3 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
7 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system are:
15 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
17 For information on non-Unix systems, see the section on
18 L<"Porting Information">, below.
22 You should probably at least skim through this entire document before
23 proceeding. Special notes specific to this release are identified
26 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
27 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
28 read it as is with any pager or editor.
30 If you're building Perl on a non-Unix system, you should also read
31 the README file specific to your operating system, since this may
32 provide additional or different instructions for building Perl.
34 =head1 Space Requirements.
36 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 7 MB of disk space.
37 The complete tree after completing C<make> takes roughly
38 15 MB, though the actual total is likely to be quite
39 system-dependent. The installation directories need something
40 on the order of 7 MB, though again that value is system-dependent.
42 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution.
44 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
49 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh file. If
50 you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you change
51 systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if you are
52 experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably I<not>
53 re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or rename it, e.g.
55 mv config.sh config.sh.old
61 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
62 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
63 you about. To accept the default, just press C<RETURN>. The default
66 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
67 F<*.SH> files and offer to run B<make depend>.
69 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h>
70 to get a listing. To compile with gcc, for example, you can run
74 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
75 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
77 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
78 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
80 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
85 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
86 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. You can specify a different 'prefix' for
87 the default installation directory, when Configure prompts you or by
88 using the Configure command line option -Dprefix='/some/directory',
91 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
93 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the directories
94 are simplified. For example, if you use prefix=/opt/perl,
95 then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
96 /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
98 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading, if
99 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
100 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
101 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
105 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
106 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
107 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
108 DynaLoader, Fcntl, FileHandle and IO are always built by default.
109 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
110 is always built by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
111 set the Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from
112 the Configure command line. Similarly, the Opcode extension is always
113 built by default, but you can skip it by setting the Configure variable
114 useopcode=false either in a hint file for from the command line.
116 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
117 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
118 version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
120 In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
121 to turn off each extension:
124 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
125 Fcntl (Always included by default)
126 FileHandle (Always included by default)
128 IO (Always included by default)
132 SDBM_File (Always included by default)
136 Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
138 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
140 Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
143 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
144 the Extensions you want.
146 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern Unix systems do)
147 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
148 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
149 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
151 =head2 GNU-style configure
153 If you prefer the GNU-style B<configure> command line interface, you can
154 use the supplied B<configure> command, e.g.
158 The B<configure> script emulates several of the more common configure
165 Cross compiling is currently not supported.
167 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
169 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
170 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
171 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
172 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
173 are B<not> included with perl. See the library documentation for
174 how to obtain the libraries.
176 I<Note:> If your database header (.h) files are not in a
177 directory normally searched by your C compiler, then you will need to
178 include the appropriate B<-I/your/directory> option when prompted by
179 Configure. If your database library (.a) files are not in a directory
180 normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to
181 include the appropriate B<-L/your/directory> option when prompted by
182 Configure. See the examples below.
188 =item gdbm in /usr/local.
190 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
191 GDBM_File extension. This examples assumes you have F<gdbm.h>
192 installed in F</usr/local/include/gdbm.h> and F<libgdbm.a> installed in
193 F</usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a>. Configure should figure all the
194 necessary steps out automatically.
196 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
197 your C compiler, you should include C<-I/usr/local/include>.
199 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
202 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
203 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
206 Again, this should all happen automatically. If you want to accept the
207 defaults for all the questions and have Configure print out only terse
208 messages, then you can just run
212 and Configure should include the GDBM_File extension automatically.
214 This should actually work if you have gdbm installed in any of
215 (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu, /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
217 =item gdbm in /usr/you
219 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
220 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
221 have F</usr/you/include/gdbm.h> and F</usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a>. You
222 still have to add B<-I/usr/you/include> to cc flags, but you have to take
223 an extra step to help Configure find F<libgdbm.a>. Specifically, when
224 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
225 F</usr/you/lib> to the list.
227 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
231 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
232 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
234 C<locincpth> is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
235 Configure will automatically add the appropriate B<-I> directives.
237 C<loclibpth> is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
238 Configure will automatically add the appropriate B<-L> directives. If
239 you have some libraries under F</usr/local/> and others under
240 F</usr/you>, then you have to include both, namely
243 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
244 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
248 =head2 Installation Directories.
