3 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
7 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system are:
15 # You may also wish to add these:
16 (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
18 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
20 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
22 For information on non-Unix systems, see the section on
23 L<"Porting information"> below.
25 For information on what's new in this release, see the
26 pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
27 changes, see the Changes file.
31 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
32 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
33 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
34 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
36 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
38 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
40 You should probably at least skim through this entire document before
43 If you're building Perl on a non-Unix system, you should also read
44 the README file specific to your operating system, since this may
45 provide additional or different instructions for building Perl.
47 If there is a hint file for your system (in the hints/ directory) you
48 should also read that hint file for specific information for your
49 system. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh hint file.)
51 =head1 Space Requirements
53 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 7 MB of disk space. The
54 complete tree after completing make takes roughly 15 MB, though the
55 actual total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
56 directories need something on the order of 7 MB, though again that
57 value is system-dependent.
59 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
61 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
66 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh file. If
67 you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you change
68 systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if you are
69 experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably not
70 re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or rename it, e.g.
72 mv config.sh config.sh.old
74 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
75 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
76 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
77 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
78 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
79 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
80 probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't, presently.
81 Similarly, if you used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version
82 numbers, you will probably want to adjust them as well.
84 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. Some Linux systems
85 (such as Debian) use i386, while others may use i486 or i586. If you
86 pick up a precompiled binary, it might not use the same name.
88 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
89 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
93 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
94 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
95 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default
96 is almost always ok. At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d
97 and Configure will use the defaults from then on.
99 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
100 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
102 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h>
103 to get a listing. To compile with gcc, for example, you can run
105 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
107 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
108 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
110 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
111 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
113 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
114 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. You can specify a different 'prefix' for
115 the default installation directory, when Configure prompts you or by
116 using the Configure command line option -Dprefix='/some/directory',
119 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
121 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the directories
122 are simplified. For example, if you use prefix=/opt/perl,
123 then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
124 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/.
126 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
127 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
128 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
129 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
131 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
136 For my Solaris system, I usually use
138 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
140 =head2 GNU-style configure
142 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
143 use the supplied configure command, e.g.
147 The configure script emulates a few of the more common configure
154 Cross compiling is not supported.
156 For systems that do not distinguish the files "Configure" and
157 "configure", Perl includes a copy of configure named
162 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
163 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
164 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
165 DynaLoader, Fcntl, and IO are always built by default. Configure does
166 not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX is always built
167 by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can set the
168 Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from the
169 Configure command line. Similarly, the Opcode extension is always built
170 by default, but you can skip it by setting the Configure variable
171 useopcode=false either in a hint file for from the command line.
173 You can learn more about each of these extensions by consulting the
174 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
177 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
178 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
179 version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
181 In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
182 to turn off each extension:
185 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
186 Fcntl (Always included by default)
188 IO (Always included by default)
192 SDBM_File (Always included by default)
196 Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
198 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
200 Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
203 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
204 the extensions you want.
206 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of
207 Berkeley DB. Once Berkeley DB version 2 is released, DB_File will be
208 upgraded to work with it. Configure will automatically detect this
209 for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with version 2.
211 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern Unix systems do)
212 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
213 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
214 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
216 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
218 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
219 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
220 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
221 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
222 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
223 how to obtain the libraries.
225 Note: If your database header (.h) files are not in a
226 directory normally searched by your C compiler, then you will need to
227 include the appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by
228 Configure. If your database library (.a) files are not in a directory
229 normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to
230 include the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by
231 Configure. See the examples below.
237 =item gdbm in /usr/local
239 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
240 GDBM_File extension. This examples assumes you have gdbm.h
241 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
242 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
243 necessary steps out automatically.
245 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
246 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
248 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
251 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
252 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
255 Again, this should all happen automatically. If you want to accept the
256 defaults for all the questions and have Configure print out only terse
257 messages, then you can just run
261 and Configure should include the GDBM_File extension automatically.
263 This should actually work if you have gdbm installed in any of
264 (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu, /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
266 =item gdbm in /usr/you
268 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
269 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
270 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
271 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
272 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
273 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
274 /usr/you/lib to the list.
276 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
280 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
281 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
283 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
284 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
286 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
287 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
288 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
289 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
292 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
293 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
297 =head2 Installation Directories
299 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
300 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
301 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
303 I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
304 everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
305 process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure
306 will use the defaults from then on.
