 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
1320 Keep the recommended value? [y]
1322 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
1323 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
1326 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
1327 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
1328 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
1331 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1332 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1333 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1334 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1337 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1338 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1339 Keep the previous value? [y]
1341 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1342 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1343 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1345 =item Changing Compilers
1347 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1348 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1349 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
1350 with the options you want to use.
1352 This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
1353 gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
1355 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1357 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1358 them to all the .SH files by running
1362 You will then have to rebuild by running
1367 =item config.over and config.arch
1369 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride
1370 Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1371 before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1372 however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1373 This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1375 There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1376 config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1377 architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1378 hints file that creates the config.arch.
1382 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1383 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1384 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1386 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1387 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1392 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1393 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1394 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1395 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1396 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1397 lost the next time you run Configure.
1399 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1400 see the file hints/README.hints.
1402 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1403 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1410 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1411 Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1412 system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1413 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1416 =item Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX and BIN_SH
1418 In Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX, Configure might abort with
1420 Build a threading Perl? [n]
1421 Configure[2437]: Syntax error at line 1 : `config.sh' is not expected.
1423 This indicates that Configure is being run with a broken Korn shell
1424 (even though you think you are using a Bourne shell by using
1425 "sh Configure" or "./Configure"). The Korn shell bug has been reported
1426 to Compaq as of February 1999 but in the meanwhile, the reason ksh is
1427 being used is that you have the environment variable BIN_SH set to
1428 'xpg4'. This causes /bin/sh to delegate its duties to /bin/posix/sh
1429 (a ksh). Unset the environment variable and rerun Configure.
1431 =item HP-UX 11, pthreads, and libgdbm
1433 If you are running Configure with -Dusethreads in HP-UX 11, be warned
1434 that POSIX threads and libgdbm (the GNU dbm library) compiled before
1435 HP-UX 11 do not mix. This will cause a basic test run by Configure to
1438 Pthread internal error: message: __libc_reinit() failed, file: ../pthreads/pthread.c, line: 1096
1439 Return Pointer is 0xc082bf33
1440 sh: 5345 Quit(coredump)
1442 and Configure will give up. The cure is to recompile and install
1443 libgdbm under HP-UX 11.
1445 =item Porting information
1447 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan 9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1448 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1449 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1450 subdirectory. Especially Porting/Glossary should come in handy.
1452 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1453 http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
1454 various other operating systems.
1456 If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture study carefully the
1457 section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1458 in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file Porting/patching.pod.
1459 Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1463 =head1 Adding extra modules to the build
1465 You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1466 CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1467 command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1469 Configure -Dextras="Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI"
1471 or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
1472 then answer "Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
1473 The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
1475 Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1476 modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1477 or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1478 do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1480 Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1481 dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
1482 For example: you will need to have the zlib.h header and the libz
1483 library installed for the Compress::Zlib, or the Foo database specific
1484 headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1485 process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1489 suidperl is an optional component, which is built or installed by default.
1492 On some systems, setuid and setgid scripts (scripts written
1493 in the C shell, Bourne shell, or Perl, for example, with the
1494 set user or group ID permissions enabled) are insecure due to
1495 a race condition in the kernel. For those systems, Perl versions
1496 5 and 4 attempt to work around this vulnerability with an optional
1497 component, a special program named suidperl, also known as sperl.
1498 This program attempts to emulate the set-user-ID and set-group-ID
1499 features of the kernel.
1501 Because of the buggy history of suidperl, and the difficulty
1502 of properly security auditing as large and complex piece of
1503 software as Perl, we cannot recommend using suidperl and the feature
1504 should be considered deprecated.
1505 Instead use for example 'sudo': http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/
1509 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1510 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1511 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1512 makefile, not Makefile since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1513 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1514 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1516 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1521 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1523 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1525 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1526 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1527 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1528 then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1534 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1535 for further tips and information.
1539 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1540 during the building of extensions, you should run
1544 to test your version of miniperl.
1548 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1549 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1550 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1551 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1552 whole L<"Locale problems"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1553 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1555 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1556 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1559 are supported and installed on your system.
1560 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1566 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1567 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1568 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1569 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by running fixincludes
1570 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1571 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1572 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1576 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1577 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1579 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1580 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1581 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1583 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1584 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1586 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1588 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1589 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1590 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1591 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1592 of your local set-up.
1596 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1597 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1600 sh Configure -Uusenm
1602 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1603 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1606 =item umask not found
1608 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1609 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1610 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1611 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1612 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1616 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1617 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1618 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1619 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1620 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1624 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1625 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1626 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1630 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1631 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1632 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1633 on L<"nm extraction">.
