3 Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
7 The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system are:
9 rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
15 # You may also wish to add these:
16 (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
18 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
20 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
22 For information on non-Unix systems, see the section on
23 L<"Porting information"> below.
25 For information on what's new in this release, see the
26 pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific
27 changes, see the Changes file.
31 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
32 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
33 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
34 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
36 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
38 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
40 You should probably at least skim through this entire document before
43 If you're building Perl on a non-Unix system, you should also read
44 the README file specific to your operating system, since this may
45 provide additional or different instructions for building Perl.
47 If there is a hint file for your system (in the hints/ directory) you
48 should also read that hint file for specific information for your
49 system. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh hint file.)
51 =head1 WARNING: This version is not binary compatible with Perl 5.004.
53 Starting with Perl 5.004_50 there were many deep and far-reaching changes
54 to the language internals. If you have dynamically loaded extensions
55 that you built under perl 5.003 or 5.004, you can continue to use them
56 with 5.004, but you will need to rebuild and reinstall those extensions
57 to use them 5.005. See the discussions below on
58 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> and
59 L<"Upgrading from 5.004 to 5.005"> for more details.
61 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
63 In a related issue, old extensions may possibly be affected by the
64 changes in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
65 pod/perldelta.pod for a description of what's changed.
67 =head1 WARNING: This version requires a compiler that supports ANSI C.
69 If you find that your C compiler is not ANSI-capable, try obtaining
70 GCC, available from GNU mirrors worldwide (e.g. ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu).
71 Another alternative may be to use a tool like C<ansi2knr> to convert the
72 sources back to K&R style, but there is no guarantee this route will get
73 you anywhere, since the prototypes are not the only ANSI features used
74 in the Perl sources. C<ansi2knr> is usually found as part of the freely
75 available C<Ghostscript> distribution. Another similar tool is
76 C<unprotoize>, distributed with GCC. Since C<unprotoize> requires GCC to
77 run, you may have to run it on a platform where GCC is available, and move
78 the sources back to the platform without GCC.
80 If you succeed in automatically converting the sources to a K&R compatible
81 form, be sure to email perlbug@perl.com to let us know the steps you
82 followed. This will enable us to officially support this option.
84 =head1 Space Requirements
86 The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 10 MB of disk space. The
87 complete tree after completing make takes roughly 20 MB, though the
88 actual total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation
89 directories need something on the order of 10 MB, though again that
90 value is system-dependent.
92 =head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution
94 If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory
103 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
104 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
106 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
107 files. If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
108 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
109 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably
110 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or rename it, e.g.
112 mv config.sh config.sh.old
114 If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the
115 version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example,
116 the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules
117 includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old
118 name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running
119 Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should
120 probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't, presently.
121 Similarly, if you used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version
122 numbers, you will probably want to adjust them as well.
124 Also, be careful to check your architecture name. Some Linux systems
125 (such as Debian) use i386, while others may use i486, i586, or i686.
126 If you pick up a precompiled binary, it might not use the same name.
128 In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running
129 Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
131 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your
132 particular installation choices, then you can probably achieve the
133 same effect by using the new Policy.sh file. See the section on
134 L<"Site-wide Policy settings"> below.
138 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
139 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
140 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default
141 is almost always okay. At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d
142 and Configure will use the defaults from then on.
144 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
145 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
147 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run B<Configure -h> to
148 get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
149 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
151 To compile with gcc, for example, you should run
153 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
155 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
156 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
158 If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
159 with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.
161 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
162 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. You can specify a different 'prefix' for
163 the default installation directory, when Configure prompts you or by
164 using the Configure command line option -Dprefix='/some/directory',
167 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
169 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the directories
170 are simplified. For example, if you use prefix=/opt/perl,
171 then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
172 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/.
