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 1.5.2 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.
148 =item * C<-lcygipc> (C<use IPC::SysV>)
150 A port of SysV IPC is available for Cygwin.
152 NOTE: This has B<not> been extensively tested. In particular,
153 C<d_semctl_semun> is undefined because it fails a Configure test
154 and on Win9x the I<shm*()> functions seem to hang. It also creates
155 a compile time dependency because F<perl.h> includes F<<sys/ipc.h>>
156 and F<<sys/sem.h>> (which will be required in the future when compiling
157 CPAN modules). CURRENTLY NOT SUPPORTED!
161 Included with the standard Cygwin netrelease is the inetutils package
162 which includes libutil.a.
166 =head2 Configure-time Options for Perl on Cygwin
168 The F<INSTALL> document describes several Configure-time options. Some of
169 these will work with Cygwin, others are not yet possible. Also, some of
170 these are experimental. You can either select an option when Configure
171 prompts you or you can define (undefine) symbols on the command line.
177 Undefining this symbol forces Perl to be compiled statically.
179 =item * C<-Uusemymalloc>
181 By default Perl uses the C<malloc()> included with the Perl source. If you
182 want to force Perl to build with the system C<malloc()> undefine this symbol.
184 =item * C<-Uuseperlio>
186 Undefining this symbol disables the PerlIO abstraction. PerlIO is now the
187 default; it is not recommended to disable PerlIO.
189 =item * C<-Dusemultiplicity>
191 Multiplicity is required when embedding Perl in a C program and using
192 more than one interpreter instance. This works with the Cygwin port.
194 =item * C<-Duse64bitint>
196 By default Perl uses 32 bit integers. If you want to use larger 64
197 bit integers, define this symbol.
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
212 =item * C<-Duselargefiles>
214 Cygwin uses 64-bit integers for internal size and position calculations,
215 this will be correctly detected and defined by Configure.
217 =item * C<-Dmksymlinks>
219 Use this to build perl outside of the source tree. This works with Cygwin.
220 Details can be found in the F<INSTALL> document. This is the recommended
221 way to build perl from sources.
225 =head2 Suspicious Warnings on Cygwin
227 You may see some messages during Configure that seem suspicious.
233 I<ld2> is needed to build dynamic libraries, but it does not exist
234 when C<dlsym()> checking occurs (it is not created until C<make> runs).
235 You will see the following message:
237 Checking whether your C<dlsym()> needs a leading underscore ...
239 I can't compile and run the test program.
240 I'm guessing that dlsym doesn't need a leading underscore.
242 Since the guess is correct, this is not a problem.
244 =item * Win9x and C<d_eofnblk>
246 Win9x does not correctly report C<EOF> with a non-blocking read on a
247 closed pipe. You will see the following messages:
249 But it also returns -1 to signal EOF, so be careful!
250 WARNING: you can't distinguish between EOF and no data!
252 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
253 The recommended value for $d_eofnblk on this machine was "define"!
254 Keep the recommended value? [y]
256 At least for consistency with WinNT, you should keep the recommended
259 =item * Compiler/Preprocessor defines
261 The following error occurs because of the Cygwin C<#define> of
264 Guessing which symbols your C compiler and preprocessor define...
265 try.c:<line#>: missing binary operator
267 This failure does not seem to cause any problems. With older gcc
268 versions, "parse error" is reported instead of "missing binary
273 =head1 MAKE ON CYGWIN
275 Simply run I<make> and wait:
277 make 2>&1 | tee log.make
279 =head2 Errors on Cygwin
281 Errors like these are normal:
284 make: [extra.pods] Error 1 (ignored)
286 make: [extras.make] Error 1 (ignored)
290 During C<make>, I<ld2> will be created and installed in your $installbin
291 directory (where you said to put public executables). It does not
292 wait until the C<make install> process to install the I<ld2> script,
293 this is because the remainder of the C<make> refers to I<ld2> without
294 fully specifying its path and does this from multiple subdirectories.
