Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system are:
rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
sh Configure
make
make test
make install
# You may also wish to add these:
(cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)
(installhtml --help)
(cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
Each of these is explained in further detail below.
For information on non-Unix systems, see the section on Porting information below.
For information on what's new in this release, see the pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information about specific changes, see the Changes file.
This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
C<code> literal code
L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
You should probably at least skim through this entire document before proceeding.
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.
If there is a hint file for your system (in the hints/ directory) you should also read that hint file for specific information for your system. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh hint file.)
Starting with Perl 5.004_50 there were many deep and far-reaching changes to the language internals. If you have dynamically loaded extensions that you built under perl 5.003 or 5.004, you can continue to use them with 5.004, but you will need to rebuild and reinstall those extensions to use them 5.005. See the discussions below on Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5 and Upgrading from 5.004 to 5.005 for more details.
The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
In a related issue, old extensions may possibly be affected by the changes in the Perl language in the current release. Please see pod/perldelta.pod for a description of what's changed.
The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 10 MB of disk space. The complete tree after completing make takes roughly 20 MB, though the actual total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation directories need something on the order of 10 MB, though again that value is system-dependent.
If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory with the command
make distclean
or
make realclean
The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes your old config.sh and Policy.sh files.
The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh files. If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or rename it, e.g.
mv config.sh config.sh.old
If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example, the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, Configure should probably check and correct for this, but it doesn't, presently. Similarly, if you used a shared libperl.so (see below) with version numbers, you will probably want to adjust them as well.
Also, be careful to check your architecture name. Some Linux systems (such as Debian) use i386, while others may use i486, i586, or i686. If you pick up a precompiled binary, it might not use the same name.
In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running Configure interactively rather than blindly accepting the defaults.
If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by using the new Policy.sh file. See the section on Site-wide Policy settings below.
Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is almost always okay. At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the defaults from then on.
After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
Configure supports a number of useful options. Run Configure -h to get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
To compile with gcc, for example, you should run
sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items with command line options, you need to use Configure -O.
By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation directory, when Configure prompts you or by using the Configure command line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
If your prefix contains the string ``perl'', then the directories are simplified. For example, if you use prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of /opt/perl/lib/perl5/.
NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will attempt infinite recursion.
It may seem obvious to say, but Perl is useful only when users can easily find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially careful, however, of overwriting a version of perl supplied by your vendor. In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to put (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc, into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another obvious and convenient place.
By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if your system supports it. If you want to force perl to be compiled statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse output, you can run
sh Configure -des
For my Solaris system, I usually use
sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure options. Try
./configure.gnu --help
for a listing.
Cross compiling is not supported.
(The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems that would not distinguish the files ``Configure'' and ``configure''.)
By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File only if it is able to find the gdbm library. (See examples below.) B, DynaLoader, Fcntl, IO, and attrs are always built by default. Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX is always built by default as well. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can set the Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from the Configure command line. Similarly, the Opcode extension is always built by default, but you can skip it by setting the Configure variable useopcode=false either in a hint file for from the command line.
You can learn more about each of these extensions by consulting the documentation in the individual .pm modules, located under the ext/ subdirectory.
Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the DynaLoader extension; you should just build the stub dl_none.xs version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)
In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set to turn off each extension:
B (Always included by default)
DB_File i_db
DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)
Fcntl (Always included by default)
GDBM_File i_gdbm
IO (Always included by default)
NDBM_File i_ndbm
ODBM_File i_dbm
POSIX useposix
SDBM_File (Always included by default)
Opcode useopcode
Socket d_socket
Threads usethreads
attrs (Always included by default)
Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use
sh Configure -Ui_ndbm
Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm library.
Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only the extensions you want.
Note: The DB_File module will only work with version 1.x of Berkeley DB or newer releases of version 2. Configure will automatically detect this for you and refuse to try to build DB_File with version 2.
If you re-use your old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to you.
Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern Unix systems do) remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as well build all the ones that will work on your system.
Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For each extension, if Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will automatically include that extension. The gdbm and db libraries are not included with perl. See the library documentation for how to obtain the libraries.
Note: If your database header (.h) files are not in a directory normally searched by your C compiler, then you will need to include the appropriate -I/your/directory option when prompted by Configure. If your database library (.a) files are not in a directory normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to include the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted by Configure. See the examples below.
Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include.
When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include -L/usr/local/lib.
If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include -L/usr/local/lib.
Again, this should all happen automatically. If you want to accept the defaults for all the questions and have Configure print out only terse messages, then you can just run
sh Configure -des
and Configure should include the GDBM_File extension automatically.
