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 F<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 1.5.24 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
68 C<chmod -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 NOTE: The GDBM library only works on NTFS partitions.
142 =item * C<-ldb> (C<use DB_File>)
144 BerkeleyDB is available for Cygwin.
146 NOTE: The BerkeleyDB library only completely works on NTFS partitions
147 and db-4.3 is flawed.
149 =item * C<cygserver> (C<use IPC::SysV>)
151 A port of SysV IPC is available for Cygwin.
153 NOTE: This has B<not> been extensively tested. In particular,
154 C<d_semctl_semun> is undefined because it fails a Configure test
155 and on Win9x the I<shm*()> functions seem to hang. It also creates
156 a compile time dependency because F<perl.h> includes F<<sys/ipc.h>>
157 and F<<sys/sem.h>> (which will be required in the future when compiling
158 CPAN modules). CURRENTLY NOT SUPPORTED!
162 Included with the standard Cygwin netrelease is the inetutils package
163 which includes libutil.a.
167 =head2 Configure-time Options for Perl on Cygwin
169 The F<INSTALL> document describes several Configure-time options. Some of
170 these will work with Cygwin, others are not yet possible. Also, some of
171 these are experimental. You can either select an option when Configure
172 prompts you or you can define (undefine) symbols on the command line.
178 Undefining this symbol forces Perl to be compiled statically.
180 =item * C<-Uusemymalloc>
182 By default Perl uses the C<malloc()> included with the Perl source. If you
183 want to force Perl to build with the system C<malloc()> undefine this symbol.
185 =item * C<-Uuseperlio>
187 Undefining this symbol disables the PerlIO abstraction. PerlIO is now the
188 default; it is not recommended to disable PerlIO.
190 =item * C<-Dusemultiplicity>
192 Multiplicity is required when embedding Perl in a C program and using
193 more than one interpreter instance. This works with the Cygwin port.
195 =item * C<-Duse64bitint>
197 By default Perl uses 32 bit integers. If you want to use larger 64
198 bit integers, define this symbol.
200 =item * C<-Duselongdouble>
202 I<gcc> supports long doubles (12 bytes). However, several additional
203 long double math functions are necessary to use them within Perl
204 (I<{atan2, cos, exp, floor, fmod, frexp, isnan, log, modf, pow, sin, sqrt}l,
206 These are B<not> yet available with Cygwin.
208 =item * C<-Dusethreads>
210 POSIX threads are implemented in Cygwin, define this symbol if you want
213 =item * C<-Duselargefiles>
215 Cygwin uses 64-bit integers for internal size and position calculations,
216 this will be correctly detected and defined by Configure.
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 Errors on Cygwin
282 Errors like these are normal:
285 make: [extra.pods] Error 1 (ignored)
287 make: [extras.make] Error 1 (ignored)
291 During C<make>, I<ld2> will be created and installed in your $installbin
292 directory (where you said to put public executables). It does not
293 wait until the C<make install> process to install the I<ld2> script,
294 this is because the remainder of the C<make> refers to I<ld2> without
295 fully specifying its path and does this from multiple subdirectories.
296 The assumption is that I<$installbin> is in your current C<PATH>. If this
297 is not the case C<make> will fail at some point. If this happens,
298 just manually copy I<ld2> from the source directory to somewhere in
301 =head1 TEST ON CYGWIN
303 There are two steps to running the test suite:
305 make test 2>&1 | tee log.make-test
307 cd t; ./perl harness 2>&1 | tee ../log.harness
309 The same tests are run both times, but more information is provided when
310 running as C<./perl harness>.
312 Test results vary depending on your host system and your Cygwin
313 configuration. If a test can pass in some Cygwin setup, it is always
314 attempted and explainable test failures are documented. It is possible
315 for Perl to pass all the tests, but it is more likely that some tests
316 will fail for one of the reasons listed below.
318 =head2 File Permissions on Cygwin
320 UNIX file permissions are based on sets of mode bits for
321 {read,write,execute} for each {user,group,other}. By default Cygwin
322 only tracks the Win32 read-only attribute represented as the UNIX file
323 user write bit (files are always readable, files are executable if they
324 have a F<.{com,bat,exe}> extension or begin with C<#!>, directories are
325 always readable and executable). On WinNT with the I<ntea> C<CYGWIN>
326 setting, the additional mode bits are stored as extended file attributes.
