3 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
7 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system are:
15 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
17 For information on non-Unix systems, see the section on
18 L<"Porting Information">, below.
22 You should probably at least skim through this entire document before
23 proceeding. Special notes specific to this release are identified
26 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
27 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
28 read it as is with any pager or editor.
30 If you're building Perl on a non-Unix system, you should also read
31 the README file specific to your operating system, since this may
32 provide additional or different instructions for building Perl.
34 =head1 Space Requirements.
36 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 7 MB of disk space.
37 The complete tree after completing C<make> takes roughly
38 15 MB, though the actual total is likely to be quite
39 system-dependent. The installation directories need something
40 on the order of 7 MB, though again that value is system-dependent.
42 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution.
44 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
49 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh file. If
50 you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you change
51 systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if you are
52 experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably I<not>
53 re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or rename it, e.g.
55 mv config.sh config.sh.old
57 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
58 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
59 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
60 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
61 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
62 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
63 probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't, presently.
64 Similarly, if you used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version
65 numbers, you will probably want to adjust them as well.
67 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. Some Linux systems
68 call themselves i486, while others use i586. If you pick up a
69 precompiled binary, it might not use the same name.
71 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
72 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
76 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
77 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
78 you about. To accept the default, just press C<RETURN>. The default
81 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
82 F<*.SH> files and offer to run B<make depend>.
84 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h>
85 to get a listing. To compile with gcc, for example, you can run
89 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
90 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
92 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
93 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
95 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
100 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
101 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. You can specify a different 'prefix' for
102 the default installation directory, when Configure prompts you or by
103 using the Configure command line option -Dprefix='/some/directory',
106 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
108 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the directories
109 are simplified. For example, if you use prefix=/opt/perl,
110 then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
111 /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
113 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading, if
114 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
115 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
116 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
120 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
121 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
122 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
123 DynaLoader, Fcntl, FileHandle and IO are always built by default.
124 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
125 is always built by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
126 set the Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from
127 the Configure command line. Similarly, the Opcode extension is always
128 built by default, but you can skip it by setting the Configure variable
129 useopcode=false either in a hint file for from the command line.
131 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
132 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
133 version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
135 In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
136 to turn off each extension:
139 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
140 Fcntl (Always included by default)
141 FileHandle (Always included by default)
143 IO (Always included by default)
147 SDBM_File (Always included by default)
151 Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
153 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
155 Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
158 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
159 the Extensions you want.
161 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern Unix systems do)
162 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
163 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
164 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
166 =head2 GNU-style configure
168 If you prefer the GNU-style B<configure> command line interface, you can
169 use the supplied B<configure> command, e.g.
173 The B<configure> script emulates several of the more common configure
180 Cross compiling is currently not supported.
182 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
184 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
185 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
186 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
187 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
188 are B<not> included with perl. See the library documentation for
189 how to obtain the libraries.
191 I<Note:> If your database header (.h) files are not in a
192 directory normally searched by your C compiler, then you will need to
193 include the appropriate B<-I/your/directory> option when prompted by
194 Configure. If your database library (.a) files are not in a directory
195 normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to
196 include the appropriate B<-L/your/directory> option when prompted by
197 Configure. See the examples below.
203 =item gdbm in /usr/local.
205 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
206 GDBM_File extension. This examples assumes you have F<gdbm.h>
207 installed in F</usr/local/include/gdbm.h> and F<libgdbm.a> installed in
208 F</usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a>. Configure should figure all the
209 necessary steps out automatically.
211 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
212 your C compiler, you should include C<-I/usr/local/include>.
214 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
217 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
218 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
221 Again, this should all happen automatically. If you want to accept the
222 defaults for all the questions and have Configure print out only terse
223 messages, then you can just run
227 and Configure should include the GDBM_File extension automatically.
229 This should actually work if you have gdbm installed in any of
230 (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu, /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
232 =item gdbm in /usr/you
234 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
235 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
236 have F</usr/you/include/gdbm.h> and F</usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a>. You
237 still have to add B<-I/usr/you/include> to cc flags, but you have to take
238 an extra step to help Configure find F<libgdbm.a>. Specifically, when
239 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
240 F</usr/you/lib> to the list.
242 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
246 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
247 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
249 C<locincpth> is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
250 Configure will automatically add the appropriate B<-I> directives.
252 C<loclibpth> is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
253 Configure will automatically add the appropriate B<-L> directives. If
254 you have some libraries under F</usr/local/> and others under
255 F</usr/you>, then you have to include both, namely
258 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
259 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
263 =head2 Installation Directories.
