3 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
7 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system are:
9 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
15 # You may also wish to add these:
16 (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
18 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
20 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
22 For information on non-Unix systems, see the section on
23 L<"Porting information"> below.
25 For information on what's new in this release, see the
26 pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
27 changes, see the Changes file.
31 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
32 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
33 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
34 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
36 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
38 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
40 You should probably at least skim through this entire document before
43 If you're building Perl on a non-Unix system, you should also read
44 the README file specific to your operating system, since this may
45 provide additional or different instructions for building Perl.
47 If there is a hint file for your system (in the hints/ directory) you
48 should also read that hint file for specific information for your
49 system. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh hint file.)
51 =head1 NOTE: This version is not binary compatible with Perl 5.004.
53 For Perl 5.004 it was possible to be binary compatible with 5.003.
54 Starting from Perl 5.004_50 this is no longer possible because there were
55 many deep and far-reaching changes to the language internals.
57 If you have dynamically loaded extensions that you built under perl
58 5.003 or 5.004 and the so-called 'bincompat3' mode (the default mode)
59 and that you wish to continue to use with perl 5.005, you may need to
60 reinstall the extensions. If you wish to continue to support both 5.004
61 and 5.005 on your system, you will have to move the 5.004 extensions
62 over to the 5.004 architecture-dependent library. See the discussion
63 below on L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5.">
65 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
67 In a related issue, old extensions may possibly be affected by the
68 changes in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
69 pod/perldelta.pod for a description of what's changed.
71 =head1 Space Requirements
73 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 10 MB of disk space. The
74 complete tree after completing make takes roughly 20 MB, though the
75 actual total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
76 directories need something on the order of 10 MB, though again that
77 value is system-dependent.
79 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
81 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
90 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
91 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
93 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
94 files. If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
95 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
96 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
97 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or rename it, e.g.
99 mv config.sh config.sh.old
101 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
102 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
103 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
104 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
105 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
106 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
107 probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't, presently.
108 Similarly, if you used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version
109 numbers, you will probably want to adjust them as well.
111 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. Some Linux systems
112 (such as Debian) use i386, while others may use i486 or i586. If you
113 pick up a precompiled binary, it might not use the same name.
115 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
116 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
118 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your
119 particular installation choices, then you can probably achieve the
120 same effect by using the new Policy.sh file. See the section on
121 L<"Site-wide Policy settings"> below.
125 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
126 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
127 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default
128 is almost always okay. At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d
129 and Configure will use the defaults from then on.
131 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
132 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
134 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h> to
135 get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
136 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
138 To compile with gcc, for example, you should run
140 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
142 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
143 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
145 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
146 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
148 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
149 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. You can specify a different 'prefix' for
150 the default installation directory, when Configure prompts you or by
151 using the Configure command line option -Dprefix='/some/directory',
154 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
156 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the directories
157 are simplified. For example, if you use prefix=/opt/perl,
158 then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
159 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/.
161 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is below
162 your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will attempt
165 It may seem obvious to say, but Perl is useful only when users can
166 easily find it. When possible, it's good for both /usr/bin/perl and
167 /usr/local/bin/perl to be symlinks to the actual binary. If that can't
168 be done, system administrators are strongly encouraged to put
169 (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
170 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
171 obvious and convenient place.
173 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
174 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
175 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
176 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
178 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
183 For my Solaris system, I usually use
185 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
187 =head2 GNU-style configure
189 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
190 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
192 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
194 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
197 ./configure.gnu --help
201 Cross compiling is not supported.
203 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
204 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
208 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
209 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
210 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
211 B, DynaLoader, Fcntl, IO, and attrs are always built by default.
212 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
213 is always built by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
214 set the Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from
215 the Configure command line. Similarly, the Opcode extension is always
216 built by default, but you can skip it by setting the Configure variable
217 useopcode=false either in a hint file for from the command line.