1635 =item __inet_* errors
1637 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1638 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1639 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1640 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1641 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1642 newer version of BIND (and remove the files the old one left behind).
1643 If you can't, you can either link with the updated resolver library provided
1644 with BIND 8.1 or rename /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and
1645 test process to avoid the problem.
1647 =item *_r() prototype NOT found
1649 On a related note, if you see a bunch of complaints like the above about
1650 reentrant functions - specifically networking-related ones - being present
1651 but without prototypes available, check to see if BIND 8.1 (or possibly
1652 other BIND 8 versions) is (or has been) installed. They install
1653 header files such as netdb.h into places such as /usr/local/include (or into
1654 another directory as specified at build/install time), at least optionally.
1655 Remove them or put them in someplace that isn't in the C preprocessor's
1656 header file include search path (determined by -I options plus defaults,
1657 normally /usr/include).
1659 =item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1661 This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1662 gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1663 changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1664 rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1665 update your gcc installation.
1669 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1670 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1678 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1679 with B<make depend; make>.
1681 =item Missing functions
1683 If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
1684 other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
1685 there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
1686 likely suspects. If Configure guessed wrong on a number of functions,
1687 you might have the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1691 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1692 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1693 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1694 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1695 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1698 =item Missing dbmclose
1700 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1701 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1703 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1705 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1706 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1707 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1708 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1709 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1710 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1711 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1712 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1713 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1714 process is continuing.
1716 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1719 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1721 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1722 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1723 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1725 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1726 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1727 quite that tightly coordinated.
1729 =item sh: ar: not found
1731 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1732 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1733 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1734 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1737 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1739 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1740 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1741 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1743 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1745 If you get this error message from the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem test, your System
1746 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1747 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1748 to include the System V semaphores.
1750 =item ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem........semget: No space left on device
1752 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1753 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1754 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1755 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1760 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1761 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1762 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1763 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1764 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1765 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1766 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1767 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1769 =item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1771 The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1772 make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1773 archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1774 C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1775 archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1776 incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1777 official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1778 that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1779 archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1781 =item invalid token: ##
1783 You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. See L<WARNING: This
1784 version requires a compiler that supports ANSI C>.
1788 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1790 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1792 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1794 UTS may need one or more of -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1796 FreeBSD can fail the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1797 configured in the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1798 you will get a message telling what to do.
1800 HP-UX 11 Y2K patch "Y2K-1100 B.11.00.B0125 HP-UX Core OS Year 2000
1801 Patch Bundle" has been reported to break the io/fs test #18 which
1802 tests whether utime() can change timestamps. The Y2K patch seems to
1803 break utime() so that over NFS the timestamps do not get changed
1804 (on local filesystems utime() still works).
1806 Building Perl on a system that has also BIND (headers and libraries)
1807 installed may run into troubles because BIND installs its own netdb.h
1808 and socket.h, which may not agree with the operating system's ideas of
1809 the same files. Similarly, including -lbind may conflict with libc's
1810 view of the world. You may have to tweak -Dlocincpth and -Dloclibpth
1815 =head2 Cross-compilation
1817 Starting from Perl 5.8 Perl has the beginnings of cross-compilation
1818 support. What is known to work is running Configure in a
1819 cross-compilation environment and building the miniperl executable.
1820 What is known not to work is building the perl executable because
1821 that would require building extensions: Dynaloader statically and
1822 File::Glob dynamically, for extensions one needs MakeMaker and
1823 MakeMaker is not yet cross-compilation aware, and neither is
1826 Since the functionality is so lacking, it must be considered
1827 highly experimental. It is so experimental that it is not even
1828 mentioned during an interactive Configure session, a direct command
1829 line invocation (detailed shortly) is required to access the
1832 NOTE: Perl is routinely built using cross-compilation
1833 in the EPOC environment, in the WinCE, and in the OpenZaurus
1834 project, but all those use something slightly different setup
1835 than what described here. For the WinCE setup, read the
1836 wince/README.compile. For the OpenZaurus setup, read the
1839 The one environment where this cross-compilation setup has
1840 successfully been used as of this writing is the Compaq iPAQ running
1841 ARM Linux. The build host was Intel Linux, the networking setup was
1842 PPP + SSH. The exact setup details are beyond the scope of this
1843 document, see http://www.handhelds.org/ for more information.