295 The assumption is that $installbin is in your current C<PATH>. If this
296 is not the case C<make> will fail at some point. If this happens,
297 just manually copy I<ld2> from the source directory to somewhere in
300 =head1 TEST ON CYGWIN
302 There are two steps to running the test suite:
304 make test 2>&1 | tee log.make-test
306 cd t;./perl harness 2>&1 | tee ../log.harness
308 The same tests are run both times, but more information is provided when
309 running as C<./perl harness>.
311 Test results vary depending on your host system and your Cygwin
312 configuration. If a test can pass in some Cygwin setup, it is always
313 attempted and explainable test failures are documented. It is possible
314 for Perl to pass all the tests, but it is more likely that some tests
315 will fail for one of the reasons listed below.
317 =head2 File Permissions on Cygwin
319 UNIX file permissions are based on sets of mode bits for
320 {read,write,execute} for each {user,group,other}. By default Cygwin
321 only tracks the Win32 read-only attribute represented as the UNIX file
322 user write bit (files are always readable, files are executable if they
323 have a F<.{com,bat,exe}> extension or begin with C<#!>, directories are
324 always readable and executable). On WinNT with the I<ntea> C<CYGWIN>
325 setting, the additional mode bits are stored as extended file attributes.
326 On WinNT with the I<ntsec> C<CYGWIN> setting, permissions use the standard
327 WinNT security descriptors and access control lists. Without one of
328 these options, these tests will fail (listing not updated yet):
330 Failed Test List of failed
331 ------------------------------------
341 op/stat.t 9, 20 (.tmp not an executable extension)
343 =head2 NDBM_File and ODBM_File do not work on FAT filesystems
345 Do not use NDBM_File or ODBM_File on FAT filesystem. They can be
346 built on a FAT filesystem, but many tests will fail:
348 ../ext/NDBM_File/ndbm.t 13 3328 71 59 83.10% 1-2 4 16-71
349 ../ext/ODBM_File/odbm.t 255 65280 ?? ?? % ??
350 ../lib/AnyDBM_File.t 2 512 12 2 16.67% 1 4
351 ../lib/Memoize/t/errors.t 0 139 11 5 45.45% 7-11
352 ../lib/Memoize/t/tie_ndbm.t 13 3328 4 4 100.00% 1-4
353 run/fresh_perl.t 97 1 1.03% 91
355 If you intend to run only on FAT (or if using AnyDBM_File on FAT),
356 run Configure with the -Ui_ndbm and -Ui_dbm options to prevent
357 NDBM_File and ODBM_File being built.
359 With NTFS (and CYGWIN=ntsec), there should be no problems even if
360 perl was built on FAT.
362 =head2 C<fork()> failures in io_* tests
364 A C<fork()> failure may result in the following tests failing:
366 ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_multihomed.t
367 ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_sock.t
368 ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_unix.t
370 See comment on fork in L<Miscellaneous> below.
372 =head1 Specific features of the Cygwin port
374 =head2 Script Portability on Cygwin
376 Cygwin does an outstanding job of providing UNIX-like semantics on top of
377 Win32 systems. However, in addition to the items noted above, there are
378 some differences that you should know about. This is a very brief guide
379 to portability, more information can be found in the Cygwin documentation.
385 Cygwin pathnames can be separated by forward (F</>) or backward (F<\\>)
386 slashes. They may also begin with drive letters (F<C:>) or Universal
387 Naming Codes (F<//UNC>). DOS device names (F<aux>, F<con>, F<prn>,
388 F<com*>, F<lpt?>, F<nul>) are invalid as base filenames. However, they
389 can be used in extensions (e.g., F<hello.aux>). Names may contain all
390 printable characters except these:
394 File names are case insensitive, but case preserving. A pathname that
395 contains a backslash or drive letter is a Win32 pathname (and not subject
396 to the translations applied to POSIX style pathnames).