219 You can learn more about each of these extensions by consulting the
220 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
223 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
224 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
225 version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
227 In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
228 to turn off each extension:
230 B (Always included by default)
232 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
233 Fcntl (Always included by default)
235 IO (Always included by default)
239 SDBM_File (Always included by default)
243 attrs (Always included by default)
245 Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
247 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
249 Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
252 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
253 the extensions you want.
255 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley
256 DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect
257 this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with version 2.
259 If you re-use your old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
260 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
261 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
264 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern Unix systems do)
265 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
266 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
267 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
269 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
271 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
272 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
273 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
274 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
275 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
276 how to obtain the libraries.
278 Note: If your database header (.h) files are not in a
279 directory normally searched by your C compiler, then you will need to
280 include the appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by
281 Configure. If your database library (.a) files are not in a directory
282 normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to
283 include the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by
284 Configure. See the examples below.
290 =item gdbm in /usr/local
292 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
293 GDBM_File extension. This examples assumes you have gdbm.h
294 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
295 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
296 necessary steps out automatically.
298 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
299 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
301 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
304 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
305 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
308 Again, this should all happen automatically. If you want to accept the
309 defaults for all the questions and have Configure print out only terse
310 messages, then you can just run
314 and Configure should include the GDBM_File extension automatically.
316 This should actually work if you have gdbm installed in any of
317 (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu, /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
319 =item gdbm in /usr/you
321 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
322 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
323 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
324 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
325 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
326 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
327 /usr/you/lib to the list.
329 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
333 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
334 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
336 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
337 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
339 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
340 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
341 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
342 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
345 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
346 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
350 =head2 Installation Directories
352 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
353 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
354 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
356 I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
357 everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
358 process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure
359 will use the defaults from then on.
361 By default, Configure uses the following directories for
362 library files (archname is a string like sun4-sunos, determined
365 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.004
366 /usr/local/lib/perl5/
367 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/archname
368 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl
370 and the following directories for manual pages:
373 /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3
375 (Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
376 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
379 The module man pages are stuck in that strange spot so that
380 they don't collide with other man pages stored in /usr/local/man/man3,
381 and so that Perl's man pages don't hide system man pages. On some
382 systems, B<man less> would end up calling up Perl's less.pm module man
383 page, rather than the less program. (This default location will likely
384 change to /usr/local/man/man3 in a future release of perl.)
386 Note: Many users prefer to store the module man pages in
387 /usr/local/man/man3. You can do this from the command line with
389 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/man/man3
391 Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
393 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
395 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
396 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you Configure with
397 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the defaults are
399 /opt/perl/lib/archname/5.004
401 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/archname
402 /opt/perl/lib/site_perl
407 The perl executable will search the libraries in the order given
410 The directories site_perl and site_perl/archname are empty, but are
411 intended to be used for installing local or site-wide extensions. Perl
412 will automatically look in these directories.
414 In order to support using things like #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.004 after
415 a later version is released, architecture-dependent libraries are
416 stored in a version-specific directory, such as
417 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.004/.
419 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
422 =head2 Changing the installation directory
424 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
425 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
426 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
427 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
428 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
429 packages may also wish to install perl into a different directory and
430 use that management software to move perl to its final destination.
431 This section describes how to do this. Someday, Configure may support
432 an option -Dinstallprefix=/foo to simplify this.
434 Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You
435 can edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to
436 /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local/wherever. Or, you can automate this
437 process by placing the following lines in a file config.over before you
438 run Configure (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice):
440 installprefix=/tmp/perl5
441 test -d $installprefix || mkdir $installprefix
442 test -d $installprefix/bin || mkdir $installprefix/bin
443 installarchlib=`echo $installarchlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
444 installbin=`echo $installbin | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
445 installman1dir=`echo $installman1dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
446 installman3dir=`echo $installman3dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
447 installprivlib=`echo $installprivlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
448 installscript=`echo $installscript | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
449 installsitelib=`echo $installsitelib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
450 installsitearch=`echo $installsitearch | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
452 Then, you can Configure and install in the usual way:
459 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
460 extensions, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
461 follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with
464 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
466 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
467 convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
468 installed on multiple systems. Here's one way to do that:
470 # Set up config.over to install perl into a different directory,
471 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
477 # Edit lib/<archname>/<version>/Config.pm to change all the
478 # install* variables back to reflect where everything will
479 # really be installed.