250 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
251 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
252 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
254 By default, Configure uses the following directories for
255 library files (archname is a string like sun4-sunos, determined
258 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.002
259 /usr/local/lib/perl5/
260 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/archname
261 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl
263 and the following directories for manual pages:
266 /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3
268 (Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
269 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
270 instead.) The module man pages are stuck in that strange spot so that
271 they don't collide with other man pages stored in /usr/local/man/man3,
272 and so that Perl's man pages don't hide system man pages. On some
273 systems, B<man less> would end up calling up Perl's less.pm module man
274 page, rather than the B<less> program.
276 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
277 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you Configure
278 with -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the defaults are
280 /opt/perl/lib/archname/5.002
282 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/archname
283 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl
288 The perl executable will search the libraries in the order given
291 The directories site_perl and site_perl/archname are empty, but are
292 intended to be used for installing local or site-wide extensions. Perl
293 will automatically look in these directories. Previously, most sites
294 just put their local extensions in with the standard distribution.
296 In order to support using things like #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.002 after
297 a later version is released, architecture-dependent libraries are
298 stored in a version-specific directory, such as
299 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.002/. In 5.000 and 5.001, these files
300 were just stored in /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/. If you will not be
301 using 5.001 binaries, you can delete the standard extensions from the
302 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/ directory. Locally-added extensions can
303 be moved to the site_perl and site_perl/archname directories.
305 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
308 =head2 Changing the installation directory
310 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
311 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
312 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
313 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
314 However, sites that use software such as B<depot> to manage software
315 packages may also wish to install perl into a different directory and
316 use that management software to move perl to its final destination.
317 This section describes how to do this. Someday, Configure may support
318 an option C<-Dinstallprefix=/foo> to simplify this.
320 Suppose you want to install perl under the F</tmp/perl5> directory.
321 You can edit F<config.sh> and change all the install* variables to
322 point to F</tmp/perl5> instead of F</usr/local/wherever>. You could
323 also set them all from the Configure command line. Or, you can
324 automate this process by placing the following lines in a file
325 F<config.over> B<before> you run Configure (replace /tmp/perl5 by a
326 directory of your choice):
328 installprefix=/tmp/perl5
329 test -d $installprefix || mkdir $installprefix
330 test -d $installprefix/bin || mkdir $installprefix/bin
331 installarchlib=`echo $installarchlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
332 installbin=`echo $installbin | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
333 installman1dir=`echo $installman1dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
334 installman3dir=`echo $installman3dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
335 installprivlib=`echo $installprivlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
336 installscript=`echo $installscript | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
337 installsitelib=`echo $installsitelib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
338 installsitearch=`echo $installsitearch | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
340 Then, you can Configure and install in the usual way:
347 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
349 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
350 convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
351 installed on multiple systems. Here's one way to do that:
353 # Set up config.over to install perl into a different directory,
354 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
360 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
361 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
362 cd /usr/local # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
363 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
365 =head2 Building a shared libperl.so Perl library.
367 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
368 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
369 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
372 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
373 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
374 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
375 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
376 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
377 can share the same library.
379 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
380 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
381 meachanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
384 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
385 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
386 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
389 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
390 libperl.so.3.2 (for perl5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
391 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
392 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
393 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
394 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
396 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
397 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
399 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
401 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
403 To actually build perl, you must add the current working directory to your
404 LD_LIBRARY_PATH environtment variable before running make. You can do
407 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
409 for Bourne-style shells, or
411 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
413 for Csh-style shells. You *MUST* do this before running make.
414 Folks running NeXT OPENSTEP must substitute DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
415 LD_LIBRARY_PATH above.
417 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
418 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
419 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
420 install a standard perl5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
421 try to build perl5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
422 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
423 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
424 libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is
425 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
426 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
427 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
428 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't.
430 The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different
431 directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING
432 version of perl. You can do this with by changing all the *archlib*
433 variables in config.sh, namely archlib, archlib_exp, and
434 installarchlib, to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
436 =head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
438 Previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in
439 <stdio.h>. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl allow alternate IO
440 mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but the stdio mechanism is still
441 the default and is the only supported mechanism.
443 This PerlIO abstraction can be enabled either on the Configure command
446 sh Configure -Duseperlio
448 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
450 If you choose to use the PerlIO abstraction layer, there are two
451 (experimental) possibilities for the underlying IO calls. These have been
452 tested to some extent on some platforms, but are not guaranteed to work
459 AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance to <stdio.h> in many
460 cases, and is extensible by the use of "disipline" modules. Sfio
461 currently only builds on a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports.
