3 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
7 First, make sure you are installing an up-to-date version of Perl. If
8 you didn't get your Perl source from CPAN, check the latest version at
9 <URL:http://www.cpan.org/src/>.
11 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system
12 with all the defaults are:
14 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
20 # You may also wish to add these:
21 (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
23 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
25 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
27 B<NOTE>: starting from the release 5.6.0, Perl will use a version
28 scheme where even-numbered subreleases (like 5.6) are stable
29 maintenance releases and odd-numbered subreleases (like 5.7) are
30 unstable development releases. Development releases should not be
31 used in production environments. Fixes and new features are first
32 carefully tested in development releases and only if they prove
33 themselves to be worthy will they be migrated to the maintenance
36 The above commands will install Perl to /usr/local or /opt, depending
37 on the platform. If that's not okay with you, use
39 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
45 For information on non-Unix systems, see the section on L<"Porting
48 If "make install" just says "`install' is up to date" or something
49 similar, you may be on case-preserving filesystems such as Mac's HFS+
50 and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion brought to you
51 by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
53 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
54 L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
56 For information on what's new in this release, see the
57 pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
58 changes, see the Changes file.
62 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
63 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
64 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
65 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
67 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
69 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
71 Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
72 you should probably at least skim through this entire document before
75 If you're building Perl on a non-Unix system, you should also read
76 the README file specific to your operating system, since this may
77 provide additional or different instructions for building Perl. There
78 are also README files for several flavors of Unix systems, such as
79 Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX; if you have one of those systems, you should
80 also read the README file specific to that system.
82 If there is a hint file for your system (in the hints/ directory) you
83 should also read that hint file for specific information for your
84 system. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh hint file.) If
85 there is a README file for your platform, then you should read
86 that too. Additional information is in the Porting/ directory.
88 =head1 WARNING: This version requires an extra step to build old extensions.
90 5.005_53 and later releases do not export unadorned
91 global symbols anymore. This means you may need to build rather old
92 extensions that have not been updated for the current naming convention
95 perl Makefile.PL POLLUTE=1
97 Alternatively, you can enable CPP symbol pollution wholesale by
98 building perl itself with:
100 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_POLLUTE
102 pod/perl56delta.pod contains more details about this.
104 =head1 WARNING: This version is not binary compatible with releases of
107 If you have built extensions (ie modules that include C code)
108 using an earlier version of Perl, you will need to rebuild and reinstall
111 Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
112 without reinstallation. See the discussions below on
113 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> and
114 L<"Upgrading from 5.005 to 5.6"> for more details.
116 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
118 On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the
119 changes in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
120 pod/perldelta.pod (and the earlier pod/perl5Xdelta.pod) for a description of
121 what's changed. See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod
122 file for a (possibly incomplete) list of locally installed modules.
123 Also see CPAN::autobundle for one way to make a "bundle" of your
124 currently installed modules.
126 =head1 WARNING: This version requires a compiler that supports ANSI C.
128 Most C compilers are now ANSI-compliant. However, a few current
129 computers are delivered with an older C compiler expressly for
130 rebuilding the system kernel, or for some other historical reason.
131 Alternatively, you may have an old machine which was shipped before
132 ANSI compliance became widespread. Such compilers are not suitable
135 If you find that your default C compiler is not ANSI-capable, but you
136 know that an ANSI-capable compiler is installed on your system, you
137 can tell F<Configure> to use the correct compiler by means of the
138 C<-Dcc=> command-line option -- see L<"gcc">.
140 If do not have an ANSI-capable compiler there are several avenues open
147 You may try obtaining GCC, available from GNU mirrors worldwide,
148 listed at <URL:http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html>. If, rather than
149 building gcc from source code, you locate a binary version configured
150 for your platform, be sure that it is compiled for the version of the
151 operating system that you are using.
155 You may purchase a commercial ANSI C compiler from your system
156 supplier or elsewhere. (Or your organization may already have
157 licensed such software -- ask your colleagues to find out how to
158 access it.) If there is a README file for your system in the Perl
159 distribution (for example, F<README.hpux>), it may contain advice on
164 Another alternative may be to use a tool like ansi2knr to convert the
165 sources back to K&R style, but there is no guarantee this route will get
166 you anywhere, since the prototypes are not the only ANSI features used
167 in the Perl sources. ansi2knr is usually found as part of the freely
168 available Ghostscript distribution. Another similar tool is
169 unprotoize, distributed with GCC. Since unprotoize requires GCC to
170 run, you may have to run it on a platform where GCC is available, and move
171 the sources back to the platform without GCC.
173 If you succeed in automatically converting the sources to a K&R compatible
174 form, be sure to email perlbug@perl.org to let us know the steps you
175 followed. This will enable us to officially support this option.
179 Although Perl can be compiled using a C++ compiler, the Configure script
180 does not work with some C++ compilers.
182 =head1 Space Requirements
184 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 50 MB of disk space.
185 After completing make, it takes up roughly 100 MB, though the actual
186 total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
187 directories need something on the order of 45 MB, though again that
188 value is system-dependent.
190 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
192 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
201 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
202 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
204 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
205 files. If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
206 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
207 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
208 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it
212 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
213 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
214 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
215 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
216 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
217 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
218 probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't.
219 Similarly, if you used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version
220 numbers, you will probably want to adjust them as well.