480 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
481 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
482 cd /usr/local # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
483 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
485 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
487 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
488 answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact
489 person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another
490 system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file
491 to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate
492 hint file for your system.
494 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
499 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
501 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
503 =head2 Configure-time Options
505 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
506 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
507 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
508 some of the main things you can change.
510 =head2 Installing perl under different names
512 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
513 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
514 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
516 make install PERLNAME=myperl
520 On some platforms, perl5.005 can be compiled to use threads. To
521 enable this, read the file README.threads, and then try
523 sh Configure -Dusethreads
525 Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command
526 line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
528 The default is to compile without thread support.
530 =head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
532 Previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in
533 stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl allow alternate IO
534 mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but the stdio mechanism is still
535 the default and is the only supported mechanism.
537 This PerlIO abstraction can be enabled either on the Configure command
540 sh Configure -Duseperlio
542 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
544 If you choose to use the PerlIO abstraction layer, there are two
545 (experimental) possibilities for the underlying IO calls. These have been
546 tested to some extent on some platforms, but are not guaranteed to work
553 AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance to stdio.h in many
554 cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline" modules. Sfio
555 currently only builds on a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports.
556 Because the data structures are completely different from stdio, perl
557 extension modules or external libraries may not work. This
558 configuration exists to allow these issues to be worked on.
560 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
561 A (fairly old) version of sfio is in CPAN, and work is in progress to make
562 it more easily buildable by adding Configure support.
564 You select this option by
566 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
568 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
569 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
572 Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails
573 to detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent).
574 Apparently, this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux
577 You can test if you have this problem by trying the following shell
578 script. (You may have to add some extra cflags and libraries. A
579 portable version of this may eventually make its way into Configure.)
584 main() { printf("42\n"); }
586 cc -o try try.c -lsfio
588 if test X$val = X42; then
589 echo "Your sfio looks ok"
591 echo "Your sfio has the exit problem."
594 If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to your sfio sources
595 and correct iffe's guess about atexit (or whatever is appropriate for
598 There also might be a more recent release of Sfio that fixes your
603 Normal stdio IO, but with all IO going through calls to the PerlIO
604 abstraction layer. This configuration can be used to check that perl and
605 extension modules have been correctly converted to use the PerlIO
608 This configuration should work on all platforms (but might not).
610 You select this option via:
612 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Uusesfio
614 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure does not
615 detect sfio, then this will be the default suggested by Configure.
619 =head2 Building a shared libperl.so Perl library
621 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
622 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
623 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
626 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
627 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
628 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
629 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
630 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
631 can share the same library.
633 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
634 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
635 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
638 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
639 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
640 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
643 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
644 libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
645 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
646 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
647 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
648 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
650 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
651 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
653 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
655 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
657 To actually build perl, you must add the current working directory to your
658 LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable before running make. You can do
661 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
663 for Bourne-style shells, or
665 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
667 for Csh-style shells. You *MUST* do this before running make.
668 Folks running NeXT OPENSTEP must substitute DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
669 LD_LIBRARY_PATH above.
671 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
672 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
673 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
674 install a standard Perl 5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
675 try to build Perl 5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
676 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
677 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
678 libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is
679 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
680 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
681 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
682 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't. On Digital Unix, you can
683 override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the _RLD_ROOT environment variable
684 to point to the perl build directory.
686 The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different
687 directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING
688 version of perl. You can do this by changing all the *archlib*
689 variables in config.sh, namely archlib, archlib_exp, and
690 installarchlib, to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
694 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed, so
695 perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
696 the malloc function on your system.
698 The perl source is shipped with a version of malloc that is very fast
699 but somewhat wasteful of space. On the other hand, your system's
700 malloc() function may be a bit slower but also a bit more frugal.
