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 When compiling Perl, you must use an ANSI C compiler. AIX does not ship
18 an ANSI compliant C-compiler with AIX by default, but binary builds of
19 gcc for AIX are widely available.
21 At the moment of writing, AIX supports two different native C compilers,
22 for which you have to pay: B<xlC> and B<vac>. If you decide to use either
23 of these two (which is quite a lot easier than using gcc), be sure to
24 upgrade to the latest available patch level. Currently:
26 xlC.C 3.1.4.8 or 3.6.6.0
27 vac.C 4.4.0.3 or 5.0.2.3
29 Perl can be compiled with either IBM's ANSI C compiler or with gcc.
30 The former is recommended, as not only can it compile Perl with no
31 difficulty, but also can take advantage of features listed later that
32 require the use of IBM compiler-specific command-line flags.
34 The IBM's compiler patch levels 5.0.0.0 and 5.0.1.0 have compiler
35 optimization bugs that affect compiling perl.c and regcomp.c,
36 respectively. If Perl's configuration detects those compiler patch
37 levels, optimization is turned off for the said source code files.
38 Upgrading to at least 5.0.2.0 is recommended.
40 If you decide to use gcc, make sure your installation is recent and
41 complete, and be sure to read the Perl README file for more gcc-specific
42 details. Please report any hoops you had to jump through to the development
47 Before installing the patches to the IBM C-compiler you need to know the
48 level of patching for the Operating System. IBM's command 'oslevel' will
49 show the base, but is not always complete:
55 # lslpp -l | grep 'bos.rte '
56 bos.rte 4.3.3.75 COMMITTED Base Operating System Runtime
57 bos.rte 4.3.2.0 COMMITTED Base Operating System Runtime
64 # lslpp -l | grep 'bos.rte '
65 bos.rte 5.1.0.25 COMMITTED Base Operating System Runtime
66 bos.rte 5.1.0.25 COMMITTED Base Operating System Runtime
68 As a side note, perl cannot be built without bos.adt.syscalls and
69 bos.adt.libm installed.
73 # lslpp -l | egrep "syscalls|libm"
74 bos.adt.libm 4.3.3.50 COMMITTED Base Application Development
75 bos.adt.syscalls 4.3.3.51 COMMITTED System Calls Application
80 # lslpp -l | egrep "syscalls|libm"
81 bos.adt.libm 5.1.0.25 COMMITTED Base Application Development
82 bos.adt.syscalls 5.1.0.25 COMMITTED System Calls Application
84 =head2 Building Dynamic Extensions on AIX
86 AIX supports dynamically loadable objects as well as shared libraries.
87 Shared libraries by convention end with the suffix .a, which is a bit
88 misleading, as an archive can contain static as well as dynamic members.
89 For perl dynamically loaded objects we use the .so suffix also used on
92 Note that starting from Perl 5.7.2 (and consequently 5.8.0) and AIX 4.3
93 or newer Perl uses the AIX native dynamic loading interface in the so
94 called runtime linking mode instead of the emulated interface that was
95 used in Perl releases 5.6.1 and earlier or, for AIX releases 4.2 and
96 earlier. This change does break backward compatibility with compiled
97 modules from earlier perl releases. The change was made to make Perl
98 more compliant with other applications like Apache/modperl which are
99 using the AIX native interface. This change also enables the use of C++
100 code with static constructors and destructors in perl extensions, which
101 was not possible using the emulated interface.
103 =head2 The IBM ANSI C Compiler
105 All defaults for Configure can be used.
107 If you've chosen to use vac 4, be sure to run 4.4.0.3. Older versions
108 will turn up nasty later on. For vac 5 be sure to run at least 5.0.1.0,
109 but vac 5.0.2.1 or up is highly recommended.
