1 If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you see.
2 It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is specially
3 designed to be readable as is.
7 INSTALL - Build and Installation guide for perl 5.
11 First, make sure you have an up-to-date version of Perl. If you
12 didn't get your Perl source from CPAN, check the latest version at
13 http://www.cpan.org/src/. Perl uses a version scheme where even-numbered
14 subreleases (like 5.8.x and 5.10.x) are stable maintenance releases and
15 odd-numbered subreleases (like 5.7.x and 5.9.x) are unstable
16 development releases. Development releases should not be used in
17 production environments. Fixes and new features are first carefully
18 tested in development releases and only if they prove themselves to be
19 worthy will they be migrated to the maintenance releases.
21 The basic steps to build and install perl 5 on a Unix system with all
22 the defaults are to run, from a freshly unpacked source tree:
29 Each of these is explained in further detail below.
31 The above commands will install Perl to /usr/local (or some other
32 platform-specific directory -- see the appropriate file in hints/.)
33 If that's not okay with you, you can run Configure interactively, by
34 just typing "sh Configure" (without the -de args). You can also specify
35 any prefix location by adding "-Dprefix='/some/dir'" to Configure's args.
36 To explicitly name the perl binary, use the command
37 "make install PERLNAME=myperl".
39 Building perl from source requires an ANSI compliant C compiler.
40 A minimum of C89 is required. Some features available in C99 will
41 be probed for and used when found. The perl build process does not
42 rely on anything more than C89.
44 These options, and many more, are explained in further detail below.
46 If you're building perl from a git repository, you should also consult
47 the documentation in pod/perlgit.pod for information on that special
50 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
51 L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
53 For information on what's new in this release, see the
54 pod/perldelta.pod file. For more information about how to find more
55 specific detail about changes, see the Changes file.
59 This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its
60 structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can
61 read it as is with any pager or editor. Headings and items are marked
62 by lines beginning with '='. The other mark-up used is
64 B<text> embolden text, used for switches, programs or commands
66 L<name> A link (cross reference) to name
69 Although most of the defaults are probably fine for most users,
70 you should probably at least skim through this document before
73 In addition to this file, check if there is a README file specific to
74 your operating system, since it may provide additional or different
75 instructions for building Perl. If there is a hint file for your
76 system (in the hints/ directory) you might also want to read it
77 for even more information.
79 For additional information about porting Perl, see the section on
80 L<"Porting information"> below, and look at the files in the Porting/
85 =head2 Changes and Incompatibilities
87 Please see pod/perldelta.pod for a description of the changes and
88 potential incompatibilities introduced with this release. A few of
89 the most important issues are listed below, but you should refer
90 to pod/perldelta.pod for more detailed information.
92 B<WARNING:> This version is not binary compatible with earlier versions
93 of Perl. If you have built extensions (i.e. modules that include C code)
94 using an earlier version of Perl, you will need to rebuild and reinstall
97 Pure perl modules without XS or C code should continue to work fine
98 without reinstallation. See the discussion below on
99 L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> for more details.
101 The standard extensions supplied with Perl will be handled automatically.
103 On a related issue, old modules may possibly be affected by the changes
104 in the Perl language in the current release. Please see
105 pod/perldelta.pod for a description of what's changed. See your
106 installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly incomplete)
107 list of locally installed modules. Also see the L<CPAN> module's
108 C<autobundle> function for one way to make a "bundle" of your currently
113 Configure will figure out various things about your system. Some
114 things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
115 you about. To accept the default, just press RETURN. The default is
116 almost always okay. It is normal for some things to be "NOT found",
117 since Configure often searches for many different ways of performing
120 At any Configure prompt, you can type &-d and Configure will use the
121 defaults from then on.
123 After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
124 *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
126 The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh and Policy.sh
129 =head2 Common Configure options
131 Configure supports a number of useful options. Run
135 to get a listing. See the Porting/Glossary file for a complete list of
136 Configure variables you can set and their definitions.
142 To compile with gcc, if it's not the default compiler on your
143 system, you should run
145 sh Configure -Dcc=gcc
147 This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or any another alternative
148 compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.
