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Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.
Reporting Problems
Wherever possible please use the perlbug tool supplied with this Perl to report problems, as it automatically includes summary configuration information about your perl, which may help us track down problems far more quickly. But first you should read the advice in this file, carefully re-read the error message and check the relevant manual pages on your system, as these may help you find an immediate solution. If you are not sure whether what you are seeing is a bug, you can send a message describing the problem to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup to get advice.
The perlbug tool is installed along with perl, so after you have completed make install
it should be possible to run it with plain perlbug
. If the install fails, or you want to report problems with make test
without installing perl, then you can use make nok
to run perlbug to report the problem, or run it by hand from this source directory with ./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug
If the build fails too early to run perlbug uninstalled, then please run the ./myconfig
shell script, and mail its output along with an accurate description of your problem to firstname.lastname@example.com
If Configure itself fails, and does not generate a config.sh file (needed to run ./myconfig
), then please mail email@example.com the description of how Configure fails along with details of your system - for example the output from running uname -a
Please try to make your message brief but clear. Brief, clear bug reports tend to get answered more quickly. Please don't worry if your written English is not great - what matters is how well you describe the important technical details of the problem you have encountered, not whether your grammar and spelling is flawless.
Trim out unnecessary information. Do not include large files (such as config.sh or a complete Configure or make log) unless absolutely necessary. Do not include a complete transcript of your build session. Just include the failing commands, the relevant error messages, and whatever preceding commands are necessary to give the appropriate context. Plain text should usually be sufficient--fancy attachments or encodings may actually reduce the number of people who read your message. Your message will get relayed to over 400 subscribers around the world so please try to keep it brief but clear.
If you are unsure what makes a good bug report please read "How to report Bugs Effectively" by Simon Tatham: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html
First, make sure you have an up-to-date version of Perl. If you didn't get your Perl source from CPAN, check the latest version at http://www.cpan.org/src/. Perl uses a version scheme where even-numbered subreleases (like 5.6.x and 5.8.x) are stable maintenance releases and odd-numbered subreleases (like 5.7.x and 5.9.x) are unstable development releases. Development releases should not be used in production environments. Fixes and new features are first carefully tested in development releases and only if they prove themselves to be worthy will they be migrated to the maintenance releases.
The basic steps to build and install perl5 on a Unix system with all the defaults are:
rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
sh Configure -de
make test
make install
Each of these is explained in further detail below.
The above commands will install Perl to /usr/local (or some other platform-specific directory -- see the appropriate file in hints/.) If that's not okay with you, can run Configure interactively and use
rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
sh Configure
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>)
or you can use some of the Configure options described below.
If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see "Reporting Problems" above.
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
F<file> A filename
Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users, you should probably at least skim through this document before proceeding.
In addition to this file, check if there is a README file specific to your operating system, since it 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 even more information. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh or the svr5.sh hint file.)
For additional information about porting Perl, see the section on "Porting information" below, and look at the files in the Porting/ directory.
Changes and Incompatibilities
Please see pod/perldelta.pod for a description of the changes and potential incompatibilities introduced with this release. A few of the most important issues are listed below, but you should refer to pod/perldelta.pod for more detailed information.
WARNING: This version is not binary compatible with releases of Perl prior to 5.8.0.
If you have built extensions (i.e. modules that include C code) using an earlier version of Perl, you will need to rebuild and reinstall those extensions.
Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine without reinstallation. See the discussions below on "Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5" and "Upgrading from 5.005 or 5.6 to 5.8.0" for more details.
The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
On a related issue, old modules 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. See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Also see CPAN::autobundle for one way to make a "bundle" of your currently installed modules.
Space Requirements
The complete perl5 source tree takes up about 60 MB of disk space. After completing make, it takes up roughly 100 MB, though the actual total is likely to be quite system-dependent. The installation directories need something on the order of 45 MB, though again that value is system-dependent. A perl build with debug symbols and -DDEBUGGING will require something on the order of 10 MB extra.
Start with a Fresh Distribution
If you have built perl before, you should clean out the build directory with the command
make distclean
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
rm -f config.sh
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. 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. For example, some Linux distributions use i386, while others may use i486. If you build it yourself, Configure uses the output of the arch command, which might be i586 or i686 instead. If you pick up a precompiled binary, or compile extensions on different systems, they might not all agree on the architecture 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 Policy.sh file. See the section on "Site-wide Policy settings" below. If you wish to start with a fresh distribution, you also need to remove any old Policy.sh files you may have with
rm -f Policy.sh
Run Configure
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. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found", since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing the same function.
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.
Common Configure options
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.
- gcc
To compile with gcc 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.
- Installation prefix
By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See "Installation Directories" and "Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5" below for further details.)
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 suggested directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of /opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see "Installation Directories" below for more details. Do not include a trailing slash, (i.e. /opt/perl/) or you may experience odd test failures.
NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will attempt infinite recursion.
