proceeding. Special notes specific to this release are identified
by B<NOTE>.
-=head1 BUILDING PERL5
+If you're building Perl on a non-Unix system, you should also read
+the README file specific to your operating system, since this may
+provide additional or different instructions for building Perl.
+
+=head1 DESCRIPTION
+
+The following is the procedures you need to follow in order to successfully
+build perl.
=head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution.
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
+flags) you can type C<&-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
If you have problems with dynamic loading using gcc on SunOS or
Solaris, and you are using GNU as and GNU ld, you may need to add
-B<-B/bin/> (for SunOS) or B<-B/usr/ccs/bin> (for Solaris) to your
+B<-B/bin/> (for SunOS) or B<-B/usr/ccs/bin/> (for Solaris) to your
$ccflags, $ldflags, and $lddlflags so that the system's versions of as
and ld are used.
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
to generate the LaTeX versions.
+=head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
+
+Some of the perl library files need to be able to obtain information from
+the system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
+header files in F</usr/include> into files that can be easily interpreted
+by perl. These files will be placed in architectural library directory
+you specified to B<Configure>; by default this is
+F</usr/local/lib/perl5/ARCH/VERSION>, where B<ARCH> is your architecture
+(such as C<sun4-solaris>) and B<VERSION> is the version of perl you are
+building (for example, C<5.003>).
+
+B<NOTE:> Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion of
+the header files in not perfect. You may have to hand edit some of the
+converted files to get them to parse correctly. For example, it breaks
+spectacularly on type casting and certain structures.
+
=head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5.
-You can safely install the current version of perl5 and still run
-scripts under the old binaries. Instead of starting your script with
-#!/usr/local/bin/perl, just start it with #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.001
-(or whatever version you want to run.)
+You can safely install the current version of perl5 and still run scripts
+under the old binaries for versions 5.002 and later ONLY. Instead of
+starting your script with #!/usr/local/bin/perl, just start it with
+#!/usr/local/bin/perl5.001 (or whatever version you want to run.)
+If you want to retain a version of perl5 prior to perl5.002, you'll
+need to install the current version in a separate directory tree,
+since some of the architecture-independent library files have changed
+in incompatible ways.
The architecture-dependent files are stored in a version-specific
directory (such as F</usr/local/lib/perl5/sun4-sunos/5.002>) so that
files.
The standard library files in F</usr/local/lib/perl5>
-should be useable by all versions of perl5.
+should be useable by all versions of perl5 since perl5.002.
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
=head1 LAST MODIFIED
-19 March 1996
+07 July 1996