1 If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you see.
2 It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is specially
3 designed to be readable as is.
7 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
9 =head1 Reporting Problems
11 Wherever possible please use the perlbug tool supplied with this Perl
12 to report problems, as it automatically includes summary configuration
13 information about your perl, which may help us track down problems far
14 more quickly. But first you should read the advice in this file,
15 carefully re-read the error message and check the relevant manual pages
16 on your system, as these may help you find an immediate solution. If
17 you are not sure whether what you are seeing is a bug, you can send a
18 message describing the problem to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup to
21 The perlbug tool is installed along with perl, so after you have
22 completed C<make install> it should be possible to run it with plain
23 C<perlbug>. If the install fails, or you want to report problems with
24 C<make test> without installing perl, then you can use C<make nok> to
25 run perlbug to report the problem, or run it by hand from this source
26 directory with C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug>
28 If the build fails too early to run perlbug uninstalled, then please
29 B<run> the C<./myconfig> shell script, and mail its output along with
30 an accurate description of your problem to perlbug@perl.org
32 If Configure itself fails, and does not generate a config.sh file
33 (needed to run C<./myconfig>), then please mail perlbug@perl.org the
34 description of how Configure fails along with details of your system
35 - for example the output from running C<uname -a>
37 Please try to make your message brief but clear. Brief, clear bug
38 reports tend to get answered more quickly. Please don't worry if your
39 written English is not great - what matters is how well you describe
40 the important technical details of the problem you have encountered,
41 not whether your grammar and spelling is flawless.
43 Trim out unnecessary information. Do not include large files (such as
44 config.sh or a complete Configure or make log) unless absolutely
45 necessary. Do not include a complete transcript of your build
46 session. Just include the failing commands, the relevant error
47 messages, and whatever preceding commands are necessary to give the
48 appropriate context. Plain text should usually be sufficient--fancy
49 attachments or encodings may actually reduce the number of people who
50 read your message. Your message will get relayed to over 400
51 subscribers around the world so please try to keep it brief but clear.
53 If you are unsure what makes a good bug report please read "How to
54 report Bugs Effectively" by Simon Tatham:
55 http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html
59 First, make sure you have an up-to-date version of Perl. If you
60 didn't get your Perl source from CPAN, check the latest version at
61 http://www.cpan.org/src/. Perl uses a version scheme where even-numbered
62 subreleases (like 5.6.x and 5.8.x) are stable maintenance releases and
63 odd-numbered subreleases (like 5.7.x and 5.9.x) are unstable
64 development releases. Development releases should not be used in
65 production environments. Fixes and new features are first carefully
66 tested in development releases and only if they prove themselves to be
67 worthy will they be migrated to the maintenance releases.
69 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system with all
72 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
78 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
80 The above commands will install Perl to /usr/local (or some other
81 platform-specific directory -- see the appropriate file in hints/.)
82 If that's not okay with you, can run Configure interactively and use
84 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
90 # You may also wish to add these:
91 (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
93 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
95 or you can use some of the Configure options described below.
97 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
98 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
100 For information on what's new in this release, see the
101 pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
102 changes, see the Changes file.
106 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
107 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
108 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
109 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
111 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
113 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
116 Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
117 you should probably at least skim through this document before
120 In addition to this file, check if there is a README file specific to
121 your operating system, since it may provide additional or different
122 instructions for building Perl. If there is a hint file for your
123 system (in the hints/ directory) you should also read that hint file
124 for even more information. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh or
125 the svr5.sh hint file.)
127 For additional information about porting Perl, see the section on
128 L<"Porting information"> below, and look at the files in the Porting/
133 =head2 Changes and Incompatibilities
135 Please see pod/perldelta.pod for a description of the changes and
136 potential incompatibilities introduced with this release. A few of
137 the most important issues are listed below, but you should refer
138 to pod/perldelta.pod for more detailed information.
140 =head3 WARNING: This version is not binary compatible with releases of
143 If you have built extensions (i.e. modules that include C code)
144 using an earlier version of Perl, you will need to rebuild and reinstall
147 Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
148 without reinstallation. See the discussions below on
149 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> and
150 L<"Upgrading from 5.005 or 5.6 to 5.8.0"> for more details.
152 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
154 On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the changes
155 in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
156 pod/perldelta.pod for a description of what's changed. See your
157 installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly incomplete)
158 list of locally installed modules. Also see CPAN::autobundle for one
159 way to make a "bundle" of your currently installed modules.
161 =head2 Space Requirements
163 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 60 MB of disk space.
164 After completing make, it takes up roughly 100 MB, though the actual
165 total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
166 directories need something on the order of 45 MB, though again that
167 value is system-dependent. A perl build with debug symbols and
168 -DDEBUGGING will require something on the order of 10 MB extra.
170 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
172 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
181 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
182 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
184 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
185 files. If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
186 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
187 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
188 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it
192 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
193 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
194 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
195 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
196 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
197 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
198 probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't. Similarly, if you
199 used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version numbers, you will
200 probably want to adjust them as well.
202 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. For example, some
203 Linux distributions use i386, while others may use i486. If you build
204 it yourself, Configure uses the output of the arch command, which
205 might be i586 or i686 instead. If you pick up a precompiled binary, or
206 compile extensions on different systems, they might not all agree on
207 the architecture name.
209 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
210 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
212 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
213 installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
214 using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
215 settings"> below. If you wish to start with a fresh distribution, you
216 also need to remove any old Policy.sh files you may have with
222 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
223 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
224 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
225 almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
226 since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
229 At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
230 defaults from then on.
232 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
233 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
235 =head2 Common Configure options
237 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run
241 to get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
242 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
248 To compile with gcc you should run
250 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
252 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
253 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
255 =item Installation prefix
257 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
258 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
259 and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for
262 You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
263 directory when Configure prompts you, or by using the Configure command
264 line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
266 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
268 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
269 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
270 prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
271 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
272 for more details. Do not include a trailing slash, (i.e. /opt/perl/)
273 or you may experience odd test failures.
275 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
276 as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
277 attempt infinite recursion.
281 It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
282 find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
283 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
284 careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
285 vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing. If you insist
286 on replacing your vendor's perl, useful information on how it was
287 configured may be found with
291 (Check the output carefully, however, since this doesn't preserve
292 spaces in arguments to Configure. For that, you have to look carefully
293 at config_arg1, config_arg2, etc.)
295 By default, Configure will not try to link /usr/bin/perl to the current
296 version of perl. You can turn on that behavior by running
298 Configure -Dinstallusrbinperl
300 or by answering 'yes' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
302 In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to put
303 (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
304 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
305 obvious and convenient place.
307 =item Building a development release.