400 When a file is opened it is in either text or binary mode. In text mode
401 a file is subject to CR/LF/Ctrl-Z translations. With Cygwin, the default
402 mode for an C<open()> is determined by the mode of the mount that underlies
403 the file. Perl provides a C<binmode()> function to set binary mode on files
404 that otherwise would be treated as text. C<sysopen()> with the C<O_TEXT>
405 flag sets text mode on files that otherwise would be treated as binary:
407 sysopen(FOO, "bar", O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TEXT)
409 C<lseek()>, C<tell()> and C<sysseek()> only work with files opened in binary
412 The text/binary issue is covered at length in the Cygwin documentation.
416 PerlIO overrides the default Cygwin Text/Binary behaviour. A file will
417 always treated as binary, regardless which mode of the mount it lives on,
418 just like it is in UNIX. So CR/LF translation needs to be requested in
419 either the C<open()> call like this:
421 open(FH, ">:crlf", "out.txt");
423 which will do conversion from LF to CR/LF on the output, or in the
424 environment settings (add this to your .bashrc):
428 which will pull in the crlf PerlIO layer which does LF -> CRLF conversion
429 on every output generated by perl.
433 The Cygwin C<stat()>, C<lstat()> and C<readlink()> functions make the F<.exe>
434 extension transparent by looking for F<foo.exe> when you ask for F<foo>
435 (unless a F<foo> also exists). Cygwin does not require a F<.exe>
436 extension, but I<gcc> adds it automatically when building a program.
437 However, when accessing an executable as a normal file (e.g., I<cp>
438 in a makefile) the F<.exe> is not transparent. The I<install> included
439 with Cygwin automatically appends a F<.exe> when necessary.
441 =item * cygwin vs. windows process ids
443 Cygwin processes have their own pid, which is different from the
444 underlying windows pid. Most posix compliant Proc functions expect
445 the cygwin pid, but several Win32::Process functions expect the
446 winpid. E.g. C<$$> is the cygwin pid of F</usr/bin/perl>, which is not
447 the winpid. Use C<Cygwin::winpid_to_pid()> and C<Cygwin::winpid_to_pid()>
448 to translate between them.
452 On WinNT C<chown()> can change a file's user and group IDs. On Win9x C<chown()>
453 is a no-op, although this is appropriate since there is no security model.
455 =item * Miscellaneous
457 File locking using the C<F_GETLK> command to C<fcntl()> is a stub that
460 Win9x can not C<rename()> an open file (although WinNT can).
462 The Cygwin C<chroot()> implementation has holes (it can not restrict file
463 access by native Win32 programs).
465 Inplace editing C<perl -i> of files doesn't work without doing a backup
466 of the file being edited C<perl -i.bak> because of windowish restrictions,
467 therefore Perl adds the suffix C<.bak> automatically if you use C<perl -i>
468 without specifying a backup extension.
470 Using C<fork()> after loading multiple dlls may fail with an internal cygwin
471 error like the following:
473 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
475 200 [main] perl 377147 sync_with_child: child -395691(0xB8) died before initialization with status code 0x1
476 1370 [main] perl 377147 sync_with_child: *** child state child loading dlls
478 Use the rebase utility to resolve the conflicting dll addresses. The
479 rebase package is included in the Cygwin netrelease. Use setup.exe from
480 F<http://www.cygwin.com/setup.exe> to install it and run rebaseall.
484 =head2 Prebuilt methods:
490 Returns current working directory.
492 =item C<Cygwin::pid_to_winpid>
494 Translates a cygwin pid to the corresponding Windows pid (which may or
495 may not be the same).
497 =item C<Cygwin::winpid_to_pid>
499 Translates a Windows pid to the corresponding cygwin pid (if any).
503 =head1 INSTALL PERL ON CYGWIN
505 This will install Perl, including I<man> pages.
507 make install 2>&1 | tee log.make-install
509 NOTE: If C<STDERR> is redirected C<make install> will B<not> prompt
510 you to install I<perl> into F</usr/bin>.
512 You may need to be I<Administrator> to run C<make install>. If you
513 are not, you must have write access to the directories in question.