This should actually work if you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu, /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one line):
sh Configure -des \
-Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
-Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"
locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search. Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search. Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under /usr/you, then you have to include both, namely
sh Configure -des \
-Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
-Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
The installation directories can all be changed by answering the appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.
I highly recommend running Configure interactively to be sure it puts everything where you want it. At any point during the Configure process, you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use the defaults from then on.
By default, Configure will use the following directories for library files for 5.005 (archname is a string like sun4-sunos, determined by Configure).
Configure variable Default value
$archlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.005/archname
$privlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.005
$sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/archname
$sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
Some users prefer to append a ``/share'' to $privlib and
$sitelib to emphasize that those directories can be shared
among different architectures.
By default, Configure will use the following directories for manual pages:
Configure variable Default value
$man1dir /usr/local/man/man1
$man3dir /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3
(Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those instead.)
The module man pages are stuck in that strange spot so that they don't collide with other man pages stored in /usr/local/man/man3, and so that Perl's man pages don't hide system man pages. On some systems, man less would end up calling up Perl's less.pm module man page, rather than the less program. (This default location will likely change to /usr/local/man/man3 in a future release of perl.)
Note: Many users prefer to store the module man pages in /usr/local/man/man3. You can do this from the command line with
sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/man/man3
Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
If you specify a prefix that contains the string ``perl'', then the directory structure is simplified. For example, if you Configure with -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the defaults for 5.005 are
Configure variable Default value
$archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.005/archname
$privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.005
$sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.005/archname
$sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.005
$man1dir /opt/perl/man/man1
$man3dir /opt/perl/man/man3
The perl executable will search the libraries in the order given above.
The directories under site_perl are empty, but are intended to be used for installing local or site-wide extensions. Perl will automatically look in these directories.
In order to support using things like #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.005 after a later version is released, architecture-dependent libraries are stored in a version-specific directory, such as /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.005/.
Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are discussed in Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5 below.
Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run Configure.
Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically. However, sites that use software such as depot to manage software packages may also wish to install perl into a different directory and use that management software to move perl to its final destination. This section describes how to do this. Someday, Configure may support an option -Dinstallprefix=/foo to simplify this.
Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You can edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local/wherever. Or, you can automate this process by placing the following lines in a file config.over before you run Configure (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice):
installprefix=/tmp/perl5
test -d $installprefix || mkdir $installprefix
test -d $installprefix/bin || mkdir $installprefix/bin
installarchlib=`echo $installarchlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
installbin=`echo $installbin | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
installman1dir=`echo $installman1dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
installman3dir=`echo $installman3dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
installprivlib=`echo $installprivlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
installscript=`echo $installscript | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
installsitelib=`echo $installsitelib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
installsitearch=`echo $installsitearch | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
Then, you can Configure and install in the usual way:
sh Configure -des
make
make test
make install
Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on extensions, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you follow this example. The next section shows one way of dealing with that problem.
If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be installed on multiple systems. Here's one way to do that:
# Set up config.over to install perl into a different directory,
# e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
sh Configure -des
make
make test
make install
cd /tmp/perl5
# Edit $archlib/Config.pm to change all the
# install* variables back to reflect where everything will
# really be installed.
# Edit any of the scripts in $scriptdir to have the correct
# #!/wherever/perl line.
tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
# Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
cd /usr/local # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
tar xvf perl5-archive.tar
After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide ``policy'' answers (such as installation directories and the local perl contact person) in the Policy.sh file. If you want to build perl on another system using the same policy defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file to the new system and Configure will use it along with the appropriate hint file for your system.
Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy answers, you should
rm -f Policy.sh
to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work. Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are some of the main things you can change.
On some platforms, perl5.005 can be compiled to use threads. To enable this, read the file README.threads, and then try
sh Configure -Dusethreads
Currently, you need to specify -Dusethreads on the Configure command line so that the hint files can make appropriate adjustments.
The default is to compile without thread support.
Previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl allow alternate IO mechanisms via a ``PerlIO'' abstraction, but the stdio mechanism is still the default and is the only supported mechanism.
This PerlIO abstraction can be enabled either on the Configure command line with
sh Configure -Duseperlio
or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
If you choose to use the PerlIO abstraction layer, there are two (experimental) possibilities for the underlying IO calls. These have been tested to some extent on some platforms, but are not guaranteed to work everywhere.
