3 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
7 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system are:
9 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
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 WARNING: This version is not binary compatible with Perl 5.004.
53 Starting with Perl 5.004_50 there were many deep and far-reaching changes
54 to the language internals. If you have dynamically loaded extensions
55 that you built under perl 5.003 or 5.004, you can continue to use them
56 with 5.004, but you will need to rebuild and reinstall those extensions
57 to use them 5.005. See the discussions below on
58 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> and
59 L<"Upgrading from 5.004 to 5.005"> for more details.
61 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
63 In a related issue, old extensions may possibly be affected by the
64 changes in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
65 pod/perldelta.pod for a description of what's changed.
67 =head1 Space Requirements
69 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 10 MB of disk space. The
70 complete tree after completing make takes roughly 20 MB, though the
71 actual total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
72 directories need something on the order of 10 MB, though again that
73 value is system-dependent.
75 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
77 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
86 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
87 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
89 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
90 files. If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
91 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
92 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
93 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or rename it, e.g.
95 mv config.sh config.sh.old
97 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
98 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
99 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
100 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
101 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
102 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
103 probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't, presently.
104 Similarly, if you used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version
105 numbers, you will probably want to adjust them as well.
107 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. Some Linux systems
108 (such as Debian) use i386, while others may use i486, i586, or i686.
109 If you pick up a precompiled binary, it might not use the same name.
111 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
112 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
114 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your
115 particular installation choices, then you can probably achieve the
116 same effect by using the new Policy.sh file. See the section on
117 L<"Site-wide Policy settings"> below.
121 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
122 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
123 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default
124 is almost always okay. At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d
125 and Configure will use the defaults from then on.
127 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
128 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
130 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h> to
131 get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
132 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
134 To compile with gcc, for example, you should run
136 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
138 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
139 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
141 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
142 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
144 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
145 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. You can specify a different 'prefix' for
146 the default installation directory, when Configure prompts you or by
147 using the Configure command line option -Dprefix='/some/directory',
150 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
152 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the directories
153 are simplified. For example, if you use prefix=/opt/perl,
154 then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
155 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/.
157 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is below
158 your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will attempt
161 It may seem obvious to say, but Perl is useful only when users can
162 easily find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
163 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
164 careful, however, of overwriting a version of perl supplied by your
165 vendor. In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to
166 put (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
167 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
168 obvious and convenient place.
170 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
171 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
172 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
173 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
175 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
180 For my Solaris system, I usually use
182 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
184 =head2 GNU-style configure
186 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
187 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
189 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
191 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
194 ./configure.gnu --help
198 Cross compiling is not supported.
200 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
201 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
205 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
206 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
207 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
208 B, DynaLoader, Fcntl, IO, and attrs are always built by default.
209 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
210 is always built by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
211 set the Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from
212 the Configure command line. Similarly, the Opcode extension is always
213 built by default, but you can skip it by setting the Configure variable
214 useopcode=false either in a hint file for from the command line.
216 You can learn more about each of these extensions by consulting the
217 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
220 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
221 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
222 version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
224 In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
225 to turn off each extension:
227 B (Always included by default)
229 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
230 Fcntl (Always included by default)
232 IO (Always included by default)
236 SDBM_File (Always included by default)
240 attrs (Always included by default)
242 Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
244 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
246 Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
249 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
250 the extensions you want.
252 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley
253 DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect
254 this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with version 2.
256 If you re-use your old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
257 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
258 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
261 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern Unix systems do)
262 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
263 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
264 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
266 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
268 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
269 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
270 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
271 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
272 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
273 how to obtain the libraries.
275 Note: If your database header (.h) files are not in a
276 directory normally searched by your C compiler, then you will need to
277 include the appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by
278 Configure. If your database library (.a) files are not in a directory
279 normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to
280 include the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by
281 Configure. See the examples below.
287 =item gdbm in /usr/local
289 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
290 GDBM_File extension. This examples assumes you have gdbm.h
291 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
292 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
293 necessary steps out automatically.
295 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
296 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
298 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
301 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
302 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
305 Again, this should all happen automatically. If you want to accept the
306 defaults for all the questions and have Configure print out only terse
307 messages, then you can just run
311 and Configure should include the GDBM_File extension automatically.