702 For many uses, speed is probably the most important consideration, so
703 the default behavior (for most systems) is to use the malloc supplied
704 with perl. However, if you will be running very large applications
705 (e.g. Tk or PDL) or if your system already has an excellent malloc, or
706 if you are experiencing difficulties with extensions that use
707 third-party libraries that call malloc, then you might wish to use
708 your system's malloc. (Or, you might wish to explore the experimental
709 malloc flags discussed below.)
711 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
713 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
715 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
717 =head2 Malloc Performance Flags
719 If you are using Perl's malloc, you may add one or
720 more of the following items to your cflags config.sh variable
721 to change its behavior in potentially useful ways. You can find out
722 more about these flags by reading the malloc.c source.
723 In a future version of perl, these might be enabled by default.
727 =item -DPERL_EMERGENCY_SBRK
729 If PERL_EMERGENCY_SBRK is defined, running out of memory need not be a
730 fatal error: a memory pool can allocated by assigning to the special
731 variable $^M. See perlvar(1) for more details.
735 If PACK_MALLOC is defined, malloc.c uses a slightly different
736 algorithm for small allocations (up to 64 bytes long). Such small
737 allocations are quite common in typical Perl scripts.
739 The expected memory savings (with 8-byte alignment in $alignbytes) is
740 about 20% for typical Perl usage. The expected slowdown due to the
741 additional malloc overhead is in fractions of a percent. (It is hard
742 to measure because of the effect of the saved memory on speed).
744 =item -DTWO_POT_OPTIMIZE
746 If TWO_POT_OPTIMIZE is defined, malloc.c uses a slightly different
747 algorithm for large allocations that are close to a power of two
748 (starting with 16K). Such allocations are typical for big hashes and
749 special-purpose scripts, especially image processing. If you will be
750 manipulating very large blocks with sizes close to powers of two, it
751 might be wise to define this macro.
753 The expected saving of memory is 0-100% (100% in applications which
754 require most memory in such 2**n chunks). The expected slowdown is
759 =head2 Building a debugging perl
761 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
762 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
763 you probably want to do
765 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
767 This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
768 to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
769 executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
770 cc -g2. Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for your
771 system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags variable in
772 config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's internal
773 state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by
774 default if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to
775 reuse your old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the
776 optimize and ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes
777 as shown in L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
779 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
780 it's convenient to have both.
782 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
783 versions of perl under L<Building a shared libperl.so Perl library>.
785 =head2 Other Compiler Flags
787 For most users, all of the Configure defaults are fine. However,
788 you can change a number of factors in the way perl is built
789 by adding appropriate -D directives to your ccflags variable in
792 For example, you can replace the rand() and srand() functions in the
793 perl source by any other random number generator by a trick such as the
796 sh Configure -Dccflags='-Drand=random -Dsrand=srandom'
798 or by adding -Drand=random and -Dsrand=srandom to your ccflags
799 at the appropriate Configure prompt. (Note: Although this worked for
800 me, it might not work for you if your system's header files give
801 different prototypes for rand() and random() or srand() and srandom().)
803 You should also run Configure interactively to verify that a hint file
804 doesn't inadvertently override your ccflags setting. (Hints files
805 shouldn't do that, but some might.)
807 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
811 =item Running Configure Interactively
813 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
814 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
817 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
818 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
819 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
820 will use the defaults from then on.
822 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
823 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
824 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
828 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
829 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
830 will offer to use that hint file.
832 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
833 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint
834 file for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an
837 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
839 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
840 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
841 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
844 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
845 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
846 Keep the recommended value? [y]
848 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
849 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
852 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
853 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
854 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
857 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
858 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
859 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
860 Now, Configure will find your gdbm library and will issue a message:
862 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
863 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
864 Keep the previous value? [y]
866 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
867 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
868 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
870 =item Changing Compilers
872 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
873 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
874 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
875 with the options you want to use.
