1 If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you see.
2 It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is specially
3 designed to be readable as is.
7 README.aix - Perl version 5 on IBM Unix (AIX) systems
11 This document describes various features of IBM's Unix operating
12 system (AIX) that will affect how Perl version 5 (hereafter just Perl)
13 is compiled and/or runs.
15 =head2 Compiling Perl 5 on AIX
17 For information on compilers on older versions of AIX, see L<Compiling
18 Perl 5 on older AIX versions up to 4.3.3>.
20 When compiling Perl, you must use an ANSI C compiler. AIX does not ship
21 an ANSI compliant C-compiler with AIX by default, but binary builds of
22 gcc for AIX are widely available.
24 =head2 Supported Compilers
26 Currently all versions of IBM's "xlc", "xlc_r", "cc", "cc_r" or
27 "vac" ANSI/C compiler will work for building Perl if that compiler
30 If you plan to link Perl to any module that requires thread-support,
31 like DBD::Oracle, it is better to use the _r version of the compiler.
32 This will not build a threaded Perl, but a thread-enabled Perl. See
33 also L<Threaded Perl> later on.
35 As of writing (2009-08) only the IBM XL C for AIX or XL C/C++ for AIX
36 compiler is supported by IBM on AIX 5L/6.1.
38 The following compiler versions are supported by IBM:
40 XL C and XL C/C++ V7, V8, V9, V10
42 The XL C for AIX is integrated in the XL C/C++ for AIX compiler.
44 If you choose XL C/C++ V9 you need APAR IZ35785 installed
45 otherwise the integrated SDBM_File do not compile correctly due
46 to an optimization bug. You can circumvent this problem by
47 adding -qipa to the optimization flags (-Doptimize='-O -qipa').
48 The PTF for APAR IZ35785 which solves this problem is available
49 from IBM (April 2009 PTF for XL C/C++ Enterprise Edition for AIX, V9.0).
51 Perl can be compiled with either IBM's ANSI C compiler or with gcc.
52 The former is recommended, as not only it can compile Perl with no
53 difficulty, but also can take advantage of features listed later
54 that require the use of IBM compiler-specific command-line flags.
56 If you decide to use gcc, make sure your installation is recent and
57 complete, and be sure to read the Perl INSTALL file for more gcc-specific
58 details. Please report any hoops you had to jump through to the
61 =head2 Incompatibility with AIX Toolbox lib gdbm
63 If the AIX Toolbox version of lib gdbm < 1.8.3-5 is installed on your
64 system then Perl will not work. This library contains the header files
65 /opt/freeware/include/gdbm/dbm.h|ndbm.h which conflict with the AIX
66 system versions. The lib gdbm will be automatically removed from the
67 wanted libraries if the presence of one of these two header files is
68 detected. If you want to bild Perl with GDBM support then please install
69 at leas gdbm-devel-1.8.3-5 (or higher).
71 =head2 Perl 5.10 was successfully compiled and tested on:
73 AIX Level | Compiler Level | w th | w/o th
74 --------------------------+-------------------------+------+-------
75 5.1 TL9 32 bit | XL C/C++ V7 | OK | OK
76 5.1 TL9 32 bit | gcc 3.2.2 | OK | OK
77 5.1 TL9 64 bit | XL C/C++ V7 | OK | OK
78 5.2 TL10 32 bit | XL C/C++ V8 | OK | OK
79 5.2 TL8 64 bit | VA C/C++ V6 | OK | OK
80 5.2 TL10 64 bit | XL C/C++ V8 | OK | OK
81 5.3 TL7 32 bit | XL C/C++ V9 + IZ35785 | OK | OK
82 5.3 TL7 32 bit | gcc 4.2.4 | OK | OK
83 5.3 TL7 64 bit | XL C/C++ V9 + IZ35785 | OK | OK
84 6.1 TL1 32 bit | XL C/C++ V10 | OK | OK
85 6.1 TL1 64 bit + IZ39077 | XL C/C++ V10 | OK | OK
88 w/o th = without thread
91 Successfully tested means that all "make test" runs finish with an
92 result of 100% OK. All tests were conducted with -Duseshrplib set.
94 =head2 Building Dynamic Extensions on AIX
96 Starting from Perl 5.7.2 (and consequently 5.8.x / 5.10.x) and AIX 4.3
97 or newer Perl uses the AIX native dynamic loading interface in the so
98 called runtime linking mode instead of the emulated interface that was
99 used in Perl releases 5.6.1 and earlier or, for AIX releases 4.2 and
100 earlier. This change does break backward compatibility with compiled
101 modules from earlier Perl releases. The change was made to make Perl
102 more compliant with other applications like Apache/mod_perl which are
103 using the AIX native interface. This change also enables the use of
104 C++ code with static constructors and destructors in Perl extensions,
105 which was not possible using the emulated interface.