222 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. For example, some
223 Linux distributions use i386, while others may use i486. If you build
224 it yourself, Configure uses the output of the arch command, which
225 might be i586 or i686 instead. If you pick up a precompiled binary, or
226 compile extensions on different systems, they might not all agree on
227 the architecture name.
229 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
230 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
232 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
233 installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
234 using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
235 settings"> below. If you wish to start with a fresh distribution, you
236 also need to remove any old Policy.sh files you may have with
242 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
243 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
244 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
245 almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
246 since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
249 At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
250 defaults from then on.
252 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
253 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
255 =head2 Altering config.sh variables for C compiler switches etc.
257 For most users, all of the Configure defaults are fine. Configure
258 also has several convenient options which are all described below.
259 However, if Configure doesn't have an option to do what you want,
260 you can change Configure variables after the platform hints have been
261 run, by using Configure's -A switch. For example, here's how to add
262 a couple of extra flags to C compiler invocations:
264 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_Y2KWARN -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC"
266 For more help on Configure switches, run:
270 =head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
272 Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
273 where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
274 read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
277 Starting from Perl 5.6.1 you can do this (if your file system supports
280 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
281 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
282 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
284 This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
285 pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
286 unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
290 and Perl will be built and tested, all in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
292 =head2 Common Configure options
294 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h> to
295 get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
296 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
302 To compile with gcc you should run
304 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
306 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
307 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
309 =item Installation prefix
311 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
312 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
313 and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for
316 You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
317 directory, when Configure prompts you or by using the Configure command
318 line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
320 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
322 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
323 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
324 prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
325 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
326 for more details. Do not include a trailing slash, (i.e. /opt/perl/)
327 or you may experience odd test failures.
329 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
330 as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
331 attempt infinite recursion.
335 It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
336 find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
337 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
338 careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
339 vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing.
341 By default, Configure will arrange for /usr/bin/perl to be linked to
342 the current version of perl. You can turn off that behavior by running
344 Configure -Uinstallusrbinperl
346 or by answering 'no' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
348 In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to
349 put (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
350 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
351 obvious and convenient place.
353 =item Overriding an old config.sh
355 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
356 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
360 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
365 Note: for development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.7, as opposed
366 to maintenance releases which have even subreleases, like 5.6)
367 if you want to use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel
368 to Configure, because the default answer to the question "do you really
369 want to Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel
370 skips that sanity check.
372 For example for my Solaris system, I usually use
374 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
376 =head2 GNU-style configure
378 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
379 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
381 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
383 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
386 ./configure.gnu --help
390 Cross compiling and compiling in a different directory are not supported.
392 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
393 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
395 =head2 Installation Directories
397 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
398 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
399 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
400 Further, there are a number of additions to the installation
401 directories since 5.005, so reusing your old config.sh may not
402 be sufficient to put everything where you want it. Do not include
403 trailing slashes on directory names.
405 I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
406 everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
407 process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use
408 the defaults from then on.
410 The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
411 people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
412 distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
413 need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
414 you can safely skip the next section.
416 The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
420 =item Directories for the perl distribution
422 By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.6.0.
423 $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
424 5.6.0 or 5.6.1, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
425 determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
426 variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
428 Configure variable Default value
431 $scriptdir $prefix/bin
432 $privlib $prefix/lib/perl5/$version
433 $archlib $prefix/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
434 $man1dir $prefix/man/man1
435 $man3dir $prefix/man/man3
439 Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
440 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
441 instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
442 directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
443 the common style is shown here.
445 =item Directories for site-specific add-on files
447 After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
448 CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
449 be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
451 Configure variable Default value
453 $sitebin $siteprefix/bin
454 $sitescript $siteprefix/bin
455 $sitelib $siteprefix/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
456 $sitearch $siteprefix/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
457 $siteman1 $siteprefix/man/man1
458 $siteman3 $siteprefix/man/man3
462 By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
463 modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
465 =item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
467 Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
468 distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
469 for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
471 Configure variable Default value
473 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
474 $vendorbin $vendorprefix/bin
475 $vendorscript $vendorprefix/bin
476 $vendorlib $vendorprefix/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
477 $vendorarch $vendorprefix/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
478 $vendorman1 $vendorprefix/man/man1
479 $vendorman3 $vendorprefix/man/man3
483 These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
484 a vendor might choose the following settings:
487 $siteprefix /usr/local
490 This would have the effect of setting the following:
494 $privlib /usr/lib/perl5/$version
495 $archlib /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
496 $man1dir /usr/man/man1
497 $man3dir /usr/man/man3
499 $sitebin /usr/local/bin
500 $sitescript /usr/local/bin
501 $sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
502 $sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
503 $siteman1 /usr/local/man/man1
504 $siteman3 /usr/local/man/man3
507 $vendorscript /usr/bin
508 $vendorlib /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
509 $vendorarch /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
510 $vendorman1 /usr/man/man1
511 $vendorman3 /usr/man/man3
513 Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
514 /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
515 the /usr/local hierarchy.
517 The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
518 version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
519 However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
520 installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
521 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for more details
522 on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
524 Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
525 example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
526 are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
527 site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
528 network. One way to do that would be something like
530 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
534 As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
535 variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
536 directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
537 Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
538 version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
542 There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
543 that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
544 separated list of directories, like this
546 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
548 The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
549 ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
550 modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
551 touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
552 version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
553 present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
554 directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
555 run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
559 In versions 5.005_57 and earlier, the default was to store module man
560 pages in a version-specific directory, such as
561 /usr/local/lib/perl5/$version/man/man3. The default for 5.005_58 and
562 after is /usr/local/man/man3 so that most users can find the man pages
563 without resetting MANPATH.