462 Because the data structures are completely different from stdio, perl
463 extension modules or external libraries may not work. This
464 configuration exists to allow these issues to be worked on.
466 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
467 A (fairly old) version of sfio is in CPAN, and work is in progress to make
468 it more easily buildable by adding Configure support.
470 You select this option by
472 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
474 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
475 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
480 Normal stdio IO, but with all IO going through calls to the PerlIO
481 abstraction layer. This configuration can be used to check that perl and
482 extension modules have been correctly converted to use the PerlIO
485 This configuration should work on all platforms (but might not).
487 You select this option via :
489 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Uusesfio
491 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure does not
492 detect sfio, then this will be the default suggested by Configure.
496 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
500 =item Running Configure Interactively
502 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
503 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
506 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
507 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler &
508 flags) you can type C<&-d> at the next Configure prompt and Configure
509 will use the defaults from then on.
511 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
512 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
513 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
517 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
518 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
519 will offer to use that hint file.
521 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
522 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint
523 file for further information. See F<hints/solaris_2.sh> for an
526 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
528 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
529 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
530 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
533 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
534 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
535 Keep the recommended value? [y]
537 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
538 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
541 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
542 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
543 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
546 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
547 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
548 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
549 Now, Configure will find your gdbm library and will issue a message:
551 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
552 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
553 Keep the previous value? [y]
555 In this case, you do I<not> want to keep the previous value, so you
556 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
557 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
559 =item Changing Compilers
561 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
562 probably I<not> re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
563 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
564 with the options you want to use.
566 This is a common source of problems. If you change from B<cc> to
567 B<gcc>, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
569 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
571 If you make any changes to F<config.sh>, you should propagate
572 them to all the .SH files by running B<sh Configure -S>. You will
573 then have to rebuild by running
580 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride Configure's
581 guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just before config.sh
582 is created. You have to be careful with this, however, as Configure
583 does no checking that your changes make sense. See the section on
584 L<"Changing the installation directory"> for an example.
588 Many of the system dependencies are contained in F<config.h>.
589 F<Configure> builds F<config.h> by running the F<config_h.SH> script.
590 The values for the variables are taken from F<config.sh>.
592 If there are any problems, you can edit F<config.h> directly. Beware,
593 though, that the next time you run B<Configure>, your changes will be
598 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
599 line, they can be made in F<cflags.SH>. For instance, to turn off the
600 optimizer on F<toke.c>, find the line in the switch structure for
601 F<toke.c> and put the command C<optimize='-g'> before the C<;;>. You
602 can also edit F<cflags> directly, but beware that your changes will be
603 lost the next time you run B<Configure>.
605 To change the C flags for all the files, edit F<config.sh>
606 and change either C<$ccflags> or C<$optimize>,
607 and then re-run B<sh Configure -S ; make depend>.
611 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file config_H to
612 config.h and edit the config.h to reflect your system's peculiarities.
613 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
616 =item Porting information
618 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan9, and VMS ports are in the
619 corresponing subdirectories. Additional information, including
620 a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
623 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
624 L<"http:/www.perl.com/CPAN/ports"> for current information on ports to
625 various other operating systems.
631 This will look for all the includes.
632 The output is stored in F<makefile>. The only difference between
633 F<Makefile> and F<makefile> is the dependencies at the bottom of
634 F<makefile>. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
635 F<makefile>, not F<Makefile> since the Unix B<make> command reads
636 F<makefile> first. (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in
637 a different file. Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh
640 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
645 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
647 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
648 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
649 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help, you can
650 send a message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
651 perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
652 Please include the I<output> of the B<./myconfig> shell script
653 that comes with the distribution.
655 [The B<perlbug> program that comes with the perl distribution is
656 useful for sending in such reports, but you need to have
657 perl compiled and installed before you can use it.]
663 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
664 for further tips and information.
668 If you can successfully build F<miniperl>, but the process crashes
669 during the building of extensions, you should run
673 to test your version of miniperl.
677 If you get duplicates upon linking for malloc et al, say -DHIDEMYMALLOC.
681 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
682 correctly. When using gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define'
683 and i_varargs='undef' in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by
684 running fixincludes correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't
685 forget to propagate your changes (see
686 L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
687 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
691 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
692 numbers will vary in different versions of perl):
694 util.c: In function `Perl_croak':
695 util.c:962: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
696 proto.h:45: prototype declaration
698 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
699 previous L<"varargs"> item.