150 =item Installation prefix
152 By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
153 /usr/local/{bin, lib, man}. (See L<"Installation Directories">
154 and L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below for
157 You can specify a different 'prefix' for the default installation
158 directory when Configure prompts you, or by using the Configure command
159 line option -Dprefix='/some/directory', e.g.
161 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl
163 If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the suggested
164 directory structure is simplified. For example, if you use
165 prefix=/opt/perl, then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
166 /opt/perl/lib/perl5/. Again, see L<"Installation Directories"> below
167 for more details. Do not include a trailing slash, (i.e. /opt/perl/)
168 or you may experience odd test failures.
170 NOTE: You must not specify an installation directory that is the same
171 as or below your perl source directory. If you do, installperl will
172 attempt infinite recursion.
176 It may seem obvious, but Perl is useful only when users can easily
177 find it. It's often a good idea to have both /usr/bin/perl and
178 /usr/local/bin/perl be symlinks to the actual binary. Be especially
179 careful, however, not to overwrite a version of perl supplied by your
180 vendor unless you are sure you know what you are doing. If you insist
181 on replacing your vendor's perl, useful information on how it was
182 configured may be found with
186 (Check the output carefully, however, since this doesn't preserve
187 spaces in arguments to Configure. For that, you have to look carefully
188 at config_arg1, config_arg2, etc.)
190 By default, Configure will not try to link /usr/bin/perl to the current
191 version of perl. You can turn on that behavior by running
193 Configure -Dinstallusrbinperl
195 or by answering 'yes' to the appropriate Configure prompt.
197 In any case, system administrators are strongly encouraged to put
198 (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc,
199 into a directory typically found along a user's PATH, or in another
200 obvious and convenient place.
202 =item Building a development release
204 For development releases (odd subreleases, like 5.9.x) if you want to
205 use Configure -d, you will also need to supply -Dusedevel to Configure,
206 because the default answer to the question "do you really want to
207 Configure a development version?" is "no". The -Dusedevel skips that
212 If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
217 =head2 Altering Configure variables for C compiler switches etc.
219 For most users, most of the Configure defaults are fine, or can easily
220 be set on the Configure command line. However, if Configure doesn't
221 have an option to do what you want, you can change Configure variables
222 after the platform hints have been run by using Configure's -A switch.
223 For example, here's how to add a couple of extra flags to C compiler
226 sh Configure -Accflags="-DPERL_EXTERNAL_GLOB -DNO_HASH_SEED"
228 To clarify, those ccflags values are not Configure options; if passed to
229 Configure directly, they won't do anything useful (they will define a
230 variable in config.sh, but without taking any action based upon it).
231 But when passed to the compiler, those flags will activate #ifdefd code.
233 For more help on Configure switches, run
237 =head2 Major Configure-time Build Options
239 There are several different ways to Configure and build perl for your
240 system. For most users, the defaults are sensible and will work.
241 Some users, however, may wish to further customize perl. Here are
242 some of the main things you can change.
246 On some platforms, perl can be compiled with support for threads. To
249 sh Configure -Dusethreads
251 The default is to compile without thread support.
253 Perl used to have two different internal threads implementations. The
254 current model (available internally since 5.6, and as a user-level module
255 since 5.8) is called interpreter-based implementation (ithreads), with
256 one interpreter per thread, and explicit sharing of data. The (deprecated)
257 5.005 version (5005threads) was removed for release 5.10.
259 The 'threads' module is for use with the ithreads implementation. The
260 'Thread' module emulates the old 5005threads interface on top of the
261 current ithreads model.
263 When using threads, perl uses a dynamically-sized buffer for some of
264 the thread-safe library calls, such as those in the getpw*() family.
265 This buffer starts small, but it will keep growing until the result
266 fits. To get a fixed upper limit, you should compile Perl with
267 PERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE defined to be the number of bytes you want. One
268 way to do this is to run Configure with
269 C<-Accflags=-DPERL_REENTRANT_MAXSIZE=65536>.
271 =head3 Large file support
273 Since Perl 5.6.0, Perl has supported large files (files larger than
274 2 gigabytes), and in many common platforms like Linux or Solaris this
275 support is on by default.
