1 If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you
2 see. It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is
3 specially designed to be readable as is.
7 README.cygwin - Perl for Cygwin
11 This document will help you configure, make, test and install Perl
12 on Cygwin. This document also describes features of Cygwin that will
13 affect how Perl behaves at runtime.
15 B<NOTE:> There are pre-built Perl packages available for Cygwin and a
16 version of Perl is provided in the normal Cygwin install. If you do
17 not need to customize the configuration, consider using one of those
21 =head1 PREREQUISITES FOR COMPILING PERL ON CYGWIN
23 =head2 Cygwin = GNU+Cygnus+Windows (Don't leave UNIX without it)
25 The Cygwin tools are ports of the popular GNU development tools for Win32
26 platforms. They run thanks to the Cygwin library which provides the UNIX
27 system calls and environment these programs expect. More information
28 about this project can be found at:
30 http://www.cygwin.com/
32 A recent net or commercial release of Cygwin is required.
34 At the time this document was last updated, Cygwin 1.3.22 was current.
37 =head2 Cygwin Configuration
39 While building Perl some changes may be necessary to your Cygwin setup so
40 that Perl builds cleanly. These changes are B<not> required for normal
43 B<NOTE:> The binaries that are built will run on all Win32 versions.
44 They do not depend on your host system (Win9x/WinME, WinNT/Win2K)
45 or your Cygwin configuration (I<ntea>, I<ntsec>, binary/text mounts).
46 The only dependencies come from hard-coded pathnames like C</usr/local>.
47 However, your host system and Cygwin configuration will affect Perl's
48 runtime behavior (see L</"TEST">).
54 Set the C<PATH> environment variable so that Configure finds the Cygwin
55 versions of programs. Any Windows directories should be removed or
56 moved to the end of your C<PATH>.
60 If you do not have I<nroff> (which is part of the I<groff> package),
61 Configure will B<not> prompt you to install I<man> pages.
65 On WinNT with either the I<ntea> or I<ntsec> C<CYGWIN> settings, directory
66 and file permissions may not be set correctly. Since the build process
67 creates directories and files, to be safe you may want to run a `C<chmod
68 -R +w *>' on the entire Perl source tree.
70 Also, it is a well known WinNT "feature" that files created by a login
71 that is a member of the I<Administrators> group will be owned by the
72 I<Administrators> group. Depending on your umask, you may find that you
73 can not write to files that you just created (because you are no longer
74 the owner). When using the I<ntsec> C<CYGWIN> setting, this is not an
75 issue because it "corrects" the ownership to what you would expect on
80 =head1 CONFIGURE PERL ON CYGWIN
82 The default options gathered by Configure with the assistance of
83 F<hints/cygwin.sh> will build a Perl that supports dynamic loading
84 (which requires a shared F<libperl.dll>).
86 This will run Configure and keep a record:
88 ./Configure 2>&1 | tee log.configure
90 If you are willing to accept all the defaults run Configure with B<-de>.
91 However, several useful customizations are available.
93 =head2 Stripping Perl Binaries on Cygwin
95 It is possible to strip the EXEs and DLLs created by the build process.
96 The resulting binaries will be significantly smaller. If you want the
97 binaries to be stripped, you can either add a B<-s> option when Configure
100 Any additional ld flags (NOT including libraries)? [none] -s
101 Any special flags to pass to gcc to use dynamic linking? [none] -s
102 Any special flags to pass to ld2 to create a dynamically loaded library?
105 or you can edit F<hints/cygwin.sh> and uncomment the relevant variables
106 near the end of the file.
108 =head2 Optional Libraries for Perl on Cygwin
110 Several Perl functions and modules depend on the existence of
111 some optional libraries. Configure will find them if they are
112 installed in one of the directories listed as being used for library
113 searches. Pre-built packages for most of these are available from
114 the Cygwin installer.
120 The crypt package distributed with Cygwin is a Linux compatible 56-bit
121 DES crypt port by Corinna Vinschen.
123 Alternatively, the crypt libraries in GNU libc have been ported to Cygwin.
125 The DES based Ultra Fast Crypt port was done by Alexey Truhan:
127 ftp://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/pc/gnuwin32/cygwin/porters/Okhapkin_Sergey/cw32crypt-dist-0.tgz
129 NOTE: There are various export restrictions on DES implementations,
130 see the glibc README for more details.