701 =item Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading
703 If you have problems with dynamic loading using gcc on SunOS or
704 Solaris, and you are using GNU as and GNU ld, you may need to add
705 B<-B/bin/> (for SunOS) or B<-B/usr/ccs/bin/> (for Solaris) to your
706 $ccflags, $ldflags, and $lddlflags so that the system's versions of as
707 and ld are used. Alternatively, you can use the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX
708 environment variable to ensure that Sun's as and ld are used. Consult
709 your gcc documentation for further information on the B<-B> option and
710 the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX variable.
712 =item ld.so.1: ./perl: fatal: relocation error:
714 If you get this message on SunOS or Solaris, and you're using gcc,
715 it's probably the GNU as or GNU ld problem in the previous item
716 L<"Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading">.
720 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
721 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. Perl should build
722 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
723 of your local set-up.
725 =item dlopen: stub interception failed
727 The primary cause of the 'dlopen: stub interception failed' message is
728 that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable includes a directory
729 which is a symlink to /usr/lib (such as /lib).
731 The reason this causes a problem is quite subtle. The file libdl.so.1.0
732 actually *only* contains functions which generate 'stub interception
733 failed' errors! The runtime linker intercepts links to
734 "/usr/lib/libdl.so.1.0" and links in internal implementation of those
735 functions instead. [Thanks to Tim Bunce for this explanation.]
739 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
740 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
745 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
746 If you have previously run Configure, you should I<not> reuse your old
751 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
752 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
753 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
754 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
755 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
759 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
760 on a number of other common functions too. You are probably better off
761 re-running Configure without using nm extraction (see previous item).
765 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
766 optimizier. Edit config.sh and change the line
774 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
775 with B<make depend; make>.
779 If you still can't compile successfully, try adding a C<-DCRIPPLED_CC>
780 flag. (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it compiled right!)
781 This simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that get
784 =item Missing functions
786 If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
787 other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
788 there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
793 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files without
794 some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or allocate larger
795 internal tables. You can customize the switches for each file in
796 F<cflags>. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
797 F<makefile> since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
800 =item Missing dbmclose
802 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
803 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
805 =item Warning (will try anyway): No library found for -lposix
807 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
808 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
809 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
810 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
811 systems; few systems will need all the possible libries listed.
812 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
813 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
814 they don't have. The message 'will try anyway' is intended to
815 reassure you that the process is continuing.
817 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
820 Warning (will try anyway): No library found for -lgdbm
822 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
823 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
824 extension without the -lgdbm library.
826 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
827 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
828 quite that tightly coordinated.
832 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
834 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
836 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
838 UTS may need one or more of B<-DCRIPPLED_CC>, B<-K> or B<-g>, and undef LSTAT.
840 If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.
842 Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
848 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If it
849 doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went wrong. See the
850 file F<t/README> in the F<t> subdirectory. Note that you can't run it
851 in background if this disables opening of /dev/tty.
853 If B<make test> bombs out, just B<cd> to the F<t> directory and run
854 B<TEST> by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
855 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
859 You can also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
860 comments that apply to your system.
862 B<Note>: one possible reason for errors is that some external programs
863 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
864 C<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
865 one or more of these environment variables set: C<LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
866 LC_COLLATE LANG>. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
867 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors. If you have
868 any of the above environment variables set, please try
869 C<setenv LC_ALL C> (for C shell) or <LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL>
870 (for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry C<make test>.
871 If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that is confusing the
872 testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as shown above and
873 see whether you can locate the program. Look for things like: C<exec,
874 `backquoted command`, system, open("|...")> or C<open("...|")>.
875 All these mean that Perl is trying to run some external program.
877 =head1 INSTALLING PERL5
881 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
882 B<Configure>; by default this is F</usr/local/bin>. It will also try
883 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
884 page, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
885 are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
886 ignore any messages about chown not working.
888 You may see some harmless error messages and warnings from pod2man.
889 You may safely ignore them. (Yes, they should be fixed, but they
890 didn't seem important enough to warrant holding up the entire release.)
892 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
893 anything, you can run
895 ./perl installperl -n
898 B<make install> will install the following:
901 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
902 will be a link to perl.
904 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
905 a2p awk-to-perl translator
906 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
908 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
909 s2p sed-to-perl translator
910 find2perl find-to-perl translator
911 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
912 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
913 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
914 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
915 pod2latex, and to other useful formats.