277 This is both good and bad. It is good in that you can use large files,
278 seek(), stat(), and -s them. It is bad in that if you are interfacing
279 Perl using some extension, the components you are connecting to must also
280 be large file aware: if Perl thinks files can be large but the other
281 parts of the software puzzle do not understand the concept, bad things
284 There's also one known limitation with the current large files
285 implementation: unless you also have 64-bit integers (see the next
286 section), you cannot use the printf/sprintf non-decimal integer formats
287 like C<%x> to print filesizes. You can use C<%d>, though.
289 If you want to compile perl without large file support, use
291 sh Configure -Uuselargefiles
293 =head3 64 bit support
295 If your platform does not run natively at 64 bits, but can simulate
296 them with compiler flags and/or C<long long> or C<int64_t>,
297 you can build a perl that uses 64 bits.
299 There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
300 using Configure -Duse64bitint and the second one using Configure
301 -Duse64bitall. The difference is that the first one is minimal and
302 the second one maximal. The first works in more places than the second.
304 The C<use64bitint> option does only as much as is required to get
305 64-bit integers into Perl (this may mean, for example, using "long
306 longs") while your memory may still be limited to 2 gigabytes (because
307 your pointers could still be 32-bit). Note that the name C<64bitint>
308 does not imply that your C compiler will be using 64-bit C<int>s (it
309 might, but it doesn't have to). The C<use64bitint> simply means that
310 you will be able to have 64 bit-wide scalar values.
312 The C<use64bitall> option goes all the way by attempting to switch
313 integers (if it can), longs (and pointers) to being 64-bit. This may
314 create an even more binary incompatible Perl than -Duse64bitint: the
315 resulting executable may not run at all in a 32-bit box, or you may
316 have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your operating system to be 64-bit
319 Natively 64-bit systems need neither -Duse64bitint nor -Duse64bitall.
320 On these systems, it might be the default compilation mode, and there
321 is currently no guarantee that passing no use64bitall option to the
322 Configure process will build a 32bit perl. Implementing -Duse32bit*
323 options is planned for a future release of perl.
327 In some systems you may be able to use long doubles to enhance the
328 range and precision of your double precision floating point numbers
329 (that is, Perl's numbers). Use Configure -Duselongdouble to enable
330 this support (if it is available).
332 Note that the exact format and range of long doubles varies:
333 the most common is the x86 80-bit (64 bits of mantissa) format,
334 but there are others, with different mantissa and exponent ranges.
338 You can "Configure -Dusemorebits" to turn on both the 64-bit support
339 and the long double support.
343 One option for more precision is that gcc 4.6 and later have a library
344 called quadmath, which implements the IEEE 754 quadruple precision
345 (128-bit, 113 bits of mantissa) floating point numbers. The library
346 works at least on x86 and ia64 platforms. It may be part of your gcc
347 installation, or you may need to install it separately.
349 With "Configure -Dusequadmath" you can try enabling its use, but note
350 the compiler dependency, you may need to also add "-Dcc=...".
351 At C level the type is called C<__float128> (note, not "long double"),
352 but Perl source knows it as NV. (This is not "long doubles".)
354 =head3 Algorithmic Complexity Attacks on Hashes
356 Perl 5.18 reworked the measures used to secure its hash function
357 from algorithmic complexity attacks. By default it will build with
358 all of these measures enabled along with support for controlling and
359 disabling them via environment variables.