308 By default, Configure uses the following directories for
309 library files (archname is a string like sun4-sunos, determined
312 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.004
313 /usr/local/lib/perl5/
314 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/archname
315 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl
317 and the following directories for manual pages:
320 /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3
322 (Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
323 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
324 instead.) The module man pages are stuck in that strange spot so that
325 they don't collide with other man pages stored in /usr/local/man/man3,
326 and so that Perl's man pages don't hide system man pages. On some
327 systems, B<man less> would end up calling up Perl's less.pm module man
328 page, rather than the less program. (This location may change in a
329 future release of perl.)
331 Note: Many users prefer to store the module man pages in
332 /usr/local/man/man3. You can do this from the command line with
334 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/man/man3
336 Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
338 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
340 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
341 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you Configure with
342 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the defaults are
344 /opt/perl/lib/archname/5.004
346 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/archname
347 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl
352 The perl executable will search the libraries in the order given
355 The directories site_perl and site_perl/archname are empty, but are
356 intended to be used for installing local or site-wide extensions. Perl
357 will automatically look in these directories. Previously, most sites
358 just put their local extensions in with the standard distribution.
360 In order to support using things like #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.004 after
361 a later version is released, architecture-dependent libraries are
362 stored in a version-specific directory, such as
363 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.004/. In Perl 5.000 and 5.001, these
364 files were just stored in /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/. If you will
365 not be using 5.001 binaries, you can delete the standard extensions from
366 the /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/ directory. Locally-added extensions
367 can be moved to the site_perl and site_perl/archname directories.
369 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
372 =head2 Changing the installation directory
374 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
375 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
376 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
377 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
378 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
379 packages may also wish to install perl into a different directory and
380 use that management software to move perl to its final destination.
381 This section describes how to do this. Someday, Configure may support
382 an option -Dinstallprefix=/foo to simplify this.
384 Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You
385 can edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to
386 /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local/wherever. Or, you can automate this
387 process by placing the following lines in a file config.over before you
388 run Configure (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice):
390 installprefix=/tmp/perl5
391 test -d $installprefix || mkdir $installprefix
392 test -d $installprefix/bin || mkdir $installprefix/bin
393 installarchlib=`echo $installarchlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
394 installbin=`echo $installbin | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
395 installman1dir=`echo $installman1dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
396 installman3dir=`echo $installman3dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
397 installprivlib=`echo $installprivlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
398 installscript=`echo $installscript | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
399 installsitelib=`echo $installsitelib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
400 installsitearch=`echo $installsitearch | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
402 Then, you can Configure and install in the usual way:
409 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
411 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
412 convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
413 installed on multiple systems. Here's one way to do that:
415 # Set up config.over to install perl into a different directory,
416 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
422 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
423 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
424 cd /usr/local # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
425 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
427 =head2 Configure-time Options
429 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
430 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
431 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
432 some of the main things you can change.
434 =head2 Binary Compatibility With Earlier Versions of Perl 5
436 If you have dynamically loaded extensions that you built under
437 perl 5.003 and that you wish to continue to use with perl 5.004, then you
438 need to ensure that 5.004 remains binary compatible with 5.003.
440 Starting with Perl 5.003, all functions in the Perl C source code have
441 been protected by default by the prefix Perl_ (or perl_) so that you
442 may link with third-party libraries without fear of namespace
443 collisions. This change broke compatibility with version 5.002, so
444 installing 5.003 or 5.004 over 5.002 or earlier will force you to
445 re-build and install all of your dynamically loadable extensions.
446 (The standard extensions supplied with Perl are handled
447 automatically). You can turn off this namespace protection by adding
448 -DNO_EMBED to your ccflags variable in config.sh.
450 Perl 5.003's namespace protection was incomplete, but this has
451 been fixed in 5.004. However, some sites may need to maintain
452 complete binary compatibility with Perl 5.003. If you are building
453 Perl for such a site, then when Configure asks if you want binary
454 compatibility, answer "y".
456 On the other hand, if you are embedding perl into another application
457 and want the maximum namespace protection, then you probably ought to
458 answer "n" when Configure asks if you want binary compatibility.
460 The default answer of "y" to maintain binary compatibility is probably
461 appropriate for almost everyone.
463 In a related issue, old extensions may possibly be affected by the changes
464 in the Perl language in the current release. Please see pod/perldelta for
465 a description of what's changed.
467 =head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
469 Previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in
470 stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl allow alternate IO
471 mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but the stdio mechanism is still
472 the default and is the only supported mechanism.
