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 1.3.6 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. GDBM's ndbm/dbm compatibility feature
139 also makes C<NDBM_File> and C<ODBM_File> possible (although they add
142 NOTE: The ndbm/dbm emulations only completely work on NTFS partitions.
144 =item * C<-ldb> (C<use DB_File>)
146 BerkeleyDB is available for Cygwin. Some details can be found in
147 F<ext/DB_File/DB_File.pm>.
149 NOTE: The BerkeleyDB library only completely works on NTFS partitions.
151 =item * C<-lcygipc> (C<use IPC::SysV>)
153 A port of SysV IPC is available for Cygwin.
155 NOTE: This has B<not> been extensively tested. In particular,
156 C<d_semctl_semun> is undefined because it fails a Configure test
157 and on Win9x the I<shm*()> functions seem to hang. It also creates
158 a compile time dependency because F<perl.h> includes F<<sys/ipc.h>>
159 and F<<sys/sem.h>> (which will be required in the future when compiling
164 =head2 Configure-time Options for Perl on Cygwin
166 The F<INSTALL> document describes several Configure-time options. Some of
167 these will work with Cygwin, others are not yet possible. Also, some of
168 these are experimental. You can either select an option when Configure
169 prompts you or you can define (undefine) symbols on the command line.
175 Undefining this symbol forces Perl to be compiled statically.
177 =item * C<-Uusemymalloc>
179 By default Perl uses the malloc() included with the Perl source. If you
180 want to force Perl to build with the system malloc() undefine this symbol.
182 =item * C<-Uuseperlio>
184 Undefining this symbol disables the PerlIO abstraction, which is now the
187 =item * C<-Dusemultiplicity>
189 Multiplicity is required when embedding Perl in a C program and using
190 more than one interpreter instance. This works with the Cygwin port.
192 =item * C<-Duse64bitint>
194 By default Perl uses 32 bit integers. If you want to use larger 64
195 bit integers, define this symbol. If there is trouble, check that
196 your Cygwin installation is up to date.
198 =item * C<-Duselongdouble>
200 I<gcc> supports long doubles (12 bytes). However, several additional
201 long double math functions are necessary to use them within Perl
202 (I<{atan2,cos,exp,floor,fmod,frexp,isnan,log,modf,pow,sin,sqrt}l,strtold>).
203 These are B<not> yet available with Cygwin.
205 =item * C<-Dusethreads>
207 POSIX threads are B<not> yet implemented in Cygwin.
209 =item * C<-Duselargefiles>
211 Although Win32 supports large files, Cygwin currently uses 32-bit integers
212 for internal size and position calculations.
216 =head2 Suspicious Warnings on Cygwin
218 You may see some messages during Configure that seem suspicious.
224 I<ld2> is needed to build dynamic libraries, but it does not exist
225 when dlsym() checking occurs (it is not created until `C<make>' runs).
226 You will see the following message:
228 Checking whether your dlsym() needs a leading underscore ...
230 I can't compile and run the test program.
231 I'm guessing that dlsym doesn't need a leading underscore.
233 Since the guess is correct, this is not a problem.
235 =item * Win9x and C<d_eofnblk>
237 Win9x does not correctly report C<EOF> with a non-blocking read on a
238 closed pipe. You will see the following messages:
240 But it also returns -1 to signal EOF, so be careful!
241 WARNING: you can't distinguish between EOF and no data!
243 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
244 The recommended value for $d_eofnblk on this machine was "define"!
245 Keep the recommended value? [y]
247 At least for consistency with WinNT, you should keep the recommended
250 =item * Compiler/Preprocessor defines
252 The following error occurs because of the Cygwin C<#define> of
255 Guessing which symbols your C compiler and preprocessor define...
256 try.c:<line#>: parse error
258 This failure does not seem to cause any problems.
262 =head1 MAKE ON CYGWIN
264 Simply run I<make> and wait:
266 make 2>&1 | tee log.make
268 =head2 Warnings on Cygwin
270 Warnings like these are normal:
272 warning: overriding commands for target <file>
273 warning: ignoring old commands for target <file>
275 dllwrap: no export definition file provided
276 dllwrap: creating one, but that may not be what you want
280 During `C<make>', I<ld2> will be created and installed in your $installbin
281 directory (where you said to put public executables). It does not
282 wait until the `C<make install>' process to install the I<ld2> script,
283 this is because the remainder of the `C<make>' refers to I<ld2> without
284 fully specifying its path and does this from multiple subdirectories.