- /usr/bin/perl
It may seem obvious, 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, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing. If you insist on replacing your vendor's perl, useful information on how it was configured may be found with
perl -V:config_args
(Check the output carefully, however, since this doesn't preserve spaces in arguments to Configure. For that, you have to look carefully at config_arg1, config_arg2, etc.)
By default, Configure will not try to link /usr/bin/perl to the current version of perl. You can turn on that behavior by running
Configure -Dinstallusrbinperl
or by answering 'yes' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
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.
- Building a development release.
For development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.9.x) if you want to use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel to Configure, because the default answer to the question "do you really want to Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel skips that sanity check.
If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse output, you can run
sh Configure -des
For example for my Solaris/x86 system, I usually use
sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -Doptimize='-xpentium -xO4' -des
Altering config.sh variables for C compiler switches etc.
For most users, most of the Configure defaults are fine, or can easily be set on the Configure command line. However, if Configure doesn't have an option to do what you want, you can change Configure variables after the platform hints have been run by using Configure's -A switch. For example, here's how to add a couple of extra flags to C compiler invocations:
sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_Y2KWARN -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC"
For more help on Configure switches, run
sh Configure -h
Major Configure-time Build Options
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, perl can be compiled with support for threads. To enable this, run
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.
Perl has two different internal threads implementations. The current model (available internally since 5.6, and as a user-level module since 5.8) is called interpreter-based implementation (ithreads), with one interpreter per thread, and explicit sharing of data. The 5.005 version (5005threads) is considered obsolete, buggy, and unmaintained.
By default, Configure selects ithreads if -Dusethreads is specified.
However, if you insist, you can select the unsupported old 5005threads behavior
sh Configure -Dusethreads -Duse5005threads
The 'threads' module is for use with the ithreads implementation. The 'Thread' module offers an interface to either 5005threads or ithreads (whichever has been configured).
When using threads, perl uses a dynamically-sized buffer for some of the thread-safe library calls, such as those in the getpw*() family. This buffer starts small, but it will keep growing until the result fits. To get a fixed upper limit, you should compile Perl with PERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE defined to be the number of bytes you want. One way to do this is to run Configure with -Accflags=-DPERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE=65536
Large file support.
Since Perl 5.6.0, Perl has supported large files (files larger than 2 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this support is on by default.
This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files, seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad in that if you are interfacing Perl using some extension, the components you are connecting to must also be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things will happen. One popular extension suffering from this ailment is the Apache extension mod_perl.
There's also one known limitation with the current large files implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer formats like %x
to print filesizes. You can use %d
, though.
64 bit support.
If your platform does not have run natively at 64 bits, but can simulate them with compiler flags and/or long long
or int64_t
, you can build a perl that uses 64 bits.
There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure -Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
The use64bitint
option does only as much as is required to get 64-bit integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long longs") while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because your pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name 64bitint
does not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit int
s (it might, but it doesn't have to). The use64bitint
simply means that you will be able to have 64 bit-wide scalar values.
The use64bitall
option goes all the way by attempting to switch integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit aware.
Natively 64-bit systems like Alpha and Cray need neither -Duse64bitint nor -Duse64bitall.
NOTE: 64-bit support is still experimental on most platforms.
Existing support only covers the LP64 data model. In particular, the
LLP64 data model is not yet supported. 64-bit libraries and system
APIs on many platforms have not stabilized--your mileage may vary.
Long doubles
In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers (that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable this support (if it is available).
"more bits"
You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support and the long double support.
Selecting File IO mechanisms
Executive summary: as of Perl 5.8, you should use the default "PerlIO" as the IO mechanism unless you have a good reason not to.
In more detail: previous versions of perl used the standard IO mechanisms as defined in stdio.h. Versions 5.003_02 and later of perl introduced alternate IO mechanisms via a "PerlIO" abstraction, but up until and including Perl 5.6, the stdio mechanism was still the default and the only supported mechanism.
Starting from Perl 5.8, the default mechanism is to use the PerlIO abstraction, because it allows better control of I/O mechanisms, instead of having to work with (often, work around) vendors' I/O implementations.
This PerlIO abstraction can be (but again, unless you know what you are doing, should not be) disabled either on the Configure command line with
sh Configure -Uuseperlio
or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
With the PerlIO abstraction layer, there is another possibility for the underlying IO calls, AT&T's "sfio". This has superior performance to stdio.h in many cases, and is extensible by the use of "discipline" modules ("Native" PerlIO has them too). 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. The latest sfio is available from http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/sfio/
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. Configure should detect this problem and warn you about problems with _exit vs. exit. If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to your sfio sources and correct iffe's guess about atexit.
Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Hashes
In Perls 5.8.0 and earlier it was easy to create degenerate hashes. Processing such hashes would consume large amounts of CPU time, enabling a "Denial of Service" attack against Perl. Such hashes may be a problem for example for mod_perl sites, sites with Perl CGI scripts and web services, that process data originating from external sources.