474 This PerlIO abstraction can be enabled either on the Configure command
477 sh Configure -Duseperlio
479 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
481 If you choose to use the PerlIO abstraction layer, there are two
482 (experimental) possibilities for the underlying IO calls. These have been
483 tested to some extent on some platforms, but are not guaranteed to work
490 AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance to stdio.h in many
491 cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline" modules. Sfio
492 currently only builds on a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports.
493 Because the data structures are completely different from stdio, perl
494 extension modules or external libraries may not work. This
495 configuration exists to allow these issues to be worked on.
497 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
498 A (fairly old) version of sfio is in CPAN, and work is in progress to make
499 it more easily buildable by adding Configure support.
501 You select this option by
503 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
505 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
506 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
509 Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails
510 to detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent).
511 Apparently, this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux
514 You can test if you have this problem by trying the following shell
515 script. (You may have to add some extra cflags and libraries. A
516 portable version of this may eventually make its way into Configure.)
521 main() { printf("42\n"); }
523 cc -o try try.c -lsfio
525 if test X$val = X42; then
526 echo "Your sfio looks ok"
528 echo "Your sfio has the exit problem."
531 If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to your sfio sources
532 and correct iffe's guess about atexit (or whatever is appropriate for
535 There also might be a more recent release of Sfio that fixes your
540 Normal stdio IO, but with all IO going through calls to the PerlIO
541 abstraction layer. This configuration can be used to check that perl and
542 extension modules have been correctly converted to use the PerlIO
545 This configuration should work on all platforms (but might not).
547 You select this option via:
549 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Uusesfio
551 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure does not
552 detect sfio, then this will be the default suggested by Configure.
556 =head2 Building a shared libperl.so Perl library
558 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
559 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
560 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
563 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
564 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
565 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
566 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
567 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
568 can share the same library.
570 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
571 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
572 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
575 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
576 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
577 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
580 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
581 libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
582 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
583 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
584 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
585 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
587 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
588 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
590 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
592 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
594 To actually build perl, you must add the current working directory to your
595 LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable before running make. You can do
598 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
600 for Bourne-style shells, or
602 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
604 for Csh-style shells. You *MUST* do this before running make.
605 Folks running NeXT OPENSTEP must substitute DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
606 LD_LIBRARY_PATH above.
608 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
609 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
610 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
611 install a standard Perl 5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
612 try to build Perl 5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
613 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
614 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
615 libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is
616 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
617 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
618 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
619 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't. On Digital Unix, you can
620 override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the _RLD_ROOT environment variable
621 to point to the perl build directory.
623 The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different
624 directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING
625 version of perl. You can do this with by changing all the *archlib*
626 variables in config.sh, namely archlib, archlib_exp, and
627 installarchlib, to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
631 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed, so
632 perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
633 the malloc function on your system.
635 The perl source is shipped with a version of malloc that is very fast
636 but somewhat wasteful of space. On the other hand, your system's
637 malloc() function is probably a bit slower but also a bit more frugal.
639 For many uses, speed is probably the most important consideration, so
640 the default behavior (for most systems) is to use the malloc supplied
641 with perl. However, if you will be running very large applications
642 (e.g. Tk or PDL) or if your system already has an excellent malloc, or
643 if you are experiencing difficulties with extensions that use
644 third-party libraries that call malloc, then you might wish to use
645 your system's malloc. (Or, you might wish to explore the experimental
646 malloc flags discussed below.)
648 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
650 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
652 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
654 =head2 Malloc Performance Flags
656 If you are using Perl's malloc, you may add one or
657 more of the following items to your cflags config.sh variable
658 to change its behavior in potentially useful ways. You can find out
659 more about these flags by reading the malloc.c source.
660 In a future version of perl, these might be enabled by default.
664 =item -DDEBUGGING_MSTATS
666 If DEBUGGING_MSTATS is defined, you can extract malloc
667 statistics from the Perl interpreter. The overhead this imposes is not
668 large (perl just twiddles integers at malloc/free/sbrk time). When you
669 run perl with the environment variable PERL_DEBUG_MSTATS set to
670 either 1 or 2, the interpreter will dump statistics to stderr at exit
671 time and (with a value of 2) after compilation. If you install the
672 Devel::Peek module you can get the statistics whenever you like by
673 invoking its mstat() function.