565 You can continue to use the old default from the command line with
567 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/man/man3
569 Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
571 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
573 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
578 As of perl5.005_57, the standard perl installation does not do
579 anything with HTML documentation, but that may change in the future.
580 Further, some add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The
581 html Configure variables listed above are provided if you wish to
582 specify where such documents should be placed. The default is "none",
583 but will likely eventually change to something useful based on user
588 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
589 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
592 Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
593 directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
596 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
597 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
598 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below.
600 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
601 library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
602 suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
604 Thus, for example, if you Configure with
605 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.6.0 are
607 Configure variable Default value
608 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.6.0
609 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.6.0/$archname
610 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.0
611 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
613 =head2 Changing the installation directory
615 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
616 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
617 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
618 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
619 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
620 packages, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
621 wish to install perl into a different directory and use that
622 management software to move perl to its final destination. This
623 section describes how to do that.
625 Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You
626 could edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to
627 /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local, or you could simply use the
628 following command line:
630 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
632 (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
634 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
635 modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
636 follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with
639 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
641 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
642 convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
643 installed on multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to
644 create an archive that can be installed in /opt/perl.
645 Here's one way to do that:
647 # Set up to install perl into a different directory,
648 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
649 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5 -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
652 make install # This will install everything into /tmp/perl5.
654 # Edit $archlib/Config.pm and $archlib/.packlist to change all the
655 # install* variables back to reflect where everything will
656 # really be installed. (That is, change /tmp/perl5 to /opt/perl
657 # everywhere in those files.)
658 # Check the scripts in $scriptdir to make sure they have the correct
659 # #!/wherever/perl line.
660 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
661 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
662 cd /opt/perl # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
663 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
665 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
667 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
668 answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact
669 person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another
670 system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file
671 to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate
672 hint file for your system.
674 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
679 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
681 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
683 If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
684 to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
685 platform-specific hints files.
687 Note: Since the directory hierarchy for 5.6.0 contains a number of
688 new vendor* and site* entries, your Policy.sh file will probably not
689 set them to your desired values. I encourage you to run Configure
690 interactively to be sure it puts things where you want them.
692 =head2 Configure-time Options
694 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
695 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
696 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
697 some of the main things you can change.
701 On some platforms, perl5.005 and later can be compiled with
702 experimental support for threads. To enable this, read the file
703 ext/threads/threads.pm, and then try:
705 sh Configure -Dusethreads
707 Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command
708 line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
710 The default is to compile without thread support.
712 Perl has two different internal threads implementations. The current
713 model (available internally since 5.6, and as a user-level module
714 since 5.8) is called interpreter-based implementation (ithreads),
715 with one interpreter per thread, and explicit sharing of data.
717 The 5.005 version (5005threads) is considered obsolete, buggy, and
720 By default, Configure selects ithreads if -Dusethreads is specified.
722 However, you can select the old 5005threads behavior
724 sh Configure -Dusethreads -Duse5005threads
726 If you decide to use ithreads, the 'threads' module allows their use,
727 and the 'Thread' module offers an interface to both 5005threads and
728 ithreads (whichever has been configured).
730 =head2 Large file support.
732 Since Perl 5.6.0, Perl has supported large files (files larger than
733 2 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
734 support is on by default.
736 This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files,
737 seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad in that if you are interfacing Perl
738 using some extension, the components you are connecting to must also
739 be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
740 parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
741 will happen. One popular extension suffering from this ailment is the
742 Apache extension mod_perl.
744 There's also one known limitation with the current large files
745 implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
746 section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer
747 formats like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
749 =head2 64 bit support.
751 If your platform does not have 64 bits natively, but can simulate them
752 with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>, you can build a
753 perl that uses 64 bits.
755 There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
756 using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
757 -Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
758 the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
760 The C<use64bitint> does only as much as is required to get 64-bit
761 integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long longs")
762 while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because your
763 pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint> does
764 not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it might,
765 but it doesn't have to): the C<use64bitint> means that you will be
766 able to have 64 bits wide scalar values.
768 The C<use64bitall> goes all the way by attempting to switch also
769 integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
770 create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
771 resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
772 have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
775 Natively 64-bit systems like Alpha and Cray need neither -Duse64bitint
778 NOTE: 64-bit support is still experimental on most platforms.
779 Existing support only covers the LP64 data model. In particular, the
780 LLP64 data model is not yet supported. 64-bit libraries and system
781 APIs on many platforms have not stabilized--your mileage may vary.
785 In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
786 range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
787 (that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
788 this support (if it is available).
792 You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
793 and the long double support.
795 =head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
797 Executive summary: in Perl 5.8, you should use the default "PerlIO"
798 as the IO mechanism unless you have a good reason not to.
800 In more detail: previous versions of perl used the standard IO
801 mechanisms as defined in stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl
802 introduced alternate IO mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but up
803 until and including Perl 5.6, the stdio mechanism was still the default
804 and the only supported mechanism.