In Perl 5.8.1 a security feature was introduced to make it harder to create such degenerate hashes. A visible side effect of this was that the keys(), values(), and each() functions may return the hash elements in different order between different runs of Perl even with the same data. It also had unintended binary incompatibility issues with certain modules compiled against Perl 5.8.0.
In Perl 5.8.2 an improved scheme was introduced. Hashes will return elements in the same order as Perl 5.8.0 by default. On a hash by hash basis, if pathological data is detected during a hash key insertion, then that hash will switch to an alternative random hash seed. As adding keys can always dramatically change returned hash element order, existing programs will not be affected by this, unless they specifically test for pre-recorded hash return order for contrived data. (eg the list of keys generated by map {"\0"x$_} 0..15
trigger randomisation) In effect the new implementation means that 5.8.1 scheme is only being used on hashes which are under attack.
One can still revert to the old guaranteed repeatable order (and be vulnerable to attack by wily crackers) by setting the environment variable PERL_HASH_SEED, see "PERL_HASH_SEED" in perlrun. Another option is to add -DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT to the compilation flags (for example by using Configure -Accflags=-DUSE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT
), in which case one has to explicitly set the PERL_HASH_SEED environment variable to enable the security feature, or by adding -DNO_HASH_SEED to the compilation flags to completely disable the randomisation feature.
Perl has never guaranteed any ordering of the hash keys, and the ordering has already changed several times during the lifetime of Perl 5. Also, the ordering of hash keys has always been, and continues to be, affected by the insertion order. It is likely that Perl 5.10 and Perl 6 will randomise all hashes. Note that because of this randomisation for example the Data::Dumper results will be different between different runs of Perl since Data::Dumper by default dumps hashes "unordered". The use of the Data::Dumper Sortkeys
option is recommended.
Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS Version 5. You can find more about SOCKS from http://www.socks.nec.com/
Dynamic Loading
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.
Building a shared Perl library
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.6.2 (for Perl 5.6.2), or libperl.so.602, 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 build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Darwin, LIBRARY_PATH for BeOS, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared library search settings. You can find the name of the environment variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
grep ldlibpthname config.sh
However, there are some special cases where manually setting the shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed ./perl:
cd t; ./perl misc/failing_test.t
./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly. 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. (This procedure may also be needed if for some unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And again, it may be something other than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX), for example: 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g. with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and install a standard Perl 5.8.0 with a shared library. Then, suppose you try to build Perl 5.8.0 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else the same, including all the installation directories. How can you ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built libperl.so.8 rather with the installed libperl.so.8? The answer is 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 only override at runtime via LD_PRELOAD, specifying the exact filename you wish to be used; and on Digital Unix, you can override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the _RLD_ROOT environment variable to point to the perl build directory.
In other words, it is generally not a good idea to try to build a perl with a shared library if $archlib/CORE/$libperl already exists from a previous build.
A good workaround is to 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 to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
Environment access
Perl often needs to write to the program's environment, such as when %ENV
is assigned to. Many implementations of the C library function putenv()
leak memory, so where possible perl will manipulate the environment directly to avoid these leaks. The default is now to perform direct manipulation whenever perl is running as a stand alone interpreter, and to call the safe but potentially leaky putenv()
function when the perl interpreter is embedded in another application. You can force perl to always use putenv()
by compiling with -DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV. You can force an embedded perl to use direct manipulation by setting PL_use_safe_putenv = 0;
after the perl_construct()
Installation Directories
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. Do not include trailing slashes on directory names.
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. Alternatively, you can
grep '^install' config.sh
after Configure has run to verify the installation paths.
The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults, you can safely skip the next section.
The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
- Directories for the perl distribution
By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.8.x. $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g. 5.8.3 or 5.8.4, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos, determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
Configure variable Default value $prefixexp /usr/local $binexp $prefixexp/bin $scriptdirexp $prefixexp/bin $privlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version $archlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version/$archname $man1direxp $prefixexp/man/man1 $man3direxp $prefixexp/man/man3 $html1direxp (none) $html3direxp (none)
$prefixexp is generated from $prefix, with ~ expansion done to convert home directories into absolute paths. Similarly for the other variables listed. As file system calls do not do this, you should always reference the ...exp variables, to support users who build perl in their home directory.
Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only the common style is shown here.