675 =item -DEMERGENCY_SBRK
677 If EMERGENCY_SBRK is defined, running out of memory need not be a
678 fatal error: a memory pool can allocated by assigning to the special
679 variable $^M. See perlvar(1) for more details.
683 If PACK_MALLOC is defined, malloc.c uses a slightly different
684 algorithm for small allocations (up to 64 bytes long). Such small
685 allocations are quite common in typical Perl scripts.
687 The expected memory savings (with 8-byte alignment in $alignbytes) is
688 about 20% for typical Perl usage. The expected slowdown due to the
689 additional malloc overhead is in fractions of a percent. (It is hard
690 to measure because of the effect of the saved memory on speed).
692 =item -DTWO_POT_OPTIMIZE
694 If TWO_POT_OPTIMIZE is defined, malloc.c uses a slightly different
695 algorithm for large allocations that are close to a power of two
696 (starting with 16K). Such allocations are typical for big hashes and
697 special-purpose scripts, especially image processing. If you will be
698 manipulating very large blocks with sizes close to powers of two, it
699 might be wise to define this macro.
701 The expected saving of memory is 0-100% (100% in applications which
702 require most memory in such 2**n chunks). The expected slowdown is
707 =head2 Building a debugging perl
709 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
710 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
711 you probably want to do
713 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
715 This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
716 to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
717 executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
718 cc -g2. Check you man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for your
719 system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags variable in
720 config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's internal
721 state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by
722 default if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to
723 reuse your old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the
724 optimize and ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes
725 as shown in L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
727 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
728 it's convenient to have both.
730 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
731 versions of perl under L<Building a shared libperl.so Perl library>.
733 =head2 Other Compiler Flags
735 For most users, all of the Configure defaults are fine. However,
736 you can change a number of factors in the way perl is built
737 by adding appropriate -D directives to your ccflags variable in
740 For example, you can replace the rand() and srand() functions in the
741 perl source by any other random number generator by a trick such as the
744 sh Configure -Dccflags='-Drand=random -Dsrand=srandom'
746 or by adding -Drand=random and -Dsrand=srandom to your ccflags
747 at the appropriate Configure prompt. (Note: Although this worked for
748 me, it might not work for you if your system's header files give
749 different prototypes for rand() and random() or srand() and srandom().)
751 You should also run Configure interactively to verify that a hint file
752 doesn't inadvertently override your ccflags setting. (Hints files
753 shouldn't do that, but some might.)
755 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
759 =item Running Configure Interactively
761 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
762 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
765 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
766 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
767 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
768 will use the defaults from then on.
770 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
771 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
772 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
776 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
777 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
778 will offer to use that hint file.
780 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
781 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint
782 file for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an
785 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
787 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
788 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
789 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
792 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
793 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
794 Keep the recommended value? [y]
796 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
797 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
800 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
801 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
802 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
805 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
806 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
807 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
808 Now, Configure will find your gdbm library and will issue a message:
810 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
811 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
812 Keep the previous value? [y]
814 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
815 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
816 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
818 =item Changing Compilers
820 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
821 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
822 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
823 with the options you want to use.
825 This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
826 gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
828 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
830 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
831 them to all the .SH files by running
835 You will then have to rebuild by running
842 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride Configure's
843 guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just before config.sh
844 is created. You have to be careful with this, however, as Configure
845 does no checking that your changes make sense. See the section on
846 L<"Changing the installation directory"> for an example.
850 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
851 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
852 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
854 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
855 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
860 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
861 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
862 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
863 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
864 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
865 lost the next time you run Configure.
867 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh
868 and change either $ccflags or $optimize,
876 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file config_H to
877 config.h and edit the config.h to reflect your system's peculiarities.
878 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
881 =item Porting information
883 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
884 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
885 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
888 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
889 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports for current information on ports to
890 various other operating systems.
896 This will look for all the includes.
897 The output is stored in makefile. The only difference between
898 Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at the bottom of
899 makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
900 makefile, not Makefile since the Unix make command reads
901 makefile first. (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in
902 a different file. Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh
905 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
910 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
912 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
913 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
914 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help, you can
915 send a message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
916 perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
917 See L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
923 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
924 for further tips and information.
928 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
929 during the building of extensions, you should run
933 to test your version of miniperl.
937 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try
938 unsetting them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang
939 while running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C
940 locale. See the discussion under L<make test> below about locales.
942 =item malloc duplicates
944 If you get duplicates upon linking for malloc et al, add -DHIDEMYMALLOC
945 or -DEMBEDMYMALLOC to your ccflags variable in config.sh.
