------------- Version 5.002 ------------- Summary of user-visible Configure and build changes since 5.001: Yet more enhancements and fixes have been made to the Configure and build process for perl. Most of these will not be visible to the ordinary user--they just make the process more robust and likely to work on a wider range of platforms. This is a brief summary of the most important changes: Include 5.000 - 5.001 upgrage notes :-) (see below). You might want to read through them as well as these notes. Install documentation for perl modules and pod2* translators. You can now view perl module documentation with either your system's man(1) program or with the supplied perldoc script. Support Linux ELF dynamic loading. Many hint file updates. Upgrade Traps and Pitfalls: Since a lot has changed in the build process, you are probably best off starting with a fresh copy of the perl5.002 sources. In particular, your 5.000 or 5.001 config.sh will contain several variables that are no longer needed. Further, improvements in the Configure tests may mean that some of the answers will be different than they were in previous versions, and which answer to keep can be difficult to sort out. Therefore, you are probably better off ignoring your old config.sh, as in the following: make distclean # (if you've built perl before) sh Configure [whatever options you like] make depend make make test ------------- Version 5.001 ------------- Summary of user-visible Configure and build changes since 5.000: A large number of enhancements and fixes have been made to the Configure and build process for perl. Most of these will not be visible to the ordinary user--they just make the process more robust and likely to work on a wider range of platforms. This is a brief summary of the most important changes. Configure changes: New and improved Configure command line options. -O now overrides config.sh settings. -D options can now include spaces, if protected in quotes (e.g. -Dcc='gcc -posix'). Type Configure -h for a full listing of options. Users can now turn on the defaults for the rest of Configure by typing &-d at any Configure prompt. This is useful if you just want to change one or two answers. Support on (non-Sun) SVR4 systems for dynamic loading and shared libperl.so Numerous new or updated hints files: PowerUnix, aix 3.x and 4.x, bsd386, convexos, cxux, DEC OSF, Esix, FreeBSD, HP-UX (especially if you're using the bundled compiler), irix 4.x, 5.x, and 6.x, Linux, MPE/IX, NeXT 3.0 and 3.2, Solaris, SVR4, Ultrix (especially 4.3), and Unicos. Improved generation of a suitable name for architecture-dependent library files. NOTE: This may differ from the name you had from your 5.000 installation. Many many portability enhancements and fixes. Build process: The process for building extensions has been extensively revised. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for complete documentation. Basically, with just a simple Makefile.PL (such as the one generated by h2xs), you can now build an extension from anywhere on your system, even if you've deleted the perl source. Improved build/install documentation in README. A little. Improved dynamic loading on HP-UX. Support dynamic loading on SVR4. Installperl now gets the version correct :-) Installperl now saves the perl *.h files and the libperl.a library in your architecture-dependent library directory so that you can later build extensions without having to re-install the perl source. Include x2p/a2p.c generated by byacc from x2p/a2p.y. Many many portability fixes. Upgrade Traps and Pitfalls: Since a lot has changed in the build process, you are probably best off starting with a fresh copy of the perl5.000 sources. In particular, your 5.000 config.sh will contain several variables that are no longer needed. Further, improvements in the Configure tests may mean that some of the answers will be different than they were in 5.000, and which answer to keep can be difficult to sort out. Therefore, you are probably better off ignoring your old config.sh. One big change is that architecture-dependent library files may well be stored in a different location in 5.001. This is because the default name used in the 5.000 release was not sufficiently specific to distinguish incompatible architectures. The relevant variable is $archlib in config.sh. Before you run ``make install'' you should rename your old $archlib. Thus if your $archlib for version 5.000 was /usr/local/lib/perl5/foo, and your new value for 5.001 is /usr/local/lib/perl5/foo-bar, then you should mv /usr/local/lib/perl5/foo /usr/local/lib/perl5/foo-bar before running ``make install''. Alternatively, you could override Configure's default guess for $archlib either by sh Configure -Darchname='foo', or by answering 'foo' when prompted by Configure for the architecture name. The following is the sequence of steps to upgrade to 5.001: cd perl5.000 make realclean rm config.sh sh Configure make depend make make test make install