- Directories for site-specific add-on files
After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
Configure variable Default value $siteprefixexp $prefixexp $sitebinexp $siteprefixexp/bin $sitescriptexp $siteprefixexp/bin $sitelibexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version $sitearchexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname $siteman1direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man1 $siteman3direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man3 $sitehtml1direxp (none) $sitehtml3direxp (none)
By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
- Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
Configure variable Default value $vendorprefixexp (none) (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.) $vendorbinexp $vendorprefixexp/bin $vendorscriptexp $vendorprefixexp/bin $vendorlibexp $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version $vendorarchexp $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname $vendorman1direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man1 $vendorman3direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man3 $vendorhtml1direxp (none) $vendorhtml3direxp (none)
These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example, a vendor might choose the following settings:
$prefix /usr $siteprefix /usr/local $vendorprefix /usr
This would have the effect of setting the following:
$binexp /usr/bin $scriptdirexp /usr/bin $privlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version $archlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname $man1direxp /usr/man/man1 $man3direxp /usr/man/man3 $sitebinexp /usr/local/bin $sitescriptexp /usr/local/bin $sitelibexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version $sitearchexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname $siteman1direxp /usr/local/man/man1 $siteman3direxp /usr/local/man/man3 $vendorbinexp /usr/bin $vendorscriptexp /usr/bin $vendorlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version $vendorarchexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname $vendorman1direxp /usr/man/man1 $vendorman3direxp /usr/man/man3
Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end-user are in the /usr/local hierarchy.
The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct. However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search the installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions. See "Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5" below for more details on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's network. One way to do that would be something like
sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
- otherlibdirs
As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty. Perl will search these directories (including architecture and version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
For example, if you have a bundle of perl libraries from a previous installation, perhaps in a strange place:
Configure -Dotherlibdirs=/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1
There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon- separated list of directories, like this
sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC first, ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs, version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
Run-time customization of @INC can be enabled with:
sh Configure -Dusesitecustomize
Which will define USE_SITECUSTOMIZE and $Config{usesitecustomize}. When enabled, make perl run $sitelibexp/sitecustomize.pl before anything else. This script can then be set up to add additional entries to @INC.
- Man Pages
In versions 5.005_57 and earlier, the default was to store module man pages in a version-specific directory, such as /usr/local/lib/perl5/$version/man/man3. The default for 5.005_58 and after is /usr/local/man/man3 so that most users can find the man pages without resetting MANPATH.
You can continue to use the old default from the command line with
sh Configure -Dman3dir=/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.4/man/man3
Some users also prefer to use a .3pm suffix. You can do that with
sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run Configure.
- HTML pages
Currently, the standard perl installation does not do anything with HTML documentation, but that may change in the future. Further, some add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The html Configure variables listed above are provided if you wish to specify where such documents should be placed. The default is "none", but will likely eventually change to something useful based on user feedback.
Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different architectures.
Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same filesystem.
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.
If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
Thus, for example, if you Configure with -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.8.4 are
Configure variable Default value
$privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.8.4
$archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.8.4/$archname
$sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.8.4
$sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.8.4/$archname
Changing the installation directory
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, or users building binary packages for distribution 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 that.
Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You could edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to /tmp/perl5 instead of /usr/local, or you could simply use the following command line:
sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
(replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on modules, 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.
Creating an installable tar archive
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. Suppose, for example, that you want to create an archive that can be installed in /opt/perl. One way to do that is by using the DESTDIR variable during make install
. The DESTDIR is automatically prepended to all the installation paths. Thus you simply do:
sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
make test
make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
cd /tmp/perl5/opt/perl
tar cvf /tmp/perl5-archive.tar .
Site-wide Policy settings
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.
If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the platform-specific hints files.
Disabling older versions of Perl
Configure will search for binary compatible versions of previously installed perl binaries in the tree that is specified as target tree and these will be used by the perl being built. See "Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5" for more details.
To disable this use of older perl modules, even completely valid pure perl modules, you can specify to not include the paths found:
sh Configure -Dinc_version_list=none ...
When using the newer perl, you can add these paths again in the $PERL5LIB environment variable or with perl's -I runtime option.
Building Perl outside of the source directory
Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary architectures. You can do this (if your file system supports symbolic links) by
mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
as usual, and Perl will be built in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
Building a debugging perl
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 Perl library".
Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained in the ext/ subdirectory.
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.) Configure does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX is always built by default. If you wish to skip POSIX, you can set the Configure variable useposix=false from the Configure command line.
If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this -- it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however; you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
If you have dynamic loading, another way of specifying extra modules is described in "Adding extra modules to the build" below.
You can learn more about each of the supplied 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.
To disable certain extensions so that they are not built, use the -Dnoextensions=... and -Donlyextensions=... options. They both accept a space-separated list of extensions. The extensions listed in noextensions
are removed from the list of extensions to build, while the onlyextensions
is rather more severe and builds only the listed extensions. The latter should be used with extreme caution since certain extensions are used by many other extensions and modules: examples of such modules include Fcntl and IO. The order of processing these options is first only
(if present), then no
(if present).
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 earlier releases of 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 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.
Including locally-installed libraries
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.
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 libraries 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.
- gdbm in /usr/local
Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the necessary steps out automatically.
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. This should also work if you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu, /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
- gdbm in /usr/you
Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/, but you still want Configure to find it. To be specific, assume you have /usr/you/include/gdbm.h and /usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a. You still have to add -I/usr/you/include to cc flags, but you have to take an extra step to help Configure find libgdbm.a. Specifically, when Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add /usr/you/lib to the list.
