=head1 DESCRIPTION
-The latest Perl (5.8.1-RC3 as of this writing) builds without changes
-under Mac OS X. Under the 10.3 "Panther" release, all self-tests pass,
+The latest Perl (5.8.8 as of this writing) builds without changes
+under Mac OS X. Under the 10.4 "Tiger" release, all self-tests pass,
and all standard features are supported.
-Earlier Mac OS X releases did not include a completely thread-safe libc,
-so threading is not fully supported. Also, earlier releases included a
+Mac OS X releases prior to 10.3 "Panther" did not include a completely
+thread-safe libc, so threading is not fully supported when Perl is built
+for these releases. Also, earlier releases included a
somewhat buggy libdb, so some of the DB_File tests are known to fail on
those releases.
pre-bound dynamic library.
-=head2 Updating Panther
+=head2 Updating Apple-supplied Perl
-As of this writing, the latest Perl release that has been tested and
-approved for inclusion in the 10.3 "Panther" release of Mac OS X is
-5.8.1 RC3. It is currently unknown whether the final 5.8.1 release will
-be made in time to be tested and included with Panther.
-
-If the final release of Perl 5.8.1 is not made in time to be included
-with Panther, it is recommended that you wait for an official Apple
-update to the OS, rather than attempting to update it yourself. In most
-cases, if you need a newer Perl, it is preferable to install it in some
+Apple ships a threaded build of perl 5.8.6 with Mac OS 10.4.x, "Tiger".
+In most cases, if you need a newer Perl, it is preferable to install it in some
other location, such as /usr/local or /opt, rather than overwriting the
system Perl. The default location (no -Dprefix=... specified when running
Configure) is /usr/local.
after you've installed the update.
Note that this is only an issue when updating from an older build of the
-same Perl version. If you're updating from (for example) 5.8.1 to 5.8.2,
+same Perl version. If you're updating from (for example) 5.8.6 to 5.8.8,
this issue won't affect you.
+=head2 64-bit Perl
+
+By default, perl is built to use 32-bit integers and pointers. The hints file,
+F<hints/darwin.sh>, provides experimental support for 64-bit integers
+and pointers (on G5 processors only) when Configure is run with the
+C<-Duse64bitall> option. Expect many compiler warnings and a number
+of test failures.
+
+=head2 Intel processor support
+
+At the time of writing, the Perl developers have no knowledge of the
+behaviour (or misbehaviour) of the Perl build process when hosted by
+an Intel-based Macintosh. As far as we know, Apple ships Perl 5.8.6
+with Intel developer builds of Mac OS X, so we presume that there
+are few or no problems in building that version of Perl. (The source
+package used by Apple may be found at L<http://opendarwin.org/>.)
+If you encounter problems in building a later version of Perl for an
+Intel-based Macintosh, please file a bug report, if possible by using
+the following command in the build directory:
+
+ ./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug
+
+=head2 Universal binaries
+
+Apple's Xcode development tools, version 2.1 and later, provide
+support for the creation of I<universal binaries>, which contain
+code for both PowerPC and Intel architectures. (In the past, and on
+other platforms, such executable files have been known as I<fat
+binaries>.) Perl's build process currently provides no support for
+the production of universal binaries.
=head2 Known problems
"libperl and Prebinding").
Starting with Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4), Apple shipped broken locale files for
-the eu_ES locale (Basque-Spain). When testing Perl, this will show up as
-test failues in the tests C<..lib/locale>. Unless you require the
-eu_ES locale, you should be OK to install Perl. If you do need this
-locale, you should contact Apple support.
+the eu_ES locale (Basque-Spain). In previous releases of Perl, this resulted in
+failures in the C<lib/locale> test. These failures have been supressed
+in the current release of Perl by making the test ignore the broken locale.
+If you need to use the eu_ES locale, you should contact Apple support.
=head2 MacPerl
=head1 AUTHOR
-This README was written by Sherm Pendley E<lt>sherm@dot-app.orgE<gt>.
+This README was written by Sherm Pendley E<lt>sherm@dot-app.orgE<gt>,
+and subsequently updated by Dominic Dunlop E<lt>domo@computer.orgE<gt>.
The "Starting From Scratch" recipe was contributed by John Montbriand
E<lt>montbriand@apple.comE<gt>.
=head1 DATE
-Last modified 2003-09-08.
+Last modified 2005-11-07.