877 This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
878 gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
880 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
882 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
883 them to all the .SH files by running
887 You will then have to rebuild by running
894 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride Configure's
895 guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just before config.sh
896 is created. You have to be careful with this, however, as Configure
897 does no checking that your changes make sense. See the section on
898 L<"Changing the installation directory"> for an example.
902 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
903 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
904 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
906 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
907 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
912 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
913 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
914 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
915 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
916 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
917 lost the next time you run Configure.
919 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh
920 and change either $ccflags or $optimize,
928 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file Porting/config_H
929 to config.h and edit the config.h to reflect your system's peculiarities.
930 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
933 =item Porting information
935 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
936 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
937 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
940 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
941 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports for current information on ports to
942 various other operating systems.
948 This will look for all the includes.
949 The output is stored in makefile. The only difference between
950 Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at the bottom of
951 makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
952 makefile, not Makefile since the Unix make command reads
953 makefile first. (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in
954 a different file. Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh
957 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
962 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
964 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
965 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
966 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help, you can
967 send a message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
968 perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
969 See L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
975 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
976 for further tips and information.
980 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
981 during the building of extensions, you should run
985 to test your version of miniperl.
989 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try
990 unsetting them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang
991 while running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C
992 locale. See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales
993 and the whole L<Locale problems> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
994 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
996 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
997 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1000 are supported and installed on your system.
1001 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1005 =item malloc duplicates
1007 If you get duplicates upon linking for malloc et al, add -DEMBEDMYMALLOC
1008 to your ccflags variable in config.sh.
1012 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1013 correctly. When using gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define'
1014 and i_varargs='undef' in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by
1015 running fixincludes correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't
1016 forget to propagate your changes (see
1017 L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1018 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1022 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1023 numbers will vary in different versions of perl):
1025 util.c: In function `Perl_croak':
1026 util.c:962: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1027 proto.h:45: prototype declaration
1029 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1030 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1032 =item Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading
1034 If you have problems with dynamic loading using gcc on SunOS or
1035 Solaris, and you are using GNU as and GNU ld, you may need to add
1036 -B/bin/ (for SunOS) or -B/usr/ccs/bin/ (for Solaris) to your
1037 $ccflags, $ldflags, and $lddlflags so that the system's versions of as
1038 and ld are used. Note that the trailing '/' is required.
1039 Alternatively, you can use the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX
1040 environment variable to ensure that Sun's as and ld are used. Consult
1041 your gcc documentation for further information on the -B option and
1042 the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX variable.
1044 One convenient way to ensure you are not using GNU as and ld is to
1045 invoke Configure with
1047 sh Configure -Dcc='gcc -B/usr/ccs/bin/'
1049 for Solaris systems. For a SunOS system, you must use -B/bin/
1052 Alternatively, recent versions of GNU ld reportedly work if you
1053 include C<-Wl,-export-dynamic> in the ccdlflags variable in
1056 =item ld.so.1: ./perl: fatal: relocation error:
1058 If you get this message on SunOS or Solaris, and you're using gcc,
1059 it's probably the GNU as or GNU ld problem in the previous item
1060 L<"Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading">.
1062 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1064 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1065 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1066 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1067 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1068 of your local set-up.
1070 =item dlopen: stub interception failed
1072 The primary cause of the 'dlopen: stub interception failed' message is
1073 that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable includes a directory
1074 which is a symlink to /usr/lib (such as /lib).
1076 The reason this causes a problem is quite subtle. The file libdl.so.1.0
1077 actually *only* contains functions which generate 'stub interception
1078 failed' errors! The runtime linker intercepts links to
1079 "/usr/lib/libdl.so.1.0" and links in internal implementation of those
1080 functions instead. [Thanks to Tim Bunce for this explanation.]
1084 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1085 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1088 sh Configure -Uusenm
1090 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1091 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1096 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1097 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1098 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1099 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1100 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1104 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1105 on a number of other common functions too. You are probably better off
1106 re-running Configure without using nm extraction (see previous item).
1110 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1111 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1112 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous items
1113 on L<"vsprintf"> and L<"nm extraction">.