107 It is highly recommended to use the new interface.
109 =head2 Using Large Files with Perl
111 Should yield no problems.
115 Should yield no problems with AIX 5.1 / 5.2 / 5.3 and 6.1.
117 IBM uses the AIX system Perl (V5.6.0 on AIX 5.1 and V5.8.2 on
118 AIX 5.2 / 5.3 and 6.1) for some AIX
119 system scripts. If you switch the links in /usr/bin from the
120 AIX system Perl (/usr/opt/perl5) to the newly build Perl then you
121 get the same features as with the IBM AIX system Perl if the
122 threaded options are used.
124 The threaded Perl build works also on AIX 5.1 but the IBM Perl
125 build (Perl v5.6.0) is not threaded on AIX 5.1.
129 If your AIX system is installed with 64-bit support, you can expect 64-bit
130 configurations to work. If you want to use 64-bit Perl on AIX 6.1
131 you need a APAR for a libc.a bug which affects (n)dbm_XXX functions.
132 The APAR number for this problem is IZ39077.
134 If you need more memory (larger data segment) for your Perl programs you
138 default: (or your user)
139 data = -1 (default is 262144 * 512 byte)
141 With the default setting the size is limited to 128MB.
142 The -1 removes this limit. If the "make test" fails please change
143 your /etc/security/limits as stated above.
145 =head2 Recommended Options AIX 5.1/5.2/5.3 and 6.1 (threaded/32-bit)
147 With the following options you get a threaded Perl version which
148 passes all make tests in threaded 32-bit mode, which is the default
149 configuration for the Perl builds that AIX ships with.
157 -Dprefix=/usr/opt/perl5_32
159 The -Dprefix option will install Perl in a directory parallel to the
160 IBM AIX system Perl installation.
162 =head2 Recommended Options AIX 5.1/5.2/5.3 and 6.1 (32-bit)
164 With the following options you get a Perl version which passes
165 all make tests in 32-bit mode.
172 -Dprefix=/usr/opt/perl5_32
174 The -Dprefix option will install Perl in a directory parallel to the
175 IBM AIX system Perl installation.
177 =head2 Recommended Options AIX 5.1/5.2/5.3 and 6.1 (threaded/64-bit)
179 With the following options you get a threaded Perl version which
180 passes all make tests in 64-bit mode.
182 export OBJECT_MODE=64 / setenv OBJECT_MODE 64 (depending on your shell)
191 -Dprefix=/usr/opt/perl5_64
193 =head2 Recommended Options AIX 5.1/5.2/5.3 and 6.1(64-bit)
195 With the following options you get a Perl version which passes all
196 make tests in 64-bit mode.
198 export OBJECT_MODE=64 / setenv OBJECT_MODE 64 (depending on your shell)
206 -Dprefix=/usr/opt/perl5_64
208 The -Dprefix option will install Perl in a directory parallel to the
209 IBM AIX system Perl installation.
211 If you choose gcc to compile 64-bit Perl then you need to add the
217 =head2 Compiling Perl 5 on older AIX versions up to 4.3.3
219 Due to the fact that AIX 4.3.3 reached end-of-service in December 31,
220 2003 this information is provided as is. The Perl versions prior to
221 Perl 5.8.9 could be compiled on AIX up to 4.3.3 with the following
222 settings (your mileage may vary):
224 When compiling Perl, you must use an ANSI C compiler. AIX does not ship
225 an ANSI compliant C-compiler with AIX by default, but binary builds of
226 gcc for AIX are widely available.
228 At the moment of writing, AIX supports two different native C compilers,
229 for which you have to pay: B<xlC> and B<vac>. If you decide to use either
230 of these two (which is quite a lot easier than using gcc), be sure to
231 upgrade to the latest available patch level. Currently:
233 xlC.C 3.1.4.10 or 3.6.6.0 or 4.0.2.2 or 5.0.2.9 or 6.0.0.3
234 vac.C 4.4.0.3 or 5.0.2.6 or 6.0.0.1
236 note that xlC has the OS version in the name as of version 4.0.2.0, so
237 you will find xlC.C for AIX-5.0 as package
239 xlC.aix50.rte 5.0.2.0 or 6.0.0.3
241 subversions are not the same "latest" on all OS versions. For example,
242 the latest xlC-5 on aix41 is 5.0.2.9, while on aix43, it is 5.0.2.7.