361 You can override various aspects of this feature by defining various
362 symbols during configure. An example might be:
364 Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_HASH_FUNC_SIPHASH
366 B<Unless stated otherwise these options are considered experimental or
367 insecure and are not recommended for production use.>
369 Perl 5.18 includes support for multiple hash functions, and changed
370 the default (to ONE_AT_A_TIME_HARD), you can choose a different
371 algorithm by defining one of the following symbols. Note that as of
372 Perl 5.18 we can only recommend use of the default or SIPHASH. All
373 the others are known to have security issues and are for research
376 PERL_HASH_FUNC_SIPHASH
379 PERL_HASH_FUNC_SUPERFAST
380 PERL_HASH_FUNC_MURMUR3
381 PERL_HASH_FUNC_ONE_AT_A_TIME
382 PERL_HASH_FUNC_ONE_AT_A_TIME_HARD
383 PERL_HASH_FUNC_ONE_AT_A_TIME_OLD
385 Perl 5.18 randomizes the order returned by keys(), values(), and each(),
386 and allows controlling this behavior by using of the PERL_PERTURB_KEYS
387 option. You can disable this option entirely with the define:
389 PERL_PERTURB_KEYS_DISABLED
391 You can disable the environment variable checks and specify the type of
392 key traversal randomization to be used by defining one of these:
394 PERL_PERTURB_KEYS_RANDOM
395 PERL_PERTURB_KEYS_DETERMINISTIC
397 In Perl 5.18 the seed used for the hash function is randomly selected
398 at process start which can be overridden by specifying a seed by setting
399 the PERL_HASH_SEED environment variable.
401 You can change this behavior by building perl with the
403 USE_HASH_SEED_EXPLICIT
405 define, in which case one has to explicitly set the PERL_HASH_SEED
406 environment variable to enable the security feature or by adding
410 to the compilation flags to completely disable the randomisation feature.
411 Note these modes are poorly tested, insecure and not recommended.
413 B<Perl has never guaranteed any ordering of the hash keys>, and the
414 ordering has already changed several times during the lifetime of Perl
415 5. Also, the ordering of hash keys has always been, and continues to
416 be, affected by the insertion order. Note that because of this
417 randomisation for example the Data::Dumper results will be different
418 between different runs of Perl, since Data::Dumper by default dumps
419 hashes "unordered". The use of the Data::Dumper C<Sortkeys> option is
422 See L<perlrun/PERL_HASH_SEED> and L<perlrun/PERL_PERTURB_KEYS> for
423 details on the environment variables, and L<perlsec/Algorithmic
424 Complexity Attacks> for further security details.
428 Perl can be configured to be 'socksified', that is, to use the SOCKS
429 TCP/IP proxy protocol library. SOCKS is used to give applications
430 access to transport layer network proxies. Perl supports only SOCKS
431 Version 5. The corresponding Configure option is -Dusesocks.
432 You can find more about SOCKS from wikipedia at
433 L<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOCKS>.
435 =head3 Dynamic Loading
437 By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading.
438 If you want to force perl to be compiled completely
439 statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or
440 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
441 With this option, you won't be able to use any new extension
442 (XS) module without recompiling perl itself.
444 =head3 Building a shared Perl library
446 Currently, for most systems, the main perl executable is built by
447 linking the "perl library" libperl.a with perlmain.o, your static
448 extensions, and various extra libraries, such as -lm.
450 On systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to
451 replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building
452 several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into
453 different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then
454 you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries
455 can share the same library.
457 The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance
458 penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall
459 mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions
462 In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl
463 test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so.
464 Your system and typical applications may well give quite different
467 The default name for the shared library is typically something like
468 libperl.so.5.8.8 (for Perl 5.8.8), or libperl.so.588, or simply
469 libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention
470 based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a
471 version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name
472 isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
474 You can elect to build a shared libperl by
476 sh Configure -Duseshrplib
478 To build a shared libperl, the environment variable controlling shared
479 library search (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in most systems, DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for
480 Darwin, LD_LIBRARY_PATH/SHLIB_PATH
481 for HP-UX, LIBPATH for AIX, PATH for Cygwin) must be set up to include
482 the Perl build directory because that's where the shared libperl will
483 be created. Configure arranges makefile to have the correct shared
484 library search settings. You can find the name of the environment
485 variable Perl thinks works in your your system by
487 grep ldlibpthname config.sh
489 However, there are some special cases where manually setting the
490 shared library path might be required. For example, if you want to run
491 something like the following with the newly-built but not-yet-installed
494 ./perl -MTestInit t/misc/failing_test.t
498 ./perl -Ilib ~/my_mission_critical_test
500 then you need to set up the shared library path explicitly.
503 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
505 for Bourne-style shells, or
507 setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
509 for Csh-style shells. (This procedure may also be needed if for some
510 unexpected reason Configure fails to set up makefile correctly.) (And
511 again, it may be something other than LD_LIBRARY_PATH for you, see above.)