1845 To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch is
1846 C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
1848 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1850 This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
1851 symbol C<usecrosscompile> available.
1853 During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1854 into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1855 cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1856 target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1857 transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1858 the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1859 methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1860 F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1862 To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1863 the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1864 happens), supply Configure with
1866 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1868 The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
1869 must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1870 You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
1874 but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
1876 Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
1877 which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
1878 This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
1879 In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
1882 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
1884 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1885 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1886 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
1888 If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
1889 compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
1890 C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
1891 (The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
1892 as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
1893 will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
1894 in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
1896 In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
1897 choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
1900 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
1902 Putting it all together:
1904 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1905 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1906 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
1908 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
1909 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1910 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1911 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1912 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
1915 or if you are happy with the defaults
1917 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1918 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1919 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1924 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
1925 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
1926 wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1928 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1929 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1930 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1932 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1934 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1935 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1936 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1940 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1941 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1945 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1946 complicated constructs). For extension and library tests you
1947 need a little bit more: you need to setup your environment variable
1948 PERL_CORE to a true value (like "1"), and you need to supply the
1949 right Perl library path:
1952 ./perl -I../lib ../ext/Socket/Socket.t
1953 ./perl -I../lib ../lib/less.t
1955 (For csh-like shells on UNIX; adjust appropriately for other platforms.)
1956 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1957 comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
1958 shared library path if you get errors like:
1960 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
1962 See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
1968 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1969 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1970 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1971 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1972 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1973 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1975 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1981 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1983 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1984 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1985 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1986 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1987 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1988 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1991 =item Timing problems
1993 Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
1994 sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
1995 If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough,
1996 these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again
1997 with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive
1998 and load-sensitive tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
1999 F<ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t>, F<lib/Benchmark.t>,
2000 F<lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t>, and F<lib/Memoize/t/speed.t>.
2004 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
2005 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
2006 For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
2007 test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
2009 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
2011 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
2013 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
2014 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
2015 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
2016 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
2018 =item Failures from lib/File/Temp/t/security saying "system possibly insecure"
2020 First, such warnings are not necessarily serious or indicative of a
2021 real security threat. That being said, they bear investigating.
2023 Note that each of the tests is run twice. The first time is in the
2024 directory returned by File::Spec->tmpdir() (often /tmp on Unix
2025 systems), and the second time in the directory from which the test was
2026 run (usually the 't' directory, if the test was run as part of 'make
2029 The tests may fail for the following reasons:
2031 (1) If the directory the tests are being run in is owned by somebody
2032 other than the user running the tests, or by root (uid 0).
2034 This failure can happen if the Perl source code distribution is
2035 unpacked in such a way that the user ids in the distribution package
2036 are used as-is. Some tar programs do this.
2038 (2) If the directory the tests are being run in is writable by group or
2039 by others, and there is no sticky bit set for the directory. (With
2040 UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to a directory means the right to
2041 add or remove files in that directory. The 'sticky bit' is a feature
2042 used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if the bit is
2043 set for a directory, no one but the owner (or root) can remove that
2044 file even if the permissions would otherwise allow file removal by
2047 This failure may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the
2048 permissions policy used on this particular system. This failure can
2049 also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit (this
2050 is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle File::Temp
2051 should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or if the system
2052 supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons it is not being
2053 used. This is, for example, the case with HP-UX: as of HP-UX release
2054 11.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX doesn't use it
2055 on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also, as with the permissions, some
2056 local policy might dictate that the stickiness is not used.
2058 (3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
2059 any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
2060 directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
2061 (2). For Unix systems, this is usually not an issue if you are
2062 building on a local disk. See the documentation for the File::Temp
2063 module for more information about 'chown giveaway'.
2065 See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
2066 about the various security aspects of temporary files.
2072 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
2073 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
2074 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
2075 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
2076 are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
2077 ignore any messages about chown not working.
2079 =head2 Installing perl under different names
2081 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
2082 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
2083 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
2085 make install PERLNAME=myperl
2087 You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
2088 "perl5.005") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
2090 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
2092 This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (e.g. to
2093 avoid conflicts with an ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor).
2094 Without this the versioned binary would be called "perl55.005".
2096 =head2 Installed files
2098 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
2099 anything, you can run
2101 ./perl installperl -n
2102 ./perl installman -n
2104 make install will install the following:
2109 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
2110 will be a link to perl.