It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one line):
sh Configure -de \ -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 -de \ -Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \ -Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"
Building DB, NDBM, and ODBM interfaces with Berkeley DB 3
A Perl interface for DB3 is part of Berkeley DB, but if you want to compile the standard Perl DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you must follow following instructions.
Berkeley DB3 from Sleepycat Software is by default installed without DB1 compatibility code (needed for the DB_File interface) and without links to compatibility files. So if you want to use packages written for the DB/ODBM/NDBM interfaces, you need to configure DB3 with --enable-compat185 (and optionally with --enable-dump185) and create additional references (suppose you are installing DB3 with --prefix=/usr):
ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdbm.so
ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libndbm.so
echo '#define DB_DBM_HSEARCH 1' >dbm.h
echo '#include <db.h>' >>dbm.h
install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/dbm.h
install -m 0644 dbm.h /usr/include/ndbm.h
Optionally, if you have compiled with --enable-compat185 (not needed for ODBM/NDBM):
ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb1.so
ln -s libdb-3.so /usr/lib/libdb.so
ODBM emulation seems not to be perfect, but is quite usable, using DB 3.1.17:
lib/odbm.............FAILED at test 9
Failed 1/64 tests, 98.44% okay
Overriding an old config.sh
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.
GNU-style configure
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.
(The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
See Cross-compilation below for information on cross-compiling.
Malloc Issues
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 has been optimized for the typical requests from perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory than your system malloc.
However, 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 should probably use your system's malloc. (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
- Using the system malloc
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.
NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you just run Configure to accept all the defaults on those platforms.
Perl's malloc family of functions are normally called Perl_malloc(), Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree(). These names do not clash with the system versions of these functions.
If this flag is enabled, however, Perl's malloc family of functions will have the same names as the system versions. This may be required sometimes if you have libraries that like to free() data that may have been allocated by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom versions.
This flag enables debugging mstats, which is required to use the Devel::Peek::mstat() function. You cannot enable this unless you are using Perl's malloc, so a typical Configure command would be
sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS -Dusemymalloc='y'
to enable this option.
What if it doesn't work?
If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas. If none of them help, then see "Reporting Problems" above.
- Running Configure Interactively
If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its guesses.
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.
- Hint files
The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure will offer to use that hint file.
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.
Occasionally, Configure makes a wrong guess. For example, on SunOS 4.1.3, Configure incorrectly concludes that tzname[] is in the standard C library. The hint file is set up to correct for this. You will see a message:
*** 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.)
- Changing Compilers
If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old. Then rerun Configure with the options you want to use.
This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
- Propagating your changes to config.sh
If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate them to all the .SH files by running
sh Configure -S
You will then have to rebuild by running
make depend make
- config.over and config.arch
You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this, however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense. This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific hints file that creates the config.arch.
- config.h
Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h. Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script. The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
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.
- cflags
If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the optimizer on toke.c, find the line in the switch structure for toke.c and put the command optimize='-g' before the ;; . You can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be lost the next time you run Configure.
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
- No sh
If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information. You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building mechanism.
- Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX and BIN_SH
In Digital UNIX/Tru64 UNIX, Configure might abort with
Build a threading Perl? [n] Configure[2437]: Syntax error at line 1 : `config.sh' is not expected.
This indicates that Configure is being run with a broken Korn shell (even though you think you are using a Bourne shell by using "sh Configure" or "./Configure"). The Korn shell bug has been reported to Compaq as of February 1999 but in the meanwhile, the reason ksh is being used is that you have the environment variable BIN_SH set to 'xpg4'. This causes /bin/sh to delegate its duties to /bin/posix/sh (a ksh). Unset the environment variable and rerun Configure.
- HP-UX 11, pthreads, and libgdbm
If you are running Configure with -Dusethreads in HP-UX 11, be warned that POSIX threads and libgdbm (the GNU dbm library) compiled before HP-UX 11 do not mix. This will cause a basic test run by Configure to fail
Pthread internal error: message: __libc_reinit() failed, file: ../pthreads/pthread.c, line: 1096 Return Pointer is 0xc082bf33 sh: 5345 Quit(coredump)
and Configure will give up. The cure is to recompile and install libgdbm under HP-UX 11.
- Porting information
Specific information for the OS/2, Plan 9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information, including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting subdirectory. Porting/Glossary should especially come in handy.
Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to various other operating systems.
If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture, study carefully the section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl" in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file Porting/patching.pod. Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
Adding extra modules to the build
You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=... command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
Configure -Dextras="Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI"
or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and then answer "Compress::Zlib Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question. The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install' command. This will only work if those modules are to be built as dynamic extensions. If you wish to include those extra modules as static extensions, see "Extensions" above.
Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet, or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the build. For example: you will need to have the zlib.h header and the libz library installed for the Compress::Zlib, or the Foo database specific headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
suidperl is an optional component, which is normally neither built nor installed by default. From perlfaq1:
On some systems, setuid and setgid scripts (scripts written
in the C shell, Bourne shell, or Perl, for example, with the
set user or group ID permissions enabled) are insecure due to
a race condition in the kernel. For those systems, Perl versions
5 and 4 attempt to work around this vulnerability with an optional
component, a special program named suidperl, also known as sperl.