806 Starting from Perl 5.8, the default mechanism is to use the PerlIO
807 abstraction, because it allows better control of I/O mechanisms,
808 instead of having to work with (often, work around) vendors' I/O
811 This PerlIO abstraction can be (but again, unless you know what you
812 are doing, should not be) disabled either on the Configure command
815 sh Configure -Uuseperlio
817 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
819 With the PerlIO abstraction layer, there is another possibility for
820 the underlying IO calls, AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance
821 to stdio.h in many cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline"
822 modules ("Native" PerlIO has them too). Sfio currently only builds on
823 a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports. Because the data
824 structures are completely different from stdio, perl extension modules
825 or external libraries may not work. This configuration exists to
826 allow these issues to be worked on.
828 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
829 The latest sfio is available from http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/sfio/
831 You select this option by
833 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
835 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
836 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
839 Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails to
840 detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent). Apparently,
841 this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux and SunOS 4.
842 Configure should detect this problem and warn you about problems with
843 _exit vs. exit. If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to
844 your sfio sources and correct iffe's guess about atexit.
848 Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
849 TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
850 access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
851 Version 5. You can find more about SOCKS from http://www.socks.nec.com/
853 =head2 Dynamic Loading
855 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
856 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
857 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
858 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
860 =head2 Building a shared Perl library
862 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
863 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
864 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
867 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
868 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
869 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
870 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
871 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
872 can share the same library.
874 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
875 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
876 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
879 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
880 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
881 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
884 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
885 libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
886 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
887 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
888 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
889 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
891 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
892 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
894 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
896 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
898 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
899 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
900 NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
901 for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
902 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
903 be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
904 library search settings. You can find the name of the environment
905 variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
907 grep ldlibpthname config.sh
909 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
910 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
911 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
914 cd t; ./perl misc/failing_test.t
916 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
918 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
921 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
923 for Bourne-style shells, or
925 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
927 for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
928 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And
929 again, it may be something other than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
931 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
932 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
934 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
936 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
937 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
938 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
939 install a standard Perl 5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
940 try to build Perl 5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
941 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
942 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
943 libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is
944 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
945 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
946 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
947 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't. On Digital Unix, you can
948 override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the _RLD_ROOT environment variable
949 to point to the perl build directory.
951 The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different
952 directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING
953 version of perl. You can do this by changing all the *archlib*
954 variables in config.sh to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
958 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
959 so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
960 the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
961 version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
962 perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
963 than your system malloc.
965 However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
966 experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
967 that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
968 (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
972 =item Using the system malloc
974 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
976 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
978 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
980 =item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
982 NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you just
983 run Configure to accept all the defaults on those platforms.
985 Perl's malloc family of functions are normally called Perl_malloc(),
986 Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree().
987 These names do not clash with the system versions of these functions.
989 If this flag is enabled, however, Perl's malloc family of functions
990 will have the same names as the system versions. This may be required
991 sometimes if you have libraries that like to free() data that may have
992 been allocated by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
994 Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
995 from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
996 does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1001 =head2 Building a debugging perl
1003 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
1004 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
1005 you probably want to do
1007 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
1009 This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
1010 to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
1011 executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
1012 cc -g2. Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for
1013 your system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags
1014 variable in config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's
1015 internal state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by default
1016 if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to reuse your
1017 old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the optimize and
1018 ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes as shown in
1019 L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
1021 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
1022 it's convenient to have both.
1024 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
1025 versions of perl under L<Building a shared libperl.so Perl library>.
1029 Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
1030 in the ext/ subdirectory.
1032 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
1033 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
1034 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
1035 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
1036 is always built by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
1037 set the Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from
1038 the Configure command line.
1040 If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
1041 running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
1042 extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
1043 it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
1044 has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
1045 extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
1046 convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
1047 you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
1048 dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
1050 You can learn more about each of the supplied extensions by consulting the
1051 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
1054 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
1055 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
1056 version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
1058 In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
1059 to turn off various extensions. All others are included by default.
1062 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
1069 Threads use5005threads
1071 Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
1073 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
1075 Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
1078 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
1079 the extensions you want.
1081 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley
1082 DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect
1083 this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with earlier
1084 releases of version 2.
1086 If you re-use your old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
1087 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
1088 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
1091 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern systems do)
1092 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
1093 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
1094 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
1096 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
1098 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
1099 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
1100 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
1101 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
1102 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
1103 how to obtain the libraries.
1105 If your database header (.h) files are not in a directory normally
1106 searched by your C compiler, then you will need to include the
1107 appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by Configure. If
1108 your database library (.a) files are not in a directory normally
1109 searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to include
1110 the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by Configure.
1111 See the examples below.
1117 =item gdbm in /usr/local
1119 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
1120 GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
1121 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
1122 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
1123 necessary steps out automatically.
1125 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1126 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
1128 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
1131 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
1132 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1135 Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1136 you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1137 /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
1139 =item gdbm in /usr/you
1141 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
1142 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
1143 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
1144 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
1145 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
1146 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
1147 /usr/you/lib to the list.
1149 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
1153 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
1154 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
1156 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1157 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1159 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
1160 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
1161 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
1162 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
1165 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
1166 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
1170 =head2 Building DB, NDBM, and ODBM interfaces with Berkeley DB 3
1172 Perl interface for DB3 is part of Berkeley DB, but if you want to
1173 compile standard Perl DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you must follow
1174 following instructions.
