- Perl Kit, Version 2.0
+ Perl Kit, Version 5.0
+
+ Copyright 1989-2000, Larry Wall
+ All rights reserved.
+
+ This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
+ it under the terms of either:
+
+ a) the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
+ Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) any
+ later version, or
+
+ b) the "Artistic License" which comes with this Kit.
+
+ This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
+ but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
+ MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See either
+ the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License for more details.
+
+ You should have received a copy of the Artistic License with this
+ Kit, in the file named "Artistic". If not, I'll be glad to provide one.
+
+ You should also have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
+ along with this program in the file named "Copying". If not, write to the
+ Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA
+ 02111-1307, USA or visit their web page on the internet at
+ http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.
+
+ For those of you that choose to use the GNU General Public License,
+ my interpretation of the GNU General Public License is that no Perl
+ script falls under the terms of the GPL unless you explicitly put
+ said script under the terms of the GPL yourself. Furthermore, any
+ object code linked with perl does not automatically fall under the
+ terms of the GPL, provided such object code only adds definitions
+ of subroutines and variables, and does not otherwise impair the
+ resulting interpreter from executing any standard Perl script. I
+ consider linking in C subroutines in this manner to be the moral
+ equivalent of defining subroutines in the Perl language itself. You
+ may sell such an object file as proprietary provided that you provide
+ or offer to provide the Perl source, as specified by the GNU General
+ Public License. (This is merely an alternate way of specifying input
+ to the program.) You may also sell a binary produced by the dumping of
+ a running Perl script that belongs to you, provided that you provide or
+ offer to provide the Perl source as specified by the GPL. (The
+ fact that a Perl interpreter and your code are in the same binary file
+ is, in this case, a form of mere aggregation.) This is my interpretation
+ of the GPL. If you still have concerns or difficulties understanding
+ my intent, feel free to contact me. Of course, the Artistic License
+ spells all this out for your protection, so you may prefer to use that.
- Copyright (c) 1988, Larry Wall
-
-You may copy the perl kit in whole or in part as long as you don't try to
-make money off it, or pretend that you wrote it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Perl is a language that combines some of the features of C, sed, awk and shell.
-See the manual page for more hype.
-
-Perl will probably not run on machines with a small address space.
+Perl is a language that combines some of the features of C, sed, awk
+and shell. See the manual page for more hype. There are also many Perl
+books available, covering a wide variety of topics, from various publishers.
+See pod/perlbook.pod for more information.
Please read all the directions below before you proceed any further, and
-then follow them carefully. Failure to do so may void your warranty. :-)
+then follow them carefully.
After you have unpacked your kit, you should have all the files listed
in MANIFEST.
Installation
-1) Run Configure. This will figure out various things about your system.
- Some things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will
- ask you about. It will then proceed to make config.h, config.sh, and
- Makefile.
-
- You might possibly have to trim # comments from the front of Configure
- if your sh doesn't handle them, but all other # comments will be taken
- care of.
-
- (If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file config.H to
- config.h and edit the config.h to reflect your system's peculiarities.)
-
-2) Glance through config.h to make sure system dependencies are correct.
- Most of them should have been taken care of by running the Configure script.
-
- If you have any additional changes to make to the C definitions, they
- can be done in the Makefile, or in config.h. Bear in mind that they will
- get undone next time you run Configure.
-
-3) make depend
-
- This will look for all the includes and modify Makefile accordingly.
- Configure will offer to do this for you.
-
-4) make
-
- This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
-
-5) make test
-
- This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made.
- If it doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went wrong.
- See the README in the t subdirectory. Note that you can't run it
- in background if this disables opening of /dev/tty. If in doubt, just
- cd to the t directory and run TEST by hand.
+1) Detailed instructions are in the file "INSTALL", which you should
+read if you are either installing on a system resembling Unix
+or porting perl to another platform. For non-Unix platforms, see the
+corresponding README.
-6) make install
+2) Read the manual entries before running perl.
- This will put perl into a public directory (normally /usr/local/bin).
- It will also try to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not
- nroff the man page, however. You may need to be root to do this. If
- you are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
- ignore any messages about chown not working.
+3) IMPORTANT! Help save the world! Communicate any problems and suggested
+patches to perlbug@perl.com so we can keep the world in sync.
+If you have a problem, there's someone else out there who either has had
+or will have the same problem. It's usually helpful if you send the
+output of the "myconfig" script in the main perl directory.
-7) Read the manual entry before running perl.
+If you've succeeded in compiling perl, the perlbug script in the "utils"
+subdirectory can be used to help mail in a bug report.
-8) Go down to the x2p directory and do a "make depend, a "make" and a
- "make install" to create the awk to perl and sed to perl translators.
+If possible, send in patches such that the patch program will apply them.
+Context diffs are the best, then normal diffs. Don't send ed scripts--
+I've probably changed my copy since the version you have.
-9) IMPORTANT! Help save the world! Communicate any problems and suggested
- patches to me, lwall@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov (Larry Wall), so we can
- keep the world in sync. If you have a problem, there's someone else
- out there who either has had or will have the same problem.
+The latest versions of perl are always available on the various CPAN
+(Comprehensive Perl Archive Network) sites around the world.
+See <URL:http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/>.
- If possible, send in patches such that the patch program will apply them.
- Context diffs are the best, then normal diffs. Don't send ed scripts--
- I've probably changed my copy since the version you have.
- Watch for perl patches in comp.sources.bugs. Patches will generally be
- in a form usable by the patch program. If you are just now bringing up
- perl and aren't sure how many patches there are, write to me and I'll
- send any you don't have. Your current patch level is shown in patchlevel.h.
+Just a personal note: I want you to know that I create nice things like this
+because it pleases the Author of my story. If this bothers you, then your
+notion of Authorship needs some revision. But you can use perl anyway. :-)
+ The author.