309 For development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.9.x) if you want to
310 use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel to Configure,
311 because the default answer to the question "do you really want to
312 Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel skips that
317 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
322 For example for my Solaris/x86 system, I usually use
324 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
326 =head2 Altering config.sh variables for C compiler switches etc.
328 For most users, most of the Configure defaults are fine, or can easily
329 be set on the Configure command line. However, if Configure doesn't
330 have an option to do what you want, you can change Configure variables
331 after the platform hints have been run by using Configure's -A switch.
332 For example, here's how to add a couple of extra flags to C compiler
335 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_EXTERNAL_GLOB -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC"
337 To clarify, those ccflags values are not Configure options; if passed to
338 Configure directly, they won't do anything useful (that will define a config.sh
339 variable, but without taking any action based upon it). When passed to the
340 compiler, those flags will activate #ifdefd code.
342 For more help on Configure switches, run
346 =head2 Major Configure-time Build Options
348 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
349 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
350 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
351 some of the main things you can change.
355 On some platforms, perl can be compiled with support for threads. To
358 sh Configure -Dusethreads
360 Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command
361 line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
363 The default is to compile without thread support.
365 Perl has two different internal threads implementations. The current
366 model (available internally since 5.6, and as a user-level module since
367 5.8) is called interpreter-based implementation (ithreads), with one
368 interpreter per thread, and explicit sharing of data. The 5.005
369 version (5005threads) is considered obsolete, buggy, and unmaintained.
371 By default, Configure selects ithreads if -Dusethreads is specified.
373 However, if you insist, you can select the unsupported old 5005threads behavior
375 sh Configure -Dusethreads -Duse5005threads
377 The 'threads' module is for use with the ithreads implementation. The
378 'Thread' module offers an interface to either 5005threads or ithreads
379 (whichever has been configured).
381 When using threads, perl uses a dynamically-sized buffer for some of
382 the thread-safe library calls, such as those in the getpw*() family.
383 This buffer starts small, but it will keep growing until the result
384 fits. To get a fixed upper limit, you should compile Perl with
385 PERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE defined to be the number of bytes you want. One
386 way to do this is to run Configure with
387 C<-Accflags=-DPERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE=65536>
389 =head3 Large file support.
391 Since Perl 5.6.0, Perl has supported large files (files larger than
392 2 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
393 support is on by default.
395 This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files,
396 seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad in that if you are interfacing Perl
397 using some extension, the components you are connecting to must also
398 be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
399 parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
400 will happen. One popular extension suffering from this ailment is the
401 Apache extension mod_perl.
403 There's also one known limitation with the current large files
404 implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
405 section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer formats
406 like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
408 =head3 64 bit support.
410 If your platform does not have run natively at 64 bits, but can
411 simulate them with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>,
412 you can build a perl that uses 64 bits.
414 There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
415 using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
416 -Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
417 the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
419 The C<use64bitint> option does only as much as is required to get
420 64-bit integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long
421 longs") while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because
422 your pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint>
423 does not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it
424 might, but it doesn't have to). The C<use64bitint> simply means that
425 you will be able to have 64 bit-wide scalar values.
427 The C<use64bitall> option goes all the way by attempting to switch
428 integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
429 create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
430 resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
431 have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
434 Natively 64-bit systems like Alpha and Cray need neither -Duse64bitint
437 NOTE: 64-bit support is still experimental on most platforms.
438 Existing support only covers the LP64 data model. In particular, the
439 LLP64 data model is not yet supported. 64-bit libraries and system
440 APIs on many platforms have not stabilized--your mileage may vary.
444 In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
445 range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
446 (that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
447 this support (if it is available).
451 You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
452 and the long double support.
454 =head3 Selecting File IO mechanisms
456 Executive summary: as of Perl 5.8, you should use the default "PerlIO"
457 as the IO mechanism unless you have a good reason not to.
459 In more detail: previous versions of perl used the standard IO
460 mechanisms as defined in stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl
461 introduced alternate IO mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but up
462 until and including Perl 5.6, the stdio mechanism was still the default
463 and the only supported mechanism.
465 Starting from Perl 5.8, the default mechanism is to use the PerlIO
466 abstraction, because it allows better control of I/O mechanisms,
467 instead of having to work with (often, work around) vendors' I/O
470 This PerlIO abstraction can be (but again, unless you know what you
471 are doing, should not be) disabled either on the Configure command
474 sh Configure -Uuseperlio
476 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
478 =head3 Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Hashes
480 In Perls 5.8.0 and earlier it was easy to create degenerate hashes.
481 Processing such hashes would consume large amounts of CPU time,
482 enabling a "Denial of Service" attack against Perl. Such hashes may be
483 a problem for example for mod_perl sites, sites with Perl CGI scripts
484 and web services, that process data originating from external sources.
486 In Perl 5.8.1 a security feature was introduced to make it harder to
487 create such degenerate hashes. A visible side effect of this was that
488 the keys(), values(), and each() functions may return the hash elements
489 in different order between different runs of Perl even with the same
490 data. It also had unintended binary incompatibility issues with
491 certain modules compiled against Perl 5.8.0.
493 In Perl 5.8.2 an improved scheme was introduced. Hashes will return
494 elements in the same order as Perl 5.8.0 by default. On a hash by hash
495 basis, if pathological data is detected during a hash key insertion,
496 then that hash will switch to an alternative random hash seed. As
497 adding keys can always dramatically change returned hash element order,
498 existing programs will not be affected by this, unless they
499 specifically test for pre-recorded hash return order for contrived
500 data. (eg the list of keys generated by C<map {"\0"x$_} 0..15> trigger
501 randomisation) In effect the new implementation means that 5.8.1 scheme
502 is only being used on hashes which are under attack.
504 One can still revert to the old guaranteed repeatable order (and be
505 vulnerable to attack by wily crackers) by setting the environment
506 variable PERL_HASH_SEED, see L<perlrun/PERL_HASH_SEED>. Another option
507 is to add -DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT to the compilation flags (for
508 example by using C<Configure -Accflags=-DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT>), in
509 which case one has to explicitly set the PERL_HASH_SEED environment
510 variable to enable the security feature, or by adding -DNO_HASH_SEED to
511 the compilation flags to completely disable the randomisation feature.
513 B<Perl has never guaranteed any ordering of the hash keys>, and the
514 ordering has already changed several times during the lifetime of Perl
515 5. Also, the ordering of hash keys has always been, and continues to
516 be, affected by the insertion order. It is likely that Perl 5.10 and
517 Perl 6 will randomise all hashes. Note that because of this
518 randomisation for example the Data::Dumper results will be different
519 between different runs of Perl since Data::Dumper by default dumps
520 hashes "unordered". The use of the Data::Dumper C<Sortkeys> option is
525 Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
526 TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
527 access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
528 Version 5. You can find more about SOCKS from http://www.socks.nec.com/
530 =head3 Dynamic Loading
532 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
533 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
534 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
535 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
537 =head3 Building a shared Perl library
539 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
540 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
541 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
544 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
545 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
546 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
547 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
548 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
549 can share the same library.