265 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
266 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
267 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
269 By default, Configure uses the following directories for
270 library files (archname is a string like sun4-sunos, determined
273 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.002
274 /usr/local/lib/perl5/
275 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/archname
276 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl
278 and the following directories for manual pages:
281 /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3
283 (Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
284 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
285 instead.) The module man pages are stuck in that strange spot so that
286 they don't collide with other man pages stored in /usr/local/man/man3,
287 and so that Perl's man pages don't hide system man pages. On some
288 systems, B<man less> would end up calling up Perl's less.pm module man
289 page, rather than the B<less> program.
291 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
292 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you Configure
293 with -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the defaults are
295 /opt/perl/lib/archname/5.002
297 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/archname
298 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl
303 The perl executable will search the libraries in the order given
306 The directories site_perl and site_perl/archname are empty, but are
307 intended to be used for installing local or site-wide extensions. Perl
308 will automatically look in these directories. Previously, most sites
309 just put their local extensions in with the standard distribution.
311 In order to support using things like #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.002 after
312 a later version is released, architecture-dependent libraries are
313 stored in a version-specific directory, such as
314 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.002/. In 5.000 and 5.001, these files
315 were just stored in /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/. If you will not be
316 using 5.001 binaries, you can delete the standard extensions from the
317 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/ directory. Locally-added extensions can
318 be moved to the site_perl and site_perl/archname directories.
320 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
323 =head2 Changing the installation directory
325 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
326 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
327 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
328 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
329 However, sites that use software such as B<depot> to manage software
330 packages may also wish to install perl into a different directory and
331 use that management software to move perl to its final destination.
332 This section describes how to do this. Someday, Configure may support
333 an option C<-Dinstallprefix=/foo> to simplify this.
335 Suppose you want to install perl under the F</tmp/perl5> directory.
336 You can edit F<config.sh> and change all the install* variables to
337 point to F</tmp/perl5> instead of F</usr/local/wherever>. You could
338 also set them all from the Configure command line. Or, you can
339 automate this process by placing the following lines in a file
340 F<config.over> B<before> you run Configure (replace /tmp/perl5 by a
341 directory of your choice):
343 installprefix=/tmp/perl5
344 test -d $installprefix || mkdir $installprefix
345 test -d $installprefix/bin || mkdir $installprefix/bin
346 installarchlib=`echo $installarchlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
347 installbin=`echo $installbin | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
348 installman1dir=`echo $installman1dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
349 installman3dir=`echo $installman3dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
350 installprivlib=`echo $installprivlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
351 installscript=`echo $installscript | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
352 installsitelib=`echo $installsitelib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
353 installsitearch=`echo $installsitearch | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
355 Then, you can Configure and install in the usual way:
362 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
364 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
365 convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
366 installed on multiple systems. Here's one way to do that:
368 # Set up config.over to install perl into a different directory,
369 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
375 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
376 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
377 cd /usr/local # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
378 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
380 =head2 Building a shared libperl.so Perl library.
382 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
383 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
384 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
387 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
388 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
389 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
390 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
391 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
392 can share the same library.
394 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
395 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
396 meachanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
399 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
400 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
401 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
404 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
405 libperl.so.3.2 (for perl5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
406 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
407 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
408 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
409 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
411 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
412 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
414 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
416 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
418 To actually build perl, you must add the current working directory to your
419 LD_LIBRARY_PATH environtment variable before running make. You can do
422 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
424 for Bourne-style shells, or
426 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
428 for Csh-style shells. You *MUST* do this before running make.
429 Folks running NeXT OPENSTEP must substitute DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
430 LD_LIBRARY_PATH above.
432 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
433 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
434 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
435 install a standard perl5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
436 try to build perl5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
437 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
438 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
439 libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is
440 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
441 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
442 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
443 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't.
445 The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different
446 directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING
447 version of perl. You can do this with by changing all the *archlib*
448 variables in config.sh, namely archlib, archlib_exp, and
449 installarchlib, to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
451 =head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
453 Previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in
454 <stdio.h>. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl allow alternate IO
455 mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but the stdio mechanism is still
456 the default and is the only supported mechanism.
458 This PerlIO abstraction can be enabled either on the Configure command
461 sh Configure -Duseperlio
463 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
465 If you choose to use the PerlIO abstraction layer, there are two
466 (experimental) possibilities for the underlying IO calls. These have been
467 tested to some extent on some platforms, but are not guaranteed to work
474 AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance to <stdio.h> in many
475 cases, and is extensible by the use of "disipline" modules. Sfio
476 currently only builds on a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports.