313 This should actually work if you have gdbm installed in any of
314 (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu, /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
316 =item gdbm in /usr/you
318 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
319 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
320 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
321 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
322 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
323 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
324 /usr/you/lib to the list.
326 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
330 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
331 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
333 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
334 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
336 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
337 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
338 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
339 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
342 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
343 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
347 =head2 Installation Directories
349 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
350 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
351 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
353 I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
354 everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
355 process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure
356 will use the defaults from then on.
358 By default, Configure will use the following directories for library files
359 for 5.005 (archname is a string like sun4-sunos, determined by Configure).
361 Configure variable Default value
362 $archlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.005/archname
363 $privlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.005
364 $sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/archname
365 $sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
367 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
368 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
371 By default, Configure will use the following directories for manual pages:
373 Configure variable Default value
374 $man1dir /usr/local/man/man1
375 $man3dir /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3
377 (Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
378 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
381 The module man pages are stuck in that strange spot so that
382 they don't collide with other man pages stored in /usr/local/man/man3,
383 and so that Perl's man pages don't hide system man pages. On some
384 systems, B<man less> would end up calling up Perl's less.pm module man
385 page, rather than the less program. (This default location will likely
386 change to /usr/local/man/man3 in a future release of perl.)
388 Note: Many users prefer to store the module man pages in
389 /usr/local/man/man3. You can do this from the command line with
391 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/man/man3
393 Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
395 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
397 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
398 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you Configure with
399 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the defaults for 5.005 are
401 Configure variable Default value
402 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.005/archname
403 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.005
404 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.005/archname
405 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.005
407 $man1dir /opt/perl/man/man1
408 $man3dir /opt/perl/man/man3
410 The perl executable will search the libraries in the order given
413 The directories under site_perl are empty, but are intended to be used
414 for installing local or site-wide extensions. Perl will automatically
415 look in these directories.
417 In order to support using things like #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.005 after
418 a later version is released, architecture-dependent libraries are
419 stored in a version-specific directory, such as
420 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.005/.
422 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
423 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
424 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below.
426 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
429 =head2 Changing the installation directory
431 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
432 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
433 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
434 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
435 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
436 packages may also wish to install perl into a different directory and
437 use that management software to move perl to its final destination.
438 This section describes how to do this. Someday, Configure may support
439 an option -Dinstallprefix=/foo to simplify this.
441 Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You
442 can edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to
443 /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local/wherever. Or, you can automate this
444 process by placing the following lines in a file config.over before you
445 run Configure (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice):
447 installprefix=/tmp/perl5
448 test -d $installprefix || mkdir $installprefix
449 test -d $installprefix/bin || mkdir $installprefix/bin
450 installarchlib=`echo $installarchlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
451 installbin=`echo $installbin | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
452 installman1dir=`echo $installman1dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
453 installman3dir=`echo $installman3dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
454 installprivlib=`echo $installprivlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
455 installscript=`echo $installscript | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
456 installsitelib=`echo $installsitelib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
457 installsitearch=`echo $installsitearch | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
459 Then, you can Configure and install in the usual way:
466 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
467 extensions, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
468 follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with
471 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
473 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
474 convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
475 installed on multiple systems. Here's one way to do that:
477 # Set up config.over to install perl into a different directory,
478 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
484 # Edit $archlib/Config.pm to change all the
485 # install* variables back to reflect where everything will
486 # really be installed.
487 # Edit any of the scripts in $scriptdir to have the correct
488 # #!/wherever/perl line.
489 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
490 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
491 cd /usr/local # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
492 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
494 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
496 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
497 answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact
498 person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another
499 system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file
500 to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate
501 hint file for your system.
503 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
508 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
510 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
512 =head2 Configure-time Options
514 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
515 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
516 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
517 some of the main things you can change.
521 On some platforms, perl5.005 can be compiled to use threads. To
522 enable this, read the file README.threads, and then try
524 sh Configure -Dusethreads
526 Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command
527 line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
529 The default is to compile without thread support.
531 =head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
533 Previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in
534 stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl allow alternate IO
535 mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but the stdio mechanism is still
536 the default and is the only supported mechanism.