285 The assumption is that $installbin is in your current C<PATH>. If this
286 is not the case `C<make>' will fail at some point. If this happens,
287 just manually copy I<ld2> from the source directory to somewhere in
290 =head1 TEST ON CYGWIN
292 There are two steps to running the test suite:
294 make test 2>&1 | tee log.make-test
296 cd t;./perl harness 2>&1 | tee ../log.harness
298 The same tests are run both times, but more information is provided when
299 running as `C<./perl harness>'.
301 Test results vary depending on your host system and your Cygwin
302 configuration. If a test can pass in some Cygwin setup, it is always
303 attempted and explainable test failures are documented. It is possible
304 for Perl to pass all the tests, but it is more likely that some tests
305 will fail for one of the reasons listed below.
307 =head2 File Permissions on Cygwin
309 UNIX file permissions are based on sets of mode bits for
310 {read,write,execute} for each {user,group,other}. By default Cygwin
311 only tracks the Win32 read-only attribute represented as the UNIX file
312 user write bit (files are always readable, files are executable if they
313 have a F<.{com,bat,exe}> extension or begin with C<#!>, directories are
314 always readable and executable). On WinNT with the I<ntea> C<CYGWIN>
315 setting, the additional mode bits are stored as extended file attributes.
316 On WinNT with the I<ntsec> C<CYGWIN> setting, permissions use the standard
317 WinNT security descriptors and access control lists. Without one of
318 these options, these tests will fail:
320 Failed Test List of failed
321 ------------------------------------
331 op/stat.t 9, 20 (.tmp not an executable extension)
333 =head2 Script Portability on Cygwin
335 Cygwin does an outstanding job of providing UNIX-like semantics on top of
336 Win32 systems. However, in addition to the items noted above, there are
337 some differences that you should know about. This is a very brief guide
338 to portability, more information can be found in the Cygwin documentation.
344 Cygwin pathnames can be separated by forward (F</>) or backward (F<\>)
345 slashes. They may also begin with drive letters (F<C:>) or Universal
346 Naming Codes (F<//UNC>). DOS device names (F<aux>, F<con>, F<prn>,
347 F<com*>, F<lpt?>, F<nul>) are invalid as base filenames. However, they
348 can be used in extensions (e.g., F<hello.aux>). Names may contain all
349 printable characters except these:
353 File names are case insensitive, but case preserving. A pathname that
354 contains a backslash or drive letter is a Win32 pathname (and not subject
355 to the translations applied to POSIX style pathnames).
359 When a file is opened it is in either text or binary mode. In text mode
360 a file is subject to CR/LF/Ctrl-Z translations. With Cygwin, the default
361 mode for an open() is determined by the mode of the mount that underlies
362 the file. Perl provides a binmode() function to set binary mode on files
363 that otherwise would be treated as text. sysopen() with the C<O_TEXT>
364 flag sets text mode on files that otherwise would be treated as binary:
366 sysopen(FOO, "bar", O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TEXT)
368 lseek(), tell() and sysseek() only work with files opened in binary mode.
370 The text/binary issue is covered at length in the Cygwin documentation.
374 The Cygwin stat(), lstat() and readlink() functions make the F<.exe>
375 extension transparent by looking for F<foo.exe> when you ask for F<foo>
376 (unless a F<foo> also exists). Cygwin does not require a F<.exe>
377 extension, but I<gcc> adds it automatically when building a program.
378 However, when accessing an executable as a normal file (e.g., I<cp>
379 in a makefile) the F<.exe> is not transparent. The I<install> included
380 with Cygwin automatically appends a F<.exe> when necessary.
384 On WinNT chown() can change a file's user and group IDs. On Win9x chown()
385 is a no-op, although this is appropriate since there is no security model.
387 =item * Miscellaneous
389 File locking using the C<F_GETLK> command to fcntl() is a stub that
392 Win9x can not rename() an open file (although WinNT can).
394 The Cygwin chroot() implementation has holes (it can not restrict file
395 access by native Win32 programs).
399 =head1 INSTALL PERL ON CYGWIN
401 This will install Perl, including I<man> pages.
403 make install | tee log.make-install
405 NOTE: If C<STDERR> is redirected `C<make install>' will B<not> prompt
406 you to install I<perl> into F</usr/bin>.