132 The MD5 port was done by Andy Piper:
134 ftp://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/pc/gnuwin32/cygwin/porters/Okhapkin_Sergey/libcrypt.tgz
136 =item * C<-lgdbm> (C<use GDBM_File>)
138 GDBM is available for Cygwin.
140 =item * C<-ldb> (C<use DB_File>)
142 BerkeleyDB is available for Cygwin. Some details can be found in
143 F<ext/DB_File/DB_File.pm>.
145 NOTE: The BerkeleyDB library only completely works on NTFS partitions.
147 =item * C<-lcygipc> (C<use IPC::SysV>)
149 A port of SysV IPC is available for Cygwin.
151 NOTE: This has B<not> been extensively tested. In particular,
152 C<d_semctl_semun> is undefined because it fails a Configure test
153 and on Win9x the I<shm*()> functions seem to hang. It also creates
154 a compile time dependency because F<perl.h> includes F<<sys/ipc.h>>
155 and F<<sys/sem.h>> (which will be required in the future when compiling
156 CPAN modules). NO LONGER SUPPORTED!
160 Included with the standard Cygwin netrelease is the inetutils package
161 which includes libutil.a.
165 =head2 Configure-time Options for Perl on Cygwin
167 The F<INSTALL> document describes several Configure-time options. Some of
168 these will work with Cygwin, others are not yet possible. Also, some of
169 these are experimental. You can either select an option when Configure
170 prompts you or you can define (undefine) symbols on the command line.
176 Undefining this symbol forces Perl to be compiled statically.
178 =item * C<-Uusemymalloc>
180 By default Perl uses the C<malloc()> included with the Perl source. If you
181 want to force Perl to build with the system C<malloc()> undefine this symbol.
183 =item * C<-Uuseperlio>
185 Undefining this symbol disables the PerlIO abstraction. PerlIO is now the
186 default; it is not recommended to disable PerlIO.
188 =item * C<-Dusemultiplicity>
190 Multiplicity is required when embedding Perl in a C program and using
191 more than one interpreter instance. This works with the Cygwin port.
193 =item * C<-Duse64bitint>
195 By default Perl uses 32 bit integers. If you want to use larger 64
196 bit integers, define this symbol. If there is trouble, check that
197 your Cygwin installation is up to date.
199 =item * C<-Duselongdouble>
201 I<gcc> supports long doubles (12 bytes). However, several additional
202 long double math functions are necessary to use them within Perl
203 (I<{atan2, cos, exp, floor, fmod, frexp, isnan, log, modf, pow, sin, sqrt}l,
205 These are B<not> yet available with Cygwin.
207 =item * C<-Dusethreads>
209 POSIX threads are implemented in Cygwin, define this symbol if you want
210 a threaded perl. If there is trouble, check that your Cygwin installation
213 =item * C<-Duselargefiles>
215 Although Win32 supports large files, Cygwin currently uses 32-bit integers
216 for internal size and position calculations.
218 =item * C<-Dmksymlinks>
220 Use this to build perl outside of the source tree. This works with Cygwin.
221 Details can be found in the F<INSTALL> document. This is the recommended
222 way to build perl from sources.
226 =head2 Suspicious Warnings on Cygwin
228 You may see some messages during Configure that seem suspicious.
234 I<ld2> is needed to build dynamic libraries, but it does not exist
235 when C<dlsym()> checking occurs (it is not created until `C<make>' runs).
236 You will see the following message:
238 Checking whether your C<dlsym()> needs a leading underscore ...
240 I can't compile and run the test program.
241 I'm guessing that dlsym doesn't need a leading underscore.
243 Since the guess is correct, this is not a problem.
245 =item * Win9x and C<d_eofnblk>
247 Win9x does not correctly report C<EOF> with a non-blocking read on a
248 closed pipe. You will see the following messages:
250 But it also returns -1 to signal EOF, so be careful!
251 WARNING: you can't distinguish between EOF and no data!
253 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
254 The recommended value for $d_eofnblk on this machine was "define"!
255 Keep the recommended value? [y]
257 At least for consistency with WinNT, you should keep the recommended
260 =item * Compiler/Preprocessor defines
262 The following error occurs because of the Cygwin C<#define> of
265 Guessing which symbols your C compiler and preprocessor define...
266 try.c:<line#>: missing binary operator
268 This failure does not seem to cause any problems. With older gcc
269 versions, "parse error" is reported instead of "missing binary
274 =head1 MAKE ON CYGWIN
276 Simply run I<make> and wait:
278 make 2>&1 | tee log.make
280 =head2 Warnings on Cygwin
282 Warnings like these are normal:
284 perl.c: In function `S_parse_body':
285 perl.c:1468: warning: implicit declaration of function `init_os_extras'
287 pp_sys.c:289: warning: `S_emulate_eaccess' defined but not used
289 perlio.c: In function `perlsio_binmode':
290 perlio.c:98: warning: implicit declaration of function `setmode'
291 perlio.c:98: warning: passing arg 1 of `Perl_PerlIO_fileno' from incompatible pointer type
293 make: [extra.pods] Error 1 (ignored)
295 make: [extras.make] Error 1 (ignored)
299 During `C<make>', I<ld2> will be created and installed in your $installbin
300 directory (where you said to put public executables). It does not
301 wait until the `C<make install>' process to install the I<ld2> script,
302 this is because the remainder of the `C<make>' refers to I<ld2> without
303 fully specifying its path and does this from multiple subdirectories.
304 The assumption is that $installbin is in your current C<PATH>. If this
305 is not the case `C<make>' will fail at some point. If this happens,
306 just manually copy I<ld2> from the source directory to somewhere in
309 =head1 TEST ON CYGWIN
311 There are two steps to running the test suite:
313 make test 2>&1 | tee log.make-test
315 cd t;./perl harness 2>&1 | tee ../log.harness
317 The same tests are run both times, but more information is provided when
318 running as `C<./perl harness>'.
320 Test results vary depending on your host system and your Cygwin
321 configuration. If a test can pass in some Cygwin setup, it is always
322 attempted and explainable test failures are documented. It is possible
323 for Perl to pass all the tests, but it is more likely that some tests
324 will fail for one of the reasons listed below.
326 =head2 File Permissions on Cygwin
328 UNIX file permissions are based on sets of mode bits for
329 {read,write,execute} for each {user,group,other}. By default Cygwin
330 only tracks the Win32 read-only attribute represented as the UNIX file
331 user write bit (files are always readable, files are executable if they
332 have a F<.{com,bat,exe}> extension or begin with C<#!>, directories are
333 always readable and executable). On WinNT with the I<ntea> C<CYGWIN>
334 setting, the additional mode bits are stored as extended file attributes.
335 On WinNT with the I<ntsec> C<CYGWIN> setting, permissions use the standard
336 WinNT security descriptors and access control lists. Without one of
337 these options, these tests will fail (listing not updated yet):
339 Failed Test List of failed
340 ------------------------------------
350 op/stat.t 9, 20 (.tmp not an executable extension)
352 =head2 NDBM_File and ODBM_File do not work on FAT filesystems
354 Do not use NDBM_File or ODBM_File on FAT filesystem. They can be
355 built on a FAT filesystem, but many tests will fail:
357 ../ext/NDBM_File/ndbm.t 13 3328 71 59 83.10% 1-2 4 16-71
358 ../ext/ODBM_File/odbm.t 255 65280 ?? ?? % ??
359 ../lib/AnyDBM_File.t 2 512 12 2 16.67% 1 4
360 ../lib/Memoize/t/errors.t 0 139 11 5 45.45% 7-11
361 ../lib/Memoize/t/tie_ndbm.t 13 3328 4 4 100.00% 1-4
362 run/fresh_perl.t 97 1 1.03% 91
364 If you intend to run only on FAT (or if using AnyDBM_File on FAT),
365 run Configure with the -Ui_ndbm and -Ui_dbm options to prevent
366 NDBM_File and ODBM_File being built.
368 With NTFS (and CYGWIN=ntsec), there should be no problems even if
369 perl was built on FAT.