538 This PerlIO abstraction can be enabled either on the Configure command
541 sh Configure -Duseperlio
543 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
545 If you choose to use the PerlIO abstraction layer, there are two
546 (experimental) possibilities for the underlying IO calls. These have been
547 tested to some extent on some platforms, but are not guaranteed to work
554 AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance to stdio.h in many
555 cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline" modules. Sfio
556 currently only builds on a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports.
557 Because the data structures are completely different from stdio, perl
558 extension modules or external libraries may not work. This
559 configuration exists to allow these issues to be worked on.
561 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
562 A (fairly old) version of sfio is in CPAN.
564 You select this option by
566 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
568 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
569 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
572 Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails
573 to detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent).
574 Apparently, this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux
577 You can test if you have this problem by trying the following shell
578 script. (You may have to add some extra cflags and libraries. A
579 portable version of this may eventually make its way into Configure.)
584 main() { printf("42\n"); }
586 cc -o try try.c -lsfio
588 if test X$val = X42; then
589 echo "Your sfio looks ok"
591 echo "Your sfio has the exit problem."
594 If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to your sfio sources
595 and correct iffe's guess about atexit.
597 There also might be a more recent release of Sfio that fixes your
602 Normal stdio IO, but with all IO going through calls to the PerlIO
603 abstraction layer. This configuration can be used to check that perl and
604 extension modules have been correctly converted to use the PerlIO
607 This configuration should work on all platforms (but might not).
609 You select this option via:
611 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Uusesfio
613 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure does not
614 detect sfio, then this will be the default suggested by Configure.
618 =head2 Building a shared libperl.so Perl library
620 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
621 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
622 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
625 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
626 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
627 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
628 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
629 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
630 can share the same library.
632 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
633 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
634 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
637 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
638 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
639 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
642 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
643 libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
644 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
645 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
646 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
647 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
649 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
650 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
652 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
654 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
656 To actually build perl, you must add the current working directory to your
657 LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable before running make. You can do
660 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
662 for Bourne-style shells, or
664 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
666 for Csh-style shells. You *MUST* do this before running make.
667 Folks running NeXT OPENSTEP must substitute DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
668 LD_LIBRARY_PATH above.
670 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
671 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
672 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
673 install a standard Perl 5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
674 try to build Perl 5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
675 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
676 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
677 libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is
678 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
679 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
680 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
681 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't. On Digital Unix, you can
682 override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the _RLD_ROOT environment variable
683 to point to the perl build directory.
685 The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different
686 directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING
687 version of perl. You can do this by changing all the *archlib*
688 variables in config.sh, namely archlib, archlib_exp, and
689 installarchlib, to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
693 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed, so
694 perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
695 the malloc function on your system.
697 The perl source is shipped with a version of malloc that is very fast but
698 somewhat wasteful of space. On the other hand, your system's malloc
699 function may be a bit slower but also a bit more frugal. However,
700 as of 5.004_68, perl's malloc has been optimized for the typical
701 requests from perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and
704 For many uses, speed is probably the most important consideration, so
705 the default behavior (for most systems) is to use the malloc supplied
706 with perl. However, if you will be running very large applications
707 (e.g. Tk or PDL) or if your system already has an excellent malloc, or
708 if you are experiencing difficulties with extensions that use
709 third-party libraries that call malloc, then you might wish to use
710 your system's malloc. (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags
713 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
715 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
717 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
719 =head2 Malloc Performance Flags
721 If you are using Perl's malloc, you may add one or more of the following
722 items to your ccflags config.sh variable to change its behavior. You can
723 find out more about these and other flags by reading the commentary near
724 the top of the malloc.c source. The defaults should be fine for
729 =item -DNO_FANCY_MALLOC
731 Undefined by default. Defining it returns malloc to the version used
736 Undefined by default. Defining it in addition to NO_FANCY_MALLOC returns
737 malloc to the version used in Perl version 5.000.
741 =head2 Building a debugging perl
743 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
744 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
745 you probably want to do
747 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
749 This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
750 to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
751 executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
752 cc -g2. Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for your
753 system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags variable in
754 config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's internal
755 state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by
756 default if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to
757 reuse your old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the
758 optimize and ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes
759 as shown in L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
761 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
762 it's convenient to have both.
764 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
765 versions of perl under L<Building a shared libperl.so Perl library>.
