4 Copyright (c) 1989,1990, Larry Wall
6 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
7 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
8 the Free Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option)
11 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
12 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
13 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
14 GNU General Public License for more details.
16 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
17 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
18 Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
20 My interpretation of the GNU General Public License is that no Perl
21 script falls under the terms of the License unless you explicitly put
22 said script under the terms of the License yourself. Furthermore, any
23 object code linked with uperl.o does not automatically fall under the
24 terms of the License, provided such object code only adds definitions
25 of subroutines and variables, and does not otherwise impair the
26 resulting interpreter from executing any standard Perl script. I
27 consider linking in C subroutines in this manner to be the moral
28 equivalent of defining subroutines in the Perl language itself. You
29 may sell such an object file as proprietary provided that you provide
30 or offer to provide the Perl source, as specified by the GNU General
31 Public License. (This is merely an alternate way of specifying input
32 to the program.) You may also sell a binary produced by the dumping of
33 a running Perl script that belongs to you, provided that you provide or
34 offer to provide the Perl source as specified by the License. (The
35 fact that a Perl interpreter and your code are in the same binary file
36 is, in this case, a form of mere aggregation.) This is my interpretation
37 of the License. If you still have concerns or difficulties understanding
38 my intent, feel free to contact me.
40 --------------------------------------------------------------------------
42 Perl is a language that combines some of the features of C, sed, awk and shell.
43 See the manual page for more hype.
45 Perl will probably not run on machines with a small address space.
47 Please read all the directions below before you proceed any further, and
48 then follow them carefully.
50 After you have unpacked your kit, you should have all the files listed
55 1) Run Configure. This will figure out various things about your system.
56 Some things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will
57 ask you about. It will then proceed to make config.h, config.sh, and
60 You might possibly have to trim # comments from the front of Configure
61 if your sh doesn't handle them, but all other # comments will be taken
64 (If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file config.H to
65 config.h and edit the config.h to reflect your system's peculiarities.)
67 2) Glance through config.h to make sure system dependencies are correct.
68 Most of them should have been taken care of by running the Configure script.
70 If you have any additional changes to make to the C definitions, they
71 can be done in the Makefile, or in config.h. Bear in mind that they will
72 get undone next time you run Configure.
76 This will look for all the includes and modify Makefile accordingly.
77 Configure will offer to do this for you.
81 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
83 If you can't compile successfully, try adding a -DCRIPPLED_CC flag.
84 (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it compiled right!)
85 This simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that
86 get indigestion easily. If that has no effect, try turning off
87 optimization. If you have missing routines, you probably need to
88 add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature that
89 Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete.
91 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files without
92 some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or allocate larger
93 internal tables. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
94 Makefile.SH, since a default rule only takes effect in the
95 absence of a specific rule.
97 The 3b2 needs to turn off -O.
98 AIX/RT may need a -a switch and -DCRIPPLED_CC.
99 SUNOS 4.0.[12] needs #define fputs(str,fp) fprintf(fp,"%s",str) in perl.h
100 SGI machines may need -Ddouble="long float".
101 Ultrix (2.3) may need to hand assemble teval.s with a -J switch.
102 Ultrix on MIPS machines may need -DLANGUAGE_C.
103 MIPS machines may need to turn off -O on perly.c and tperly.c.
104 SCO Xenix may need -m25000 for yacc.
105 Xenix 386 needs -Sm10000 for yacc.
106 Genix needs to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
107 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
108 A/UX may need -ZP -DPOSIX, and -g if big cc is used.
109 FPS machines may need -J and -DBADSWITCH.
110 If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC or -DBADSWITCH or both.
111 Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef ODBM & NDBM.
112 C's that don't try to restore registers on longjmp() may need -DJMPCLOBBER.
113 (Try this if you get random glitches.)
117 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made.
118 If it doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went wrong.
119 See the README in the t subdirectory. Note that you can't run it
120 in background if this disables opening of /dev/tty. If "make test"
121 bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run TEST by hand to see if
122 it makes any difference.
126 This will put perl into a public directory (such as /usr/local/bin).
127 It will also try to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not
128 nroff the man page, however. You may need to be root to do this. If
129 you are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
130 ignore any messages about chown not working.
132 7) Read the manual entry before running perl.
134 8) IMPORTANT! Help save the world! Communicate any problems and suggested
135 patches to me, lwall@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov (Larry Wall), so we can
136 keep the world in sync. If you have a problem, there's someone else
137 out there who either has had or will have the same problem.
139 If possible, send in patches such that the patch program will apply them.
140 Context diffs are the best, then normal diffs. Don't send ed scripts--
141 I've probably changed my copy since the version you have.
143 Watch for perl patches in comp.lang.perl. Patches will generally be
144 in a form usable by the patch program. If you are just now bringing up
145 perl and aren't sure how many patches there are, write to me and I'll
146 send any you don't have. Your current patch level is shown in patchlevel.h.
149 Just a personal note: I want you to know that I create nice things like this
150 because it pleases the Author of my story. If this bothers you, then your
151 notion of Authorship needs some revision. But you can use perl anyway. :-)