327 On WinNT with the default I<ntsec> C<CYGWIN> setting, permissions use the
328 standard WinNT security descriptors and access control lists. Without one of
329 these options, these tests will fail (listing not updated yet):
331 Failed Test List of failed
332 ------------------------------------
342 op/stat.t 9, 20 (.tmp not an executable extension)
344 =head2 NDBM_File and ODBM_File do not work on FAT filesystems
346 Do not use NDBM_File or ODBM_File on FAT filesystem. They can be
347 built on a FAT filesystem, but many tests will fail:
349 ../ext/NDBM_File/ndbm.t 13 3328 71 59 83.10% 1-2 4 16-71
350 ../ext/ODBM_File/odbm.t 255 65280 ?? ?? % ??
351 ../lib/AnyDBM_File.t 2 512 12 2 16.67% 1 4
352 ../lib/Memoize/t/errors.t 0 139 11 5 45.45% 7-11
353 ../lib/Memoize/t/tie_ndbm.t 13 3328 4 4 100.00% 1-4
354 run/fresh_perl.t 97 1 1.03% 91
356 If you intend to run only on FAT (or if using AnyDBM_File on FAT),
357 run Configure with the -Ui_ndbm and -Ui_dbm options to prevent
358 NDBM_File and ODBM_File being built.
360 With NTFS (and no CYGWIN=nontsec), there should be no problems even if
361 perl was built on FAT.
363 =head2 C<fork()> failures in io_* tests
365 A C<fork()> failure may result in the following tests failing:
367 ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_multihomed.t
368 ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_sock.t
369 ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_unix.t
371 See comment on fork in L<Miscellaneous> below.
373 =head1 Specific features of the Cygwin port
375 =head2 Script Portability on Cygwin
377 Cygwin does an outstanding job of providing UNIX-like semantics on top of
378 Win32 systems. However, in addition to the items noted above, there are
379 some differences that you should know about. This is a very brief guide
380 to portability, more information can be found in the Cygwin documentation.
386 Cygwin pathnames can be separated by forward (F</>) or backward (F<\\>)
387 slashes. They may also begin with drive letters (F<C:>) or Universal
388 Naming Codes (F<//UNC>). DOS device names (F<aux>, F<con>, F<prn>,
389 F<com*>, F<lpt?>, F<nul>) are invalid as base filenames. However, they
390 can be used in extensions (e.g., F<hello.aux>). Names may contain all
391 printable characters except these:
395 File names are case insensitive, but case preserving. A pathname that
396 contains a backslash or drive letter is a Win32 pathname (and not subject
397 to the translations applied to POSIX style pathnames).
399 For conversion we have C<Cygwin::win_to_posix_path()> and
400 C<Cygwin::posix_to_win_path()>.
402 Pathnames may not contain Unicode characters. C<Cygwin> still uses the
403 ANSI API calls and no Unicode calls because of newlib deficiencies.
404 There's an unofficial unicode patch for cygwin at
405 F<http://www.okisoft.co.jp/esc/utf8-cygwin/>
409 When a file is opened it is in either text or binary mode. In text mode
410 a file is subject to CR/LF/Ctrl-Z translations. With Cygwin, the default
411 mode for an C<open()> is determined by the mode of the mount that underlies
412 the file. See C<Cygwin::is_binmount()>. Perl provides a C<binmode()> function
413 to set binary mode on files that otherwise would be treated as text.
414 C<sysopen()> with the C<O_TEXT> flag sets text mode on files that otherwise
415 would be treated as binary:
417 sysopen(FOO, "bar", O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TEXT)
419 C<lseek()>, C<tell()> and C<sysseek()> only work with files opened in binary
422 The text/binary issue is covered at length in the Cygwin documentation.
426 PerlIO overrides the default Cygwin Text/Binary behaviour. A file will
427 always treated as binary, regardless which mode of the mount it lives on,
428 just like it is in UNIX. So CR/LF translation needs to be requested in
429 either the C<open()> call like this:
431 open(FH, ">:crlf", "out.txt");
433 which will do conversion from LF to CR/LF on the output, or in the
434 environment settings (add this to your .bashrc):
438 which will pull in the crlf PerlIO layer which does LF -> CRLF conversion
439 on every output generated by perl.