767 =head2 Other Compiler Flags
769 For most users, all of the Configure defaults are fine. However,
770 you can change a number of factors in the way perl is built
771 by adding appropriate -D directives to your ccflags variable in
774 For example, you can replace the rand() and srand() functions in the
775 perl source by any other random number generator by a trick such as the
776 following (this should all be on one line):
778 sh Configure -Dccflags='-Dmy_rand=random -Dmy_srand=srandom' \
781 or you can use the drand48 family of functions with
783 sh Configure -Dccflags='-Dmy_rand=lrand48 -Dmy_srand=srand48' \
786 or by adding the -D flags to your ccflags at the appropriate Configure
787 prompt. (Read pp.c to see how this works.)
789 You should also run Configure interactively to verify that a hint file
790 doesn't inadvertently override your ccflags setting. (Hints files
791 shouldn't do that, but some might.)
793 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
797 =item Running Configure Interactively
799 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
800 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
803 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
804 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
805 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
806 will use the defaults from then on.
808 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
809 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
810 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
814 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
815 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
816 will offer to use that hint file.
818 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
819 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
820 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
821 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
824 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
826 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
827 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
828 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
831 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
832 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
833 Keep the recommended value? [y]
835 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
836 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
839 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
840 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
841 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
844 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
845 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
846 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
847 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
850 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
851 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
852 Keep the previous value? [y]
854 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
855 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
856 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
858 =item Changing Compilers
860 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
861 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
862 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
863 with the options you want to use.
865 This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
866 gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
868 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
870 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
871 them to all the .SH files by running
875 You will then have to rebuild by running
882 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride Configure's
883 guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just before config.sh
884 is created. You have to be careful with this, however, as Configure
885 does no checking that your changes make sense. See the section on
886 L<"Changing the installation directory"> for an example.
890 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
891 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
892 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
894 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
895 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
900 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
901 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
902 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
903 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
904 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
905 lost the next time you run Configure.
907 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
908 see the file hints/README.hints.
910 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
911 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
918 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file Porting/config_H
919 to config.h and edit the config.h to reflect your system's peculiarities.
920 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
923 =item Porting information
925 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
926 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
927 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
930 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
931 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports for current information on ports to
932 various other operating systems.
938 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
939 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
940 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
941 makefile, not Makefile since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
942 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
943 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
945 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
950 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
952 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
953 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
954 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help, you can
955 send a message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
956 perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
957 See L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
963 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
964 for further tips and information.
968 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
969 during the building of extensions, you should run
973 to test your version of miniperl.
977 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
978 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
979 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
980 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
981 whole L<"Locale problems"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
982 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
984 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
985 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
988 are supported and installed on your system.
989 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
993 =item malloc duplicates
995 If you get duplicates upon linking for malloc et al, add -DEMBEDMYMALLOC
996 to your ccflags variable in config.sh.
1000 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1001 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1002 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1003 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by running fixincludes
1004 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1005 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1006 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1010 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1011 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1013 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1014 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1015 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1017 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1018 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1020 =item Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading
1022 If you have problems with dynamic loading using gcc on SunOS or
1023 Solaris, and you are using GNU as and GNU ld, you may need to add
1024 -B/bin/ (for SunOS) or -B/usr/ccs/bin/ (for Solaris) to your
1025 $ccflags, $ldflags, and $lddlflags so that the system's versions of as
1026 and ld are used. Note that the trailing '/' is required.
1027 Alternatively, you can use the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX
1028 environment variable to ensure that Sun's as and ld are used. Consult
1029 your gcc documentation for further information on the -B option and
1030 the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX variable.
1032 One convenient way to ensure you are not using GNU as and ld is to
1033 invoke Configure with
1035 sh Configure -Dcc='gcc -B/usr/ccs/bin/'
1037 for Solaris systems. For a SunOS system, you must use -B/bin/
1040 Alternatively, recent versions of GNU ld reportedly work if you
1041 include C<-Wl,-export-dynamic> in the ccdlflags variable in
1044 =item ld.so.1: ./perl: fatal: relocation error:
1046 If you get this message on SunOS or Solaris, and you're using gcc,
1047 it's probably the GNU as or GNU ld problem in the previous item
1048 L<"Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading">.
1050 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1052 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1053 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1054 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1055 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1056 of your local set-up.
