From: Rafael Garcia-Suarez Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 07:38:19 +0000 (+0000) Subject: Miscellaneous modernisations and trimmings. X-Git-Url: http://git.shadowcat.co.uk/gitweb/gitweb.cgi?a=commitdiff_plain;h=08854360428ba7f2949e2c2683742fc33c1fd9cd;p=p5sagit%2Fp5-mst-13.2.git Miscellaneous modernisations and trimmings. p4raw-id: //depot/perl@31621 --- diff --git a/INSTALL b/INSTALL index a013eaa..e77b189 100644 --- a/INSTALL +++ b/INSTALL @@ -59,7 +59,7 @@ http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html 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 @@ -90,7 +90,7 @@ If that's not okay with you, can run Configure interactively and use # You may also wish to add these: (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h) (installhtml --help) - (cd pod && make tex && ) + (cd pod && make tex && ) or you can use some of the Configure options described below. @@ -231,13 +231,14 @@ Configure variables you can set and their definitions. =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 @@ -320,7 +321,7 @@ after the platform hints have been run by using Configure's -A switch. 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 @@ -366,9 +367,9 @@ This buffer starts small, but it will keep growing until the result 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 @@ -379,18 +380,17 @@ seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad in that if you are interfacing Perl 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 or C, +If your platform does not run natively at 64 bits, but can simulate +them with compiler flags and/or C or C, you can build a perl that uses 64 bits. There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved @@ -413,13 +413,7 @@ resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may 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 @@ -471,10 +465,9 @@ the compilation flags to completely disable the randomisation feature. B, 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 option is recommended. @@ -498,7 +491,7 @@ Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by 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 @@ -516,15 +509,12 @@ Your system and typical applications may well give quite different 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 @@ -545,8 +535,10 @@ shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run 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. @@ -565,13 +557,14 @@ again, it may be something other than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.) 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 @@ -630,9 +623,9 @@ The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories. =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. @@ -943,6 +936,10 @@ you probably want to have support for perl internal debugging code (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= For a more eye appealing call, -DEBUGGING is defined to be an alias @@ -972,8 +969,6 @@ L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.) You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually it's convenient to have both. -=over 4 - =item -DDEBUGGING =item -DEBUGGING @@ -1488,8 +1483,9 @@ Because of the buggy history of suidperl, and the difficulty 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, http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/ . +privileges, such as B. =head1 make depend @@ -1545,7 +1541,7 @@ If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting 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 section in the file pod/perllocale.pod. The latter is especially useful if you see something like this perl: warning: Setting locale failed.