408 You may need to be I<Administrator> to run `C<make install>'. If you
409 are not, you must have write access to the directories in question.
411 Information on installing the Perl documentation in HTML format can be
412 found in the F<INSTALL> document.
414 =head1 MANIFEST ON CYGWIN
416 These are the files in the Perl release that contain references to Cygwin.
417 These very brief notes attempt to explain the reason for all conditional
418 code. Hopefully, keeping this up to date will allow the Cygwin port to
419 be kept as clean as possible.
425 INSTALL README.cygwin README.win32 MANIFEST
426 Changes Changes5.005 Changes5.004 Changes5.6
427 pod/perl.pod pod/perlport.pod pod/perlfaq3.pod
428 pod/perldelta.pod pod/perl5004delta.pod pod/perl56delta.pod
429 pod/perlhist.pod pod/perlmodlib.pod pod/buildtoc.PL pod/perltoc.pod
431 =item Build, Configure, Make, Install
436 ext/IPC/SysV/hints/cygwin.pl
437 ext/NDBM_File/hints/cygwin.pl
438 ext/ODBM_File/hints/cygwin.pl
440 Configure - help finding hints from uname,
441 shared libperl required for dynamic loading
442 Makefile.SH - linklibperl
443 Porting/patchls - cygwin in port list
444 installman - man pages with :: translated to .
445 installperl - install dll/ld2/perlld, install to pods
446 makedepend.SH - uwinfix
450 t/io/tell.t - binmode
451 t/lib/b.t - ignore Cwd from os_extras
452 t/lib/glob-basic.t - Win32 directory list access differs from read mode
453 t/op/magic.t - $^X/symlink WORKAROUND, s/.exe//
454 t/op/stat.t - no /dev, skip Win32 ftCreationTime quirk
455 (cache manager sometimes preserves ctime of file
456 previously created and deleted), no -u (setuid)
458 =item Compiled Perl Source
460 EXTERN.h - __declspec(dllimport)
461 XSUB.h - __declspec(dllexport)
462 cygwin/cygwin.c - os_extras (getcwd, spawn)
465 doio.c - win9x can not rename a file when it is open
466 pp_sys.c - do not define h_errno, pp_system with spawn
469 =item Compiled Module Source
471 ext/POSIX/POSIX.xs - tzname defined externally
472 ext/SDBM_File/sdbm/pair.c
473 - EXTCONST needs to be redefined from EXTERN.h
474 ext/SDBM_File/sdbm/sdbm.c
477 =item Perl Modules/Scripts
479 lib/Cwd.pm - hook to internal Cwd::cwd
480 lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm
481 - require MM_Cygwin.pm
482 lib/ExtUtils/MM_Cygwin.pm
483 - canonpath, cflags, manifypods, perl_archive
484 lib/File/Find.pm - on remote drives stat() always sets st_nlink to 1
485 lib/File/Spec/Unix.pm - preserve //unc
486 lib/File/Temp.pm - no directory sticky bit
487 lib/perl5db.pl - use stdin not /dev/tty
488 utils/perldoc.PL - version comment
492 =head1 BUGS ON CYGWIN
494 When I<make> starts, it warns about overriding commands for F<perlmain.o>.
496 `C<make clean>' does not remove library F<.def> or F<.exe.stackdump>
499 The I<ld2> script contains references to the source directory. You should
500 change these to $installbin after `C<make install>'.
502 Support for swapping real and effective user and group IDs is incomplete.
503 On WinNT Cygwin provides setuid(), seteuid(), setgid() and setegid().
504 However, additional Cygwin calls for manipulating WinNT access tokens
505 and security contexts are required.
507 When building DLLs, `C<dllwrap --export-all-symbols>' is used to export
508 global symbols. It might be better to generate an explicit F<.def> file
509 (see F<makedef.pl>). Also, DLLs can now be build with `C<gcc -shared>'.
513 Charles Wilson <cwilson@ece.gatech.edu>,
514 Eric Fifer <egf7@columbia.edu>,
515 alexander smishlajev <als@turnhere.com>,
516 Steven Morlock <newspost@morlock.net>,
517 Sebastien Barre <Sebastien.Barre@utc.fr>,
518 Teun Burgers <burgers@ecn.nl>.
522 Last updated: 9 November 2000