515 Information on installing the Perl documentation in HTML format can be
516 found in the F<INSTALL> document.
518 =head1 MANIFEST ON CYGWIN
520 These are the files in the Perl release that contain references to Cygwin.
521 These very brief notes attempt to explain the reason for all conditional
522 code. Hopefully, keeping this up to date will allow the Cygwin port to
523 be kept as clean as possible (listing not updated yet).
529 INSTALL README.cygwin README.win32 MANIFEST
530 Changes Changes5.005 Changes5.004 Changes5.6
531 pod/perl.pod pod/perlport.pod pod/perlfaq3.pod
532 pod/perldelta.pod pod/perl5004delta.pod pod/perl56delta.pod
533 pod/perlhist.pod pod/perlmodlib.pod perl/buildtoc pod/perltoc.pod
535 =item Build, Configure, Make, Install
540 ext/IPC/SysV/hints/cygwin.pl
541 ext/NDBM_File/hints/cygwin.pl
542 ext/ODBM_File/hints/cygwin.pl
544 Configure - help finding hints from uname,
545 shared libperl required for dynamic loading
546 Makefile.SH - linklibperl
547 Porting/patchls - cygwin in port list
548 installman - man pages with :: translated to .
549 installperl - install dll/ld2/perlld, install to pods
550 makedepend.SH - uwinfix
554 t/io/tell.t - binmode
555 t/lib/b.t - ignore Cwd from os_extras
556 t/lib/glob-basic.t - Win32 directory list access differs from read mode
557 t/op/magic.t - $^X/symlink WORKAROUND, s/.exe//
558 t/op/stat.t - no /dev, skip Win32 ftCreationTime quirk
559 (cache manager sometimes preserves ctime of file
560 previously created and deleted), no -u (setuid)
561 t/lib/cygwin.t - builtin cygwin function tests
563 =item Compiled Perl Source
565 EXTERN.h - __declspec(dllimport)
566 XSUB.h - __declspec(dllexport)
567 cygwin/cygwin.c - os_extras (getcwd, spawn, Cygwin::winpid_to_pid,
568 Cygwin::pid_to_winpid)
571 doio.c - win9x can not rename a file when it is open
572 pp_sys.c - do not define h_errno, pp_system with spawn
575 =item Compiled Module Source
577 ext/POSIX/POSIX.xs - tzname defined externally
578 ext/SDBM_File/sdbm/pair.c
579 - EXTCONST needs to be redefined from EXTERN.h
580 ext/SDBM_File/sdbm/sdbm.c
583 =item Perl Modules/Scripts
585 lib/Cwd.pm - hook to internal Cwd::cwd
586 lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm
587 - require MM_Cygwin.pm
588 lib/ExtUtils/MM_Cygwin.pm
589 - canonpath, cflags, manifypods, perl_archive
590 lib/File/Find.pm - on remote drives stat() always sets st_nlink to 1
591 lib/File/Spec/Unix.pm - preserve //unc
592 lib/File/Temp.pm - no directory sticky bit
593 lib/perl5db.pl - use stdin not /dev/tty
594 utils/perldoc.PL - version comment
598 =head1 BUGS ON CYGWIN
600 Support for swapping real and effective user and group IDs is incomplete.
601 On WinNT Cygwin provides C<setuid()>, C<seteuid()>, C<setgid()> and C<setegid()>.
602 However, additional Cygwin calls for manipulating WinNT access tokens
603 and security contexts are required.
607 Charles Wilson <cwilson@ece.gatech.edu>,
608 Eric Fifer <egf7@columbia.edu>,
609 alexander smishlajev <als@turnhere.com>,
610 Steven Morlock <newspost@morlock.net>,
611 Sebastien Barre <Sebastien.Barre@utc.fr>,
612 Teun Burgers <burgers@ecn.nl>,
613 Gerrit P. Haase <gp@familiehaase.de>.
617 Last updated: 2005-02-11