244 Perl can be compiled with either IBM's ANSI C compiler or with gcc.
245 The former is recommended, as not only can it compile Perl with no
246 difficulty, but also can take advantage of features listed later that
247 require the use of IBM compiler-specific command-line flags.
249 The IBM's compiler patch levels 5.0.0.0 and 5.0.1.0 have compiler
250 optimization bugs that affect compiling perl.c and regcomp.c,
251 respectively. If Perl's configuration detects those compiler patch
252 levels, optimization is turned off for the said source code files.
253 Upgrading to at least 5.0.2.0 is recommended.
255 If you decide to use gcc, make sure your installation is recent and
256 complete, and be sure to read the Perl INSTALL file for more gcc-specific
257 details. Please report any hoops you had to jump through to the development
262 Before installing the patches to the IBM C-compiler you need to know the
263 level of patching for the Operating System. IBM's command 'oslevel' will
264 show the base, but is not always complete (in this example oslevel shows
265 4.3.NULL, whereas the system might run most of 4.3.THREE):
269 # lslpp -l | grep 'bos.rte '
270 bos.rte 4.3.3.75 COMMITTED Base Operating System Runtime
271 bos.rte 4.3.2.0 COMMITTED Base Operating System Runtime
274 The same might happen to AIX 5.1 or other OS levels. As a side note, Perl
275 cannot be built without bos.adt.syscalls and bos.adt.libm installed
277 # lslpp -l | egrep "syscalls|libm"
278 bos.adt.libm 5.1.0.25 COMMITTED Base Application Development
279 bos.adt.syscalls 5.1.0.36 COMMITTED System Calls Application
282 =head2 Building Dynamic Extensions on AIX
284 AIX supports dynamically loadable objects as well as shared libraries.
285 Shared libraries by convention end with the suffix .a, which is a bit
286 misleading, as an archive can contain static as well as dynamic members.
287 For Perl dynamically loaded objects we use the .so suffix also used on
288 many other platforms.
290 Note that starting from Perl 5.7.2 (and consequently 5.8.0) and AIX 4.3
291 or newer Perl uses the AIX native dynamic loading interface in the so
292 called runtime linking mode instead of the emulated interface that was
293 used in Perl releases 5.6.1 and earlier or, for AIX releases 4.2 and
294 earlier. This change does break backward compatibility with compiled
295 modules from earlier Perl releases. The change was made to make Perl
296 more compliant with other applications like Apache/mod_perl which are
297 using the AIX native interface. This change also enables the use of C++
298 code with static constructors and destructors in Perl extensions, which
299 was not possible using the emulated interface.
301 =head2 The IBM ANSI C Compiler
303 All defaults for Configure can be used.
305 If you've chosen to use vac 4, be sure to run 4.4.0.3. Older versions
306 will turn up nasty later on. For vac 5 be sure to run at least 5.0.1.0,
307 but vac 5.0.2.6 or up is highly recommended. Note that since IBM has
308 removed vac 5.0.2.1 through 5.0.2.5 from the software depot, these
309 versions should be considered obsolete.
311 Here's a brief lead of how to upgrade the compiler to the latest
312 level. Of course this is subject to changes. You can only upgrade
313 versions from ftp-available updates if the first three digit groups
314 are the same (in where you can skip intermediate unlike the patches
315 in the developer snapshots of Perl), or to one version up where the
316 "base" is available. In other words, the AIX compiler patches are
319 vac.C.4.4.0.1 => vac.C.4.4.0.3 is OK (vac.C.4.4.0.2 not needed)
320 xlC.C.3.1.3.3 => xlC.C.3.1.4.10 is NOT OK (xlC.C.3.1.4.0 is not available)
322 # ftp ftp.software.ibm.com
323 Connected to service.boulder.ibm.com.
324 : welcome message ...
325 Name (ftp.software.ibm.com:merijn): anonymous
326 331 Guest login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password.
328 ... accepted login stuff
329 ftp> cd /aix/fixes/v4/
330 ftp> dir other other.ll
331 output to local-file: other.ll? y
332 200 PORT command successful.
333 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
334 226 Transfer complete.
336 output to local-file: xlc.ll? y
337 200 PORT command successful.
338 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
339 226 Transfer complete.