918 library files in $privlib and $archlib specified to
919 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
920 man pages in the location specified to Configure, usually
921 something like /usr/local/man/man1.
922 module in the location specified to Configure, usually
923 man pages under /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3.
924 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
926 Installperl will also create the library directories $siteperl and
927 $sitearch listed in config.sh. Usually, these are something like
928 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
929 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$archname
930 where $archname is something like sun4-sunos. These directories
931 will be used for installing extensions.
933 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl.a library are also installed
934 under $archlib so that any user may later build new extensions, run the
935 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
936 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
938 Most of the documentation in the pod/ directory is also available
939 in HTML and LaTeX format. Type
941 cd pod; make html; cd ..
943 to generate the html versions, and
945 cd pod; make tex; cd ..
947 to generate the LaTeX versions.
949 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
951 Some of the perl library files need to be able to obtain information from
952 the system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
953 header files in F</usr/include> into files that can be easily interpreted
954 by perl. These files will be placed in architectural library directory
955 you specified to B<Configure>; by default this is
956 F</usr/local/lib/perl5/ARCH/VERSION>, where B<ARCH> is your architecture
957 (such as C<sun4-solaris>) and B<VERSION> is the version of perl you are
958 building (for example, C<5.003>).
960 B<NOTE:> Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion of
961 the header files in not perfect. You may have to hand edit some of the
962 converted files to get them to parse correctly. For example, it breaks
963 spectacularly on type casting and certain structures.
965 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5.
967 You can safely install the current version of perl5 and still run scripts
968 under the old binaries for versions 5.003 and later ONLY. Instead of
969 starting your script with #!/usr/local/bin/perl, just start it with
970 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.003 (or whatever version you want to run.)
971 If you want to retain a version of perl5 prior to perl5.003, you'll
972 need to install the current version in a separate directory tree,
973 since some of the architecture-independent library files have changed
974 in incompatible ways.
976 The architecture-dependent files are stored in a version-specific
977 directory (such as F</usr/local/lib/perl5/sun4-sunos/5.002>) so that
978 they are still accessible. I<Note:> perl5.000 and perl5.001 did not
979 put their architecture-dependent libraries in a version-specific
980 directory. They are simply in F</usr/local/lib/perl5/$archname>. If
981 you will not be using 5.000 or 5.001, you may safely remove those
984 The standard library files in F</usr/local/lib/perl5>
985 should be usable by all versions of perl5.
987 Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use with a newer
988 version of perl. If you do run into problems, and you want to continue
989 to use the old version of perl along with your extension, simply move
990 those extension files to the appropriate version directory, such as
991 F</usr/local/lib/perl/archname/5.002>. Then perl5.002 will find your
992 files in the 5.002 directory, and newer versions of perl will find your
993 newer extension in the site_perl directory.
995 Some users may prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
996 separate directories. One convenient way to do this is by
997 using a separate prefix for each version, such as
999 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.002
1001 and adding /opt/perl5.002/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
1002 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
1003 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
1005 B<NOTE>: Starting with 5.002_01, all functions in the perl C source
1006 code are protected by default by the prefix Perl_ (or perl_) so that
1007 you may link with third-party libraries without fear of namespace
1008 collisons. This breaks compatability with
1009 version 5.002, so once you install 5.002_01 (or higher) you will
1010 need to re-build and install all of your dynamically loadable
1011 extensions. (The standard extensions supplied with Perl are handled
1012 automatically). You can turn off this namespace protection by adding
1013 -DNO_EMBED to your ccflags variable in config.sh.
1015 In the future, we certainly hope that most extensions won't need to be
1016 recompiled for use with a newer version of perl.
1018 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
1020 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
1022 By default, the perl5 libraries go into F</usr/local/lib/perl5/>, so
1023 they don't override the perl4 libraries in F</usr/local/lib/perl/>.
1025 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
1026 F<perl4.036>. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
1027 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
1028 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
1029 the C<#!> line at the top of them by C<#!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036>
1030 (or whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod
1031 for possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
1033 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
1035 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation is
1036 in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
1037 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
1038 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied B<perldoc> script. This
1039 is sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
1043 Andy Dougherty <doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu>, borrowing I<very> heavily
1044 from the original README by Larry Wall.
1046 =head1 LAST MODIFIED