513 You can often recognize failures to build/use a shared libperl from error
514 messages complaining about a missing libperl.so (or libperl.sl in HP-UX),
517 18126:./miniperl: /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
519 There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you
520 want to have more than one "flavor" of the same version of perl (e.g.
521 with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and
522 install a standard Perl 5.10.0 with a shared library. Then, suppose you
523 try to build Perl 5.10.0 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else
524 the same, including all the installation directories. How can you
525 ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built
526 libperl.so.8 rather with the installed libperl.so.8? The answer is
527 that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded
528 in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or
529 equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that
530 with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux, you can only override at runtime via
531 LD_PRELOAD, specifying the exact filename you wish to be used; and on
532 Digital Unix, you can override LD_LIBRARY_PATH by setting the
533 _RLD_ROOT environment variable to point to the perl build directory.
535 In other words, it is generally not a good idea to try to build a perl
536 with a shared library if $archlib/CORE/$libperl already exists from a
539 A good workaround is to specify a different directory for the
540 architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING version of perl.
541 You can do this by changing all the *archlib* variables in config.sh to
542 point to your new architecture-dependent library.
544 =head3 Environment access
546 Perl often needs to write to the program's environment, such as when
547 C<%ENV> is assigned to. Many implementations of the C library function
548 C<putenv()> leak memory, so where possible perl will manipulate the
549 environment directly to avoid these leaks. The default is now to perform
550 direct manipulation whenever perl is running as a stand alone interpreter,
551 and to call the safe but potentially leaky C<putenv()> function when the
552 perl interpreter is embedded in another application. You can force perl
553 to always use C<putenv()> by compiling with
554 C<-Accflags="-DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV">, see section L</"Altering Configure
555 variables for C compiler switches etc.">. You can force an embedded perl
556 to use direct manipulation by setting C<PL_use_safe_putenv = 0;> after
557 the C<perl_construct()> call.
559 =head2 Installation Directories
561 The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
562 appropriate questions in Configure. For convenience, all the installation
563 questions are near the beginning of Configure. Do not include trailing
564 slashes on directory names. At any point during the Configure process,
565 you can answer a question with &-d and Configure will use the defaults
566 from then on. Alternatively, you can
568 grep '^install' config.sh
570 after Configure has run to verify the installation paths.
572 The defaults are intended to be reasonable and sensible for most
573 people building from sources. Those who build and distribute binary
574 distributions or who export perl to a range of systems will probably
575 need to alter them. If you are content to just accept the defaults,
576 you can safely skip the next section.
578 The directories set up by Configure fall into three broad categories.
582 =item Directories for the perl distribution
584 By default, Configure will use the following directories for 5.24.0.
585 $version is the full perl version number, including subversion, e.g.
586 5.12.3, and $archname is a string like sun4-sunos,
587 determined by Configure. The full definitions of all Configure
588 variables are in the file Porting/Glossary.
590 Configure variable Default value
591 $prefixexp /usr/local
592 $binexp $prefixexp/bin
593 $scriptdirexp $prefixexp/bin
594 $privlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version
595 $archlibexp $prefixexp/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
596 $man1direxp $prefixexp/man/man1
597 $man3direxp $prefixexp/man/man3
601 $prefixexp is generated from $prefix, with ~ expansion done to convert
602 home directories into absolute paths. Similarly for the other variables
603 listed. As file system calls do not do this, you should always reference
604 the ...exp variables, to support users who build perl in their home
607 Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
608 /usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
609 instead. Also, if $prefix contains the string "perl", the library
610 directories are simplified as described below. For simplicity, only
611 the common style is shown here.
613 =item Directories for site-specific add-on files
615 After perl is installed, you may later wish to add modules (e.g. from
616 CPAN) or scripts. Configure will set up the following directories to
617 be used for installing those add-on modules and scripts.