551 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
552 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
553 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
556 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
557 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
558 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
561 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
562 libperl.so.6.2 (for Perl 5.6.2), or libperl.so.602, or simply
563 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
564 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
565 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
566 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
568 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
569 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
571 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
573 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
575 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
576 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
577 NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
578 for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
579 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
580 be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
581 library search settings. You can find the name of the environment
582 variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
584 grep ldlibpthname config.sh
586 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
587 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
588 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
591 cd t; ./perl misc/failing_test.t
593 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
595 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
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. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
605 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And
606 again, it may be something other than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
608 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
609 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
611 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
613 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
614 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
615 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
616 install a standard Perl 5.8.0 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
617 try to build Perl 5.8.0 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
618 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
619 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
620 libperl.so.8 rather with the installed libperl.so.8? The answer is
621 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
622 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
623 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
624 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux, you can only override at runtime via
625 LD_PRELOAD, specifying the exact filename you wish to be used; and on
626 Digital Unix, you can override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the
627 _RLD_ROOT environment variable to point to the perl build directory.
629 In other words, it is generally not a good idea to try to build a perl
630 with a shared library if $archlib/CORE/$libperl already exists from a
633 A good workaround is to specify a different directory for the
634 architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING version of perl.
635 You can do this by changing all the *archlib* variables in config.sh to
636 point to your new architecture-dependent library.
638 =head3 Environment access
640 Perl often needs to write to the program's environment, such as when C<%ENV>
641 is assigned to. Many implementations of the C library function C<putenv()>
642 leak memory, so where possible perl will manipulate the environment directly
643 to avoid these leaks. The default is now to perform direct manipulation
644 whenever perl is running as a stand alone interpreter, and to call the safe
645 but potentially leaky C<putenv()> function when the perl interpreter is
646 embedded in another application. You can force perl to always use C<putenv()>
647 by compiling with -DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV. You can force an embedded perl to
648 use direct manipulation by setting C<PL_use_safe_putenv = 0;> after the
649 C<perl_construct()> call.
651 =head2 Installation Directories
653 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
654 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
655 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
656 Do not include trailing slashes on directory names.
658 I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
659 everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
660 process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use
661 the defaults from then on. Alternatively, you can
663 grep '^install' config.sh
665 after Configure has run to verify the installation paths.
667 The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
668 people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
669 distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
670 need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
671 you can safely skip the next section.
673 The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
677 =item Directories for the perl distribution
679 By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.9.0.
680 $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
681 5.9.0 or 5.9.1, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
682 determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
683 variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
685 Configure variable Default value
686 $prefixexp /usr/local
687 $binexp $prefixexp/bin
688 $scriptdirexp $prefixexp/bin
689 $privlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version
690 $archlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
691 $man1direxp $prefixexp/man/man1
692 $man3direxp $prefixexp/man/man3
696 $prefixexp is generated from $prefix, with ~ expansion done to convert home
697 directories into absolute paths. Similarly for the other variables listed. As
698 file system calls do not do this, you should always reference the ...exp
699 variables, to support users who build perl in their home directory.
701 Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
702 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
703 instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
704 directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
705 the common style is shown here.
707 =item Directories for site-specific add-on files
709 After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
710 CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
711 be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
713 Configure variable Default value
714 $siteprefixexp $prefixexp
715 $sitebinexp $siteprefixexp/bin
716 $sitescriptexp $siteprefixexp/bin
717 $sitelibexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
718 $sitearchexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
719 $siteman1direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man1
720 $siteman3direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man3
721 $sitehtml1direxp (none)
722 $sitehtml3direxp (none)
724 By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
725 modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
727 =item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
729 Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
730 distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
731 for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
733 Configure variable Default value
734 $vendorprefixexp (none)
735 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
736 $vendorbinexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
737 $vendorscriptexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
739 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
741 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
742 $vendorman1direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man1
743 $vendorman3direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man3
744 $vendorhtml1direxp (none)
745 $vendorhtml3direxp (none)
747 These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
748 a vendor might choose the following settings:
751 $siteprefix /usr/local
754 This would have the effect of setting the following:
757 $scriptdirexp /usr/bin
758 $privlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version
759 $archlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
760 $man1direxp /usr/man/man1
761 $man3direxp /usr/man/man3
763 $sitebinexp /usr/local/bin
764 $sitescriptexp /usr/local/bin
765 $sitelibexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
766 $sitearchexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
767 $siteman1direxp /usr/local/man/man1
768 $siteman3direxp /usr/local/man/man3
770 $vendorbinexp /usr/bin
771 $vendorscriptexp /usr/bin
772 $vendorlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
773 $vendorarchexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
774 $vendorman1direxp /usr/man/man1
775 $vendorman3direxp /usr/man/man3
777 Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
778 /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in
779 the /usr/local hierarchy.
781 The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
782 version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
783 However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the
784 installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
785 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below for more details
786 on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
788 Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
789 example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
790 are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
791 site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
792 network. One way to do that would be something like
794 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
798 As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
799 variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
800 directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
801 Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
802 version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
804 For example, if you have a bundle of perl libraries from a previous
805 installation, perhaps in a strange place:
807 Configure -Dotherlibdirs=/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1
811 There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
812 that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
813 separated list of directories, like this
815 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
817 The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
818 ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
819 modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
820 touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
821 version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
822 present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
823 directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
824 run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
826 =item USE_SITECUSTOMIZE
828 Run-time customization of @INC can be enabled with:
830 sh Configure -Dusesitecustomize
832 Which will define USE_SITECUSTOMIZE and $Config{usesitecustomize}.
833 When enabled, make perl run F<$sitelibexp/sitecustomize.pl> before
834 anything else. This script can then be set up to add additional
839 In versions 5.005_57 and earlier, the default was to store module man
840 pages in a version-specific directory, such as
841 /usr/local/lib/perl5/$version/man/man3. The default for 5.005_58 and
842 after is /usr/local/man/man3 so that most users can find the man pages
843 without resetting MANPATH.
845 You can continue to use the old default from the command line with
847 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.9.0/man/man3
849 Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
851 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
853 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
858 Currently, the standard perl installation does not do anything with
859 HTML documentation, but that may change in the future. Further, some
860 add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The html Configure
861 variables listed above are provided if you wish to specify where such
862 documents should be placed. The default is "none", but will likely
863 eventually change to something useful based on user feedback.
867 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
868 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
871 Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
872 directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
875 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
876 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
877 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below.