AT&T's ``sfio''. This has superior performance to stdio.h in many cases, and is extensible by the use of ``discipline'' modules. Sfio currently only builds on a subset of the UNIX platforms perl supports. Because the data structures are completely different from stdio, perl extension modules or external libraries may not work. This configuration exists to allow these issues to be worked on.
This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed. A (fairly old) version of sfio is in CPAN.
You select this option by
sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by Configure.
Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails to detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent). Apparently, this is a problem at least for some versions of Linux and SunOS 4.
You can test if you have this problem by trying the following shell script. (You may have to add some extra cflags and libraries. A portable version of this may eventually make its way into Configure.)
#!/bin/sh
cat > try.c <<'EOCP'
#include <stdio.h>
main() { printf("42\n"); }
EOCP
cc -o try try.c -lsfio
val=`./try`
if test X$val = X42; then
echo "Your sfio looks ok"
else
echo "Your sfio has the exit problem."
fi
If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to your sfio sources and correct iffe's guess about atexit.
There also might be a more recent release of Sfio that fixes your problem.
This configuration should work on all platforms (but might not).
You select this option via:
sh Configure -Duseperlio -Uusesfio
If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure does not detect sfio, then this will be the default suggested by Configure.
Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by linking the ``perl library'' libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static extensions (usually just DynaLoader.a) and various extra libraries, such as -lm.
On some 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 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries can share the same library.
The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions and upgrades.
In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so. Your system and typical applications may well give quite different results.
The default name for the shared library is typically something like libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 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
To actually build perl, you must add the current working directory to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable before running make. You can do this with
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
for Bourne-style shells, or
setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
for Csh-style shells. You *MUST* do this before running make. Folks running NeXT OPENSTEP must substitute DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for LD_LIBRARY_PATH above.
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 5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you try to build Perl 5.004 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.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't. On Digital Unix, you can override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the _RLD_ROOT environment variable to point to the perl build directory.
The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING version of perl. You can do this by changing all the *archlib* variables in config.sh, namely archlib, archlib_exp, and installarchlib, to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
Perl relies heavily on
malloc(3) to grow data
structures as needed, so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by
the performance of the malloc function on your system.
The perl source is shipped with a version of malloc that is very fast but somewhat wasteful of space. On the other hand, your system's malloc function may be a bit slower but also a bit more frugal. However, as of 5.004_68, perl's malloc has been optimized for the typical requests from perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory.
For many uses, speed is probably the most important consideration, so the default behavior (for most systems) is to use the malloc supplied with perl. However, if you will be running very large applications (e.g. Tk or PDL) or if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries that call malloc, then you might wish to use your system's malloc. (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
If you are using Perl's malloc, you may add one or more of the following items to your ccflags config.sh variable to change its behavior. You can find out more about these and other flags by reading the commentary near the top of the malloc.c source. The defaults should be fine for nearly everyone.
You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with perl -d your_script. If, however, you want to debug perl itself, you probably want to do
sh Configure -Doptimize='-g'
This will do two independent things: First, it will force compilation to use cc -g so that you can use your system's debugger on the executable. (Note: Your system may actually require something like cc -g2. Check your man pages for
cc(1) and also any hint file for your system.) Second, it will add
-DDEBUGGING to your ccflags variable in config.sh so that you can use
perl -D to access perl's internal state. (Note: Configure will only add
-DDEBUGGING by default if you are not reusing your old
config.sh. If you want to reuse your old config.sh, then you can just edit
it and change the optimize and ccflags variables by hand and then propagate
your changes as shown in Propagating your changes to config.sh below.)
You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently, but usually it's convenient to have both.
If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple versions of perl under Building a shared libperl.so Perl library.
For most users, all of the Configure defaults are fine. However, you can change a number of factors in the way perl is built by adding appropriate -D directives to your ccflags variable in config.sh.
For example, you can replace the
rand() and
srand() functions in the perl source by any other random number generator by a trick such as the following (this should all be on one line):
sh Configure -Dccflags='-Dmy_rand=random -Dmy_srand=srandom' \
-Drandbits=31
or you can use the drand48 family of functions with
sh Configure -Dccflags='-Dmy_rand=lrand48 -Dmy_srand=srand48' \
-Drandbits=31
or by adding the -D flags to your ccflags at the appropriate Configure prompt. (Read pp.c to see how this works.)
You should also run Configure interactively to verify that a hint file doesn't inadvertently override your ccflags setting. (Hints files shouldn't do that, but some might.)
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 and flags) you can type &-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 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
Several of the hint files contain additional important information. If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint file for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example. More information about writing good hints is in the hints/README.hints file.