174 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is below
175 your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will attempt
178 It may seem obvious to say, but Perl is useful only when users can
179 easily find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
180 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
181 careful, however, of overwriting a version of perl supplied by your
182 vendor. In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to
183 put (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
184 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
185 obvious and convenient place.
187 You can use "Configure -Uinstallusrbinperl" which causes installperl
188 to skip installing perl also as /usr/bin/perl.
190 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if
191 your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled
192 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
193 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
195 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
200 For my Solaris system, I usually use
202 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
204 =head2 GNU-style configure
206 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
207 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
209 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
211 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
214 ./configure.gnu --help
218 Cross compiling is not supported.
220 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
221 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
225 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
226 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
227 only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.)
228 B, DynaLoader, Fcntl, IO, and attrs are always built by default.
229 Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX
230 is always built by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can
231 set the Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from
232 the Configure command line. Similarly, the Opcode extension is always
233 built by default, but you can skip it by setting the Configure variable
234 useopcode=false either in a hint file for from the command line.
236 You can learn more about each of these extensions by consulting the
237 documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the
240 Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the
241 DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs
242 version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
244 In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
245 to turn off each extension:
247 B (Always included by default)
249 DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
250 Fcntl (Always included by default)
252 IO (Always included by default)
256 SDBM_File (Always included by default)
260 attrs (Always included by default)
262 Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
264 sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
266 Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
269 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
270 the extensions you want.
272 Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley
273 DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect
274 this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with version 2.
276 If you re-use your old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
277 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
278 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
281 Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern Unix systems do)
282 remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
283 executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
284 well build all the ones that will work on your system.
286 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
288 Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
289 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if
290 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
291 automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries
292 are not included with perl. See the library documentation for
293 how to obtain the libraries.
295 Note: If your database header (.h) files are not in a
296 directory normally searched by your C compiler, then you will need to
297 include the appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by
298 Configure. If your database library (.a) files are not in a directory
299 normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to
300 include the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by
301 Configure. See the examples below.
307 =item gdbm in /usr/local
309 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
310 GDBM_File extension. This examples assumes you have gdbm.h
311 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
312 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
313 necessary steps out automatically.
315 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
316 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
318 When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
321 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
322 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
325 Again, this should all happen automatically. If you want to accept the
326 defaults for all the questions and have Configure print out only terse
327 messages, then you can just run
331 and Configure should include the GDBM_File extension automatically.
333 This should actually work if you have gdbm installed in any of
334 (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu, /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
336 =item gdbm in /usr/you
338 Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
339 but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you
340 have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You
341 still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take
342 an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when
343 Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
344 /usr/you/lib to the list.
346 It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
350 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
351 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
353 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
354 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
356 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
357 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If
358 you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
359 /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
362 -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
363 -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
367 =head2 Installation Directories
369 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
370 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the
371 installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
373 I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts
374 everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure
375 process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure
376 will use the defaults from then on.
378 By default, Configure will use the following directories for library files
379 for 5.005 (archname is a string like sun4-sunos, determined by Configure).
381 Configure variable Default value
382 $archlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.005/archname
383 $privlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.005
384 $sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/archname
385 $sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
387 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
388 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
391 By default, Configure will use the following directories for manual pages:
393 Configure variable Default value
394 $man1dir /usr/local/man/man1
395 $man3dir /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3
397 (Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
398 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
401 The module man pages are stuck in that strange spot so that
402 they don't collide with other man pages stored in /usr/local/man/man3,
403 and so that Perl's man pages don't hide system man pages. On some
404 systems, B<man less> would end up calling up Perl's less.pm module man
405 page, rather than the less program. (This default location will likely
406 change to /usr/local/man/man3 in a future release of perl.)