879 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
880 library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
881 suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
883 Thus, for example, if you Configure with
884 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.9.0 are
886 Configure variable Default value
887 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0
888 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0/$archname
889 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0
890 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0/$archname
892 =head2 Changing the installation directory
894 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
895 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
896 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
897 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
898 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
899 packages, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
900 wish to install perl into a different directory and use that
901 management software to move perl to its final destination. This
902 section describes how to do that.
904 Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You
905 could edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to
906 /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local, or you could simply use the
907 following command line:
909 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
911 (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
913 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
914 modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
915 follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with
918 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
920 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is convenient
921 to compile it once and create an archive that can be installed on
922 multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to create an
923 archive that can be installed in /opt/perl. One way to do that is by
924 using the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>. The DESTDIR is
925 automatically prepended to all the installation paths. Thus you
928 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
931 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
932 cd /tmp/perl5/opt/perl
933 tar cvf /tmp/perl5-archive.tar .
935 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
937 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
938 answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact
939 person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another
940 system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file
941 to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate
942 hint file for your system. This will work even if Policy.sh was
943 generated for another version of Perl, or on a system with a
944 different architecture and/or operating system. However, in such cases,
945 you should review the contents of the file before using it: for
946 example, your new target may not keep its man pages in the same place
947 as the system on which the file was generated.
949 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
954 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
956 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
958 If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
959 to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
960 platform-specific hints files.
962 =head2 Disabling older versions of Perl
964 Configure will search for binary compatible versions of previously
965 installed perl binaries in the tree that is specified as target tree
966 and these will be used by the perl being built.
967 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> for more details.
969 To disable this use of older perl modules, even completely valid pure perl
970 modules, you can specify to not include the paths found:
972 sh Configure -Dinc_version_list=none ...
974 When using the newer perl, you can add these paths again in the
975 $PERL5LIB environment variable or with perl's -I runtime option.
977 =head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
979 Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
980 where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
981 read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
982 architectures. You can do this (if your file system supports symbolic
985 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
986 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
987 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
989 This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
990 pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
991 unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
995 as usual, and Perl will be built in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
997 =head2 Building a debugging perl
999 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
1000 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
1001 you probably want to have support for perl internal debugging code
1002 (activated by adding -DDEBUGGING to ccflags), and/or support for the
1003 system debugger by adding -g to optimize.
1005 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING=<mode>
1007 For a more eye appealing call, -DEBUGGING is defined to be an alias
1008 for -DDEBUGGING. For both, the -U calls are also supported, in order
1009 to be able to overrule the hints or Policy.sh settings.
1013 =item -DEBUGGING=old
1015 Which is the default, and supports the old convention of
1017 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
1019 This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
1020 to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
1021 executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
1022 cc -g2. Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for
1023 your system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags
1024 variable in config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's
1025 internal state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by default
1026 if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to reuse your
1027 old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the optimize and
1028 ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes as shown in
1029 L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
1031 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
1032 it's convenient to have both.
1040 =item -DEBUGGING=both
1042 Sets both -DDEBUGGING in the ccflags, and add -g to optimize.
1046 Adds -g to optimize, but does not set -DDEBUGGING.
1048 =item -DEBUGGING=none
1050 Removes -g from optimize, and -DDEBUGGING from ccflags.
1054 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
1055 versions of perl under L<Building a shared Perl library>.
1059 Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
1060 in the ext/ subdirectory.
1062 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
1063 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
1064 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
1065 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
1066 is always built by default. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
1067 set the Configure variable useposix=false from the Configure command line.
1069 If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
1070 running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
1071 extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
1072 it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
1073 has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
1074 extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
1075 convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
1076 you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
1077 dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
1079 If you have dynamic loading, another way of specifying extra modules
1080 is described in L<"Adding extra modules to the build"> below.
1082 You can learn more about each of the supplied extensions by consulting the
1083 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
1086 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
1087 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
1088 version. Configure will suggest this as the default.
1090 To disable certain extensions so that they are not built, use the
1091 -Dnoextensions=... and -Donlyextensions=... options. They both accept
1092 a space-separated list of extensions. The extensions listed in
1093 C<noextensions> are removed from the list of extensions to build, while
1094 the C<onlyextensions> is rather more severe and builds only the listed
1095 extensions. The latter should be used with extreme caution since
1096 certain extensions are used by many other extensions and modules:
1097 examples of such modules include Fcntl and IO. The order of processing
1098 these options is first C<only> (if present), then C<no> (if present).
1100 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
1101 the extensions you want.
1103 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley
1104 DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect
1105 this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with earlier
1106 releases of version 2.
1108 If you re-use your old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
1109 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
1110 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
1113 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern systems do)
1114 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
1115 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
1116 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
1118 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
1120 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
1121 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
1122 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
1123 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
1124 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
1125 how to obtain the libraries.
1127 If your database header (.h) files are not in a directory normally
1128 searched by your C compiler, then you will need to include the
1129 appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by Configure. If
1130 your database libraries are not in a directory normally
1131 searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to include
1132 the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by Configure.
1133 See the examples below.
1139 =item gdbm in /usr/local
1141 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
1142 GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
1143 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
1144 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
1145 necessary steps out automatically.
1147 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1148 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
1150 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
1153 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
1154 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1157 Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1158 you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1159 /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
1161 =item gdbm in /usr/you
1163 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
1164 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
1165 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
1166 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
1167 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
1168 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
1169 /usr/you/lib to the list.
1171 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
1175 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
1176 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
1178 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1179 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1181 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
1182 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
1183 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
1184 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
1187 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
1188 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
1192 =head2 Building DB, NDBM, and ODBM interfaces with Berkeley DB 3
1194 A Perl interface for DB3 is part of Berkeley DB, but if you want to
1195 compile the standard Perl DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you must follow
1196 following instructions.
1198 Berkeley DB3 from Sleepycat Software is by default installed without
1199 DB1 compatibility code (needed for the DB_File interface) and without
1200 links to compatibility files. So if you want to use packages written
1201 for the DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you need to configure DB3 with
1202 --enable-compat185 (and optionally with --enable-dump185) and create
1203 additional references (suppose you are installing DB3 with
1206 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdbm.so
1207 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libndbm.so
1208 echo '#define DB_DBM_HSEARCH 1' >dbm.h
1209 echo '#include <db.h>' >>dbm.h
1210 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/dbm.h
1211 install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/ndbm.h
1213 Optionally, if you have compiled with --enable-compat185 (not needed
1216 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb1.so
1217 ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb.so
1219 ODBM emulation seems not to be perfect, but is quite usable,
1222 lib/odbm.............FAILED at test 9
1223 Failed 1/64 tests, 98.44% okay
1225 =head2 Overriding an old config.sh
1227 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
1228 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
1230 =head2 GNU-style configure
1232 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
1233 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
1235 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
1237 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
1240 ./configure.gnu --help
1244 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
1245 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
1247 See L<Cross-compilation> below for information on cross-compiling.
1249 =head2 Malloc Issues
1251 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
1252 so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
1253 the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
1254 version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
1255 perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
1256 than your system malloc.