443 The Cygwin C<stat()>, C<lstat()> and C<readlink()> functions make the F<.exe>
444 extension transparent by looking for F<foo.exe> when you ask for F<foo>
445 (unless a F<foo> also exists). Cygwin does not require a F<.exe>
446 extension, but I<gcc> adds it automatically when building a program.
447 However, when accessing an executable as a normal file (e.g., I<cp>
448 in a makefile) the F<.exe> is not transparent. The I<install> included
449 with Cygwin automatically appends a F<.exe> when necessary.
451 =item * cygwin vs. windows process ids
453 Cygwin processes have their own pid, which is different from the
454 underlying windows pid. Most posix compliant Proc functions expect
455 the cygwin pid, but several Win32::Process functions expect the
456 winpid. E.g. C<$$> is the cygwin pid of F</usr/bin/perl>, which is not
457 the winpid. Use C<Cygwin::winpid_to_pid()> and C<Cygwin::winpid_to_pid()>
458 to translate between them.
462 On WinNT C<chown()> can change a file's user and group IDs. On Win9x C<chown()>
463 is a no-op, although this is appropriate since there is no security model.
465 =item * Miscellaneous
467 File locking using the C<F_GETLK> command to C<fcntl()> is a stub that
470 Win9x can not C<rename()> an open file (although WinNT can).
472 The Cygwin C<chroot()> implementation has holes (it can not restrict file
473 access by native Win32 programs).
475 Inplace editing C<perl -i> of files doesn't work without doing a backup
476 of the file being edited C<perl -i.bak> because of windowish restrictions,
477 therefore Perl adds the suffix C<.bak> automatically if you use C<perl -i>
478 without specifying a backup extension.
480 Using C<fork()> after loading multiple dlls may fail with an internal cygwin
481 error like the following:
483 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
485 200 [main] perl 377147 sync_with_child: child -395691(0xB8) died before initialization with status code 0x1
486 1370 [main] perl 377147 sync_with_child: *** child state child loading dlls
488 Use the rebase utility to resolve the conflicting dll addresses. The
489 rebase package is included in the Cygwin netrelease. Use setup.exe from
490 F<http://www.cygwin.com/setup.exe> to install it and run rebaseall.
494 =head2 Prebuilt methods:
500 Returns the current working directory.
502 =item C<Cygwin::pid_to_winpid>
504 Translates a cygwin pid to the corresponding Windows pid (which may or
505 may not be the same).
507 =item C<Cygwin::winpid_to_pid>
509 Translates a Windows pid to the corresponding cygwin pid (if any).
511 =item C<Cygwin::win_to_posix_path>
513 Translates a Windows path to the corresponding cygwin path respecting
514 the current mount points. With a second non-null argument returns an
515 absolute path. Double-byte characters will not be translated.
517 =item C<Cygwin::posix_to_win_path>
519 Translates a cygwin path to the corresponding cygwin path respecting
520 the current mount points. With a second non-null argument returns an
521 absolute path. Double-byte characters will not be translated.
523 =item C<Cygwin::mount_table()>
525 Returns an array of [mnt_dir, mnt_fsname, mnt_type, mnt_opts].
527 perl -e 'for $i (Cygwin::mount_table) {print join(" ",@$i),"\n";}'
528 /bin c:\cygwin\bin system binmode,cygexec
529 /usr/bin c:\cygwin\bin system binmode
530 /usr/lib c:\cygwin\lib system binmode
531 / c:\cygwin system binmode
532 /cygdrive/c c: system binmode,noumount
533 /cygdrive/d d: system binmode,noumount
534 /cygdrive/e e: system binmode,noumount
536 =item C<Cygwin::mount_flags>
538 Returns the mount type and flags for a specified mount point.
539 A comma-seperated string of mntent->mnt_type (always
540 "system" or "user"), then the mntent->mnt_opts, where
541 the first is always "binmode" or "textmode".
543 system|user,binmode|textmode,exec,cygexec,cygdrive,mixed,
544 notexec,managed,nosuid,devfs,proc,noumount
546 If the argument is "/cygdrive", just the volume mount settings are returned.
548 User mounts override system mounts.
550 $ perl -e 'print Cygwin::mount_flags "/usr/bin"'
551 system,binmode,cygexec
552 $ perl -e 'print Cygwin::mount_flags "/cygdrive"'
555 =item C<Cygwin::is_binmount>
557 Returns true if the given cygwin path is binary mounted, false if the
558 path is mounted in textmode.