1115 =item __inet_* errors
1117 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1118 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1119 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1120 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1121 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1122 newer version of BIND. If you can't, you can either link with the
1123 updated resolver library provided with BIND 8.1 or rename
1124 /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and test process to
1129 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1130 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1138 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1139 with B<make depend; make>.
1143 If you still can't compile successfully, try adding a -DCRIPPLED_CC
1144 flag. (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it compiled right!)
1145 This simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that get
1148 =item Missing functions
1150 If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
1151 other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
1152 there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
1157 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1158 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1159 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1160 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1161 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1164 =item Missing dbmclose
1166 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1167 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1169 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1171 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1172 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1173 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1174 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1175 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1176 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1177 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1178 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1179 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1180 process is continuing.
1182 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1185 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1187 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1188 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1189 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1191 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1192 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1193 quite that tightly coordinated.
1195 =item sh: ar: not found
1197 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1198 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1199 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1200 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1203 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1205 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1206 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1207 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1211 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1213 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1215 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1217 UTS may need one or more of -DCRIPPLED_CC, -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1219 If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.
1221 Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
1227 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made (you
1228 should run plain 'make' before 'make test' otherwise you won't have a
1229 complete build). If 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful"
1230 then something went wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1232 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1233 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1234 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1236 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1238 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1239 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1240 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1244 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1245 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1249 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1250 complicated constructs).
1252 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1253 comments that apply to your system.
1259 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1260 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1261 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1262 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1263 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1264 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1266 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1272 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1274 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1275 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1276 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1277 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1278 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1279 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1284 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1285 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
1286 Specifically, in perl5.004_64, tests 74 and 78 have been reported to
1287 fail on some systems. On my SparcStation IPC with 8 MB of RAM, test 78
1288 will fail if the system is running any other significant tasks at the
1291 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1293 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
1295 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1296 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1297 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1298 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1300 You may also be able to reduce perl's memory usage by using some of
1301 the ideas described above in L<"Malloc Performance Flags">.
1307 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1308 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
1309 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
1310 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
1311 are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
1312 ignore any messages about chown not working.
1314 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
1315 anything, you can run
1317 ./perl installperl -n
1318 ./perl installman -n
1320 make install will install the following:
1323 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
1324 will be a link to perl.
1326 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
1327 a2p awk-to-perl translator
1328 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
1330 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
1331 s2p sed-to-perl translator
1332 find2perl find-to-perl translator
1333 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
1334 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
1335 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
1336 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
1337 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
1338 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
1339 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
1342 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
1344 library files in $privlib and $archlib specified to
1345 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
1346 man pages in the location specified to Configure, usually
1347 something like /usr/local/man/man1.
1348 module in the location specified to Configure, usually
1349 man pages under /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3.
1350 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
1352 Installperl will also create the library directories $siteperl and
1353 $sitearch listed in config.sh. Usually, these are something like
1354 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
1355 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$archname
1356 where $archname is something like sun4-sunos. These directories
1357 will be used for installing extensions.
1359 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl.a library are also installed
1360 under $archlib so that any user may later build new extensions, run the
1361 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
1362 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
1364 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
1366 WARNING: The upgrade from 5.004_0x to 5.005 is going to be a bit
1367 tricky. See L<"Upgrading from 5.004 to 5.005"> below.
1369 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
1370 5.004_04) to another similar version (e.g. 5.004_05) without re-compiling
1371 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
1372 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
1373 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
1374 with 5.004_04, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
1375 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
1376 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.00404.
1378 (If you are upgrading from 5.002 or earlier, beware that some of the
1379 standard library files have changed in incompatible ways, so you are
1380 probably better off starting with a fresh installation.)