477 Because the data structures are completely different from stdio, perl
478 extension modules or external libraries may not work. This
479 configuration exists to allow these issues to be worked on.
481 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
482 A (fairly old) version of sfio is in CPAN, and work is in progress to make
483 it more easily buildable by adding Configure support.
485 You select this option by
487 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
489 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
490 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
495 Normal stdio IO, but with all IO going through calls to the PerlIO
496 abstraction layer. This configuration can be used to check that perl and
497 extension modules have been correctly converted to use the PerlIO
500 This configuration should work on all platforms (but might not).
502 You select this option via :
504 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Uusesfio
506 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure does not
507 detect sfio, then this will be the default suggested by Configure.
511 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
515 =item Running Configure Interactively
517 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
518 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
521 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
522 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler &
523 flags) you can type C<&-d> at the next Configure prompt and Configure
524 will use the defaults from then on.
526 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
527 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
528 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
532 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
533 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
534 will offer to use that hint file.
536 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
537 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint
538 file for further information. See F<hints/solaris_2.sh> for an
541 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
543 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
544 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
545 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
548 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
549 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
550 Keep the recommended value? [y]
552 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
553 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
556 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
557 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
558 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
561 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
562 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
563 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
564 Now, Configure will find your gdbm library and will issue a message:
566 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
567 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
568 Keep the previous value? [y]
570 In this case, you do I<not> want to keep the previous value, so you
571 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
572 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
574 =item Changing Compilers
576 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
577 probably I<not> re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
578 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
579 with the options you want to use.
581 This is a common source of problems. If you change from B<cc> to
582 B<gcc>, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
584 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
586 If you make any changes to F<config.sh>, you should propagate
587 them to all the .SH files by running B<sh Configure -S>. You will
588 then have to rebuild by running
595 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride Configure's
596 guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just before config.sh
597 is created. You have to be careful with this, however, as Configure
598 does no checking that your changes make sense. See the section on
599 L<"Changing the installation directory"> for an example.
603 Many of the system dependencies are contained in F<config.h>.
604 F<Configure> builds F<config.h> by running the F<config_h.SH> script.
605 The values for the variables are taken from F<config.sh>.
607 If there are any problems, you can edit F<config.h> directly. Beware,
608 though, that the next time you run B<Configure>, your changes will be
613 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
614 line, they can be made in F<cflags.SH>. For instance, to turn off the
615 optimizer on F<toke.c>, find the line in the switch structure for
616 F<toke.c> and put the command C<optimize='-g'> before the C<;;>. You
617 can also edit F<cflags> directly, but beware that your changes will be
618 lost the next time you run B<Configure>.
620 To change the C flags for all the files, edit F<config.sh>
621 and change either C<$ccflags> or C<$optimize>,
622 and then re-run B<sh Configure -S ; make depend>.
626 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file config_H to
627 config.h and edit the config.h to reflect your system's peculiarities.
628 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
631 =item Porting information
633 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan9, and VMS ports are in the
634 corresponing subdirectories. Additional information, including
635 a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
638 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
639 L<"http:/www.perl.com/CPAN/ports"> for current information on ports to
640 various other operating systems.
644 =head1 Binary Compatibility With 5.003
646 Perl 5.003 turned on the EMBED feature by default, which tries to
647 avoid possible symbol name conflict by prefixing all global symbols
648 with "Perl_". However, its list of global symbols was incomplete.
649 This error has been rectified in Perl 5.004.
651 However, some sites may need to maintain complete binary compatibility
652 with Perl 5.003. If you are building Perl for such a site, then after
653 B<Configure> you should run these two commands:
658 These commands will make your new Perl as binary-compatible with
659 version 5.003 as possible.
663 This will look for all the includes.
664 The output is stored in F<makefile>. The only difference between
665 F<Makefile> and F<makefile> is the dependencies at the bottom of
666 F<makefile>. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
667 F<makefile>, not F<Makefile> since the Unix B<make> command reads
668 F<makefile> first. (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in
669 a different file. Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh
672 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
677 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
679 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
680 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
681 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help, you can
682 send a message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
683 perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
684 Please include the I<output> of the B<./myconfig> shell script
685 that comes with the distribution.
687 [The B<perlbug> program that comes with the perl distribution is
688 useful for sending in such reports, but you need to have
689 perl compiled and installed before you can use it.]
695 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
696 for further tips and information.
700 If you can successfully build F<miniperl>, but the process crashes
701 during the building of extensions, you should run
705 to test your version of miniperl.