This program attempts to emulate the set-user-ID and set-group-ID
features of the kernel.
Because of the buggy history of suidperl, and the difficulty of properly security auditing as large and complex piece of software as Perl, we cannot recommend using suidperl and the feature should be considered deprecated. Instead, use a tool specifically designed to handle changes in privileges, such as sudo, http://www.courtesan.com/sudo/ .
make depend
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.
Expected errors
These errors are normal, and can be ignored:
make: [extra.pods] Error 1 (ignored)
make: [extras.make] Error 1 (ignored)
What if it doesn't work?
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, then see "Reporting Problems" above.
- hints
If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file for further tips and information.
- extensions
If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes during the building of extensions, run
make minitest
to test your version of miniperl.
- locale
If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while running ./miniperl configpm with locales other than the C locale. See the discussion under "make test" below about locales and the whole "Locale problems" section in the file pod/perllocale.pod. The latter is especially useful if you see something like this
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.
- varargs
If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef' in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by installing gcc correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate your changes (see "Propagating your changes to config.sh" below). See also the "vsprintf" item below.
- util.c
If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
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.
If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details of your local set-up.
- nm extraction
If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions, try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line with
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 not found
If the build processes encounters errors relating to 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
If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's version of 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:
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.
- do_aspawn
If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item on "nm extraction".
- __inet_* errors
If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a newer version of BIND (and remove the files the old one left behind). If you can't, you can either link with the updated resolver library provided with BIND 8.1 or rename /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the Perl build and test process to avoid the problem.
- *_r() prototype NOT found
On a related note, if you see a bunch of complaints like the above about reentrant functions - specifically networking-related ones - being present but without prototypes available, check to see if BIND 8.1 (or possibly other BIND 8 versions) is (or has been) installed. They install header files such as netdb.h into places such as /usr/local/include (or into another directory as specified at build/install time), at least optionally. Remove them or put them in someplace that isn't in the C preprocessor's header file include search path (determined by -I options plus defaults, normally /usr/include).
- #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to update your gcc installation.
- Optimizer
If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
optimize=' '
then propagate your changes with sh Configure -S and rebuild with make depend; make.
- Missing functions and Undefined symbols
If the build of miniperl fails with a long list of missing functions or undefined symbols, check the libs variable in the config.sh file. It should look something like
libs='-lsocket -lnsl -ldl -lm -lc'
The exact libraries will vary from system to system, but you typically need to include at least the math library -lm. Normally, Configure will suggest the correct defaults. If the libs variable is empty, you need to start all over again. Run
make distclean
and start from the very beginning. This time, unless you are sure of what you are doing, accept the default list of libraries suggested by Configure.
If the libs variable looks correct, you might have the "nm extraction" problem discussed above.
If you stil have missing routines or undefined symbols, you probably need to add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete. If you used a hint file, see if it has any relevant advice. You can also look through through config.h for likely suspects.
- toke.c
Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for each file in cflags. It's okay to insert rules for specific files into makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a specific rule.
- Missing dbmclose
SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
- Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lsomething
If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but the extension passes its tests anyway (see "make test" below), then don't worry about the warning message. The extension Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed. For example, a system may have -lcposix or -lposix, but it's unlikely to have both, so most users will see warnings for the one they don't have. The phrase 'probably harmless' is intended to reassure you that nothing unusual is happening, and the build process is continuing.
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.
- sh: ar: not found
This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar' was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin directory.
- db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
- Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
If you get this error message from the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem test, your System V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS to include the System V semaphores.
- ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem........semget: No space left on device
Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications) with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your system.
- GNU binutils
If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld' may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
The Configure program has not been able to find all the files which make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file
andtar: Unexpected EOF on archive file
), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the official site named at the start of this document. If you do find that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code archive, please report it to the site's maintainer. - invalid token: ##
You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. To compile Perl, you need to use a compiler that supports ANSI C. If there is a README file for your system, it may have further details on your compiler options.
- Miscellaneous
Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:
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 -K or -g, and undef LSTAT.
FreeBSD can fail the ext/IPC/SysV/t/sem.t test if SysV IPC has not been configured in the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and you will get a message telling you what to do.
HP-UX 11 Y2K patch "Y2K-1100 B.11.00.B0125 HP-UX Core OS Year 2000 Patch Bundle" has been reported to break the io/fs test #18 which tests whether utime() can change timestamps. The Y2K patch seems to break utime() so that over NFS the timestamps do not get changed (on local filesystems utime() still works).
Building Perl on a system that has also BIND (headers and libraries) installed may run into troubles because BIND installs its own netdb.h and socket.h, which may not agree with the operating system's ideas of the same files. Similarly, including -lbind may conflict with libc's view of the world. You may have to tweak -Dlocincpth and -Dloclibpth to avoid the BIND.