621 $siteprefixexp $prefixexp
622 $sitebinexp $siteprefixexp/bin
623 $sitescriptexp $siteprefixexp/bin
624 $sitelibexp $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
626 $siteprefixexp/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
627 $siteman1direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man1
628 $siteman3direxp $siteprefixexp/man/man3
629 $sitehtml1direxp (none)
630 $sitehtml3direxp (none)
632 By default, ExtUtils::MakeMaker will install architecture-independent
633 modules into $sitelib and architecture-dependent modules into $sitearch.
635 =item Directories for vendor-supplied add-on files
637 Lastly, if you are building a binary distribution of perl for
638 distribution, Configure can optionally set up the following directories
639 for you to use to distribute add-on modules.
643 $vendorprefixexp (none)
645 (The next ones are set only if vendorprefix is set.)
647 $vendorbinexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
648 $vendorscriptexp $vendorprefixexp/bin
649 $vendorlibexp $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
651 $vendorprefixexp/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
652 $vendorman1direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man1
653 $vendorman3direxp $vendorprefixexp/man/man3
654 $vendorhtml1direxp (none)
655 $vendorhtml3direxp (none)
657 These are normally empty, but may be set as needed. For example,
658 a vendor might choose the following settings:
661 $siteprefix /usr/local
664 This would have the effect of setting the following:
667 $scriptdirexp /usr/bin
668 $privlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version
669 $archlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/$version/$archname
670 $man1direxp /usr/man/man1
671 $man3direxp /usr/man/man3
673 $sitebinexp /usr/local/bin
674 $sitescriptexp /usr/local/bin
675 $sitelibexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version
676 $sitearchexp /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$version/$archname
677 $siteman1direxp /usr/local/man/man1
678 $siteman3direxp /usr/local/man/man3
680 $vendorbinexp /usr/bin
681 $vendorscriptexp /usr/bin
682 $vendorlibexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version
683 $vendorarchexp /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/$version/$archname
684 $vendorman1direxp /usr/man/man1
685 $vendorman3direxp /usr/man/man3
687 Note how in this example, the vendor-supplied directories are in the
688 /usr hierarchy, while the directories reserved for the end user are in
689 the /usr/local hierarchy.
691 The entire installed library hierarchy is installed in locations with
692 version numbers, keeping the installations of different versions distinct.
693 However, later installations of Perl can still be configured to search
694 the installed libraries corresponding to compatible earlier versions.
695 See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below for more
696 details on how Perl can be made to search older version directories.
698 Of course you may use these directories however you see fit. For
699 example, you may wish to use $siteprefix for site-specific files that
700 are stored locally on your own disk and use $vendorprefix for
701 site-specific files that are stored elsewhere on your organization's
702 network. One way to do that would be something like
704 sh Configure -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local -Dvendorprefix=/usr/share/perl
708 As a final catch-all, Configure also offers an $otherlibdirs
709 variable. This variable contains a colon-separated list of additional
710 directories to add to @INC. By default, it will be empty.
711 Perl will search these directories (including architecture and
712 version-specific subdirectories) for add-on modules and extensions.
714 For example, if you have a bundle of perl libraries from a previous
715 installation, perhaps in a strange place:
717 Configure -Dotherlibdirs=/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1
721 There is one other way of adding paths to @INC at perl build time, and
722 that is by setting the APPLLIB_EXP C pre-processor token to a colon-
723 separated list of directories, like this
725 sh Configure -Accflags='-DAPPLLIB_EXP=\"/usr/libperl\"'
727 The directories defined by APPLLIB_EXP get added to @INC I<first>,
728 ahead of any others, and so provide a way to override the standard perl
729 modules should you, for example, want to distribute fixes without
730 touching the perl distribution proper. And, like otherlib dirs,
731 version and architecture specific subdirectories are also searched, if
732 present, at run time. Of course, you can still search other @INC
733 directories ahead of those in APPLLIB_EXP by using any of the standard
734 run-time methods: $PERLLIB, $PERL5LIB, -I, use lib, etc.
736 =item usesitecustomize
738 Run-time customization of @INC can be enabled with:
740 sh Configure -Dusesitecustomize
742 which will define USE_SITECUSTOMIZE and $Config{usesitecustomize}.