1258 However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
1259 experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
1260 that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
1261 (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
1265 =item Using the system malloc
1267 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
1269 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
1271 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
1273 =item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
1275 NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you just
1276 run Configure to accept all the defaults on those platforms.
1278 Perl's malloc family of functions are normally called Perl_malloc(),
1279 Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree().
1280 These names do not clash with the system versions of these functions.
1282 If this flag is enabled, however, Perl's malloc family of functions
1283 will have the same names as the system versions. This may be required
1284 sometimes if you have libraries that like to free() data that may have
1285 been allocated by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1287 Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1288 from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1289 does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1292 =item -DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS
1294 This flag enables debugging mstats, which is required to use the
1295 Devel::Peek::mstat() function. You cannot enable this unless you are
1296 using Perl's malloc, so a typical Configure command would be
1298 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS -Dusemymalloc='y'
1300 to enable this option.
1304 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1306 If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1307 If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
1311 =item Running Configure Interactively
1313 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1314 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1317 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1318 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1319 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1320 will use the defaults from then on.
1322 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1323 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1324 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1328 Hint files tell Configure about a number of things:
1334 The peculiarities or conventions of particular platforms -- non-standard
1335 library locations and names, default installation locations for binaries,
1340 The deficiencies of the platform -- for example, library functions that,
1341 although present, are too badly broken to be usable; or limits on
1342 resources that are generously available on most platforms.
1346 How best to optimize for the platform, both in terms of binary size and/or
1347 speed, and for Perl feature support. Because of wide variations in the
1348 implementation of shared libraries and of threading, for example, Configure
1349 often needs hints in order to be able to use these features.
1353 The perl distribution includes many system-specific hints files
1354 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1355 will offer to use that hint file. Unless you have a very good reason
1356 not to, you should accept its offer.
1358 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1359 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
1360 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
1361 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
1362 file, which also explains hint files known as callback-units.
1364 Note that any hint file is read before any Policy file, meaning that
1365 Policy overrides hints -- see L</Site-wide Policy settings>.
1367 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1369 If you are re-using an old config.sh, it's possible that Configure detects
1370 different values from the ones specified in this file. You will almost
1371 always want to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something
1374 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1375 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1376 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1377 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1380 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1381 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1382 Keep the previous value? [y]
1384 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1385 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1386 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1388 =item Changing Compilers
1390 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1391 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1392 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
1393 with the options you want to use.
1395 This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
1396 gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
1398 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1400 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1401 them to all the .SH files by running
1405 You will then have to rebuild by running
1410 =item config.over and config.arch
1412 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride
1413 Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1414 before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1415 however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1416 This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1418 There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1419 config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1420 architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1421 hints file that creates the config.arch.
1425 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1426 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1427 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1429 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1430 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1435 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1436 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1437 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
1438 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
1439 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
1440 lost the next time you run Configure.
1442 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1443 see the file hints/README.hints.
1445 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1446 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1453 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1454 Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1455 system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1456 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1459 =item Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX and BIN_SH
1461 In Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX, Configure might abort with
1463 Build a threading Perl? [n]
1464 Configure[2437]: Syntax error at line 1 : `config.sh' is not expected.
1466 This indicates that Configure is being run with a broken Korn shell
1467 (even though you think you are using a Bourne shell by using
1468 "sh Configure" or "./Configure"). The Korn shell bug has been reported
1469 to Compaq as of February 1999 but in the meanwhile, the reason ksh is
1470 being used is that you have the environment variable BIN_SH set to
1471 'xpg4'. This causes /bin/sh to delegate its duties to /bin/posix/sh
1472 (a ksh). Unset the environment variable and rerun Configure.
1474 =item HP-UX 11, pthreads, and libgdbm
1476 If you are running Configure with -Dusethreads in HP-UX 11, be warned
1477 that POSIX threads and libgdbm (the GNU dbm library) compiled before
1478 HP-UX 11 do not mix. This will cause a basic test run by Configure to
1481 Pthread internal error: message: __libc_reinit() failed, file: ../pthreads/pthread.c, line: 1096
1482 Return Pointer is 0xc082bf33
1483 sh: 5345 Quit(coredump)
1485 and Configure will give up. The cure is to recompile and install
1486 libgdbm under HP-UX 11.
1488 =item Porting information
1490 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan 9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1491 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1492 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1493 subdirectory. Porting/Glossary should especially come in handy.
1495 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1496 http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
1497 various other operating systems.
1499 If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture, study carefully the
1500 section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1501 in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file Porting/patching.pod.
1502 Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1506 =head2 Adding extra modules to the build
1508 You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1509 CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1510 command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1512 Configure -Dextras="Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI"
1514 or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
1515 then answer "Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
1516 The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command.
1517 This will only work if those modules are to be built as dynamic
1518 extensions. If you wish to include those extra modules as static
1519 extensions, see L<"Extensions"> above.
1521 Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1522 modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1523 or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1524 do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1526 Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1527 dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build.
1528 For example: you will need to have the zlib.h header and the libz
1529 library installed for the Compress::Zlib, or the Foo database specific
1530 headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1531 process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1535 suidperl is an optional component, which is normally neither built
1536 nor installed by default. From perlfaq1:
1538 On some systems, setuid and setgid scripts (scripts written
1539 in the C shell, Bourne shell, or Perl, for example, with the
1540 set user or group ID permissions enabled) are insecure due to
1541 a race condition in the kernel. For those systems, Perl versions
1542 5 and 4 attempt to work around this vulnerability with an optional
1543 component, a special program named suidperl, also known as sperl.
1544 This program attempts to emulate the set-user-ID and set-group-ID
1545 features of the kernel.
1547 Because of the buggy history of suidperl, and the difficulty
1548 of properly security auditing as large and complex piece of
1549 software as Perl, we cannot recommend using suidperl and the feature
1550 should be considered deprecated.
1551 Instead, use a tool specifically designed to handle changes in
1552 privileges, such as B<sudo>, http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/ .
1556 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1557 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1558 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1559 makefile, not Makefile, since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1560 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1561 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1563 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1568 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1570 =head2 Expected errors
1572 These errors are normal, and can be ignored:
1575 make: [extra.pods] Error 1 (ignored)
1577 make: [extras.make] Error 1 (ignored)
1579 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1581 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1582 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1583 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1584 then see L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
1590 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1591 for further tips and information.
1595 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1596 during the building of extensions, run
1600 to test your version of miniperl.