1058 =item dlopen: stub interception failed
1060 The primary cause of the 'dlopen: stub interception failed' message is
1061 that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable includes a directory
1062 which is a symlink to /usr/lib (such as /lib).
1064 The reason this causes a problem is quite subtle. The file libdl.so.1.0
1065 actually *only* contains functions which generate 'stub interception
1066 failed' errors! The runtime linker intercepts links to
1067 "/usr/lib/libdl.so.1.0" and links in internal implementation of those
1068 functions instead. [Thanks to Tim Bunce for this explanation.]
1072 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1073 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1076 sh Configure -Uusenm
1078 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1079 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1082 =item umask not found
1084 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1085 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1086 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1087 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1088 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1092 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1093 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1094 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1095 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1096 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1100 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1101 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1102 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1106 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1107 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1108 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1109 on L<"nm extraction">.
1111 =item __inet_* errors
1113 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1114 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1115 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1116 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1117 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1118 newer version of BIND. If you can't, you can either link with the
1119 updated resolver library provided with BIND 8.1 or rename
1120 /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and test process to
1125 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1126 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1134 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1135 with B<make depend; make>.
1139 If you still can't compile successfully, try adding a -DCRIPPLED_CC
1140 flag. (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it compiled right!)
1141 This simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that get
1144 =item Missing functions
1146 If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
1147 other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
1148 there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
1149 likely suspects. If Configure guessed wrong on a number of functions,
1150 you might have the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1154 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1155 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1156 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1157 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1158 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1161 =item Missing dbmclose
1163 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1164 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1166 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1168 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1169 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1170 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1171 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1172 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1173 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1174 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1175 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1176 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1177 process is continuing.
1179 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1182 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1184 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1185 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1186 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1188 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1189 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1190 quite that tightly coordinated.
1192 =item sh: ar: not found
1194 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1195 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1196 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1197 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1200 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1202 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1203 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1204 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1208 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1210 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1212 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1214 UTS may need one or more of -DCRIPPLED_CC, -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1216 If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.
1218 Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
1224 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made (you
1225 should run plain 'make' before 'make test' otherwise you won't have a
1226 complete build). If 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful"
1227 then something went wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1229 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1230 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1231 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1233 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1235 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1236 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1237 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1241 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1242 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1246 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1247 complicated constructs).
1249 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1250 comments that apply to your system.
1256 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1257 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1258 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1259 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1260 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1261 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1263 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1269 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1271 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1272 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1273 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1274 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1275 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1276 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1281 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1282 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
1283 Specifically, in perl5.004_64, tests 74 and 78 have been reported to
1284 fail on some systems. On my SparcStation IPC with 8 MB of RAM, test 78
1285 will fail if the system is running any other significant tasks at the
1288 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1290 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
1292 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1293 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1294 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1295 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1301 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1302 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
1303 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
1304 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
1305 are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
1306 ignore any messages about chown not working.
1308 =head2 Installing perl under different names
1310 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
1311 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
1312 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
1314 make install PERLNAME=myperl
1316 =head2 Installed files
1318 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
1319 anything, you can run
1321 ./perl installperl -n
1322 ./perl installman -n
1324 make install will install the following:
1327 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
1328 will be a link to perl.
1330 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
1331 a2p awk-to-perl translator
1332 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
1334 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
1335 s2p sed-to-perl translator
1336 find2perl find-to-perl translator
1337 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
1338 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
1339 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
1340 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
1341 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
1342 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
1343 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
1346 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
1348 library files in $privlib and $archlib specified to
1349 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
1350 man pages in the location specified to Configure, usually
1351 something like /usr/local/man/man1.
1352 module in the location specified to Configure, usually
1353 man pages under /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3.
1354 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
1356 Installperl will also create the library directories $siteperl and
1357 $sitearch listed in config.sh. Usually, these are something like
1359 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
1360 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/archname
1362 where archname is something like sun4-sunos. These directories
1363 will be used for installing extensions.
1365 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl.a library are also installed
1366 under $archlib so that any user may later build new extensions, run the
1367 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
1368 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
1370 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
1372 WARNING: The upgrade from 5.004_0x to 5.005 is going to be a bit
1373 tricky. See L<"Upgrading from 5.004 to 5.005"> below.
1375 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
1376 5.004_04) to another similar version (e.g. 5.004_05) without re-compiling
1377 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
1378 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
1379 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
1380 with 5.004_04, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
1381 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
1382 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.00404.