408 Note: Many users prefer to store the module man pages in
409 /usr/local/man/man3. You can do this from the command line with
411 sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/man/man3
413 Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
415 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
417 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
418 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you Configure with
419 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the defaults for 5.005 are
421 Configure variable Default value
422 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.005/archname
423 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.005
424 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.005/archname
425 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.005
427 $man1dir /opt/perl/man/man1
428 $man3dir /opt/perl/man/man3
430 The perl executable will search the libraries in the order given
433 The directories under site_perl are empty, but are intended to be used
434 for installing local or site-wide extensions. Perl will automatically
435 look in these directories.
437 In order to support using things like #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.005 after
438 a later version is released, architecture-dependent libraries are
439 stored in a version-specific directory, such as
440 /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.005/.
442 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
443 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
444 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5"> below.
446 Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
449 =head2 Changing the installation directory
451 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
452 associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
453 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
454 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
455 However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software
456 packages may also wish to install perl into a different directory and
457 use that management software to move perl to its final destination.
458 This section describes how to do this. Someday, Configure may support
459 an option -Dinstallprefix=/foo to simplify this.
461 Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You
462 can edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to
463 /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local/wherever. Or, you can automate this
464 process by placing the following lines in a file config.over before you
465 run Configure (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice):
467 installprefix=/tmp/perl5
468 test -d $installprefix || mkdir $installprefix
469 test -d $installprefix/bin || mkdir $installprefix/bin
470 installarchlib=`echo $installarchlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
471 installbin=`echo $installbin | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
472 installman1dir=`echo $installman1dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
473 installman3dir=`echo $installman3dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
474 installprivlib=`echo $installprivlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
475 installscript=`echo $installscript | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
476 installsitelib=`echo $installsitelib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
477 installsitearch=`echo $installsitearch | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
479 Then, you can Configure and install in the usual way:
486 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
487 extensions, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
488 follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with
491 =head2 Creating an installable tar archive
493 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
494 convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
495 installed on multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to
496 create an archive that can be installed in /opt/perl.
497 Here's one way to do that:
499 # Set up config.over to install perl into a different directory,
500 # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
501 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
504 make install # This will install everything into /tmp/perl5.
506 # Edit $archlib/Config.pm and $archlib/.packlist to change all the
507 # install* variables back to reflect where everything will
508 # really be installed. (That is, change /tmp/perl5 to /opt/perl
509 # everywhere in those files.)
510 # Check the scripts in $scriptdir to make sure they have the correct
511 # #!/wherever/perl line.
512 tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
513 # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
514 cd /opt/perl # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
515 tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
517 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
519 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
520 answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact
521 person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another
522 system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file
523 to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate
524 hint file for your system.
526 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
531 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
533 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
535 =head2 Configure-time Options
537 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
538 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
539 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
540 some of the main things you can change.
544 On some platforms, perl5.005 can be compiled with experimental support
545 for threads. To enable this, read the file README.threads, and then
548 sh Configure -Dusethreads
550 Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command
551 line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
553 The default is to compile without thread support.
555 =head2 Selecting File IO mechanisms
557 Previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in
558 stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl allow alternate IO
559 mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but the stdio mechanism is still
560 the default and is the only supported mechanism.
562 This PerlIO abstraction can be enabled either on the Configure command
565 sh Configure -Duseperlio
567 or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
569 If you choose to use the PerlIO abstraction layer, there are two
570 (experimental) possibilities for the underlying IO calls. These have been
571 tested to some extent on some platforms, but are not guaranteed to work
578 AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance to stdio.h in many
579 cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline" modules. Sfio
580 currently only builds on a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports.
581 Because the data structures are completely different from stdio, perl
582 extension modules or external libraries may not work. This
583 configuration exists to allow these issues to be worked on.
585 This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed.
586 A (fairly old) version of sfio is in CPAN.
588 You select this option by
590 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
592 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects
593 that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by
596 Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails
597 to detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent).
598 Apparently, this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux
601 You can test if you have this problem by trying the following shell
602 script. (You may have to add some extra cflags and libraries. A
603 portable version of this may eventually make its way into Configure.)