743 When enabled, this makes perl run F<$sitelibexp/sitecustomize.pl> before
744 anything else. This script can then be set up to add additional
749 By default, man pages will be installed in $man1dir and $man3dir, which
750 are normally /usr/local/man/man1 and /usr/local/man/man3. If you
751 want to use a .3pm suffix for perl man pages, you can do that with
753 sh Configure -Dman3ext=3pm
757 Currently, the standard perl installation does not do anything with
758 HTML documentation, but that may change in the future. Further, some
759 add-on modules may wish to install HTML documents. The html Configure
760 variables listed above are provided if you wish to specify where such
761 documents should be placed. The default is "none", but will likely
762 eventually change to something useful based on user feedback.
766 Some users prefer to append a "/share" to $privlib and $sitelib
767 to emphasize that those directories can be shared among different
770 Note that these are just the defaults. You can actually structure the
771 directories any way you like. They don't even have to be on the same
774 Further details about the installation directories, maintenance and
775 development subversions, and about supporting multiple versions are
776 discussed in L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5"> below.
778 If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
779 library directory structure is slightly simplified. Instead of
780 suggesting $prefix/lib/perl5/, Configure will suggest $prefix/lib.
782 Thus, for example, if you Configure with
783 -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the default library directories for 5.9.0 are
785 Configure variable Default value
786 $privlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0
787 $archlib /opt/perl/lib/5.9.0/$archname
788 $sitelib /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0
789 $sitearch /opt/perl/lib/site_perl/5.9.0/$archname
791 =head2 Changing the installation directory
793 Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
794 associated files) should be installed, and the directory in which it
795 will eventually reside. For most sites, these two are the same; for
796 sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
797 However, sites that use package management software such as rpm or
798 dpkg, or users building binary packages for distribution may also
799 wish to install perl into a different directory before moving perl
800 to its final destination. There are two ways to do that:
806 To install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory, use the following
809 sh Configure -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/perl5
811 (replace /tmp/perl5 by a directory of your choice).
813 Beware, though, that if you go to try to install new add-on
814 modules, they too will get installed in under '/tmp/perl5' if you
815 follow this example. That's why it's usually better to use DESTDIR,
816 as shown in the next section.
820 If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is convenient
821 to compile it once and create an archive that can be installed on
822 multiple systems. Suppose, for example, that you want to create an
823 archive that can be installed in /opt/perl. One way to do that is by
824 using the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>. The DESTDIR is
825 automatically prepended to all the installation paths. Thus you
828 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl -des
831 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
832 cd /tmp/perl5/opt/perl
833 tar cvf /tmp/perl5-archive.tar .
837 =head2 Relocatable @INC
839 To create a relocatable perl tree, use the following command line:
841 sh Configure -Duserelocatableinc
843 Then the paths in @INC (and everything else in %Config) can be
844 optionally located via the path of the perl executable.
846 That means that, if the string ".../" is found at the start of any
847 path, it's substituted with the directory of $^X. So, the relocation
848 can be configured on a per-directory basis, although the default with
849 "-Duserelocatableinc" is that everything is relocated. The initial
850 install is done to the original configured prefix.
852 This option is not compatible with the building of a shared libperl
853 ("-Duseshrplib"), because in that case perl is linked with an hard-coded
854 rpath that points at the libperl.so, that cannot be relocated.
856 =head2 Site-wide Policy settings
858 After Configure runs, it stores a number of common site-wide "policy"
859 answers (such as installation directories) in the Policy.sh file.
860 If you want to build perl on another system using the same policy
861 defaults, simply copy the Policy.sh file to the new system's perl build
862 directory, and Configure will use it. This will work even if Policy.sh was
863 generated for another version of Perl, or on a system with a
864 different architecture and/or operating system. However, in such cases,
865 you should review the contents of the file before using it: for
866 example, your new target may not keep its man pages in the same place
867 as the system on which the file was generated.
869 Alternatively, if you wish to change some or all of those policy
874 to ensure that Configure doesn't re-use them.
876 Further information is in the Policy_sh.SH file itself.
878 If the generated Policy.sh file is unsuitable, you may freely edit it
879 to contain any valid shell commands. It will be run just after the
880 platform-specific hints files.