2112 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
2113 a2p awk-to-perl translator
2117 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
2119 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
2120 s2p sed-to-perl translator
2121 find2perl find-to-perl translator
2122 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
2123 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
2124 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
2125 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
2126 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
2127 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
2128 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
2134 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
2135 dprofpp Perl code profile post-processor
2139 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
2140 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
2144 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2146 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
2147 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2149 Installperl will also create the directories listed above
2150 in L<"Installation Directories">.
2152 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
2153 under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
2154 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2155 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
2157 Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2158 installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
2159 perl alongside an already installed production version of perl without
2160 disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2161 To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2163 Configure -Dversiononly
2165 or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2166 you can just manually run
2168 ./perl installperl -v
2170 and skip installman altogether.
2171 See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2174 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
2176 Perl 5.8 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
2177 In other words, you will have to recompile your XS modules.
2179 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
2180 5.004_04) to another similar version (e.g. 5.004_05) without re-compiling
2181 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
2182 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
2183 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
2184 with 5.004_04, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
2185 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
2186 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.00404.
2188 Usually, most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to
2189 use with a newer version of Perl (the Perl 5.6 to Perl 5.8 transition
2190 being an exception). Here is how it is supposed to work. (These
2191 examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
2193 Suppose you already have version 5.005_03 installed. The directories
2194 searched by 5.005_03 are
2196 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503/$archname
2197 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503
2198 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2199 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2201 Beginning with 5.6.0 the version number in the site libraries are
2202 fully versioned. Now, suppose you install version 5.6.0. The directories
2203 searched by version 5.6.0 will be
2205 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/$archname
2206 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0
2207 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
2208 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2210 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2211 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2212 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2214 Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
2215 of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
2216 directories. This way, modules installed under 5.005_03 will continue
2217 to be usable by 5.005_03 but will also accessible to 5.6.0. Further,
2218 suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
2219 present only in 5.6.0. That new module will get installed into
2220 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0 and will be available to 5.6.0,
2221 but will not interfere with the 5.005_03 version.
2223 The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
2224 5.6.0 and above will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
2226 Lastly, suppose you now install 5.8.0, which is not binary compatible
2227 with 5.6.0. The directories searched by 5.8.0 (if you don't change the
2228 Configure defaults) will be:
2230 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0/$archname
2231 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0
2232 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/$archname
2233 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0
2235 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2237 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2239 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2241 Note that the earlier $archname entries are now gone, but pure perl
2242 modules from earlier versions will still be found.
2244 Assuming the users in your site are still actively using perl 5.6.0 and
2245 5.005 after you installed 5.8.0, you can continue to install add-on
2246 extensions using any of perl 5.8.0, 5.6.0, or 5.005. The installations
2247 of these different versions remain distinct, but remember that the
2248 newer versions of perl are automatically set up to search the
2249 compatible site libraries of the older ones. This means that
2250 installing a new XS extension with 5.005 will make it visible to both
2251 5.005 and 5.6.0, but not to 5.8.0. Installing a pure perl module with
2252 5.005 will make it visible to all three versions. Later, if you
2253 install the same extension using, say, perl 5.8.0, it will override the
2254 5.005-installed version, but only for perl 5.8.0.
2256 This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2257 to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2258 versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
2260 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
2262 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
2263 separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
2264 won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2265 libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2266 way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
2268 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.004
2270 and adding /opt/perl5.004/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
2271 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2272 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2274 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
2275 (e.g. 5.8 for all 5.8.x versions), but change directory with
2278 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2279 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2280 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2283 =head2 Upgrading from 5.005 or 5.6 to 5.8.0
2285 B<Perl 5.8.0 is binary incompatible with Perl 5.6.1, 5.6.0, 5.005,
2286 and any earlier Perl release.> Perl modules having binary parts
2287 (meaning that a C compiler is used) will have to be recompiled to be
2288 used with 5.8.0. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with
2289 5.8.0, you may safely do so without disturbing the 5.005 or 5.6.0
2290 installations. (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5">
2293 See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2294 incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
2295 perllocal.pod, not perllocale.pod, for installed module information.
2297 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
2299 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
2301 By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
2302 they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
2304 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
2305 perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
2306 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
2307 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
2308 the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036 (or
2309 whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod for
2310 possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
2312 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2314 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2315 system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2316 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2317 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2318 library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2320 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2321 of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2322 hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2323 For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2326 =head1 installhtml --help
2328 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2329 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2330 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2332 Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2333 html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2335 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2340 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2342 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2343 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2344 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2345 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2346 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
2349 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2350 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2351 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2352 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2353 (and would welcome patches for them).