1604 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1605 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1606 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1607 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1608 whole L<"Locale problems"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1609 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1611 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1612 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1615 are supported and installed on your system.
1616 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1622 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1623 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1624 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1625 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by installing gcc
1626 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1627 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1628 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1632 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1633 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1635 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1636 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1637 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1639 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1640 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1642 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1644 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1645 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1646 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1647 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1648 of your local set-up.
1652 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1653 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1656 sh Configure -Uusenm
1658 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1659 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1662 =item umask not found
1664 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1665 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1666 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1667 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1668 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1672 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1673 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1674 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1675 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1676 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1680 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1681 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1682 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1686 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1687 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1688 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1689 on L<"nm extraction">.
1691 =item __inet_* errors
1693 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1694 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1695 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1696 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1697 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1698 newer version of BIND (and remove the files the old one left behind).
1699 If you can't, you can either link with the updated resolver library provided
1700 with BIND 8.1 or rename /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and
1701 test process to avoid the problem.
1703 =item *_r() prototype NOT found
1705 On a related note, if you see a bunch of complaints like the above about
1706 reentrant functions - specifically networking-related ones - being present
1707 but without prototypes available, check to see if BIND 8.1 (or possibly
1708 other BIND 8 versions) is (or has been) installed. They install
1709 header files such as netdb.h into places such as /usr/local/include (or into
1710 another directory as specified at build/install time), at least optionally.
1711 Remove them or put them in someplace that isn't in the C preprocessor's
1712 header file include search path (determined by -I options plus defaults,
1713 normally /usr/include).
1715 =item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1717 This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1718 gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1719 changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1720 rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1721 update your gcc installation.
1725 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1726 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1734 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1735 with B<make depend; make>.
1737 =item Missing functions and Undefined symbols
1739 If the build of miniperl fails with a long list of missing functions or
1740 undefined symbols, check the libs variable in the config.sh file. It
1741 should look something like
1743 libs='-lsocket -lnsl -ldl -lm -lc'
1745 The exact libraries will vary from system to system, but you typically
1746 need to include at least the math library -lm. Normally, Configure
1747 will suggest the correct defaults. If the libs variable is empty, you
1748 need to start all over again. Run
1752 and start from the very beginning. This time, unless you are sure of
1753 what you are doing, accept the default list of libraries suggested by
1756 If the libs variable looks correct, you might have the
1757 L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1759 If you stil have missing routines or undefined symbols, you probably
1760 need to add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature
1761 that Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete. If
1762 you used a hint file, see if it has any relevant advice. You can also
1763 look through through config.h for likely suspects.
1767 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1768 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1769 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1770 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1771 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1774 =item Missing dbmclose
1776 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1777 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1779 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1781 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1782 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1783 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1784 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1785 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1786 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1787 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1788 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1789 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1790 process is continuing.
1792 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1795 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1797 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1798 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1799 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1801 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1802 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1803 quite that tightly coordinated.
1805 =item sh: ar: not found
1807 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1808 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1809 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1810 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1813 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1815 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1816 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1817 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1819 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1821 If you get this error message from the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem test, your System
1822 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1823 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1824 to include the System V semaphores.
1826 =item ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem........semget: No space left on device
1828 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1829 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1830 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1831 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1836 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1837 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1838 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1839 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1840 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1841 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1842 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1843 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1845 =item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1847 The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1848 make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1849 archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1850 C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1851 archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1852 incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1853 official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1854 that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1855 archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1857 =item invalid token: ##
1859 You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. To compile Perl, you
1860 need to use a compiler that supports ANSI C. If there is a README
1861 file for your system, it may have further details on your compiler
1866 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1868 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1870 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1872 UTS may need one or more of -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1874 FreeBSD can fail the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1875 configured in the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1876 you will get a message telling you what to do.
1878 HP-UX 11 Y2K patch "Y2K-1100 B.11.00.B0125 HP-UX Core OS Year 2000
1879 Patch Bundle" has been reported to break the io/fs test #18 which
1880 tests whether utime() can change timestamps. The Y2K patch seems to
1881 break utime() so that over NFS the timestamps do not get changed
1882 (on local filesystems utime() still works).
1884 Building Perl on a system that has also BIND (headers and libraries)
1885 installed may run into troubles because BIND installs its own netdb.h
1886 and socket.h, which may not agree with the operating system's ideas of
1887 the same files. Similarly, including -lbind may conflict with libc's
1888 view of the world. You may have to tweak -Dlocincpth and -Dloclibpth
1893 =head2 Cross-compilation
1895 Perl can be cross-compiled. It is just not trivial, cross-compilation
1896 rarely is. Perl is routinely cross-compiled for many platforms (as of
1897 June 2005 at least PocketPC aka WinCE, Open Zaurus, EPOC, Symbian, and
1898 the IBM OS/400). These platforms are known as the B<target> platforms,
1899 while the systems where the compilation takes place are the B<host>
1902 What makes the situation difficult is that first of all,
1903 cross-compilation environments vary significantly in how they are set
1904 up and used, and secondly because the primary way of configuring Perl
1905 (using the rather large Unix-tool-dependent Configure script) is not
1906 awfully well suited for cross-compilation. However, starting from
1907 version 5.8.0, the Configure script also knows one way of supporting
1908 cross-compilation support, please keep reading.
1910 See the following files for more information about compiling Perl for
1911 the particular platforms:
1915 =item WinCE/PocketPC
1937 Packaging and transferring either the core Perl modules or CPAN
1938 modules to the target platform is also left up to the each
1939 cross-compilation environment. Often the cross-compilation target
1940 platforms are somewhat limited in diskspace: see the section
1941 L<Minimizing the Perl installation> to learn more of the minimal set
1942 of files required for a functional Perl installation.
1944 For some cross-compilation environments the Configure option
1945 C<-Dinstallprefix=...> might be handy, see L<Changing the installation
1948 About the cross-compilation support of Configure: what is known to
1949 work is running Configure in a cross-compilation environment and
1950 building the miniperl executable. What is known not to work is
1951 building the perl executable because that would require building
1952 extensions: Dynaloader statically and File::Glob dynamically, for
1953 extensions one needs MakeMaker and MakeMaker is not yet
1954 cross-compilation aware, and neither is the main Makefile.
1956 The cross-compilation setup of Configure has successfully been used in
1957 at least two Linux cross-compilation environments. The setups were
1958 both such that the host system was Intel Linux with a gcc built for
1959 cross-compiling into ARM Linux, and there was a SSH connection to the
1962 To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch that
1963 has to be used is C<-Dusecrosscompile>.
1965 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1967 This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
1968 symbol C<usecrosscompile> available, and C<xconfig.h> will be used
1969 for cross-compilation.
