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.
=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
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.