343 -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn system 1169432 Nov 2 17:29 other.ll
344 -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn system 29170 Nov 2 17:29 xlc.ll
346 On AIX 4.2 using xlC, we continue:
348 # lslpp -l | fgrep 'xlC.C '
349 xlC.C 3.1.4.9 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler
350 xlC.C 3.1.4.0 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler
351 # grep 'xlC.C.3.1.4.*.bff' xlc.ll
352 -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6286336 Jul 22 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.1.bff
353 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6173696 Aug 24 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.10.bff
354 -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6319104 Aug 14 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.2.bff
355 -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6316032 Oct 21 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.3.bff
356 -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6315008 Dec 20 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.4.bff
357 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6178816 Mar 28 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.5.bff
358 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6188032 May 22 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.6.bff
359 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6191104 Sep 5 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.7.bff
360 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6185984 Jan 13 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.8.bff
361 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6169600 May 27 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.9.bff
362 # wget ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/fixes/v4/xlc/xlC.C.3.1.4.10.bff
365 On AIX 4.3 using vac, we continue:
367 # lslpp -l | grep 'vac.C '
368 vac.C 5.0.2.2 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler
369 vac.C 5.0.2.0 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler
370 # grep 'vac.C.5.0.2.*.bff' other.ll
371 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 13592576 Apr 16 2001 vac.C.5.0.2.0.bff
372 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 14133248 Apr 9 2002 vac.C.5.0.2.3.bff
373 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 14173184 May 20 2002 vac.C.5.0.2.4.bff
374 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 14192640 Nov 22 2002 vac.C.5.0.2.6.bff
375 # wget ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/fixes/v4/other/vac.C.5.0.2.6.bff
378 Likewise on all other OS levels. Then execute the following command, and
381 # smit install_update
382 -> Install and Update from LATEST Available Software
383 * INPUT device / directory for software [ vac.C.5.0.2.6.bff ]
387 Follow the messages ... and you're done.
389 If you like a more web-like approach, a good start point can be
390 http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/download/downloadaz.jsp and click
391 "C for AIX", and follow the instructions.
393 =head2 The usenm option
397 cc -o miniperl ... miniperlmain.o opmini.o perl.o ... -lm -lc ...
399 causes error like this
401 ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .aintl
402 ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .copysignl
403 ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .syscall
404 ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .eaccess
405 ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .setresuid
406 ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .setresgid
407 ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .setproctitle
408 ld: 0711-345 Use the -bloadmap or -bnoquiet option to obtain more information.
414 ./Configure -Dusenm ...
416 which makes Configure to use the C<nm> tool when scanning for library
417 symbols, which usually is not done in AIX.
419 Related to this, you probably should not use the C<-r> option of
420 Configure in AIX, because that affects of how the C<nm> tool is used.
422 =head2 Using GNU's gcc for building Perl
424 Using gcc-3.x (tested with 3.0.4, 3.1, and 3.2) now works out of the box,
425 as do recent gcc-2.9 builds available directly from IBM as part of their
426 Linux compatibility packages, available here:
428 http://www.ibm.com/servers/aix/products/aixos/linux/
430 =head2 Using Large Files with Perl
432 Should yield no problems.
436 Threads seem to work OK, though at the moment not all tests pass when
437 threads are used in combination with 64-bit configurations.
439 You may get a warning when doing a threaded build:
441 "pp_sys.c", line 4640.39: 1506-280 (W) Function argument assignment between types "unsigned char*" and "const void*" is not allowed.
443 The exact line number may vary, but if the warning (W) comes from a line
446 hent = PerlSock_gethostbyaddr(addr, (Netdb_hlen_t) addrlen, addrtype);
448 in the "pp_ghostent" function, you may ignore it safely. The warning
449 is caused by the reentrant variant of gethostbyaddr() having a slightly
450 different prototype than its non-reentrant variant, but the difference
451 is not really significant here.
455 If your AIX is installed with 64-bit support, you can expect 64-bit
456 configurations to work. In combination with threads some tests might
459 =head2 AIX 4.2 and extensions using C++ with statics
461 In AIX 4.2 Perl extensions that use C++ functions that use statics
462 may have problems in that the statics are not getting initialized.
463 In newer AIX releases this has been solved by linking Perl with
464 the libC_r library, but unfortunately in AIX 4.2 the said library
465 has an obscure bug where the various functions related to time
466 (such as time() and gettimeofday()) return broken values, and
467 therefore in AIX 4.2 Perl is not linked against the libC_r.
471 H.Merijn Brand <h.m.brand@xs4all.nl>
472 Rainer Tammer <tammer@tammer.net>
476 Version 0.0.11: 18 Jan 2010