371 =head2 C<fork()> failures in io_* tests
373 A C<fork()> failure may result in the following tests failing:
375 ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_multihomed.t
376 ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_sock.t
377 ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_unix.t
379 See comment on fork in L<Miscellaneous> below.
381 =head2 Script Portability on Cygwin
383 Cygwin does an outstanding job of providing UNIX-like semantics on top of
384 Win32 systems. However, in addition to the items noted above, there are
385 some differences that you should know about. This is a very brief guide
386 to portability, more information can be found in the Cygwin documentation.
392 Cygwin pathnames can be separated by forward (F</>) or backward (F<\\>)
393 slashes. They may also begin with drive letters (F<C:>) or Universal
394 Naming Codes (F<//UNC>). DOS device names (F<aux>, F<con>, F<prn>,
395 F<com*>, F<lpt?>, F<nul>) are invalid as base filenames. However, they
396 can be used in extensions (e.g., F<hello.aux>). Names may contain all
397 printable characters except these:
401 File names are case insensitive, but case preserving. A pathname that
402 contains a backslash or drive letter is a Win32 pathname (and not subject
403 to the translations applied to POSIX style pathnames).
407 When a file is opened it is in either text or binary mode. In text mode
408 a file is subject to CR/LF/Ctrl-Z translations. With Cygwin, the default
409 mode for an C<open()> is determined by the mode of the mount that underlies
410 the file. Perl provides a C<binmode()> function to set binary mode on files
411 that otherwise would be treated as text. C<sysopen()> with the C<O_TEXT>
412 flag sets text mode on files that otherwise would be treated as binary:
414 sysopen(FOO, "bar", O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TEXT)
416 C<lseek()>, C<tell()> and C<sysseek()> only work with files opened in binary
419 The text/binary issue is covered at length in the Cygwin documentation.
423 PerlIO overrides the default Cygwin Text/Binary behaviour. A file will
424 always treated as binary, regardless which mode of the mount it lives on,
425 just like it is in UNIX. So CR/LF translation needs to be requested in
426 either the C<open()> call like this:
428 open(FH, ">:crlf", "out.txt");
430 which will do conversion from LF to CR/LF on the output, or in the
431 environment settings (add this to your .bashrc):
435 which will pull in the crlf PerlIO layer which does LF -> CRLF conversion
436 on every output generated by perl.
440 The Cygwin C<stat()>, C<lstat()> and C<readlink()> functions make the F<.exe>
441 extension transparent by looking for F<foo.exe> when you ask for F<foo>
442 (unless a F<foo> also exists). Cygwin does not require a F<.exe>
443 extension, but I<gcc> adds it automatically when building a program.
444 However, when accessing an executable as a normal file (e.g., I<cp>
445 in a makefile) the F<.exe> is not transparent. The I<install> included
446 with Cygwin automatically appends a F<.exe> when necessary.
450 On WinNT C<chown()> can change a file's user and group IDs. On Win9x C<chown()>
451 is a no-op, although this is appropriate since there is no security model.
453 =item * Miscellaneous
455 File locking using the C<F_GETLK> command to C<fcntl()> is a stub that
458 Win9x can not C<rename()> an open file (although WinNT can).
460 The Cygwin C<chroot()> implementation has holes (it can not restrict file
461 access by native Win32 programs).
463 Inplace editing C<perl -i> of files doesn't work without doing a backup
464 of the file being edited C<perl -i.bak> because of windowish restrictions,
465 therefore Perl adds the suffix C<.bak> automatically if you use C<perl -i>
466 without specifying a backup extension.
468 Using C<fork()> after loading multiple dlls may fail with an internal cygwin
469 error like the following:
471 C:\CYGWIN\BIN\PERL.EXE: *** couldn't allocate memory 0x10000(4128768) for 'C:\CYGWIN\LIB\PERL5\5.6.1\CYGWIN-MULTI\AUTO\SOCKET\SOCKET.DLL' alignment, Win32 error 8
473 200 [main] perl 377147 sync_with_child: child -395691(0xB8) died before initialization with status code 0x1
474 1370 [main] perl 377147 sync_with_child: *** child state child loading dlls
476 Use the rebase utility to resolve the conflicting dll addresses. The
477 rebase package is included in the Cygwin netrelease. Use setup.exe from
478 F<http://www.cygwin.com/setup.exe> to install it and run rebaseall.
482 =head1 INSTALL PERL ON CYGWIN
484 This will install Perl, including I<man> pages.
486 make install 2>&1 | tee log.make-install
488 NOTE: If C<STDERR> is redirected `C<make install>' will B<not> prompt
489 you to install I<perl> into F</usr/bin>.