1176 Berkeley DB3 from Sleepycat Software is by default installed without
1177 DB1 compatibility code (needed for DB_File interface) and without
1178 links to compatibility files. So if you want to use packages written
1179 for DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you need to configure DB3 with
1180 --enable-compat185 (and optionally with --enable-dump185) and create
1181 additional references (suppose you are installing DB3 with
1184 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdbm.so
1185 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libndbm.so
1186 echo '#define DB_DBM_HSEARCH 1' >dbm.h
1187 echo '#include <db.h>' >>dbm.h
1188 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/dbm.h
1189 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/ndbm.h
1191 Optionally, if you have compiled with --enable-compat185 (not needed
1194 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb1.so
1195 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb.so
1197 ODBM emulation seems not to be perfect, but is quite usable,
1200 lib/odbm.............FAILED at test 9
1201 Failed 1/64 tests, 98.44% okay
1203 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1205 If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1206 If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1210 =item Running Configure Interactively
1212 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1213 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1216 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1217 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1218 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1219 will use the defaults from then on.
1221 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1222 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1223 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1227 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
1228 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1229 will offer to use that hint file.
1231 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1232 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1233 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1234 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
1237 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1239 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
1240 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
1241 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
1244 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1245 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
1246 Keep the recommended value? [y]
1248 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
1249 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
1252 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
1253 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
1254 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
1257 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1258 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1259 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1260 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1263 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1264 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1265 Keep the previous value? [y]
1267 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1268 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1269 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1271 =item Changing Compilers
1273 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1274 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1275 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
1276 with the options you want to use.
1278 This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
1279 gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
1281 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1283 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1284 them to all the .SH files by running
1288 You will then have to rebuild by running
1293 =item config.over and config.arch
1295 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride
1296 Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1297 before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1298 however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1299 This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1301 There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1302 config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1303 architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1304 hints file that creates the config.arch.
1308 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1309 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1310 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1312 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1313 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1318 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1319 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1320 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1321 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1322 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1323 lost the next time you run Configure.
1325 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1326 see the file hints/README.hints.
1328 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1329 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1336 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1337 Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1338 system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1339 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1342 =item Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX and BIN_SH
1344 In Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX, Configure might abort with
1346 Build a threading Perl? [n]
1347 Configure[2437]: Syntax error at line 1 : `config.sh' is not expected.
1349 This indicates that Configure is being run with a broken Korn shell
1350 (even though you think you are using a Bourne shell by using
1351 "sh Configure" or "./Configure"). The Korn shell bug has been reported
1352 to Compaq as of February 1999 but in the meanwhile, the reason ksh is
1353 being used is that you have the environment variable BIN_SH set to
1354 'xpg4'. This causes /bin/sh to delegate its duties to /bin/posix/sh
1355 (a ksh). Unset the environment variable and rerun Configure.
1357 =item HP-UX 11, pthreads, and libgdbm
1359 If you are running Configure with -Dusethreads in HP-UX 11, be warned
1360 that POSIX threads and libgdbm (the GNU dbm library) compiled before
1361 HP-UX 11 do not mix. This will cause a basic test run by Configure to
1364 Pthread internal error: message: __libc_reinit() failed, file: ../pthreads/pthread.c, line: 1096
1365 Return Pointer is 0xc082bf33
1366 sh: 5345 Quit(coredump)
1368 and Configure will give up. The cure is to recompile and install
1369 libgdbm under HP-UX 11.
1371 =item Porting information
1373 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1374 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1375 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1376 subdirectory. Especially Porting/Glossary should come in handy.
1378 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1379 http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
1380 various other operating systems.
1382 If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture study carefully the
1383 section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1384 in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file Porting/patching.pod.
1385 Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1389 =head1 Adding extra modules to the build
1391 You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1392 CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1393 command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1395 Configure -Dextras="Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI"
1397 or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
1398 then answer "Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
1399 The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
1401 Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1402 modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1403 or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1404 do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1406 Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1407 dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
1408 For example: you will need to have the zlib.h header and the libz
1409 library installed for the Compress::Zlib, or the Foo database specific
1410 headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1411 process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1415 suidperl is an optional component, which is built or installed by default.
1418 On some systems, setuid and setgid scripts (scripts written
1419 in the C shell, Bourne shell, or Perl, for example, with the
1420 set user or group ID permissions enabled) are insecure due to
1421 a race condition in the kernel. For those systems, Perl versions
1422 5 and 4 attempt to work around this vulnerability with an optional
1423 component, a special program named suidperl, also known as sperl.
1424 This program attempts to emulate the set-user-ID and set-group-ID
1425 features of the kernel.
1427 Because of the buggy history of suidperl, and the difficulty
1428 of properly security auditing as large and complex piece of
1429 software as Perl, we cannot recommend using suidperl and the feature
1430 should be considered deprecated.
1431 Instead use for example 'sudo': http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/
1435 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1436 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1437 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1438 makefile, not Makefile since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1439 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1440 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1442 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1447 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1449 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1451 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1452 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1453 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1454 then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1460 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1461 for further tips and information.
1465 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1466 during the building of extensions, you should run
1470 to test your version of miniperl.
1474 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1475 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1476 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1477 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1478 whole L<"Locale problems"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1479 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1481 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1482 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1485 are supported and installed on your system.
1486 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1492 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1493 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1494 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1495 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by running fixincludes
1496 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1497 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1498 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1502 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1503 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1505 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1506 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1507 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1509 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1510 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1512 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1514 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1515 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1516 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1517 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1518 of your local set-up.
1522 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1523 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1526 sh Configure -Uusenm
1528 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1529 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1532 =item umask not found
1534 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1535 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1536 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1537 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1538 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1542 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1543 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1544 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1545 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1546 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1550 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1551 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1552 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1556 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1557 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1558 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1559 on L<"nm extraction">.