608 main() { printf("42\n"); }
610 cc -o try try.c -lsfio
612 if test X$val = X42; then
613 echo "Your sfio looks ok"
615 echo "Your sfio has the exit problem."
618 If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to your sfio sources
619 and correct iffe's guess about atexit.
621 There also might be a more recent release of Sfio that fixes your
626 Normal stdio IO, but with all IO going through calls to the PerlIO
627 abstraction layer. This configuration can be used to check that perl and
628 extension modules have been correctly converted to use the PerlIO
631 This configuration should work on all platforms (but might not).
633 You select this option via:
635 sh Configure -Duseperlio -Uusesfio
637 If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure does not
638 detect sfio, then this will be the default suggested by Configure.
642 =head2 Building a shared libperl.so Perl library
644 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
645 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
646 extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries,
649 On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
650 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
651 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
652 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
653 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
654 can share the same library.
656 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
657 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
658 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
661 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
662 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
663 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
666 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
667 libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply
668 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
669 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
670 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
671 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
673 For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required
674 for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
676 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
678 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
680 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
681 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
682 NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS) must be set up to include
683 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
684 be created. Configure arranges Makefile to have the correct shared
685 library search settings.
687 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
688 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
689 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
692 cd t; ./perl misc/failing_test.t
694 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
696 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
699 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
701 for Bourne-style shells, or
703 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
705 for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
706 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up Makefile correctly.)
708 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
709 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
711 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
713 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
714 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
715 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
716 install a standard Perl 5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
717 try to build Perl 5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
718 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
719 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
720 libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is
721 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
722 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
723 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
724 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't. On Digital Unix, you can
725 override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the _RLD_ROOT environment variable
726 to point to the perl build directory.
728 The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different
729 directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING
730 version of perl. You can do this by changing all the *archlib*
731 variables in config.sh, namely archlib, archlib_exp, and
732 installarchlib, to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
736 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed, so
737 perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
738 the malloc function on your system.
740 The perl source is shipped with a version of malloc that is very fast but
741 somewhat wasteful of space. On the other hand, your system's malloc
742 function may be a bit slower but also a bit more frugal. However,
743 as of 5.004_68, perl's malloc has been optimized for the typical
744 requests from perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and
747 For many uses, speed is probably the most important consideration, so
748 the default behavior (for most systems) is to use the malloc supplied
749 with perl. However, if you will be running very large applications
750 (e.g. Tk or PDL) or if your system already has an excellent malloc, or
751 if you are experiencing difficulties with extensions that use
752 third-party libraries that call malloc, then you might wish to use
753 your system's malloc. (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags
756 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
758 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
760 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
762 =head2 Malloc Performance Flags
764 If you are using Perl's malloc, you may add one or more of the following
765 items to your ccflags config.sh variable to change its behavior. You can
766 find out more about these and other flags by reading the commentary near
767 the top of the malloc.c source. The defaults should be fine for
772 =item -DNO_FANCY_MALLOC
774 Undefined by default. Defining it returns malloc to the version used
779 Undefined by default. Defining it in addition to NO_FANCY_MALLOC returns
780 malloc to the version used in Perl version 5.000.
784 =head2 Building a debugging perl
786 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
787 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
788 you probably want to do
790 sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
792 This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation
793 to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the
794 executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like
795 cc -g2. Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for your
796 system.) Second, it will add -DDEBUGGING to your ccflags variable in
797 config.sh so that you can use B<perl -D> to access perl's internal
798 state. (Note: Configure will only add -DDEBUGGING by
799 default if you are not reusing your old config.sh. If you want to
800 reuse your old config.sh, then you can just edit it and change the
801 optimize and ccflags variables by hand and then propagate your changes
802 as shown in L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below.)
804 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually
805 it's convenient to have both.
807 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
808 versions of perl under L<Building a shared libperl.so Perl library>.
