using the Configure command line option -Dprefix='/some/directory',
e.g.
- Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
+ sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the directories
are simplified. For example, if you use prefix=/opt/perl,
statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or by
using the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
+=head2 Extensions
+
+By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which
+appears to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build
+GDBM_File only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples
+below.) DynaLoader and Fcntl are always built by default. Configure
+does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX is always
+built by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can set the
+Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from the
+Configure command line. Similarly, the Safe extension is always built
+by default, but you can skip it by setting the Configure variable
+usesafe=false either in a hint file for from the command line.
+
+In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
+to turn off each extension:
+
+ DB_File i_db
+ DynaLoader (Must always be included)
+ Fcntl (Always included by default)
+ GDBM_File i_gdbm
+ NDBM_File i_ndbm
+ ODBM_File i_dbm
+ POSIX useposix
+ SDBM_File (Always included by default)
+ Safe usesafe
+ Socket d_socket
+
+Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
+
+ sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
+
+Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
+library.
+
+Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
+the Extensions you want.
+
+Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern Unix systems do)
+remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
+executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
+well build all the ones that will work on your system.
+
=head2 GNU-style configure
If you prefer the GNU-style B<configure> command line interface, you can
/usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.002
/usr/local/lib/perl5/
- /usr/local/lib/site_perl/archname
- /usr/local/lib/site_perl
+ /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/archname
+ /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl
and the following directories for manual pages:
Then, you can Configure and install in the usual way:
- sh ./Configure -des
+ sh Configure -des
make
make test
make install
# Set up config.over to install perl into a different directory,
# e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
- sh ./Configure -des
+ sh Configure -des
make
make test
make install
=over 4
+=item Running Configure Interactively
+
+If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
+Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
+guesses.
+
+All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
+have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler &
+flags) you can type '&-d' at the next Configure prompt and Configure
+will use the defaults from then on.
+
+If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
+config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
+instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
+
=item Hint files.
The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
=item Propagating your changes
If you later make any changes to F<config.sh>, you should propagate
-them to all the .SH files by running B<Configure -S>.
+them to all the .SH files by running B<sh Configure -S>.
=item config.over
You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride Configure's
guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just before config.sh
is created. You have to be careful with this, however, as Configure
-does no checking that your changes make sense.
+does no checking that your changes make sense. See the section on
+changing the installation directory for an example.
=item config.h
To change the C flags for all the files, edit F<config.sh>
and change either C<$ccflags> or C<$optimize>,
-and then re-run B<Configure -S ; make depend>.
+and then re-run B<sh Configure -S ; make depend>.
=item No sh.
fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
of your local set-up.
+If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
+try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
+with
+
+ sh Configure -Uusenm
+
=back
=head1 make test
./perl op/groups.t
+B<NOTE>: one possible reason for errors is that some external programs
+may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
+C<make test> exercises them. This may happen for example if you have
+one or more of these environment variables set:
+C<LC_ALL LC_CTYPE LANG>. In certain UNIXes especially the non-English
+locales are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
+If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
+C<setenv LC_ALL C> or <LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL>, for C<csh>-style and
+C<Bourne>-style shells, respectively, from the command line and then
+retry C<make test>. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken
+program that is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test
+by hand as shown above and see whether you can locate the program.
+Look for things like:
+C<exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...")> or C<open("...|")>.
+All these mean that Perl is trying to run some external program.
=head1 INSTALLING PERL5
=head1 make install
s2p sed-to-perl translator
find2perl find-to-perl translator
h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
+ perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
pod2latex, and to other useful formats.
Installperl will also create the library directories $siteperl and
$sitearch listed in config.sh. Usually, these are something like
- /usr/local/lib/site_perl/
- /usr/local/lib/site_perl/$archname
+ /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
+ /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$archname
where $archname is something like sun4-sunos. These directories
will be used for installing extensions.
The standard library files in F</usr/local/lib/perl5>
should be useable by all versions of perl5.
-Most extensions will not need to be recompiled to use with a newer
+Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use with a newer
version of perl. If you do run into problems, and you want to continue
to use the old version of perl along with your extension, simply move
those extension files to the appropriate version directory, such as
files in the 5.002 directory, and newer versions of perl will find your
newer extension in the site_perl directory.
+Some users may prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
+separate directories. One convenient way to do this is by
+using a separate prefix for each version, such as
+
+ sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.002
+
+and adding /opt/perl5.002/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
+may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
+scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
+
=head1 Coexistence with perl4
You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
Andy Dougherty <doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu>, borrowing I<very> heavily
from the original README by Larry Wall.
-18 October 1995
+=head 2 LAST MODIFIED
+
+04 January 1996