111 Here's a brief lead of how to upgrade the compiler to the latest
112 level. Of course this is subject to changes. You can only upgrade
113 versions from ftp-available updates if the first three digit groups
114 are the same (in where you can skip intermediate unlike the patches
115 in the developer snapshots of perl), or to one version up where the
116 `base' is available. In other words, the AIX compiler patches are
119 vac.C.4.4.0.1 => vac.C.4.4.0.3 is OK (vac.C.4.4.0.2 not needed)
120 xlC.C.3.1.3.3 => xlC.C.3.1.4.10 is NOT OK (xlC.C.3.1.4.0 is not available)
122 # ftp ftp.software.ibm.com
123 Connected to service.boulder.ibm.com.
124 : welcome message ...
125 Name (ftp.software.ibm.com:merijn): anonymous
126 331 Guest login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password.
128 ... accepted login stuff
129 ftp> cd /aix/fixes/v4/
130 ftp> dir other other.ll
131 output to local-file: other.ll? y
132 200 PORT command successful.
133 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
134 226 Transfer complete.
136 output to local-file: xlc.ll? y
137 200 PORT command successful.
138 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
139 226 Transfer complete.
143 -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn system 1169432 Nov 2 17:29 other.ll
144 -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn system 29170 Nov 2 17:29 xlc.ll
146 On AIX 4.2 using xlC, we continue:
148 # lslpp -l | fgrep 'xlC.C '
149 xlC.C 3.1.4.9 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler
150 xlC.C 3.1.4.0 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler
151 # grep 'xlC.C.3.1.4.*.bff' xlc.ll
152 -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6286336 Jul 22 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.1.bff
153 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6173696 Aug 24 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.10.bff
154 -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6319104 Aug 14 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.2.bff
155 -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6316032 Oct 21 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.3.bff
156 -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6315008 Dec 20 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.4.bff
157 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6178816 Mar 28 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.5.bff
158 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6188032 May 22 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.6.bff
159 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6191104 Sep 5 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.7.bff
160 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6185984 Jan 13 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.8.bff
161 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6169600 May 27 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.9.bff
162 # wget ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/fixes/v4/xlc/xlC.C.3.1.4.10.bff
165 On AIX 4.3 using vac, we continue:
167 # lslpp -l | fgrep 'vac.C '
168 vac.C 4.4.0.2 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler
169 vac.C 4.4.0.0 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler
170 # grep 'vac.C.4.4.0.*.bff' other.ll
171 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 13466624 May 26 1999 vac.C.4.4.0.1.bff
172 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 13473792 Aug 31 1999 vac.C.4.4.0.2.bff
173 -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 13480960 May 19 20:32 vac.C.4.4.0.3.bff
174 # wget ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/fixes/v4/other/vac.C.4.4.0.3.bff
177 Then execute the following command, and fill in its choices
179 # smit install_update
180 -> Install and Update from LATEST Available Software
181 * INPUT device / directory for software [ vac.C.4.4.0.3.bff ]
185 Follow the messages ... and you're done.
187 =head2 Using GNU's gcc for building perl
189 Using gcc-3.0 (tested with 3.0.4) now works out of the box, as does the
190 most recent gcc-2.9 available directly from IBM (as part of their Linux
191 compatibility packages).
193 =head2 Using Large Files with Perl
195 Should yield no problems.
199 Threads seem to work OK, though at the moment not all tests pass when
200 threads are used in combination with 64bit configurations.
204 If your AIX is installed with 64-bit support, you can expect 64bit
205 configurations to work. In combination with threads some tests might
208 =head2 AIX 4.2 and extensions using C++ with statics
210 In AIX 4.2 Perl extensions that use C++ functions that use statics
211 may have problems in that the statics are not getting initialized.
212 In newer AIX releases this has been solved by linking Perl with
213 the libC_r library, but unfortunately in AIX 4.2 the said library
214 has an obscure bug where the various functions related to time
215 (such as time() and gettimeofday()) return broken values, and
216 therefore in AIX 4.2 Perl is not linked against the libC_r.
220 H.Merijn Brand <h.m.brand@hccnet.nl>
224 Version 0.0.5: 21 May 2002