Perl can be cross-compiled. It is just not trivial, cross-compilation rarely is. Perl is routinely cross-compiled for many platforms (as of June 2005 at least PocketPC aka WinCE, Open Zaurus, EPOC, Symbian, and the IBM OS/400). These platforms are known as the target platforms, while the systems where the compilation takes place are the host platforms.
What makes the situation difficult is that first of all, cross-compilation environments vary significantly in how they are set up and used, and secondly because the primary way of configuring Perl (using the rather large Unix-tool-dependent Configure script) is not awfully well suited for cross-compilation. However, starting from version 5.8.0, the Configure script also knows one way of supporting cross-compilation support, please keep reading.
See the following files for more information about compiling Perl for the particular platforms:
- WinCE/PocketPC
README.ce, wince/README.perlce
- Open Zaurus
- Symbian
Packaging and transferring either the core Perl modules or CPAN modules to the target platform is also left up to the each cross-compilation environment. Often the cross-compilation target platforms are somewhat limited in diskspace: see the section "Minimizing the Perl installation" to learn more of the minimal set of files required for a functional Perl installation.
For some cross-compilation environments the Configure option -Dinstallprefix=...
might be handy, see "Changing the installation directory".
About the cross-compilation support of Configure: what is known to work is running Configure in a cross-compilation environment and building the miniperl executable. What is known not to work is building the perl executable because that would require building extensions: Dynaloader statically and File::Glob dynamically, for extensions one needs MakeMaker and MakeMaker is not yet cross-compilation aware, and neither is the main Makefile.
The cross-compilation setup of Configure has successfully been used in at least two Linux cross-compilation environments. The setups were both such that the host system was Intel Linux with a gcc built for cross-compiling into ARM Linux, and there was a SSH connection to the target system.
To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch that has to be used is -Dusecrosscompile
sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config symbol usecrosscompile
During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the target host. The execution scripts are named run-* and the transfer scripts to-* and from-*. The part after the dash is the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the methods are ssh and scp, thus making the scripts run-ssh, to-scp, and from-scp.
To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer happens), supply Configure with
-Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp. You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
but in case you don't, "root" will be used.
Because this is a cross-compilation effort, you will also need to specify which target environment and which compilation environment to use. This includes the compiler, the header files, and the libraries. In the below we use the usual settings for the iPAQ cross-compilation environment:
If the name of the cc
has the usual GNU C semantics for cross compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the names of the ar
, nm
, and ranlib
will also be automatically chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on. (The ld
requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure as appropriate.) Also, in this case the incpth, libpth, and usrinc will be guessed by Configure (unless explicitly set to something else, in which case Configure's guesses with be appended).
In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also choose rsh for execution, and rcp or cp for transfer, for example:
-Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
Putting it all together:
sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
-Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
-Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
-Dtargetuser=root \
-Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
-Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
-Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
-Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include \
-Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib \
or if you are happy with the defaults:
sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
-Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
-Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
Another example where the cross-compiler has been installed under /usr/local/arm/2.95.5:
sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
-Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
-Dcc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/bin/arm-linux-gcc \
-Dincpth=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
-Dusrinc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/include \
make test
This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. 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.
What if make test doesn't work?
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). For extension and library tests you need a little bit more: you need to setup your environment variable PERL_CORE to a true value (like "1"), and you need to supply the right Perl library path:
setenv PERL_CORE 1
./perl -I../lib ../ext/Socket/Socket.t
./perl -I../lib ../lib/less.t
(For csh-like shells on UNIX; adjust appropriately for other platforms.) You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your shared library path if you get errors like:
/sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
See "Building a shared Perl library" earlier in this document.
- locale
Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way make test exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
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.
- Timing problems
Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time. If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough, these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive and load-sensitive tests include t/op/alarm.t, ext/Time/HiRes/HiRes.t, lib/Benchmark.t, lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t, and lib/Memoize/t/speed.t.
- Out of memory
On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message. For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670, test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
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.
- Failures from lib/File/Temp/t/security saying "system possibly insecure"
First, such warnings are not necessarily serious or indicative of a real security threat. That being said, they bear investigating.
Note that each of the tests is run twice. The first time is in the directory returned by File::Spec->tmpdir() (often /tmp on Unix systems), and the second time in the directory from which the test was run (usually the 't' directory, if the test was run as part of 'make test').
The tests may fail for the following reasons:
(1) If the directory the tests are being run in is owned by somebody other than the user running the tests, or by root (uid 0).
This failure can happen if the Perl source code distribution is unpacked in such a way that the user ids in the distribution package are used as-is. Some tar programs do this.
(2) If the directory the tests are being run in is writable by group or by others, and there is no sticky bit set for the directory. (With UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to a directory means the right to add or remove files in that directory. The 'sticky bit' is a feature used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if the bit is set for a directory, no one but the owner (or root) can remove that file even if the permissions would otherwise allow file removal by others.)