491 You may need to be I<Administrator> to run `C<make install>'. If you
492 are not, you must have write access to the directories in question.
494 Information on installing the Perl documentation in HTML format can be
495 found in the F<INSTALL> document.
497 =head1 MANIFEST ON CYGWIN
499 These are the files in the Perl release that contain references to Cygwin.
500 These very brief notes attempt to explain the reason for all conditional
501 code. Hopefully, keeping this up to date will allow the Cygwin port to
502 be kept as clean as possible (listing not updated yet).
508 INSTALL README.cygwin README.win32 MANIFEST
509 Changes Changes5.005 Changes5.004 Changes5.6
510 pod/perl.pod pod/perlport.pod pod/perlfaq3.pod
511 pod/perldelta.pod pod/perl5004delta.pod pod/perl56delta.pod
512 pod/perlhist.pod pod/perlmodlib.pod pod/buildtoc.PL pod/perltoc.pod
514 =item Build, Configure, Make, Install
519 ext/IPC/SysV/hints/cygwin.pl
520 ext/NDBM_File/hints/cygwin.pl
521 ext/ODBM_File/hints/cygwin.pl
523 Configure - help finding hints from uname,
524 shared libperl required for dynamic loading
525 Makefile.SH - linklibperl
526 Porting/patchls - cygwin in port list
527 installman - man pages with :: translated to .
528 installperl - install dll/ld2/perlld, install to pods
529 makedepend.SH - uwinfix
533 t/io/tell.t - binmode
534 t/lib/b.t - ignore Cwd from os_extras
535 t/lib/glob-basic.t - Win32 directory list access differs from read mode
536 t/op/magic.t - $^X/symlink WORKAROUND, s/.exe//
537 t/op/stat.t - no /dev, skip Win32 ftCreationTime quirk
538 (cache manager sometimes preserves ctime of file
539 previously created and deleted), no -u (setuid)
541 =item Compiled Perl Source
543 EXTERN.h - __declspec(dllimport)
544 XSUB.h - __declspec(dllexport)
545 cygwin/cygwin.c - os_extras (getcwd, spawn)
548 doio.c - win9x can not rename a file when it is open
549 pp_sys.c - do not define h_errno, pp_system with spawn
552 =item Compiled Module Source
554 ext/POSIX/POSIX.xs - tzname defined externally
555 ext/SDBM_File/sdbm/pair.c
556 - EXTCONST needs to be redefined from EXTERN.h
557 ext/SDBM_File/sdbm/sdbm.c
560 =item Perl Modules/Scripts
562 lib/Cwd.pm - hook to internal Cwd::cwd
563 lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm
564 - require MM_Cygwin.pm
565 lib/ExtUtils/MM_Cygwin.pm
566 - canonpath, cflags, manifypods, perl_archive
567 lib/File/Find.pm - on remote drives stat() always sets st_nlink to 1
568 lib/File/Spec/Unix.pm - preserve //unc
569 lib/File/Temp.pm - no directory sticky bit
570 lib/perl5db.pl - use stdin not /dev/tty
571 utils/perldoc.PL - version comment
575 =head1 BUGS ON CYGWIN
577 Support for swapping real and effective user and group IDs is incomplete.
578 On WinNT Cygwin provides C<setuid()>, C<seteuid()>, C<setgid()> and C<setegid()>.
579 However, additional Cygwin calls for manipulating WinNT access tokens
580 and security contexts are required.
584 Charles Wilson <cwilson@ece.gatech.edu>,
585 Eric Fifer <egf7@columbia.edu>,
586 alexander smishlajev <als@turnhere.com>,
587 Steven Morlock <newspost@morlock.net>,
588 Sebastien Barre <Sebastien.Barre@utc.fr>,
589 Teun Burgers <burgers@ecn.nl>,
590 Gerrit P. Haase <gp@familiehaase.de>.
594 Last updated: 2003-03-20