949 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
950 correctly. When using gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define'
951 and i_varargs='undef' in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by
952 running fixincludes correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't
953 forget to propagate your changes (see
954 L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
955 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
959 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
960 numbers will vary in different versions of perl):
962 util.c: In function `Perl_croak':
963 util.c:962: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
964 proto.h:45: prototype declaration
966 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
967 previous L<"varargs"> item.
969 =item Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading
971 If you have problems with dynamic loading using gcc on SunOS or
972 Solaris, and you are using GNU as and GNU ld, you may need to add
973 -B/bin/ (for SunOS) or -B/usr/ccs/bin/ (for Solaris) to your
974 $ccflags, $ldflags, and $lddlflags so that the system's versions of as
975 and ld are used. Note that the trailing '/' is required.
976 Alternatively, you can use the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX
977 environment variable to ensure that Sun's as and ld are used. Consult
978 your gcc documentation for further information on the -B option and
979 the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX variable.
981 One convenient way to ensure you are not using GNU as and ld is to
982 invoke Configure with
984 sh Configure -Dcc='gcc -B/usr/ccs/bin/'
986 for Solaris systems. For a SunOS system, you must use -B/bin/
989 =item ld.so.1: ./perl: fatal: relocation error:
991 If you get this message on SunOS or Solaris, and you're using gcc,
992 it's probably the GNU as or GNU ld problem in the previous item
993 L<"Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading">.
995 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
997 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
998 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
999 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1000 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1001 of your local set-up.
1003 =item dlopen: stub interception failed
1005 The primary cause of the 'dlopen: stub interception failed' message is
1006 that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable includes a directory
1007 which is a symlink to /usr/lib (such as /lib).
1009 The reason this causes a problem is quite subtle. The file libdl.so.1.0
1010 actually *only* contains functions which generate 'stub interception
1011 failed' errors! The runtime linker intercepts links to
1012 "/usr/lib/libdl.so.1.0" and links in internal implementation of those
1013 functions instead. [Thanks to Tim Bunce for this explanation.]
1017 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1018 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1021 sh Configure -Uusenm
1023 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1024 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1029 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1030 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1031 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1032 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1033 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1037 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1038 on a number of other common functions too. You are probably better off
1039 re-running Configure without using nm extraction (see previous item).
1043 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1044 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1045 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous items
1046 on L<"vsprintf"> and L<"nm extraction">.
1050 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1051 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1059 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1060 with B<make depend; make>.
1064 If you still can't compile successfully, try adding a -DCRIPPLED_CC
1065 flag. (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it compiled right!)
1066 This simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that get
1069 =item Missing functions
1071 If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
1072 other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
1073 there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
1078 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1079 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1080 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1081 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1082 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1085 =item Missing dbmclose
1087 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1088 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1090 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1092 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1093 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1094 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1095 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1096 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1097 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1098 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1099 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1100 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1101 process is continuing.
1103 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1106 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1108 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1109 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1110 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1112 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1113 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1114 quite that tightly coordinated.
1116 =item sh: ar: not found
1118 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1119 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1120 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1121 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1124 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1126 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1127 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1128 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1132 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1134 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1136 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1138 UTS may need one or more of -DCRIPPLED_CC, -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1140 If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.
1142 Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
1148 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If it
1149 doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went wrong. See the
1150 file t/README in the t subdirectory. Note that you can't run the
1151 tests in background if this disables opening of /dev/tty.
1153 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1154 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1155 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1159 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1160 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1164 (this assumes that most tests succeed, since harness uses
1165 complicated constructs).
1167 You can also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1168 comments that apply to your system.
1170 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1171 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1172 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1173 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1174 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1175 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1177 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1183 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1185 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1186 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1187 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1188 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1189 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1190 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1195 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1196 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
1197 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
1198 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
1199 are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
1200 ignore any messages about chown not working.
1202 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
1203 anything, you can run
1205 ./perl installperl -n
1206 ./perl installman -n
1208 make install will install the following:
1211 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
1212 will be a link to perl.
1214 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
1215 a2p awk-to-perl translator
1216 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
1218 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
1219 s2p sed-to-perl translator
1220 find2perl find-to-perl translator
1221 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
1222 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
1223 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
1224 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
1225 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
1226 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
1227 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
1230 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
1232 library files in $privlib and $archlib specified to
1233 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
1234 man pages in the location specified to Configure, usually
1235 something like /usr/local/man/man1.