1971 During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1972 into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1973 cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1974 target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1975 transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1976 the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1977 methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1978 F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1980 To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1981 the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1982 happens), supply Configure with
1984 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1986 The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
1987 must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1988 You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
1992 but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
1994 Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify
1995 which target environment and which compilation environment to use.
1996 This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries.
1997 In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation
2000 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
2002 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
2003 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
2004 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
2006 If the name of the C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
2007 compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and
2008 C<ranlib> will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
2009 (The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
2010 as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc
2011 will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else,
2012 in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
2014 In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
2015 choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
2018 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
2020 Putting it all together:
2022 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
2023 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
2024 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
2026 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
2027 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
2028 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
2029 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
2030 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
2033 or if you are happy with the defaults:
2035 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
2036 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
2037 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
2040 Another example where the cross-compiler has been installed under
2041 F</usr/local/arm/2.95.5>:
2043 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
2044 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
2045 -Dcc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/bin/arm-linux-gcc \
2046 -Dincpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
2047 -Dusrinc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
2048 -Dlibpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/lib
2052 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
2053 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
2054 wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
2056 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
2057 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
2058 a few tty tests will be skipped.
2060 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
2062 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
2063 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
2064 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
2068 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
2069 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
2073 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
2074 complicated constructs). For extension and library tests you
2075 need a little bit more: you need to setup your environment variable
2076 PERL_CORE to a true value (like "1"), and you need to supply the
2077 right Perl library path:
2080 ./perl -I../lib ../ext/Socket/Socket.t
2081 ./perl -I../lib ../lib/less.t
2083 (For csh-like shells on UNIX; adjust appropriately for other platforms.)
2084 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
2085 comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
2086 shared library path if you get errors like:
2088 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
2090 See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
2096 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
2097 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
2098 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
2099 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
2100 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
2101 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
2103 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
2109 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
2111 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
2112 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
2113 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
2114 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
2115 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
2116 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
2119 =item Timing problems
2121 Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
2122 sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
2123 If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough,
2124 these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again
2125 with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive
2126 and load-sensitive tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
2127 F<ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t>, F<lib/Benchmark.t>,
2128 F<lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t>, and F<lib/Memoize/t/speed.t>.
2132 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
2133 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
2134 For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
2135 test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
2137 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
2139 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
2141 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
2142 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
2143 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
2144 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
2146 =item Failures from lib/File/Temp/t/security saying "system possibly insecure"
2148 First, such warnings are not necessarily serious or indicative of a
2149 real security threat. That being said, they bear investigating.
2151 Note that each of the tests is run twice. The first time is in the
2152 directory returned by File::Spec->tmpdir() (often /tmp on Unix
2153 systems), and the second time in the directory from which the test was
2154 run (usually the 't' directory, if the test was run as part of 'make
2157 The tests may fail for the following reasons:
2159 (1) If the directory the tests are being run in is owned by somebody
2160 other than the user running the tests, or by root (uid 0).
2162 This failure can happen if the Perl source code distribution is
2163 unpacked in such a way that the user ids in the distribution package
2164 are used as-is. Some tar programs do this.
2166 (2) If the directory the tests are being run in is writable by group or
2167 by others, and there is no sticky bit set for the directory. (With
2168 UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to a directory means the right to
2169 add or remove files in that directory. The 'sticky bit' is a feature
2170 used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if the bit is
2171 set for a directory, no one but the owner (or root) can remove that
2172 file even if the permissions would otherwise allow file removal by
2175 This failure may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the
2176 permissions policy used on this particular system. This failure can
2177 also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit (this
2178 is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle File::Temp
2179 should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or if the system
2180 supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons it is not being
2181 used. This is, for example, the case with HP-UX: as of HP-UX release
2182 11.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX doesn't use it
2183 on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also, as with the permissions, some
2184 local policy might dictate that the stickiness is not used.
2186 (3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
2187 any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
2188 directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
2189 (2). For Unix systems, this is usually not an issue if you are
2190 building on a local disk. See the documentation for the File::Temp
2191 module for more information about 'chown giveaway'.
2193 See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
2194 about the various security aspects of temporary files.
2200 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
2201 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
2202 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
2203 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
2204 are not root, you must still have permission to install into the directories
2205 in question and you should ignore any messages about chown not working.
2207 If "make install" just says "`install' is up to date" or something
2208 similar, you may be on a case-insensitive filesystems such as Mac's HFS+,
2209 and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion is brought to you
2210 by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
2212 =head2 Installing perl under different names
2214 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
2215 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
2216 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
2218 make install PERLNAME=myperl
2220 You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
2221 "perl5.005") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
2223 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
2225 This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (e.g. to
2226 avoid conflicts with an ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor).
2227 Without this the versioned binary would be called "perl55.005".
2229 =head2 Installing perl under a different directory
2231 You can install perl under a different destination directory by using
2232 the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>, with a command like
2234 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
2236 DESTDIR is automatically prepended to all the installation paths. See
2237 the example in L<"Creating an installable tar archive"> above.
2240 =head2 Installed files
2242 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
2243 anything, you can run
2245 ./perl installperl -n
2246 ./perl installman -n
2248 make install will install the following:
2253 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
2254 will be a link to perl.
2256 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
2257 a2p awk-to-perl translator
2261 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
2263 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
2264 s2p sed-to-perl translator
2265 find2perl find-to-perl translator
2266 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
2267 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
2268 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
2269 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
2270 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
2271 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
2272 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
2278 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
2279 dprofpp Perl code profile post-processor
2283 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
2284 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
2288 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2290 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
2291 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2293 Installperl will also create the directories listed above
2294 in L<"Installation Directories">.
2296 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
2297 under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
2298 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2299 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
2301 Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2302 installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
2303 perl alongside an already installed production version of perl without
2304 disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2305 To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2307 Configure -Dversiononly
2309 or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2310 you can just manually run
2312 ./perl installperl -v
2314 and skip installman altogether.
2315 See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2318 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
2320 Perl 5.9 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
2321 In other words, you will have to recompile your XS modules.
2323 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
2324 5.8.0) to another similar version (e.g. 5.8.2) without re-compiling
2325 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
2326 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
2327 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
2328 with 5.8.2, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
2329 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
2330 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.8.2.
2332 Usually, most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use
2333 with a newer version of Perl Here is how it is supposed to work.
2334 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
2336 Suppose you already have version 5.005_03 installed. The directories
2337 searched by 5.005_03 are
2339 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503/$archname
2340 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503
2341 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2342 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2344 Beginning with 5.6.0 the version number in the site libraries are
2345 fully versioned. Now, suppose you install version 5.6.0. The directories
2346 searched by version 5.6.0 will be
2348 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/$archname
2349 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0
2350 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0/$archname
2351 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2353 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/$archname
2354 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2355 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2357 Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
2358 of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
2359 directories. This way, modules installed under 5.005_03 will continue
2360 to be usable by 5.005_03 but will also accessible to 5.6.0. Further,
2361 suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
2362 present only in 5.6.0. That new module will get installed into
2363 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0 and will be available to 5.6.0,
2364 but will not interfere with the 5.005_03 version.