*** WHOA THERE!!! ***
The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"!
Keep the recommended value? [y]
You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try overriding it.
If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word ``previous'' will be used instead of ``recommended''. Again, you will almost always want to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your system.
For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries. Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will issue a message:
*** WHOA THERE!!! ***
The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
Keep the previous value? [y]
In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
sh Configure -S
You will then have to rebuild by running
make depend
make
If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware, though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be lost.
To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file, see the file hints/README.hints.
To change the
C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change
either $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
sh Configure -S
make depend
Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports for current information on ports to various other operating systems.
This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile. The
only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at the
bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
makefile, not Makefile since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
(On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file. Check
the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed explicitly above.
This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas. If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help, you can send a message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem. See Reporting Problems below.
make minitest
to test your version of miniperl.
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LC_ALL = "En_US",
LANG = (unset)
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
at Perl startup.
util.c: In function `Perl_form':
util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
proto.h:125: prototype declaration
it might well be a symptom of the gcc ``varargs problem''. See the previous varargs item.
$lddlflags so that the system's versions of as and ld are used. Note that the trailing '/' is required. Alternatively, you can use the
GCC_EXEC_PREFIX environment variable to ensure that Sun's as and ld are used. Consult your gcc documentation for further information on the
-B option and the
GCC_EXEC_PREFIX variable.
One convenient way to ensure you are not using GNU as and ld is to invoke Configure with
sh Configure -Dcc='gcc -B/usr/ccs/bin/'
for Solaris systems. For a SunOS system, you must use -B/bin/ instead.
Alternatively, recent versions of
GNU ld reportedly work if you include -Wl,-export-dynamic in the ccdlflags variable in config.sh.
The reason this causes a problem is quite subtle. The file libdl.so.1.0 actually *only* contains functions which generate 'stub interception failed' errors! The runtime linker intercepts links to ``/usr/lib/libdl.so.1.0'' and links in internal implementation of those functions instead. [Thanks to Tim Bunce for this explanation.]
sh Configure -Uusenm
or by answering the nm extraction question interactively. If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old config.sh.
umask(), the problem is probably that Configure couldn't find your
umask() system call. Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't, this is probably the
nm extraction problem discussed above. Also, try reading the hints file for your system
for further information.
vsprintf(). Check whether your system has
vprintf(). (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
d_vprintf='define'
If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong on a number of other common functions too. This is probably the nm extraction problem discussed above.
fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item on
nm extraction.
optimize='-O'
to
optimize=' '
then propagate your changes with sh Configure -S and rebuild with make depend; make.
dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes
dbmclose()) may be available.
On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the message
Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File extension without the -lgdbm library.
It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not quite that tightly coordinated.
Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
UTS may need one or more of -DCRIPPLED_CC, -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
FreeBSD can fail the lib/ipc_sysv.t test if SysV IPC has not been configured to the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and you will get a message telling what to do.
If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.
Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM
This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made (you should run plain 'make' before 'make test' otherwise you won't have a complete build). If 'make test' doesn't say ``All tests successful'' then something went wrong. See the file t/README in the t subdirectory.
Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but a few tty tests will be skipped.
If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST by hand to see if it makes any difference. If individual tests bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,
./perl op/groups.t
Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
./perl harness
(this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses complicated constructs).
You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful comments that apply to your system.
If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
setenv LC_ALL C
(for C shell) or
LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system,
open(``|...'') or
open(``...|''). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some external program.
Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
cd t; ./perl op/pat.t
to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly, and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
This will put perl into the public directory you specified to Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try to put the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man pages, however. You may need to be root to run make install. If you are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should ignore any messages about chown not working.
If you want to install perl under a name other than ``perl'' (for example, when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging), indicate the alternate name on the ``make install'' line, such as:
make install PERLNAME=myperl
If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing anything, you can run
./perl installperl -n
./perl installman -n
make install will install the following:
perl,
perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
will be a link to perl.
suidperl,
sperl5.nnn If you requested setuid emulation.
a2p awk-to-perl translator
cppstdin This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
read from stdin.
c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
s2p sed-to-perl translator
find2perl find-to-perl translator
h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers
h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules
pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
pod2latex, to other useful formats.
pod2man, and
pod2text
splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
library files in $privlib and $archlib specified to
Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
man pages in the location specified to Configure, usually
something like /usr/local/man/man1.
module in the location specified to Configure, usually
man pages under /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3.
pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
Installperl will also create the library directories $siteperl
and $sitearch listed in config.sh. Usually, these are
something like
/usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
/usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/archname
where archname is something like sun4-sunos. These directories will be used for installing extensions.
