1 If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you
2 see. It is written in the POD format (see perlpod manpage) which is
3 specially designed to be readable as is.
7 perlamiga - Perl under Amiga OS
11 One can read this document in the following formats:
14 multiview perlamiga.guide
16 to list some (not all may be available simultaneously), or it may
17 be read I<as is>: either as F<README.amiga>, or F<pod/perlamiga.pod>.
19 A recent version of perl for the Amiga can be found at the Geek Gadgets
20 section of the Aminet:
22 http://www.aminet.net/~aminet/dirs/dev_gg.html
28 perlamiga - Perl under Amiga OS
34 - Starting Perl programs under AmigaOS
35 - Shortcomings of Perl under AmigaOS
37 Accessing documentation
44 - Getting the perl source
45 - Application of the patches
48 - Installing the built perl
54 =head2 Prerequisites for Compiling Perl on AmigaOS
58 =item B<Unix emulation for AmigaOS: ixemul.library>
60 You need the Unix emulation for AmigaOS, whose most important part is
61 B<ixemul.library>. For a minimum setup, get the latest versions
62 of the following packages from the Aminet archives
63 ( http://www.aminet.net/~aminet/ ):
69 Note also that this is a minimum setup; you might want to add other
70 packages of B<ADE> (the I<Amiga Developers Environment>).
72 =item B<Version of Amiga OS>
74 You need at the very least AmigaOS version 2.0. Recommended is version 3.1.
78 =head2 Starting Perl programs under AmigaOS
80 Start your Perl program F<foo> with arguments C<arg1 arg2 arg3> the
81 same way as on any other platform, by
83 perl foo arg1 arg2 arg3
85 If you want to specify perl options C<-my_opts> to the perl itself (as
86 opposed to your program), use
88 perl -my_opts foo arg1 arg2 arg3
90 Alternately, you can try to get a replacement for the system's B<Execute>
91 command that honors the #!/usr/bin/perl syntax in scripts and set the s-Bit
92 of your scripts. Then you can invoke your scripts like under UNIX with
96 (Note that having *nixish full path to perl F</usr/bin/perl> is not
97 necessary, F<perl> would be enough, but having full path would make it
98 easier to use your script under *nix.)
100 =head2 Shortcomings of Perl under AmigaOS
102 Perl under AmigaOS lacks some features of perl under UNIX because of
103 deficiencies in the UNIX-emulation, most notably:
113 some features of the UNIX filesystem regarding link count and file dates
117 inplace operation (the -i switch) without backup file
121 umask() works, but the correct permissions are only set when the file is
128 Change to the installation directory (most probably ADE:), and
129 extract the binary distribution:
131 lha -mraxe x perl-$VERSION-bin.lha
135 tar xvzpf perl-$VERSION-bin.tgz
137 (Of course you need lha or tar and gunzip for this.)
139 For installation of the Unix emulation, read the appropriate docs.
141 =head1 Accessing documentation
143 =head2 Manpages for Perl on AmigaOS
145 If you have C<man> installed on your system, and you installed perl
146 manpages, use something like this:
150 man ExtUtils.MakeMaker
152 to access documentation for different components of Perl. Start with
156 Note: You have to modify your man.conf file to search for manpages
157 in the /ade/lib/perl5/man/man3 directory, or the man pages for the
158 perl library will not be found.
160 Note that dot (F<.>) is used as a package separator for documentation
161 for packages, and as usual, sometimes you need to give the section - C<3>
162 above - to avoid shadowing by the I<less(1) manpage>.
165 =head2 Perl HTML Documentation on AmigaOS
167 If you have some WWW browser available, you can build B<HTML> docs.
168 Cd to directory with F<.pod> files, and do like this
170 cd /ade/lib/perl5/pod
173 After this you can direct your browser the file F<perl.html> in this
174 directory, and go ahead with reading docs.
176 Alternatively you may be able to get these docs prebuilt from C<CPAN>.
178 =head2 Perl GNU Info Files on AmigaOS
180 Users of C<Emacs> would appreciate it very much, especially with
181 C<CPerl> mode loaded. You need to get latest C<pod2info> from C<CPAN>,
182 or, alternately, prebuilt info pages.
184 =head2 Perl LaTeX Documentation on AmigaOS
186 Can be constructed using C<pod2latex>.
188 =head1 BUILDING PERL ON AMIGAOS
190 Here we discuss how to build Perl under AmigaOS.
192 =head2 Build Prerequisites for Perl on AmigaOS
194 You need to have the latest B<ixemul> (Unix emulation for Amiga)
197 =head2 Getting the Perl Source for AmigaOS
199 You can either get the latest perl-for-amiga source from Ninemoons
202 tar xvzpf perl-$VERSION-src.tgz
204 or get the official source from CPAN:
206 http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0
210 tar xvzpf perl-$VERSION.tar.gz
212 You will see a message about errors while extracting F<Configure>. This
213 is normal and expected. (There is a conflict with a similarly-named file
214 F<configure>, but it causes no harm.)
216 =head2 Making Perl on AmigaOS
218 Remember to use a hefty wad of stack (I use 2000000)
220 sh configure.gnu --prefix=/gg
230 =head2 Testing Perl on AmigaOS
236 Some tests will be skipped because they need the fork() function:
238 F<io/pipe.t>, F<op/fork.t>, F<lib/filehand.t>, F<lib/open2.t>, F<lib/open3.t>,
239 F<lib/io_pipe.t>, F<lib/io_sock.t>
241 =head2 Installing the built Perl on AmigaOS
249 Norbert Pueschel, pueschel@imsdd.meb.uni-bonn.de
250 Jan-Erik Karlsson, trg@privat.utfors.se