562 =head1 INSTALL PERL ON CYGWIN
564 This will install Perl, including I<man> pages.
566 make install 2>&1 | tee log.make-install
568 NOTE: If C<STDERR> is redirected C<make install> will B<not> prompt
569 you to install I<perl> into F</usr/bin>.
571 You may need to be I<Administrator> to run C<make install>. If you
572 are not, you must have write access to the directories in question.
574 Information on installing the Perl documentation in HTML format can be
575 found in the F<INSTALL> document.
577 =head1 MANIFEST ON CYGWIN
579 These are the files in the Perl release that contain references to Cygwin.
580 These very brief notes attempt to explain the reason for all conditional
581 code. Hopefully, keeping this up to date will allow the Cygwin port to
582 be kept as clean as possible (listing not updated yet).
588 INSTALL README.cygwin README.win32 MANIFEST
589 Changes Changes5.005 Changes5.004 Changes5.6
590 pod/perl.pod pod/perlport.pod pod/perlfaq3.pod
591 pod/perldelta.pod pod/perl5004delta.pod pod/perl56delta.pod
592 pod/perlhist.pod pod/perlmodlib.pod perl/buildtoc pod/perltoc.pod
594 =item Build, Configure, Make, Install
599 ext/IPC/SysV/hints/cygwin.pl
600 ext/NDBM_File/hints/cygwin.pl
601 ext/ODBM_File/hints/cygwin.pl
603 Configure - help finding hints from uname,
604 shared libperl required for dynamic loading
605 Makefile.SH - linklibperl
606 Porting/patchls - cygwin in port list
607 installman - man pages with :: translated to .
608 installperl - install dll/ld2/perlld, install to pods
609 makedepend.SH - uwinfix
613 t/io/tell.t - binmode
614 t/lib/b.t - ignore Cwd from os_extras
615 t/lib/glob-basic.t - Win32 directory list access differs from read mode
616 t/op/magic.t - $^X/symlink WORKAROUND, s/.exe//
617 t/op/stat.t - no /dev, skip Win32 ftCreationTime quirk
618 (cache manager sometimes preserves ctime of file
619 previously created and deleted), no -u (setuid)
620 t/lib/cygwin.t - builtin cygwin function tests
622 =item Compiled Perl Source
624 EXTERN.h - __declspec(dllimport)
625 XSUB.h - __declspec(dllexport)
626 cygwin/cygwin.c - os_extras (getcwd, spawn, and several Cygwin:: functions)
629 doio.c - win9x can not rename a file when it is open
630 pp_sys.c - do not define h_errno, pp_system with spawn
633 =item Compiled Module Source
635 ext/POSIX/POSIX.xs - tzname defined externally
636 ext/SDBM_File/sdbm/pair.c
637 - EXTCONST needs to be redefined from EXTERN.h
638 ext/SDBM_File/sdbm/sdbm.c
641 =item Perl Modules/Scripts
643 lib/Cwd.pm - hook to internal Cwd::cwd
644 lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm
645 - require MM_Cygwin.pm
646 lib/ExtUtils/MM_Cygwin.pm
647 - canonpath, cflags, manifypods, perl_archive
648 lib/File/Find.pm - on remote drives stat() always sets st_nlink to 1
649 lib/File/Spec/Cygwin.pm - case_tolerant
650 lib/File/Spec/Unix.pm - preserve //unc
651 lib/File/Temp.pm - no directory sticky bit
652 lib/perl5db.pl - use stdin not /dev/tty
653 utils/perldoc.PL - version comment
657 =head1 BUGS ON CYGWIN
659 Support for swapping real and effective user and group IDs is incomplete.
660 On WinNT Cygwin provides C<setuid()>, C<seteuid()>, C<setgid()> and C<setegid()>.
661 However, additional Cygwin calls for manipulating WinNT access tokens
662 and security contexts are required.
666 Charles Wilson <cwilson@ece.gatech.edu>,
667 Eric Fifer <egf7@columbia.edu>,
668 alexander smishlajev <als@turnhere.com>,
669 Steven Morlock <newspost@morlock.net>,
670 Sebastien Barre <Sebastien.Barre@utc.fr>,
671 Teun Burgers <burgers@ecn.nl>,
672 Gerrit P. Haase <gp@familiehaase.de>,
673 Reini Urban <rurban@cpan.org>,
674 Jan Dubois <jand@activestate.com>.
678 Last updated: 2007-08-12