First, make sure you have an up-to-date version of Perl. If you
didn't get your Perl source from CPAN, check the latest version at
http://www.cpan.org/src/. Perl uses a version scheme where even-numbered
-subreleases (like 5.6.x and 5.8.x) are stable maintenance releases and
+subreleases (like 5.8.x and 5.10.x) are stable maintenance releases and
odd-numbered subreleases (like 5.7.x and 5.9.x) are unstable
development releases. Development releases should not be used in
production environments. Fixes and new features are first carefully
# You may also wish to add these:
(cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
(installhtml --help)
- (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
+ (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
or you can use some of the Configure options described below.
L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
For information on what's new in this release, see the
-pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
+pod/perl5100delta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
changes, see the Changes file.
=head1 DESCRIPTION
=head2 Changes and Incompatibilities
-Please see pod/perldelta.pod for a description of the changes and
+Please see pod/perl5100delta.pod for a description of the changes and
potential incompatibilities introduced with this release. A few of
the most important issues are listed below, but you should refer
-to pod/perldelta.pod for more detailed information.
+to pod/perl5100delta.pod for more detailed information.
-=head3 WARNING: This version is not binary compatible with releases of
-Perl prior to 5.9.0.
+B<WARNING:> This version is not binary compatible with prior releases of Perl.
If you have built extensions (i.e. modules that include C code)
using an earlier version of Perl, you will need to rebuild and reinstall
On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the changes
in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
-pod/perldelta.pod for a description of what's changed. See your
+pod/perl5100delta.pod for a description of what's changed. See your
installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly incomplete)
list of locally installed modules. Also see CPAN::autobundle for one
way to make a "bundle" of your currently installed modules.
-=head2 Space Requirements
-
-The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 60 MB of disk space.
-After completing make, it takes up roughly 100 MB, though the actual
-total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
-directories need something on the order of 50 MB, though again that
-value is quite system-dependent.
-
=head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
=over 4
-=item gcc
+=item C compiler
-To compile with gcc you should run
+To compile with gcc, if it's not the default compiler on your
+system, you should run
sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
-This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
+This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or any another alternative
compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
=item Installation prefix
For example, here's how to add a couple of extra flags to C compiler
invocations:
- sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_EXTERNAL_GLOB -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC"
+ sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_EXTERNAL_GLOB -DNO_HASH_SEED"
To clarify, those ccflags values are not Configure options; if passed to
Configure directly, they won't do anything useful (that will define a config.sh
fits. To get a fixed upper limit, you should compile Perl with
PERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE defined to be the number of bytes you want. One
way to do this is to run Configure with
-C<-Accflags=-DPERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE=65536>
+C<-Accflags=-DPERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE=65536>.
-=head3 Large file support.
+=head3 Large file support
Since Perl 5.6.0, Perl has supported large files (files larger than
2 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
using some extension, the components you are connecting to must also
be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
-will happen. One popular extension suffering from this ailment is the
-Apache extension mod_perl.
+will happen.
There's also one known limitation with the current large files
implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer formats
like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
-=head3 64 bit support.
+=head3 64 bit support
-If your platform does not have run natively at 64 bits, but can
-simulate them with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>,
+If your platform does not run natively at 64 bits, but can simulate
+them with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>,
you can build a perl that uses 64 bits.
There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
aware.
-Natively 64-bit systems like Alpha and Cray need neither -Duse64bitint
-nor -Duse64bitall.
-
- NOTE: 64-bit support is still experimental on most platforms.
- Existing support only covers the LP64 data model. In particular, the
- LLP64 data model is not yet supported. 64-bit libraries and system
- APIs on many platforms have not stabilized--your mileage may vary.
+Natively 64-bit systems need neither -Duse64bitint nor -Duse64bitall.
=head3 Long doubles
You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
and the long double support.
-=head3 Selecting File IO mechanisms
-
-Executive summary: as of Perl 5.8, you should use the default "PerlIO"
-as the IO mechanism unless you have a good reason not to.
-
-In more detail: previous versions of perl used the standard IO
-mechanisms as defined in stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl
-introduced alternate IO mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but up
-until and including Perl 5.6, the stdio mechanism was still the default
-and the only supported mechanism.
-
-Starting from Perl 5.8, the default mechanism is to use the PerlIO
-abstraction, because it allows better control of I/O mechanisms,
-instead of having to work with (often, work around) vendors' I/O
-implementations.
-
-This PerlIO abstraction can be (but again, unless you know what you
-are doing, should not be) disabled either on the Configure command
-line with
-
- sh Configure -Uuseperlio
-
-or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
-
=head3 Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Hashes
In Perls 5.8.0 and earlier it was easy to create degenerate hashes.
B<Perl has never guaranteed any ordering of the hash keys>, and the
ordering has already changed several times during the lifetime of Perl
5. Also, the ordering of hash keys has always been, and continues to
-be, affected by the insertion order. It is likely that Perl 5.10 and
-Perl 6 will randomise all hashes. Note that because of this
+be, affected by the insertion order. Note that because of this
randomisation for example the Data::Dumper results will be different
-between different runs of Perl since Data::Dumper by default dumps
+between different runs of Perl, since Data::Dumper by default dumps
hashes "unordered". The use of the Data::Dumper C<Sortkeys> option is
recommended.
linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
extensions, and various extra libraries, such as -lm.
-On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
+On systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
results.
The default name for the shared library is typically something like
-libperl.so.6.2 (for Perl 5.6.2), or libperl.so.602, or simply
+libperl.so.5.8.8 (for Perl 5.8.8), or libperl.so.588, or simply
libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
-For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
-for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
-
You can elect to build a shared libperl by
sh Configure -Duseshrplib
something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
./perl:
- cd t; ./perl misc/failing_test.t
+ cd t; ./perl -MTestInit misc/failing_test.t
+
or
+
./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
for example:
-18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
+
+ 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
-install a standard Perl 5.8.0 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
-try to build Perl 5.8.0 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
+install a standard Perl 5.10.0 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
+try to build Perl 5.10.0 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
libperl.so.8 rather with the installed libperl.so.8? The answer is
=item Directories for the perl distribution
-By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.9.0.
+By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.10.0.
$version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
-5.9.0 or 5.9.1, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
+5.10.0 or 5.9.5, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
(activated by adding -DDEBUGGING to ccflags), and/or support for the
system debugger by adding -g to optimize.
+ sh Configure -DDEBUGGING
+
+or
+
sh Configure -DDEBUGGING=<mode>
For a more eye appealing call, -DEBUGGING is defined to be an alias
You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
it's convenient to have both.
-=over 4
-
=item -DDEBUGGING
=item -DEBUGGING
of properly security auditing as large and complex piece of
software as Perl, we cannot recommend using suidperl and the feature
should be considered deprecated.
+
Instead, use a tool specifically designed to handle changes in
-privileges, such as B<sudo>, http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/ .
+privileges, such as B<sudo>.
=head1 make depend
them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
-whole L<"Locale problems"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
+whole L<perllocale/"LOCALE PROBLEMS"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
=head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
-Perl 5.9 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
+Perl 5.10 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
In other words, you will have to recompile your XS modules.
In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
perllocal.pod, not perllocale.pod, for installed module information.
-=head1 Coexistence with perl4
-
-You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
-
-By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
-they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
-
-In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
-perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
-process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
-However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
-the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036 (or
-whatever the appropriate pathname is). See L<perltrap> for
-possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
-
=head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
projects / p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git / blobdiff