Perl's *.h header files and the libperl.a library are also installed under
$archlib so that any user may later build new extensions, run
the optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
WARNING: The upgrade from 5.004_0x to 5.005 is going to be a bit tricky. See Upgrading from 5.004 to 5.005 below.
In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g. 5.004_04) to another similar version (e.g. 5.004_05) without re-compiling all of your add-on extensions. You can also safely leave the old version around in case the new version causes you problems for some reason. For example, if you want to be sure that your script continues to run with 5.004_04, simply replace the '#!/usr/local/bin/perl' line at the top of the script with the particular version you want to run, e.g. #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.00404.
Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use with a newer version of perl. Here is how it is supposed to work. (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
The directories searched by version 5.005 will be
Configure variable Default value
$archlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.005/archname
$privlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.005
$sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/archname
$sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
while the directories searched by version 5.005_01 will be
$archlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00501/archname
$privlib /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00501
$sitearch /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/archname
$sitelib /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005
When you install an add-on extension, it gets installed into $sitelib (or $sitearch if it is architecture-specific). This directory deliberately does
NOT include the sub-version number (01) so that both 5.005 and 5.005_01 can use the extension. Only when a perl version changes to break backwards compatibility will the default suggestions for the $sitearch and $sitelib version numbers be increased.
However, if you do run into problems, and you want to continue to use the
old version of perl along with your extension, move those extension files
to the appropriate version directory, such as $privlib (or
$archlib). (The extension's .packlist file lists the files installed with
that extension. For the Tk extension, for example, the list of files
installed is in $sitearch/auto/Tk/.packlist.) Then use your newer version
of perl to rebuild and re-install the extension into $sitelib. This way,
Perl 5.005 will find your files in the 5.005 directory, and newer versions
of perl will find your newer extension in the $sitelib
directory. (This is also why perl searches the site-specific libraries
last.)
Alternatively, if you are willing to reinstall all your extensions every
time you upgrade perl, then you can include the subversion number in
$sitearch and $sitelib when you run Configure.
Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely separate directories. One convenient way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.004
and adding /opt/perl5.004/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions (e.g. 5.004 for all 5.004_0x versions), but change directory with each major version.
If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to seriously consider using a separate directory, since development subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out yet.
Extensions built and installed with versions of perl prior to 5.004_50 will
need to be recompiled to be used with 5.004_50 and later. You will,
however, be able to continue using 5.004 even after you install 5.005. The
5.004 binary will still be able to find the extensions built under 5.004;
the 5.005 binary will look in the new $sitearch and
$sitelib directories, and will not find them.
You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.
By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named perl4.036. That will not be touched by the perl5 installation process. Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5. However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace the #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036 (or whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod for possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly. For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain structures.
Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
The following command-line is an example of one used to convert perl documentation:
./installhtml \
--podroot=. \
--podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
--recurse \
--htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
--htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
--splithead=pod/perlipc \
--splititem=pod/perlfunc \
--libpods=perlfunc:perlguts:perlvar:perlrun:perlop \
--verbose
See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to see warnings like ``no title'', ``unexpected directive'' and ``cannot resolve'' as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems (and would welcome patches for them).
You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce the number of ``cannot resolve'' warnings.
Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory available in TeX format. Type
(cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
If you have difficulty building perl, and none of the advice in this file helps, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help either, then you should send a message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem.
Please include the output of the ./myconfig shell script that comes with
the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the perlbug program that comes
with the perl distribution, but you need to have perl compiled before you
can use it. (If you have not installed it yet, you need to run ./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug instead of a plain perlbug.)
You might also find helpful information in the Porting directory of the perl distribution.
Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the build process. Type man perl to get started. Alternatively, you can type perldoc perl to use the supplied perldoc script. This is sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form, along with its table of contents, by going to the pod/ subdirectory and running (either):
./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed
./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed. (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff set-up.)
Note that you must have performed the installation already before running the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate the documentation.
Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see Reporting Problems above.
This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under the same terms as perl itself.
If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of a larger package) please do modify these installation instructions and the contact information to match your distribution.
$Id: INSTALL,v 1.42 1998/07/15 18:04:44 doughera Released $
If rather than formatting bugs, you encounter substantive content errors in these documents, such as mistakes in the explanations or code, please use the perlbug utility included with the Perl distribution.