1561 =item __inet_* errors
1563 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1564 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1565 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1566 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1567 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1568 newer version of BIND. If you can't, you can either link with the
1569 updated resolver library provided with BIND 8.1 or rename
1570 /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and test process to
1573 =item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1575 This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1576 gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1577 changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1578 rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1579 update your gcc installation.
1583 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1584 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1592 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1593 with B<make depend; make>.
1595 =item Missing functions
1597 If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
1598 other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
1599 there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
1600 likely suspects. If Configure guessed wrong on a number of functions,
1601 you might have the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1605 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1606 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1607 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1608 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1609 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1612 =item Missing dbmclose
1614 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1615 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1617 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1619 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1620 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1621 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1622 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1623 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1624 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1625 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1626 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1627 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1628 process is continuing.
1630 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1633 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1635 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1636 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1637 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1639 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1640 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1641 quite that tightly coordinated.
1643 =item sh: ar: not found
1645 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1646 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1647 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1648 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1651 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1653 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1654 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1655 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1657 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1659 If you get this error message from the lib/ipc_sysv test, your System
1660 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1661 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1662 to include the System V semaphores.
1664 =item lib/ipc_sysv........semget: No space left on device
1666 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1667 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1668 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1669 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1674 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1675 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1676 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1677 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1678 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1679 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1680 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1681 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1683 =item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1685 The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1686 make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1687 archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1688 C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1689 archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1690 incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1691 official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1692 that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1693 archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1695 =item invalid token: ##
1697 You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. See L<WARNING: This
1698 version requires a compiler that supports ANSI C>.
1702 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1704 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1706 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1708 UTS may need one or more of -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1710 FreeBSD can fail the lib/ipc_sysv.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1711 configured in the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1712 you will get a message telling what to do.
1714 HP-UX 11 Y2K patch "Y2K-1100 B.11.00.B0125 HP-UX Core OS Year 2000
1715 Patch Bundle" has been reported to break the io/fs test #18 which
1716 tests whether utime() can change timestamps. The Y2K patch seems to
1717 break utime() so that over NFS the timestamps do not get changed
1718 (on local filesystems utime() still works).
1722 =head2 Cross-compilation
1724 Starting from Perl 5.8 Perl has the beginnings of cross-compilation
1725 support. What is known to work is running Configure in a
1726 cross-compilation environment and building the miniperl executable.
1727 What is known not to work is building the perl executable because
1728 that would require building extensions: Dynaloader statically and
1729 File::Glob dynamically, for extensions one needs MakeMaker and
1730 MakeMaker is not yet cross-compilation aware, and neither is
1733 Since the functionality is so lacking, it must be considered
1734 highly experimental. It is so experimental that it is not even
1735 mentioned during an interactive Configure session, a direct command
1736 line invocation (detailed shortly) is required to access the
1739 NOTE: Perl is routinely built using cross-compilation
1740 in the EPOC environment but the solutions from there
1741 can't directly be used elsewhere.
1743 The one environment where cross-compilation has successfully been used
1744 as of this writing is the Compaq iPAQ running ARM Linux. The build
1745 host was Intel Linux, the networking setup was PPP + SSH. The exact
1746 setup details are beyond the scope of this document, see
1747 http://www.handhelds.org/ for more information.
1749 To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch is
1750 C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
1752 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1754 This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
1755 symbol C<usecrosscompile> available.
1757 During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1758 into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1759 cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1760 target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1761 transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1762 the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1763 methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1764 F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1766 To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1767 the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1768 happens), supply Configure with
1770 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1772 The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
1773 must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1774 You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
1778 but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
1780 Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
1781 which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
1782 This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
1783 In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
1786 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
1788 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1789 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1790 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
1792 If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
1793 compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
1794 C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
1795 (The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
1796 as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
1797 will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
1798 in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
1800 In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
1801 choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
1804 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
1806 Putting it all together:
1808 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1809 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1810 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
1812 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
1813 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1814 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1815 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
1816 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
1819 or if you are happy with the defaults
1821 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1822 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1823 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1828 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
1829 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
1830 wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1832 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1833 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1834 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1836 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1838 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1839 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1840 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1844 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1845 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1849 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1850 complicated constructs). For extension and library tests you
1851 need a little bit more: you need to setup your environment variable
1852 PERL_CORE to a true value (like "1"), and you need to supply the
1853 right Perl library path:
1856 ./perl -I../lib ../ext/Socket/Socket.t
1857 ./perl -I../lib ../lib/less.t
1859 (For csh-like shells on UNIX; adjust appropriately for other platforms.)
1860 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1861 comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
1862 shared library path if you get errors like:
1864 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
1866 See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
1872 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1873 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1874 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1875 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1876 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1877 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1879 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1885 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1887 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1888 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1889 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1890 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1891 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1892 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1895 =item Timing problems
1897 Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
1898 sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
1899 If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough,
1900 these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again
1901 with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive
1902 and load-sensitive tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
1903 F<ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t>, F<lib/Benchmark.t>,
1904 F<lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t>, and F<lib/Memoize/t/speed.t>.
1908 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1909 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
1910 For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
1911 test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
1913 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1915 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
1917 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1918 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1919 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1920 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1922 =item Test failures from lib/ftmp-security saying "system possibly insecure"
1924 Firstly, test failures from the ftmp-security are not necessarily
1925 serious or indicative of a real security threat. That being said,
1926 they bear investigating.
