4 Copyright (c) 1989,1990,1991,1992,1993,1994 Larry Wall
7 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
8 it under the terms of either:
10 a) the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
11 Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) any
14 b) the "Artistic License" which comes with this Kit.
16 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
17 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
18 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See either
19 the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License for more details.
21 You should have received a copy of the Artistic License with this
22 Kit, in the file named "Artistic". If not, I'll be glad to provide one.
24 You should also have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
25 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
26 Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
28 For those of you that choose to use the GNU General Public License,
29 my interpretation of the GNU General Public License is that no Perl
30 script falls under the terms of the GPL unless you explicitly put
31 said script under the terms of the GPL yourself. Furthermore, any
32 object code linked with perl does not automatically fall under the
33 terms of the GPL, provided such object code only adds definitions
34 of subroutines and variables, and does not otherwise impair the
35 resulting interpreter from executing any standard Perl script. I
36 consider linking in C subroutines in this manner to be the moral
37 equivalent of defining subroutines in the Perl language itself. You
38 may sell such an object file as proprietary provided that you provide
39 or offer to provide the Perl source, as specified by the GNU General
40 Public License. (This is merely an alternate way of specifying input
41 to the program.) You may also sell a binary produced by the dumping of
42 a running Perl script that belongs to you, provided that you provide or
43 offer to provide the Perl source as specified by the GPL. (The
44 fact that a Perl interpreter and your code are in the same binary file
45 is, in this case, a form of mere aggregation.) This is my interpretation
46 of the GPL. If you still have concerns or difficulties understanding
47 my intent, feel free to contact me. Of course, the Artistic License
48 spells all this out for your protection, so you may prefer to use that.
50 --------------------------------------------------------------------------
52 Perl is a language that combines some of the features of C, sed, awk
53 and shell. See the manual page for more hype. There are also two Nutshell
54 Handbooks published by O'Reilly & Assoc. See pod/perlbook.pod
57 Please read all the directions below before you proceed any further, and
58 then follow them carefully.
60 After you have unpacked your kit, you should have all the files listed
65 1) Run Configure. This will figure out various things about your
66 system. Some things Configure will figure out for itself, other
67 things it will ask you about. If the test scripts and programs
68 run ok, the defaults will usually be right. It will then proceed to
69 make config.h, config.sh, and Makefile. You may have to explicitly
70 say sh Configure to ensure that Configure is run under sh.
71 If you're a hotshot, run Configure -d to take all the defaults,
72 edit config.sh to patch up any flaws, and then run Configure -S.
74 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run Configure -h
75 to get a listing. To compile with gcc, for example, you can run
76 Configure -Dcc=gcc, or answer 'gcc' at the cc prompt.
78 If you wish to use gcc (or another alternative compiler))
79 you should use Configure -Dcc=gcc. That way, the the hints
80 files can set appropriate defaults.
82 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
83 probably _not_ re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
84 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old.
86 By default, perl will be installed in /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}.
87 You can specify a different prefix for the default installation
88 directory, when Configure prompts you or by using something like
89 Configure -Dprefix=/whatever.
91 You can also supply a file config.over to over-ride Configure's
92 guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just before
95 You might possibly have to trim # comments from the front of Configure
96 if your sh doesn't handle them, but all other # comments will be taken
99 (If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file config_H to
100 config.h and edit the config.h to reflect your system's peculiarities.)
102 2) Glance through config.h to make sure system dependencies are correct.
103 Most of them should have been taken care of by running the Configure script.
105 If you have any additional changes to make to the C definitions, they
106 can be done in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the optimizer
107 on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for toke.c and
108 put the command optimize='-g' before the ;;. To change the C flags
109 for all the files, edit config.sh and change either $ccflags or $optimize.
113 This will look for all the includes and modify Makefile accordingly.
114 Configure will offer to do this for you.
118 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
120 If you can't compile successfully, try adding a -DCRIPPLED_CC flag.
121 (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it compiled right!)
122 This simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that
123 get indigestion easily. If that has no effect, try turning off
124 optimization. If you have missing routines, you probably need to
125 add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature that
126 Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete.
128 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files without
129 some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or allocate larger
130 internal tables. You can customize the switches for each file in
131 cflags.SH. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
132 Makefile.SH, since a default rule only takes effect in the
133 absence of a specific rule.
135 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
136 for further tips and information.
138 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
139 during the building of extensions, you should run
141 to test your version of miniperl.
143 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or
146 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
148 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
150 UTS may need one or more of -DCRIPPLED_CC, -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
152 If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.
154 Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
156 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
157 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
159 If you get duplicates upon linking for malloc et al, say -DHIDEMYMALLOC.
161 If you get duplicate function definitions (a perl function has the
162 same name as another function on your system) try -DEMBED.
164 If you get varags problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
165 correctly. When using gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define'
166 and i_varags='undef' in config.sh. The problem is usually solved
167 by running fixincludes correctly.
169 If you wish to use dynamic loading on SunOS or Solaris, and you
170 have GNU as and GNU ld installed, you may need to add -B/bin/ to
171 your $ccflags and $ldflags so that the system's versions of as
174 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
175 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. Perl should build
176 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
177 of your local set-up.
181 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made.
182 If it doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went wrong.
183 See the README in the t subdirectory. Note that you can't run it
184 in background if this disables opening of /dev/tty. If "make test"
185 bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run TEST by hand to see if
186 it makes any difference. If individual tests bomb, you can run
187 them by hand, e.g., ./perl op/groups.t
191 This will put perl into a public directory (such as
192 /usr/local/bin). It will also try to put the man pages in a
193 reasonable place. It will not nroff the man page, however. You
194 may need to be root to run make install. If you are not root, you
195 must own the directories in question and you should ignore any
196 messages about chown not working.
198 make install will install the following:
200 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
201 will be a link to perl.
203 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
204 a2p awk-to-perl translator
205 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
207 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
208 s2p sed-to-perl translator
209 find2perl find-to-perl translator
210 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
211 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
212 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
213 pod2latex, and to other useful formats.
216 library files in $privlib and $archlib specified to
217 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
218 man pages in the location specified to Configure, usually
219 something like /usr/local/man/man1.
220 module in the location specified to Configure, usually
221 man pages under /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3.
222 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
224 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl.a library are also
225 installed under $archlib so that you may later build new
226 extensions even if the Perl source is no longer available.
228 make install may also offer to install perl in a "standard" location.
230 Most of the documentation in the pod/ directory is also available
231 in HTML and LaTeX format. Type
232 cd pod; make html; cd ..
233 to generate the html versions, and
234 cd pod; make tex; cd ..
235 to generate the LaTeX versions.
237 7) Read the manual entries before running perl.
239 8) IMPORTANT! Help save the world! Communicate any problems and suggested
240 patches to me, lwall@netlabs.com (Larry Wall), so we can
241 keep the world in sync. If you have a problem, there's someone else
242 out there who either has had or will have the same problem.
244 If possible, send in patches such that the patch program will apply them.
245 Context diffs are the best, then normal diffs. Don't send ed scripts--
246 I've probably changed my copy since the version you have. It's also
247 helpful if you send the output of "uname -a".
249 Watch for perl patches in comp.lang.perl. Patches will generally be
250 in a form usable by the patch program. If you are just now bringing up
251 perl and aren't sure how many patches there are, write to me and I'll
252 send any you don't have. Your current patch level is shown in patchlevel.h.
255 Just a personal note: I want you to know that I create nice things like this
256 because it pleases the Author of my story. If this bothers you, then your
257 notion of Authorship needs some revision. But you can use perl anyway. :-)