810 =head2 Other Compiler Flags
812 For most users, all of the Configure defaults are fine. However,
813 you can change a number of factors in the way perl is built
814 by adding appropriate -D directives to your ccflags variable in
817 You should also run Configure interactively to verify that a hint file
818 doesn't inadvertently override your ccflags setting. (Hints files
819 shouldn't do that, but some might.)
821 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
825 =item Running Configure Interactively
827 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
828 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
831 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
832 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
833 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
834 will use the defaults from then on.
836 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
837 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
838 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
842 The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
843 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
844 will offer to use that hint file.
846 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
847 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file
848 for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
849 More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints
852 =item *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
854 Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS
855 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the
856 standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You
859 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
860 The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
861 Keep the recommended value? [y]
863 You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the
864 relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try
867 If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word "previous" will be
868 used instead of "recommended". Again, you will almost always want
869 to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your
872 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
873 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
874 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
875 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
878 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
879 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
880 Keep the previous value? [y]
882 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
883 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
884 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
886 =item Changing Compilers
888 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
889 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
890 rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure
891 with the options you want to use.
893 This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to
894 gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
896 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
898 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
899 them to all the .SH files by running
903 You will then have to rebuild by running
910 You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride Configure's
911 guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just before config.sh
912 is created. You have to be careful with this, however, as Configure
913 does no checking that your changes make sense. See the section on
914 L<"Changing the installation directory"> for an example.
918 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
919 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
920 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
922 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
923 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
928 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
929 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
930 optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for
931 toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You
932 can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be
933 lost the next time you run Configure.
935 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
936 see the file hints/README.hints.
938 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
939 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
946 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file Porting/config_H
947 to config.h and edit the config.h to reflect your system's peculiarities.
948 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
951 =item Environment variable clashes
953 Configure uses a CONFIG variable that is reported to cause trouble on
954 ReliantUnix 5.44. If your system sets this variable, you can try
955 unsetting it before you run Configure. Configure should eventually
956 be fixed to avoid polluting the namespace of the environment.
958 =item Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX and BIN_SH
960 In Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX Configure might abort with
962 Build a threading Perl? [n]
963 Configure[2437]: Syntax error at line 1 : `config.sh' is not expected.
965 This indicates that Configure is being run with a broken Korn shell
966 (even though you think you are using a Bourne shell by using
967 "sh Configure" or "./Configure"). The Korn shell bug has been reported
968 to Compaq as of February 1999 but in the meanwhile, the reason ksh is
969 being used is that you have the environment variable BIN_SH set to
970 'xpg4'. This causes /bin/sh to delegate its duties to /bin/posix/sh
971 (a ksh). Unset the environment variable and rerun Configure.
973 =item HP-UX 11, pthreads, and libgdbm
975 If you are running Configure with -Dusethreads in HP-UX 11, be warned
976 that POSIX threads and libgdbm (the GNU dbm library) compiled before
977 HP-UX 11 do not mix. This will cause a basic test run by Configure to
980 Pthread internal error: message: __libc_reinit() failed, file: ../pthreads/pthread.c, line: 1096
981 Return Pointer is 0xc082bf33
982 sh: 5345 Quit(coredump)
984 and Configure will give up. The cure is to recompile and install
985 libgdbm under HP-UX 11.
987 =item Porting information
989 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
990 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
991 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
994 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
995 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports for current information on ports to
996 various other operating systems.
1002 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1003 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1004 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1005 makefile, not Makefile since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1006 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1007 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1009 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1014 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1016 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1017 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1018 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help, you can
1019 send a message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to
1020 perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
1021 See L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1027 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1028 for further tips and information.
1032 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1033 during the building of extensions, you should run
1037 to test your version of miniperl.
1041 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1042 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1043 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1044 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1045 whole L<"Locale problems"> section in the file pod/perllocale.pod.
1046 The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
1048 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1049 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1052 are supported and installed on your system.