1382 The standard library files in /usr/local/lib/perl5 should be usable by
1383 all versions of perl5 after 5.002. An exception is the diagnostics.pm
1384 module. Since that module uses the /usr/local/lib/perl5/pod/perldiag.pod
1385 documentation file, the C<use diagnostics;> pragma and the splain script
1386 will only identify and explain any warnings or errors that the most
1387 recently-installed version of perl can generate. Usually, this is not
1390 Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use
1391 with a newer version of perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
1392 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
1394 The directories searched by version 5.004_05 will be
1396 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.00405
1397 /usr/local/lib/perl5/
1398 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/archname
1399 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl
1401 while the directories searched by version 5.004_04 are
1403 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.00404
1404 /usr/local/lib/perl5/
1405 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/archname
1406 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl
1408 When you install an add-on extension, it gets installed into
1409 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/archname (if it is architecture-specific.)
1410 This directory is deliberately NOT version-specific so that both 5.004_04
1411 and 5.004_05 can use the extension.
1413 However, if you do run into problems, and you want to continue to
1414 use the old version of perl along with your extension, simply move
1415 those extension files to the appropriate version directory, such as
1416 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.00404. Then use your newer version of
1417 perl to rebuild and re-install the extension into site_perl. This way,
1418 Perl 5.004_04 will find your files in the 5.00404 directory, and
1419 newer versions of perl will find your newer extension in the site_perl
1422 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
1424 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
1425 separate directories. One convenient way to do this is by
1426 using a separate prefix for each version, such as
1428 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.004
1430 and adding /opt/perl5.004/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
1431 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
1432 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
1434 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
1435 (e.g. 5.004 for all 5.004_0x versions), but change directory with
1438 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
1439 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
1440 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
1443 =head2 Upgrading from 5.004 to 5.005
1445 Extensions compiled with versions of perl prior to 5.004_50 will need
1446 to be recompiled to be used with 5.004_50 and later.
1448 If you wish to continue using those extensions under 5.004_04, for
1449 example, then you need to move those extensions from their current
1450 directories, which are something like
1452 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
1453 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/archname
1455 to the version-specific directory such as
1457 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.00404
1461 Once you have moved the 5.00404 versions of the extensions out of the
1462 way, you may recompile and reinstall with 5.005.
1464 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
1466 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
1468 By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
1469 they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
1471 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
1472 perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
1473 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
1474 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
1475 the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036
1476 (or whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod
1477 for possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
1479 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
1481 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from
1482 the system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
1483 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
1484 by perl. These files will be placed in the architectural library directory
1485 you specified to Configure; by default this is
1486 /usr/local/lib/perl5/ARCH/VERSION, where ARCH is your architecture
1487 (such as sun4-solaris) and VERSION is the version of perl you are
1488 building (for example, 5.004).
1490 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the
1491 conversion of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have
1492 to hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse
1493 correctly. For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and
1496 =head1 installhtml --help
1498 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
1499 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
1500 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
1502 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
1507 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
1509 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
1510 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
1511 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
1512 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
1513 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
1516 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
1517 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
1518 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
1519 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
1520 (and would welcome patches for them).
1522 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
1523 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
1525 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
1527 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
1528 available in TeX format. Type
1530 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
1532 =head1 Reporting Problems
1534 If you have difficulty building perl, and none of the advice in this
1535 file helps, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant
1536 manual pages on your system doesn't help either, then you should send a
1537 message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
1538 perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
1540 Please include the output of the ./myconfig shell script
1541 that comes with the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the
1542 perlbug program that comes with the perl distribution,
1543 but you need to have perl compiled and installed before you can use it.
1545 You might also find helpful information in the Porting
1546 directory of the perl distribution.
1548 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
1550 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation is
1551 in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
1552 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
1553 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This
1554 is sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
1556 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
1557 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory
1558 and running (either):
1560 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
1561 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
1563 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
1564 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
1567 Note that you must have performed the installation already before
1568 running the above, since the script collects the installed files to
1569 generate the documentation.
1573 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu ,
1574 borrowing very heavily from the original README by Larry Wall,
1575 with lots of helpful feedback and additions from the
1576 perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
1578 If you have problems or questions, please see L<"Reporting Problems">
1581 =head1 LAST MODIFIED
1583 $Id: INSTALL,v 1.34 1998/04/23 18:19:41 doughera Released $