This failure may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the permissions policy used on this particular system. This failure can also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit (this is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle File::Temp should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or if the system supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons it is not being used. This is, for example, the case with HP-UX: as of HP-UX release 11.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX doesn't use it on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also, as with the permissions, some local policy might dictate that the stickiness is not used.
(3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and (2). For Unix systems, this is usually not an issue if you are building on a local disk. See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information about 'chown giveaway'.
See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information about the various security aspects of temporary files.
make install
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 still have permission to install into the directories in question and you should ignore any messages about chown not working.
If "make install" just says "`install' is up to date" or something similar, you may be on a case-insensitive filesystems such as Mac's HFS+, and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion is brought to you by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
Installing perl under different names
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
You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like "perl5.005") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (e.g. to avoid conflicts with an ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor). Without this the versioned binary would be called "perl55.005".
Installing perl under a different directory
You can install perl under a different destination directory by using the DESTDIR variable during make install
, with a command like
make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
DESTDIR is automatically prepended to all the installation paths. See the example in "Creating an installable tar archive" above.
Installed files
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:
perl5.nnn where nnn is the current release number. This
will be a link to perl.
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.
splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
dprofpp Perl code profile post-processor
library files
in $privlib and $archlib specified to
Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
module man
pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
Installperl will also create the directories listed above in "Installation Directories".
Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of perl alongside an already installed production version of perl without disabling installation of new modules for the production version. To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
Configure -Dversiononly
or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively, you can just manually run
./perl installperl -v
and skip installman altogether. See also "Maintaining completely separate versions" for another approach.
Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5
Perl 5.8 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl. In other words, you will have to recompile your XS modules.
In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl (e.g. 5.8.0) to another similar version (e.g. 5.8.2) 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 5.8.2, 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/perl5.8.2.
Usually, 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.)
Suppose you already have version 5.005_03 installed. The directories searched by 5.005_03 are
Beginning with 5.6.0 the version number in the site libraries are fully versioned. Now, suppose you install version 5.6.0. The directories searched by version 5.6.0 will be
Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible directories. This way, modules installed under 5.005_03 will continue to be usable by 5.005_03 but will also accessible to 5.6.0. Further, suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features present only in 5.6.0. That new module will get installed into /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.6.0 and will be available to 5.6.0, but will not interfere with the 5.005_03 version.
The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that 5.6.0 and above will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
Lastly, suppose you now install 5.8.0, which is not binary compatible with 5.6.0. The directories searched by 5.8.0 (if you don't change the Configure defaults) will be:
Note that the earlier $archname entries are now gone, but pure perl modules from earlier versions will still be found.
Assuming the users in your site are still actively using perl 5.6.0 and 5.005 after you installed 5.8.0, you can continue to install add-on extensions using any of perl 5.8.0, 5.6.0, or 5.005. The installations of these different versions remain distinct, but remember that the newer versions of perl are automatically set up to search the compatible site libraries of the older ones. This means that installing a new XS extension with 5.005 will make it visible to both 5.005 and 5.6.0, but not to 5.8.0. Installing a pure perl module with 5.005 will make it visible to all three versions. Later, if you install the same extension using, say, perl 5.8.0, it will override the 5.005-installed version, but only for perl 5.8.0.
This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
Maintaining completely separate versions
Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.8.2
and adding /opt/perl5.8.2/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. 5.8 for all 5.8.x 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.
Upgrading from 5.005 or 5.6 to 5.8.4
Perl 5.8.4 is binary incompatible with Perl 5.6.x, 5.005, and any earlier Perl release. Perl modules having binary parts (meaning that a C compiler is used) will have to be recompiled to be used with 5.8.4. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with 5.8.4, you may safely do so without disturbing the older installations. (See "Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5" above.)
See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want perllocal.pod, not perllocale.pod, for installed module information.
Coexistence with perl4
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 perltrap for possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
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.
installhtml --help
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.
Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
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 \
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.
cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
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>)
Minimizing the Perl installation
The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way: Encode, with its big conversion tables, consumes a lot of space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything. The Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all depends on what do you need to do.
In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files depends on what you need.
Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
use strict;
use warnings;
foreach my $f (</*>) {
in Linux is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
Secondly, Debian perl-base package contains the following files, size about 1.9MB in its i386 version:
A nice trick to find out the minimal set of Perl library files you will need to run a Perl program is
perl -e 'do "prog.pl"; END { print "$_\n" for sort keys %INC }'
(this will not find libraries required in runtime, unfortunately, but it's a minimal set) and if you want to find out all the files you can use something like the below
strace perl -le 'do "x.pl"' 2>&1 | perl -nle '/^open\(\"(.+?)"/ && print $1'
(The 'strace' is Linux-specific, other similar utilities include 'truss' and 'ktrace'.)
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 email@example.com , borrowing very heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful feedback and additions from the firstname.lastname@example.com 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, with the following additional request: 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.