1053 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1057 =item malloc duplicates
1059 If you get duplicates upon linking for malloc et al, add -DEMBEDMYMALLOC
1060 to your ccflags variable in config.sh.
1064 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1065 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1066 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1067 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by running fixincludes
1068 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1069 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1070 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1074 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1075 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1077 util.c: In function `Perl_form':
1078 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1079 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1081 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1082 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1084 =item Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading
1086 If you have problems with dynamic loading using gcc on SunOS or
1087 Solaris, and you are using GNU as and GNU ld, you may need to add
1088 -B/bin/ (for SunOS) or -B/usr/ccs/bin/ (for Solaris) to your
1089 $ccflags, $ldflags, and $lddlflags so that the system's versions of as
1090 and ld are used. Note that the trailing '/' is required.
1091 Alternatively, you can use the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX
1092 environment variable to ensure that Sun's as and ld are used. Consult
1093 your gcc documentation for further information on the -B option and
1094 the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX variable.
1096 One convenient way to ensure you are not using GNU as and ld is to
1097 invoke Configure with
1099 sh Configure -Dcc='gcc -B/usr/ccs/bin/'
1101 for Solaris systems. For a SunOS system, you must use -B/bin/
1104 Alternatively, recent versions of GNU ld reportedly work if you
1105 include C<-Wl,-export-dynamic> in the ccdlflags variable in
1108 =item ld.so.1: ./perl: fatal: relocation error:
1110 If you get this message on SunOS or Solaris, and you're using gcc,
1111 it's probably the GNU as or GNU ld problem in the previous item
1112 L<"Solaris and SunOS dynamic loading">.
1114 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1116 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1117 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1118 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1119 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1120 of your local set-up.
1122 =item dlopen: stub interception failed
1124 The primary cause of the 'dlopen: stub interception failed' message is
1125 that the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable includes a directory
1126 which is a symlink to /usr/lib (such as /lib).
1128 The reason this causes a problem is quite subtle. The file libdl.so.1.0
1129 actually *only* contains functions which generate 'stub interception
1130 failed' errors! The runtime linker intercepts links to
1131 "/usr/lib/libdl.so.1.0" and links in internal implementation of those
1132 functions instead. [Thanks to Tim Bunce for this explanation.]
1136 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1137 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1140 sh Configure -Uusenm
1142 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1143 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1146 =item umask not found
1148 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1149 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1150 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1151 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1152 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1156 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1157 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1158 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1159 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1160 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1164 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1165 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1166 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1170 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1171 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1172 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1173 on L<"nm extraction">.
1175 =item __inet_* errors
1177 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1178 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1179 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1180 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1181 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1182 newer version of BIND. If you can't, you can either link with the
1183 updated resolver library provided with BIND 8.1 or rename
1184 /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and test process to
1189 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1190 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1198 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1199 with B<make depend; make>.
1203 If you still can't compile successfully, try adding a -DCRIPPLED_CC
1204 flag. (Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it compiled right!)
1205 This simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that get
1208 =item Missing functions
1210 If you have missing routines, you probably need to add some library or
1211 other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
1212 there but is defective or incomplete. Look through config.h for
1213 likely suspects. If Configure guessed wrong on a number of functions,
1214 you might have the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1218 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1219 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1220 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1221 each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
1222 makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1225 =item Missing dbmclose
1227 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1228 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1230 =item Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1232 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1233 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1234 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1235 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1236 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1237 For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's
1238 unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one
1239 they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to
1240 reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build
1241 process is continuing.
1243 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1246 Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1248 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1249 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1250 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1252 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1253 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1254 quite that tightly coordinated.
1256 =item sh: ar: not found
1258 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1259 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1260 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1261 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1264 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1266 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1267 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1268 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1270 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1272 If you get this error message from the lib/ipc_sysv test, your System
1273 V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1274 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1275 to include the System V semaphores.