2355 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2356 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2358 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2360 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2361 available in TeX format. Type
2363 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2365 =head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2367 The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2368 Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2369 operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2371 Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way:
2372 Encode, with its big conversion tables, consumes a lot of
2373 space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything. The
2374 Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network
2375 programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all
2376 depends on what do you need to do.
2378 In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2379 recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2380 depends on what you need.
2382 Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2386 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2390 in Solaris is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
2393 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2394 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2395 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2396 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2397 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2398 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/File/Glob/autosplit.ix
2399 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/Config.pm
2400 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/XSLoader.pm
2401 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/DynaLoader.pm
2402 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/CORE/libperl.so
2403 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/strict.pm
2404 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/warnings.pm
2405 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Carp.pm
2406 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Exporter.pm
2407 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/File/Glob.pm
2408 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/AutoLoader.pm
2409 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/vars.pm
2410 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/warnings/register.pm
2411 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Carp/Heavy.pm
2412 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2414 Secondly, Debian perl-base package contains the following files,
2415 size about 1.2MB in its i386 version:
2417 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2418 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian
2419 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
2420 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
2421 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
2422 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
2423 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/AutoLoader.pm
2424 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Carp.pm
2425 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Carp/Heavy.pm
2426 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Cwd.pm
2427 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Exporter.pm
2428 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2429 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/File/Spec.pm
2430 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2431 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/FileHandle.pm
2432 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Getopt/Long.pm
2433 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2434 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2435 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IPC/Open2.pm
2436 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IPC/Open3.pm
2437 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/SelectSaver.pm
2438 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Symbol.pm
2439 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Text/Tabs.pm
2440 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Text/Wrap.pm
2441 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/attributes.pm
2442 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/GetOptions.al
2443 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/FindOption.al
2444 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/Configure.al
2445 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/config.al
2446 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/Croak.al
2447 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/autosplit.ix
2448 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/base.pm
2449 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/constant.pm
2450 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/fields.pm
2451 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/integer.pm
2452 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/lib.pm
2453 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/locale.pm
2454 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/overload.pm
2455 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/strict.pm
2456 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/vars.pm
2457 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/warnings.pm
2458 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/warnings/register.pm
2460 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Config.pm
2461 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Data/Dumper.pm
2462 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/DynaLoader.pm
2463 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Errno.pm
2464 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Fcntl.pm
2465 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/File/Glob.pm
2466 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO.pm
2467 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/File.pm
2468 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Handle.pm
2469 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Pipe.pm
2470 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Seekable.pm
2471 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Select.pm
2472 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket.pm
2473 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/POSIX.pm
2474 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Socket.pm
2475 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/XSLoader.pm
2476 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.so
2477 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.bs
2478 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2479 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2480 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2481 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2482 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a
2483 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/extralibs.ld
2484 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2485 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs
2486 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/Glob.bs
2487 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2488 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/autosplit.ix
2489 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/IO/IO.so
2490 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/IO/IO.bs
2491 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/POSIX.bs
2492 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2493 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2494 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2495 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2496 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Socket/Socket.bs
2498 =head1 Reporting Problems
2500 If you have difficulty building perl, and none of the advice in this file
2501 helps, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant manual
2502 pages on your system doesn't help either, then you should send a message
2503 to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to perlbug@perl.org with
2504 an accurate description of your problem.
2506 Please include the output of the ./myconfig shell script that comes with
2507 the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the perlbug program that
2508 comes with the perl distribution, but you need to have perl compiled
2509 before you can use it. (If you have not installed it yet, you need to
2510 run C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug> instead of a plain C<perlbug>.)
2512 Please try to make your message brief but clear. Trim out unnecessary
2513 information. Do not include large files (such as config.sh or a complete
2514 Configure or make log) unless absolutely necessary. Do not include a
2515 complete transcript of your build session. Just include the failing
2516 commands, the relevant error messages, and whatever preceding commands
2517 are necessary to give the appropriate context. Plain text should
2518 usually be sufficient--fancy attachments or encodings may actually
2519 reduce the number of people who read your message. Your message
2520 will get relayed to over 400 subscribers around the world so please
2521 try to keep it brief but clear.
2523 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
2525 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2526 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
2527 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
2528 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2529 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
2531 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
2532 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and
2535 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
2536 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
2538 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
2539 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
2542 Note that you must have performed the installation already before running
2543 the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate
2548 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2549 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2550 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
2552 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2553 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2555 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2557 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2558 the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2559 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2560 a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2561 and the contact information to match your distribution.