1928 The tests may fail for the following reasons. Note that each of the
1929 tests is run both in the building directory and the temporary
1930 directory, as returned by File::Spec->tmpdir().
1932 (1) If the directory the tests are being run is owned by somebody else
1933 than the user running the tests, or root (uid 0). This failure can
1934 happen if the Perl source code distribution is unpacked in a way that
1935 the user ids in the distribution package are used as-is. Some tar
1938 (2) If the directory the tests are being run in is writable by group
1939 or by others (remember: with UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to
1940 a directory means the right to add/remove files in that directory),
1941 and there is no sticky bit set in the directory. 'Sticky bit' is
1942 a feature used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if
1943 the bit is on a directory, no one but the owner (or the root) can remove
1944 that file even if the permissions of the directory would allow file
1945 removal by others. This failure can happen if the permissions in the
1946 directory simply are a bit too liberal for the tests' liking. This
1947 may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the permissions policy
1948 used on this particular directory/project/system/site. This failure
1949 can also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit
1950 (this is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle
1951 File::Temp should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or
1952 if the system supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons
1953 it is not being used. This is for example the case with HP-UX: as of
1954 HP-UX release 11.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX
1955 doesn't use it on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also, as with the
1956 permissions, some local policy might dictate that the stickiness is
1959 (3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
1960 any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
1961 directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
1964 See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
1965 about the various security aspects.
1971 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1972 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
1973 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
1974 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
1975 are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
1976 ignore any messages about chown not working.
1978 =head2 Installing perl under different names
1980 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
1981 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
1982 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
1984 make install PERLNAME=myperl
1986 You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
1987 "perl5.005") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
1989 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
1991 This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (e.g. to
1992 avoid conflicts with an ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor).
1993 Without this the versioned binary would be called "perl55.005".
1995 =head2 Installed files
1997 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
1998 anything, you can run
2000 ./perl installperl -n
2001 ./perl installman -n
2003 make install will install the following:
2008 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
2009 will be a link to perl.
2011 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
2012 a2p awk-to-perl translator
2016 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
2018 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
2019 s2p sed-to-perl translator
2020 find2perl find-to-perl translator
2021 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
2022 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
2023 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
2024 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
2025 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
2026 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
2027 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
2033 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
2034 dprofpp Perl code profile post-processor
2038 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
2039 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
2043 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2045 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
2046 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2048 Installperl will also create the directories listed above
2049 in L<"Installation Directories">.
2051 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
2052 under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
2053 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2054 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
2056 Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2057 installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
2058 perl alongside an already installed production version of perl without
2059 disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2060 To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2062 Configure -Dversiononly
2064 or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2065 you can just manually run
2067 ./perl installperl -v
2069 and skip installman altogether.
2070 See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2073 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
2075 Perl 5.8 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
2076 In other words, you have to recompile your XS modules.
2078 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
2079 5.004_04) to another similar version (e.g. 5.004_05) without re-compiling
2080 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
2081 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
2082 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
2083 with 5.004_04, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
2084 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
2085 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.00404.
2087 Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use
2088 with a newer version of perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
2089 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
2091 Suppose you already have version 5.005_03 installed. The directories
2092 searched by 5.005_03 are
2094 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503/$archname
2095 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503
2096 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2097 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2099 Beginning with 5.6.0 the version number in the site libraries are
2100 fully versioned. Now, suppose you install version 5.6.0. The directories
2101 searched by version 5.6.0 will be
2103 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/$archname
2104 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0
2105 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
2106 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2108 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2109 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2110 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2112 Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
2113 of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
2114 directories. This way, modules installed under 5.005_03 will continue
2115 to be usable by 5.005_03 but will also accessible to 5.6.0. Further,
2116 suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
2117 present only in 5.6.0. That new module will get installed into
2118 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0 and will be available to 5.6.0,
2119 but will not interfere with the 5.005_03 version.
2121 The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
2122 5.6.0 will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
2124 Lastly, suppose you now install version 5.6.1, which we'll assume is
2125 binary compatible with 5.6.0 and 5.005. The directories searched
2126 by 5.6.1 (if you don't change the Configure defaults) will be:
2128 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.1/$archname
2129 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.1
2130 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1/$archname
2131 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.1
2133 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
2134 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2136 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2137 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2138 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2140 Assuming the users in your site are still actively using perl 5.6.0 and
2141 5.005 after you installed 5.6.1, you can continue to install add-on
2142 extensions using any of perl 5.6.1, 5.6.0, or 5.005. The installations
2143 of these different versions remain distinct, but remember that the newer
2144 versions of perl are automatically set up to search the site libraries of
2145 the older ones. This means that installing a new extension with 5.005
2146 will make it visible to all three versions. Later, if you install the
2147 same extension using, say, perl 5.6.1, it will override the 5.005-installed
2148 version, but only for perl 5.6.1.
2150 This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2151 to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2152 versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
2154 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
2156 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
2157 separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
2158 won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2159 libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2160 way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
2162 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.004
2164 and adding /opt/perl5.004/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
2165 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2166 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2168 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
2169 (e.g. 5.004 for all 5.004_0x versions), but change directory with
2172 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2173 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2174 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2177 =head2 Upgrading from 5.005 to 5.6.0
2179 Most extensions built and installed with versions of perl
2180 prior to 5.005_50 will not need to be recompiled to be used with
2181 5.6.0. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with 5.6.0,
2182 you may safely do so without disturbing the 5.005 installation.