709 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try
710 unsetting them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang
711 while running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C
712 locale. See the discussion under L<make test> below about locales.
716 If you get duplicates upon linking for malloc et al, say -DHIDEMYMALLOC.
720 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
721 correctly. When using gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define'
722 and i_varargs='undef' in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by
723 running fixincludes correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't
724 forget to propagate your changes (see
725 L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
726 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
730 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
731 numbers will vary in different versions of perl):
733 util.c: In function `Perl_croak':
734 util.c:962: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
735 proto.h:45: prototype declaration
737 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
738 previous L<"varargs"> item.
740 =item Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading
742 If you have problems with dynamic loading using gcc on SunOS or
743 Solaris, and you are using GNU as and GNU ld, you may need to add
744 B<-B/bin/> (for SunOS) or B<-B/usr/ccs/bin/> (for Solaris) to your
745 $ccflags, $ldflags, and $lddlflags so that the system's versions of as
746 and ld are used. Alternatively, you can use the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX
747 environment variable to ensure that Sun's as and ld are used. Consult
748 your gcc documentation for further information on the B<-B> option and
749 the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX variable.
751 =item ld.so.1: ./perl: fatal: relocation error:
753 If you get this message on SunOS or Solaris, and you're using gcc,
754 it's probably the GNU as or GNU ld problem in the previous item
755 L<"Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading">.
759 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
760 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. Perl should build
761 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
762 of your local set-up.
764 =item dlopen: stub interception failed
766 The primary cause of the 'dlopen: stub interception failed' message is
767 that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable includes a directory
768 which is a symlink to /usr/lib (such as /lib).
770 The reason this causes a problem is quite subtle. The file libdl.so.1.0
771 actually *only* contains functions which generate 'stub interception
772 failed' errors! The runtime linker intercepts links to
773 "/usr/lib/libdl.so.1.0" and links in internal implementation of those
774 functions instead. [Thanks to Tim Bunce for this explanation.]
778 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
779 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
784 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
785 If you have previously run Configure, you should I<not> reuse your old
790 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
791 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
792 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
793 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
794 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
798 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
799 on a number of other common functions too. You are probably better off
800 re-running Configure without using nm extraction (see previous item).
804 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
805 optimizier. Edit config.sh and change the line
813 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
814 with B<make depend; make>.
818 If you still can't compile successfully, try adding a C<-DCRIPPLED_CC>
819 flag. (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it compiled right!)
820 This simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that get
823 =item Missing functions
825 If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
826 other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
827 there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
832 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files without
833 some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or allocate larger
834 internal tables. You can customize the switches for each file in
835 F<cflags>. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
836 F<makefile> since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
839 =item Missing dbmclose
841 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
842 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
844 =item Warning (will try anyway): No library found for -lposix
846 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
847 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
848 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
849 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
850 systems; few systems will need all the possible libries listed.
851 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
852 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
853 they don't have. The message 'will try anyway' is intended to
854 reassure you that the process is continuing.
856 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
859 Warning (will try anyway): No library found for -lgdbm
861 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
862 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
863 extension without the -lgdbm library.
865 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
866 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
867 quite that tightly coordinated.
871 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
873 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
875 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
877 UTS may need one or more of B<-DCRIPPLED_CC>, B<-K> or B<-g>, and undef LSTAT.
879 If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.
881 Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
887 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If it
888 doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went wrong. See the
889 file F<t/README> in the F<t> subdirectory. Note that you can't run it
890 in background if this disables opening of /dev/tty.
892 If B<make test> bombs out, just B<cd> to the F<t> directory and run
893 B<TEST> by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
894 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
898 You can also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
899 comments that apply to your system.
901 B<Note>: one possible reason for errors is that some external programs
902 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
903 C<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
904 one or more of these environment variables set: C<LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
905 LC_COLLATE LANG>. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
906 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
908 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
909 C<setenv LC_ALL C> (for C shell) or <LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL> (for
910 Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry C<make
911 test>. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
912 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
913 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
914 things like: C<exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...")> or
915 C<open("...|")>. All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
918 =head1 INSTALLING PERL5
922 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
923 B<Configure>; by default this is F</usr/local/bin>. It will also try
924 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
925 page, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
926 are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
927 ignore any messages about chown not working.
929 You may see some harmless error messages and warnings from pod2man.
930 You may safely ignore them. (Yes, they should be fixed, but they
931 didn't seem important enough to warrant holding up the entire release.)
933 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
934 anything, you can run
936 ./perl installperl -n
939 B<make install> will install the following:
942 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
943 will be a link to perl.