1277 =item lib/ipc_sysv........semget: No space left on device
1279 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1280 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1281 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1282 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1287 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1288 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1289 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1290 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1291 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1292 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1293 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1294 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1298 Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
1300 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1302 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1304 UTS may need one or more of -DCRIPPLED_CC, -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
1306 FreeBSD can fail the lib/ipc_sysv.t test if SysV IPC has not been
1307 configured to the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1308 you will get a message telling what to do.
1310 If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.
1312 Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
1314 HP-UX 11 Y2K patch "Y2K-1100 B.11.00.B0125 HP-UX Core OS Year 2000
1315 Patch Bundle" has been reported to break the io/fs test #18 which
1316 tests whether utime() can change timestamps. The Y2K patch seems to
1317 break utime() so that over NFS the timestamps do not get changed
1318 (on local filesystems utime() still works).
1324 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made (you
1325 should run plain 'make' before 'make test' otherwise you won't have a
1326 complete build). If 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful"
1327 then something went wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
1329 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
1330 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
1331 a few tty tests will be skipped.
1333 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
1335 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
1336 by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests
1337 bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
1341 Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
1342 individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
1346 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
1347 complicated constructs).
1349 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
1350 comments that apply to your system.
1356 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
1357 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
1358 B<make test> exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
1359 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
1360 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
1361 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
1363 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
1369 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
1371 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
1372 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
1373 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
1374 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
1375 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
1376 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
1381 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
1382 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
1383 Specifically, in perl5.004_64, tests 74 and 78 have been reported to
1384 fail on some systems. On my SparcStation IPC with 8 MB of RAM, test 78
1385 will fail if the system is running any other significant tasks at the
1388 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
1390 cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
1392 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
1393 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
1394 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
1395 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
1401 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
1402 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try
1403 to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man
1404 pages, however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you
1405 are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
1406 ignore any messages about chown not working.
1408 =head2 Installing perl under different names
1410 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
1411 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
1412 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
1414 make install PERLNAME=myperl
1416 =head2 Installed files
1418 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
1419 anything, you can run
1421 ./perl installperl -n
1422 ./perl installman -n
1424 make install will install the following:
1427 perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
1428 will be a link to perl.
1430 sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
1431 a2p awk-to-perl translator
1432 cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
1434 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
1435 s2p sed-to-perl translator
1436 find2perl find-to-perl translator
1437 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
1438 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
1439 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
1440 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
1441 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
1442 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
1443 pod2latex, to other useful formats.
1446 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
1448 library files in $privlib and $archlib specified to
1449 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
1450 man pages in the location specified to Configure, usually
1451 something like /usr/local/man/man1.
1452 module in the location specified to Configure, usually
1453 man pages under /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3.
1454 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
1456 Installperl will also create the library directories $siteperl and
1457 $sitearch listed in config.sh. Usually, these are something like
1459 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
1460 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/archname
1462 where archname is something like sun4-sunos. These directories
1463 will be used for installing extensions.
1465 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl.a library are also installed
1466 under $archlib so that any user may later build new extensions, run the
1467 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
1468 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
1470 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
1472 WARNING: The upgrade from 5.004_0x to 5.005 is going to be a bit
1473 tricky. See L<"Upgrading from 5.004 to 5.005"> below.
1475 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g.
1476 5.004_04) to another similar version (e.g. 5.004_05) without re-compiling
1477 all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version
1478 around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason.
1479 For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run
1480 with 5.004_04, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the
1481 top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g.
1482 #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.00404.
1484 Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use
1485 with a newer version of perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
1486 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
1488 The directories searched by version 5.005 will be
1490 Configure variable Default value
1491 $archlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.005/archname
1492 $privlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.005
1493 $sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/archname
1494 $sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
1496 while the directories searched by version 5.005_01 will be
1498 $archlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00501/archname
1499 $privlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00501
1500 $sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/archname
1501 $sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
1503 When you install an add-on extension, it gets installed into $sitelib (or
1504 $sitearch if it is architecture-specific). This directory deliberately
1505 does NOT include the sub-version number (01) so that both 5.005 and
1506 5.005_01 can use the extension. Only when a perl version changes to
1507 break backwards compatibility will the default suggestions for the
1508 $sitearch and $sitelib version numbers be increased.