2366 The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
2367 5.6.0 and above will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
2369 Lastly, suppose you now install 5.8.0, which is not binary compatible
2370 with 5.6.0. The directories searched by 5.8.0 (if you don't change the
2371 Configure defaults) will be:
2373 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0/$archname
2374 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.0
2375 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/$archname
2376 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0
2378 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0
2380 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
2382 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2384 Note that the earlier $archname entries are now gone, but pure perl
2385 modules from earlier versions will still be found.
2387 Assuming the users in your site are still actively using perl 5.6.0 and
2388 5.005 after you installed 5.8.0, you can continue to install add-on
2389 extensions using any of perl 5.8.0, 5.6.0, or 5.005. The installations
2390 of these different versions remain distinct, but remember that the
2391 newer versions of perl are automatically set up to search the
2392 compatible site libraries of the older ones. This means that
2393 installing a new XS extension with 5.005 will make it visible to both
2394 5.005 and 5.6.0, but not to 5.8.0. Installing a pure perl module with
2395 5.005 will make it visible to all three versions. Later, if you
2396 install the same extension using, say, perl 5.8.0, it will override the
2397 5.005-installed version, but only for perl 5.8.0.
2399 This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2400 to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2401 versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
2403 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
2405 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
2406 separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
2407 won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2408 libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2409 way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
2411 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.8.2
2413 and adding /opt/perl5.8.2/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
2414 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2415 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2417 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
2418 (e.g. 5.8 for all 5.8.x versions), but change directory with
2421 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2422 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2423 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2426 =head2 Upgrading from 5.005 or 5.6 to 5.8.0
2428 B<Perl 5.9.0 is binary incompatible with Perl 5.8.x, Perl 5.6.x, 5.005,
2429 and any earlier Perl release.> Perl modules having binary parts
2430 (meaning that a C compiler is used) will have to be recompiled to be
2431 used with 5.9.0. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with
2432 5.9.0, you may safely do so without disturbing the older
2433 installations. (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5">
2436 See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2437 incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
2438 perllocal.pod, not perllocale.pod, for installed module information.
2440 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
2442 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
2444 By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
2445 they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
2447 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
2448 perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
2449 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
2450 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
2451 the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036 (or
2452 whatever the appropriate pathname is). See L<perltrap> for
2453 possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
2455 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2457 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2458 system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2459 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2460 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2461 library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2463 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2464 of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2465 hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2466 For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2469 =head1 installhtml --help
2471 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2472 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2473 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2475 Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2476 html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2478 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2483 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2485 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2486 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2487 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2488 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2489 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
2492 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2493 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2494 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2495 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2496 (and would welcome patches for them).
2498 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2499 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2501 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2503 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2504 available in TeX format. Type
2506 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2508 =head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2510 The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2511 Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2512 operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2514 Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way:
2515 Encode, with its big conversion tables, consumes a lot of
2516 space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything. The
2517 Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network
2518 programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all
2519 depends on what do you need to do.
2521 In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2522 recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2523 depends on what you need.
2525 Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2529 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2533 in Linux is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
2536 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/strict.pm
2537 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/warnings.pm
2538 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/File/Glob.pm
2539 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/XSLoader.pm
2540 ./lib/perl5/5.9.3/i686-linux/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2542 Secondly, Debian perl-base package contains the following files,
2543 size about 1.9MB in its i386 version:
2548 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B.pm
2549 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/B/Deparse.pm
2550 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Config.pm
2551 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Cwd.pm
2552 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Data/Dumper.pm
2553 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/DynaLoader.pm
2554 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Errno.pm
2555 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Fcntl.pm
2556 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/File/Glob.pm
2557 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO.pm
2558 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/File.pm
2559 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Handle.pm
2560 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Pipe.pm
2561 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Seekable.pm
2562 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Select.pm
2563 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket.pm
2564 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/POSIX.pm
2565 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/Socket.pm
2566 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/XSLoader.pm
2567 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.bs
2568 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Cwd/Cwd.so
2569 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.bs
2570 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.so
2571 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/DynaLoader.a
2572 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2573 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2574 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2575 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2576 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/DynaLoader/extralibs.ld
2577 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.bs
2578 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2579 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.bs
2580 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2581 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.bs
2582 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/IO/IO.so
2583 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.bs
2584 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2585 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2586 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2587 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.bs
2588 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2589 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/lib.pm
2590 /usr/lib/perl/5.8.4/re.pm
2591 /usr/share/doc/perl-base
2592 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
2593 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2594 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian.gz
2595 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
2596 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
2597 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
2599 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/AutoLoader.pm
2600 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp.pm
2601 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Carp/Heavy.pm
2602 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter.pm
2603 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2604 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec.pm
2605 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2606 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/FileHandle.pm
2607 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Getopt/Long.pm
2608 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2609 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2610 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open2.pm
2611 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/IPC/Open3.pm
2612 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/List/Util.pm
2613 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Scalar/Util.pm
2614 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/SelectSaver.pm
2615 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Symbol.pm
2616 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/ParseWords.pm
2617 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Tabs.pm
2618 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/Text/Wrap.pm
2619 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/attributes.pm
2620 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/base.pm
2621 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes.pm
2622 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/bytes_heavy.pl
2623 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/constant.pm
2624 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/fields.pm
2625 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/integer.pm
2626 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/locale.pm
2627 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/overload.pm
2628 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/strict.pm
2629 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8.pm
2630 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/utf8_heavy.pl
2631 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/vars.pm
2632 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings.pm
2633 /usr/share/perl/5.8.4/warnings/register.pm
2635 A nice trick to find out the minimal set of Perl library files you will
2636 need to run a Perl program is
2638 perl -e 'do "prog.pl"; END { print "$_\n" for sort keys %INC }'
2640 (this will not find libraries required in runtime, unfortunately, but
2641 it's a minimal set) and if you want to find out all the files you can
2642 use something like the below
2644 strace perl -le 'do "x.pl"' 2>&1 | perl -nle '/^open\(\"(.+?)"/ && print $1'
2646 (The 'strace' is Linux-specific, other similar utilities include 'truss'
2649 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
2651 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2652 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
2653 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
2654 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2655 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
2657 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
2658 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and
2661 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
2662 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
2664 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
2665 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
2668 Note that you must have performed the installation already before running
2669 the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate
2674 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2675 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2676 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
2678 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2679 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2681 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2683 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2684 the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2685 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2686 a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2687 and the contact information to match your distribution.