1236 module in the location specified to Configure, usually
1237 man pages under /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3.
1238 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
1240 Installperl will also create the library directories $siteperl and
1241 $sitearch listed in config.sh. Usually, these are something like
1242 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
1243 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$archname
1244 where $archname is something like sun4-sunos. These directories
1245 will be used for installing extensions.
1247 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl.a library are also installed
1248 under $archlib so that any user may later build new extensions, run the
1249 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
1250 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
1252 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
1254 You can safely install the current version of perl5 and still run scripts
1255 under the old binaries for versions 5.003 and later ONLY. Instead of
1256 starting your script with #!/usr/local/bin/perl, just start it with
1257 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.003 (or whatever version you want to run.)
1258 If you want to retain a version of Perl 5 prior to 5.003, you'll
1259 need to install the current version in a separate directory tree,
1260 since some of the architecture-independent library files have changed
1261 in incompatible ways.
1263 The old architecture-dependent files are stored in a version-specific
1264 directory (such as /usr/local/lib/perl5/sun4-sunos/5.003) so that they
1265 will still be accessible even after a later version is installed.
1266 (Note: Perl 5.000 and 5.001 did not put their architecture-dependent
1267 libraries in a version-specific directory. They are simply in
1268 /usr/local/lib/perl5/$archname. If you will not be using 5.000 or
1269 5.001, you may safely remove those files.)
1271 In general, the standard library files in /usr/local/lib/perl5 should
1272 be usable by all versions of perl5. However, the diagnostics.pm module
1273 uses the /usr/local/lib/perl5/pod/perldiag.pod documentation file, so
1274 the C<use diagnostics;> pragma and the splain script will only identify
1275 and explain any warnings or errors that the most recently-installed
1276 version of perl can generate.
1278 Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use with a newer
1279 version of perl. If you do run into problems, and you want to continue
1280 to use the old version of perl along with your extension, simply move
1281 those extension files to the appropriate version directory, such as
1282 /usr/local/lib/perl/archname/5.003. Then Perl 5.003 will find your
1283 files in the 5.003 directory, and newer versions of perl will find your
1284 newer extension in the site_perl directory.
1286 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
1287 separate directories. One convenient way to do this is by
1288 using a separate prefix for each version, such as
1290 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.004
1292 and adding /opt/perl5.004/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
1293 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
1294 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
1296 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
1297 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
1298 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
1301 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
1303 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
1305 By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
1306 they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
1308 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
1309 perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
1310 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
1311 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
1312 the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036
1313 (or whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod
1314 for possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
1316 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
1318 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from
1319 the system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
1320 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
1321 by perl. These files will be placed in the architectural library directory
1322 you specified to Configure; by default this is
1323 /usr/local/lib/perl5/ARCH/VERSION, where ARCH is your architecture
1324 (such as sun4-solaris) and VERSION is the version of perl you are
1325 building (for example, 5.004).
1327 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the
1328 conversion of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have
1329 to hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse
1330 correctly. For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and
1333 =head installhtml --help
1335 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
1336 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
1337 documentation into linked HTML files and install install them.
1339 The following command-line is an example of the one we use to convert
1344 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
1346 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
1347 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
1348 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
1349 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
1350 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
1353 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
1354 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
1355 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
1356 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
1357 (and would welcome patches for them).
1359 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
1361 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
1362 available in TeX format. Type
1364 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
1366 =head1 Reporting Problems
1368 If you have difficulty building perl, and none of the advice in this
1369 file helps, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant
1370 manual pages on your system doesn't help either, then you should send a
1371 message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
1372 perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
1374 Please include the output of the ./myconfig shell script
1375 that comes with the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the
1376 perlbug program that comes with the perl distribution,
1377 but you need to have perl compiled and installed before you can use it.
1379 You might also find helpful information in the Porting
1380 directory of the perl distribution.
1382 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
1384 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation is
1385 in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
1386 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
1387 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This
1388 is sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
1390 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
1391 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory
1392 and running (either):
1394 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
1395 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
1397 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
1398 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
1401 Note that you must have performed the installation already before
1402 running the above, since the script collects the installed files to
1403 generate the documentation.
1407 Andy Dougherty doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu , borrowing very heavily
1408 from the original README by Larry Wall, and also with lots of helpful
1409 feedback from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
1411 =head1 LAST MODIFIED
1413 $Id: INSTALL,v 1.18 1997/05/29 18:24:10 doughera Exp $