1510 However, if you do run into problems, and you want to continue to use the
1511 old version of perl along with your extension, move those extension files
1512 to the appropriate version directory, such as $privlib (or $archlib).
1513 (The extension's .packlist file lists the files installed with that
1514 extension. For the Tk extension, for example, the list of files installed
1515 is in $sitearch/auto/Tk/.packlist.) Then use your newer version of perl
1516 to rebuild and re-install the extension into $sitelib. This way, Perl
1517 5.005 will find your files in the 5.005 directory, and newer versions
1518 of perl will find your newer extension in the $sitelib directory.
1519 (This is also why perl searches the site-specific libraries last.)
1521 Alternatively, if you are willing to reinstall all your extensions
1522 every time you upgrade perl, then you can include the subversion
1523 number in $sitearch and $sitelib when you run Configure.
1525 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
1527 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
1528 separate directories. One convenient way to do this is by
1529 using a separate prefix for each version, such as
1531 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.004
1533 and adding /opt/perl5.004/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
1534 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
1535 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
1537 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
1538 (e.g. 5.004 for all 5.004_0x versions), but change directory with
1541 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
1542 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
1543 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
1546 =head2 Upgrading from 5.004 to 5.005
1548 Extensions built and installed with versions of perl prior to 5.004_50
1549 will need to be recompiled to be used with 5.004_50 and later. You will,
1550 however, be able to continue using 5.004 even after you install 5.005.
1551 The 5.004 binary will still be able to find the extensions built under
1552 5.004; the 5.005 binary will look in the new $sitearch and $sitelib
1553 directories, and will not find them.
1555 =head1 Coexistence with perl4
1557 You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
1559 By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so
1560 they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
1562 In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
1563 perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
1564 process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
1565 However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
1566 the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036
1567 (or whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod
1568 for possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
1570 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
1572 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from
1573 the system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
1574 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
1575 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent library
1576 ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
1578 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the
1579 conversion of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have
1580 to hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse
1581 correctly. For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and
1584 =head1 installhtml --help
1586 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
1587 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
1588 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
1590 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
1595 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
1597 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
1598 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
1599 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
1600 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
1601 --libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
1604 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
1605 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
1606 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
1607 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
1608 (and would welcome patches for them).
1610 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
1611 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
1613 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
1615 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
1616 available in TeX format. Type
1618 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
1620 =head1 Reporting Problems
1622 If you have difficulty building perl, and none of the advice in this file
1623 helps, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant manual
1624 pages on your system doesn't help either, then you should send a message
1625 to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to perlbug@perl.com with
1626 an accurate description of your problem.
1628 Please include the output of the ./myconfig shell script that comes with
1629 the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the perlbug program that
1630 comes with the perl distribution, but you need to have perl compiled
1631 before you can use it. (If you have not installed it yet, you need to
1632 run C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug> instead of a plain C<perlbug>.)
1634 You might also find helpful information in the Porting directory of the
1637 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
1639 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
1640 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
1641 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
1642 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
1643 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
1645 Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form,
1646 along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and
1649 ./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
1650 ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
1652 This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed.
1653 (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff
1656 Note that you must have performed the installation already before running
1657 the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate
1662 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
1663 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
1664 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
1666 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
1667 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
1669 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
1671 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
1672 the same terms as perl itself.
1674 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
1675 a larger package) please do modify these installation instructions and
1676 the contact information to match your distribution.
1678 =head1 LAST MODIFIED
1680 $Id: INSTALL,v 1.42 1998/07/15 18:04:44 doughera Released $