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.machten - Perl version 5 on Power MachTen systems
11 This document describes how to build Perl 5 on Power MachTen systems,
12 and discusses a few wrinkles in the implementation.
14 =head2 Compiling Perl 5 on MachTen
16 To compile perl under MachTen 4.1.4 (and probably earlier versions):
23 This builds and installs a statically-linked perl; MachTen's dynamic
24 linking facilities are not adequate to support Perl's use of
25 dynamically linked libraries. (See F<hints/machten.sh> for more
28 You should have at least 32 megabytes of free memory on your
29 system before running the C<make> command.
31 For much more information on building perl -- for example, on how to
32 change the default installation directory -- see F<INSTALL>.
34 =head2 Failures during C<make test>
40 This test may fail when first run after building perl. It does not
41 fail subsequently. The cause is unknown.
43 =item pragma/warnings.t
45 Test 257 fails due to a failure to warn about attempts to read from a
46 filehandle which is a duplicate of stdout when stdout is attached to a
47 pipe. The output of the test contains a block comment which discusses
48 a different failure, not applicable to MachTen.
50 The root of the problem is that Machten does not assign a file type to
51 either end of a pipe (see L<stat>), resulting, among other things
52 in Perl's C<-p> test failing on file descriptors belonging to pipes.
53 As a result, perl becomes confused, and the test for reading from a
54 write-only file fails. I am reluctant to patch perl to get around
55 this, as it's clearly an OS bug (about which Tenon has been informed),
56 and limited in its effect on practical Perl programs.
60 =head2 Using external modules
62 If warnings are enabled with Perl's C<-w> command-line flag, you are
63 likely to see warnings when using external modules containing XS
66 Subroutine DynaLoader::dl_error redefined at /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.0/powerpc-machten/DynaLoader.pm line 93.
68 This is a harmless consequence of the static linking used for MachTen
69 perl. You can suppress the warnings by using the more modern
70 C<-Mwarnings> instead of the traditional C<-w>. (See L<perllexwarn>.)
72 =head2 Building external modules
74 To add an external module to perl, build in the normal way, which
75 is documented in L<ExtUtils::MakeMaker>, or which can be driven
76 automatically by the CPAN module (see L<CPAN>), which is part of the
77 standard distribution. If wou want to install a
78 module contains XS code (C or C++ source which compiles to object code
79 for linking with perl), you will have to replace your perl binary with
80 a new version containing the new statically-linked object module. The
81 build process tells you how to do this.
83 There is a gotcha, however, which users usually encounter immediately
84 they respond to CPAN's invitation to C<install Bundle::CPAN>. When
85 installing a I<bundle> -- a group of modules which together achieve
86 some particular purpose, the installation process for later modules in
87 the bundle tends to assume that earlier modules have been fully
88 installed and are available for use. This is not true on a
89 statically-linked system for earlier modules which contain XS code.
90 As a result the installation of the bundle fails. The work-around is
91 not to install the bundle as a one-shot operation, but instead to see
92 what modules it contains, and install these one-at-a-time by hand in
97 Dominic Dunlop <domo@computer.org>
101 Version 1.0 2000-03-22