1384 Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use
1385 with a newer version of perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
1386 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
1388 The directories searched by version 5.005 will be
1390 Configure variable Default value
1391 $archlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.005/archname
1392 $privlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.005
1393 $sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/archname
1394 $sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
1396 while the directories searched by version 5.005_01 will be
1398 $archlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00501/archname
1399 $privlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00501
1400 $sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/archname
1401 $sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
1403 When you install an add-on extension, it gets installed into $sitelib (or
1404 $sitearch if it is architecture-specific). This directory deliberately
1405 does NOT include the sub-version number (01) so that both 5.005 and
1406 5.005_01 can use the extension. Only when a perl version changes to
1407 break backwards compatibility will the default suggestions for the
1408 $sitearch and $sitelib version numbers be increased.
1410 However, if you do run into problems, and you want to continue to use the
1411 old version of perl along with your extension, move those extension files
1412 to the appropriate version directory, such as $privlib (or $archlib).
1413 (The extension's .packlist file lists the files installed with that
1414 extension. For the Tk extension, for example, the list of files installed
1415 is in $sitearch/auto/Tk/.packlist.) Then use your newer version of perl
1416 to rebuild and re-install the extension into $sitelib. This way, Perl
1417 5.005 will find your files in the 5.005 directory, and newer versions
1418 of perl will find your newer extension in the $sitelib directory.
1419 (This is also why perl searches the site-specific libraries last.)
1421 Alternatively, if you are willing to reinstall all your extensions
1422 every time you upgrade perl, then you can include the subversion
1423 number in $sitearch and $sitelib when you run Configure.
1425 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
1427 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
1428 separate directories. One convenient way to do this is by
1429 using a separate prefix for each version, such as
1431 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.004
1433 and adding /opt/perl5.004/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
1434 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
1435 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
1437 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
1438 (e.g. 5.004 for all 5.004_0x versions), but change directory with
1441 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
1442 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
1443 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
1446 =head2 Upgrading from 5.004 to 5.005
1448 Extensions built and installed with versions of perl prior to 5.004_50
1449 will need to be recompiled to be used with 5.004_50 and later. You will,
1450 however, be able to continue using 5.004 even after you install 5.005.
1451 The 5.004 binary will still be able to find the extensions built under
1452 5.004; the 5.005 binary will look in the new $sitearch and $sitelib
1453 directories, and will not find them.
1455 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
1457 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
1459 By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
1460 they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
1462 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
1463 perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
1464 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
1465 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
1466 the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036
1467 (or whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod
1468 for possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
1470 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
1472 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from
1473 the system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
1474 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
1475 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent library
1476 ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
1478 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the
1479 conversion of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have
1480 to hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse
1481 correctly. For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and
1484 =head1 installhtml --help
1486 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
1487 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
1488 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
1490 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
1495 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
1497 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
1498 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
1499 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
1500 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
1501 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
1504 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
1505 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
1506 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
1507 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
1508 (and would welcome patches for them).
1510 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
1511 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
1513 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
1515 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
1516 available in TeX format. Type
1518 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
1520 =head1 Reporting Problems
1522 If you have difficulty building perl, and none of the advice in this file
1523 helps, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant manual
1524 pages on your system doesn't help either, then you should send a message
1525 to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to perlbug@perl.com with
1526 an accurate description of your problem.
1528 Please include the output of the ./myconfig shell script that comes with
1529 the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the perlbug program that
1530 comes with the perl distribution, but you need to have perl compiled
1531 before you can use it. (If you have not installed it yet, you need to
1532 run C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug> instead of a plain C<perlbug>.)
1534 You might also find helpful information in the Porting directory of the
1537 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
1539 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
1540 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
1541 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
1542 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
1543 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
1545 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
1546 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and
1549 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
1550 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
1552 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
1553 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
1556 Note that you must have performed the installation already before running
1557 the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate
1562 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
1563 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
1564 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
1566 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
1567 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
1569 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
1571 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
1572 the same terms as perl itself.
1574 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
1575 a larger package) please do modify these installation instructions and
1576 the contact information to match your distribution.
1578 =head1 LAST MODIFIED
1580 $Id: INSTALL,v 1.42 1998/07/15 18:04:44 doughera Released $