945 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
946 a2p awk-to-perl translator
947 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
949 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
950 s2p sed-to-perl translator
951 find2perl find-to-perl translator
952 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
953 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
954 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
955 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
956 pod2latex, and to other useful formats.
959 library files in $privlib and $archlib specified to
960 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
961 man pages in the location specified to Configure, usually
962 something like /usr/local/man/man1.
963 module in the location specified to Configure, usually
964 man pages under /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3.
965 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
967 Installperl will also create the library directories $siteperl and
968 $sitearch listed in config.sh. Usually, these are something like
969 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
970 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$archname
971 where $archname is something like sun4-sunos. These directories
972 will be used for installing extensions.
974 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl.a library are also installed
975 under $archlib so that any user may later build new extensions, run the
976 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
977 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
979 Most of the documentation in the pod/ directory is also available
980 in HTML and LaTeX format. Type
982 cd pod; make html; cd ..
984 to generate the html versions, and
986 cd pod; make tex; cd ..
988 to generate the LaTeX versions.
990 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
992 Some of the perl library files need to be able to obtain information from
993 the system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
994 header files in F</usr/include> into files that can be easily interpreted
995 by perl. These files will be placed in architectural library directory
996 you specified to B<Configure>; by default this is
997 F</usr/local/lib/perl5/ARCH/VERSION>, where B<ARCH> is your architecture
998 (such as C<sun4-solaris>) and B<VERSION> is the version of perl you are
999 building (for example, C<5.003>).
1001 B<NOTE:> Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion of
1002 the header files in not perfect. You may have to hand edit some of the
1003 converted files to get them to parse correctly. For example, it breaks
1004 spectacularly on type casting and certain structures.
1006 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5.
1008 You can safely install the current version of perl5 and still run scripts
1009 under the old binaries for versions 5.003 and later ONLY. Instead of
1010 starting your script with #!/usr/local/bin/perl, just start it with
1011 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.003 (or whatever version you want to run.)
1012 If you want to retain a version of perl5 prior to perl5.003, you'll
1013 need to install the current version in a separate directory tree,
1014 since some of the architecture-independent library files have changed
1015 in incompatible ways.
1017 The architecture-dependent files are stored in a version-specific
1018 directory (such as F</usr/local/lib/perl5/sun4-sunos/5.002>) so that
1019 they are still accessible. I<Note:> perl5.000 and perl5.001 did not
1020 put their architecture-dependent libraries in a version-specific
1021 directory. They are simply in F</usr/local/lib/perl5/$archname>. If
1022 you will not be using 5.000 or 5.001, you may safely remove those
1025 The standard library files in F</usr/local/lib/perl5>
1026 should be usable by all versions of perl5.
1028 Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use with a newer
1029 version of perl. If you do run into problems, and you want to continue
1030 to use the old version of perl along with your extension, simply move
1031 those extension files to the appropriate version directory, such as
1032 F</usr/local/lib/perl/archname/5.002>. Then perl5.002 will find your
1033 files in the 5.002 directory, and newer versions of perl will find your
1034 newer extension in the site_perl directory.
1036 Some users may prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
1037 separate directories. One convenient way to do this is by
1038 using a separate prefix for each version, such as
1040 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.002
1042 and adding /opt/perl5.002/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
1043 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
1044 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
1046 B<NOTE>: Starting with 5.002_01, all functions in the perl C source
1047 code are protected by default by the prefix Perl_ (or perl_) so that
1048 you may link with third-party libraries without fear of namespace
1049 collisons. This breaks compatability with
1050 version 5.002, so once you install 5.002_01 (or higher) you will
1051 need to re-build and install all of your dynamically loadable
1052 extensions. (The standard extensions supplied with Perl are handled
1053 automatically). You can turn off this namespace protection by adding
1054 -DNO_EMBED to your ccflags variable in config.sh.
1056 In the future, we certainly hope that most extensions won't need to be
1057 recompiled for use with a newer version of perl.
1059 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
1061 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
1063 By default, the perl5 libraries go into F</usr/local/lib/perl5/>, so
1064 they don't override the perl4 libraries in F</usr/local/lib/perl/>.
1066 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
1067 F<perl4.036>. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
1068 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
1069 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
1070 the C<#!> line at the top of them by C<#!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036>
1071 (or whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod
1072 for possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
1074 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
1076 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation is
1077 in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
1078 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
1079 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied B<perldoc> script. This
1080 is sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
1084 Andy Dougherty <doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu>, borrowing I<very> heavily
1085 from the original README by Larry Wall.
1087 =head1 LAST MODIFIED