2183 (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> above.)
2185 See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2186 incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
2187 perllocal.pod not perllocale.pod for installed module information.
2189 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
2191 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
2193 By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
2194 they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
2196 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
2197 perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
2198 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
2199 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
2200 the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036 (or
2201 whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod for
2202 possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
2204 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2206 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2207 system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2208 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2209 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2210 library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2212 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2213 of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2214 hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2215 For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2218 =head1 installhtml --help
2220 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2221 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2222 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2224 Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2225 html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2227 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2232 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2234 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2235 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2236 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2237 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2238 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
2241 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2242 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2243 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2244 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2245 (and would welcome patches for them).
2247 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2248 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2250 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2252 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2253 available in TeX format. Type
2255 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2257 =head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2259 The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2260 Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2261 operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2263 Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way:
2264 Encode, with its big conversion tables, consumes a lot of
2265 space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything. The
2266 Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network
2267 programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all
2268 depends on what do you need to do.
2270 In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2271 recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2272 depends on what you need.
2274 Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2278 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2282 in Solaris is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
2285 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2286 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2287 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2288 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2289 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2290 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/auto/File/Glob/autosplit.ix
2291 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/Config.pm
2292 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/XSLoader.pm
2293 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/DynaLoader.pm
2294 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris-64int/CORE/libperl.so
2295 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/strict.pm
2296 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/warnings.pm
2297 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Carp.pm
2298 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Exporter.pm
2299 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/File/Glob.pm
2300 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/AutoLoader.pm
2301 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/vars.pm
2302 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/warnings/register.pm
2303 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Carp/Heavy.pm
2304 ./lib/perl5/5.6.1/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2306 Secondly, Debian perl-base package contains the following files,
2307 size about 1.2MB in its i386 version:
2309 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2310 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian
2311 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
2312 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
2313 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
2314 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
2315 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/AutoLoader.pm
2316 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Carp.pm
2317 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Carp/Heavy.pm
2318 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Cwd.pm
2319 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Exporter.pm
2320 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2321 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/File/Spec.pm
2322 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2323 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/FileHandle.pm
2324 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Getopt/Long.pm
2325 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2326 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2327 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IPC/Open2.pm
2328 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/IPC/Open3.pm
2329 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/SelectSaver.pm
2330 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Symbol.pm
2331 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Text/Tabs.pm
2332 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/Text/Wrap.pm
2333 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/attributes.pm
2334 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/GetOptions.al
2335 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/FindOption.al
2336 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/Configure.al
2337 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/config.al
2338 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/Croak.al
2339 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/auto/Getopt/Long/autosplit.ix
2340 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/base.pm
2341 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/constant.pm
2342 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/fields.pm
2343 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/integer.pm
2344 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/lib.pm
2345 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/locale.pm
2346 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/overload.pm
2347 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/strict.pm
2348 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/vars.pm
2349 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/warnings.pm
2350 /usr/share/perl/5.6.1/warnings/register.pm
2352 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Config.pm
2353 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Data/Dumper.pm
2354 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/DynaLoader.pm
2355 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Errno.pm
2356 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Fcntl.pm
2357 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/File/Glob.pm
2358 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO.pm
2359 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/File.pm
2360 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Handle.pm
2361 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Pipe.pm
2362 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Seekable.pm
2363 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Select.pm
2364 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/IO/Socket.pm
2365 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/POSIX.pm
2366 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/Socket.pm
2367 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/XSLoader.pm
2368 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.so
2369 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.bs
2370 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2371 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2372 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2373 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2374 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a
2375 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/DynaLoader/extralibs.ld
2376 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2377 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs
2378 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/Glob.bs
2379 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2380 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/File/Glob/autosplit.ix
2381 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/IO/IO.so
2382 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/IO/IO.bs
2383 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/POSIX.bs
2384 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2385 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2386 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2387 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2388 /usr/lib/perl/5.6.1/auto/Socket/Socket.bs
2390 =head1 Reporting Problems
2392 If you have difficulty building perl, and none of the advice in this file
2393 helps, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant manual
2394 pages on your system doesn't help either, then you should send a message
2395 to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to perlbug@perl.org with
2396 an accurate description of your problem.
2398 Please include the output of the ./myconfig shell script that comes with
2399 the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the perlbug program that
2400 comes with the perl distribution, but you need to have perl compiled
2401 before you can use it. (If you have not installed it yet, you need to
2402 run C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug> instead of a plain C<perlbug>.)
2404 Please try to make your message brief but clear. Trim out unnecessary
2405 information. Do not include large files (such as config.sh or a complete
2406 Configure or make log) unless absolutely necessary. Do not include a
2407 complete transcript of your build session. Just include the failing
2408 commands, the relevant error messages, and whatever preceding commands
2409 are necessary to give the appropriate context. Plain text should
2410 usually be sufficient--fancy attachments or encodings may actually
2411 reduce the number of people who read your message. Your message
2412 will get relayed to over 400 subscribers around the world so please
2413 try to keep it brief but clear.
2415 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
2417 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2418 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
2419 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
2420 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2421 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
2423 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
2424 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and
2427 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
2428 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
2430 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
2431 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
2434 Note that you must have performed the installation already before running
2435 the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate
2440 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2441 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2442 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
2444 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2445 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2447 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2449 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2450 the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2451 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2452 a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2453 and the contact information to match your distribution.