882 =head2 Disabling older versions of Perl
884 Configure will search for binary compatible versions of previously
885 installed perl binaries in the tree that is specified as target tree,
886 and these will be used as locations to search for modules by the perl
887 being built. The list of perl versions found will be put in the Configure
888 variable inc_version_list.
890 To disable this use of older perl modules, even completely valid pure
891 perl modules, you can specify to not include the paths found:
893 sh Configure -Dinc_version_list=none ...
895 If you do want to use modules from some previous perl versions, the
896 variable must contain a space separated list of directories under the
897 site_perl directory, and has to include architecture-dependent
898 directories separately, eg.
900 sh Configure -Dinc_version_list="5.16.0/x86_64-linux 5.16.0" ...
902 When using the newer perl, you can add these paths again in the
903 PERL5LIB environment variable or with perl's -I runtime option.
905 =head2 Building Perl outside of the source directory
907 Sometimes it is desirable to build Perl in a directory different from
908 where the sources are, for example if you want to keep your sources
909 read-only, or if you want to share the sources between different binary
910 architectures. You can do this (if your file system supports symbolic
913 mkdir /tmp/perl/build/directory
914 cd /tmp/perl/build/directory
915 sh /path/to/perl/source/Configure -Dmksymlinks ...
917 This will create in /tmp/perl/build/directory a tree of symbolic links
918 pointing to files in /path/to/perl/source. The original files are left
919 unaffected. After Configure has finished you can just say
925 as usual, and Perl will be built in /tmp/perl/build/directory.
927 =head2 Building a debugging perl
929 You can run perl scripts under the perl debugger at any time with
930 B<perl -d your_script>. If, however, you want to debug perl itself,
931 you probably want to have support for perl internal debugging code
932 (activated by adding -DDEBUGGING to ccflags), and/or support for the
933 system debugger by adding -g to the optimisation flags. For that,
936 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING
940 sh Configure -DDEBUGGING=<mode>
942 For a more eye appealing call, -DEBUGGING is defined to be an alias
943 for -DDEBUGGING. For both, the -U calls are also supported, in order
944 to be able to overrule the hints or Policy.sh settings.
946 Here are the DEBUGGING modes:
954 =item -DEBUGGING=both
956 Sets both -DDEBUGGING in the ccflags, and adds -g to optimize.
958 You can actually specify -g and -DDEBUGGING independently (see below),
959 but usually it's convenient to have both.
965 Adds -g to optimize, but does not set -DDEBUGGING.
967 (Note: Your system may actually require something like cc -g2.
968 Check your man pages for cc(1) and also any hint file for your system.)
970 =item -DEBUGGING=none
974 Removes -g from optimize, and -DDEBUGGING from ccflags.
978 If you are using a shared libperl, see the warnings about multiple
979 versions of perl under L<Building a shared Perl library>.
981 Note that a perl built with -DDEBUGGING will be much bigger and will run
982 much, much more slowly than a standard perl.
984 =head2 DTrace support
986 On platforms where DTrace is available, it may be enabled by
987 using the -Dusedtrace option to Configure. DTrace probes are available
988 for subroutine entry (sub-entry) and subroutine exit (sub-exit). Here's a
989 simple D script that uses them:
991 perl$target:::sub-entry, perl$target:::sub-return {
992 printf("%s %s (%s:%d)\n", probename == "sub-entry" ? "->" : "<-",
993 copyinstr(arg0), copyinstr(arg1), arg2);
999 Perl ships with a number of standard extensions. These are contained
1000 in the ext/ subdirectory.
1002 By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears
1003 to be supported. For example, Configure will offer to build GDBM_File
1004 only if it is able to find the gdbm library.
1006 To disable certain extensions so that they are not built, use the
1007 -Dnoextensions=... and -Donlyextensions=... options. They both accept
1008 a space-separated list of extensions, such as C<IPC/SysV>. The extensions
1010 C<noextensions> are removed from the list of extensions to build, while
1011 the C<onlyextensions> is rather more severe and builds only the listed
1012 extensions. The latter should be used with extreme caution since
1013 certain extensions are used by many other extensions and modules:
1014 examples of such modules include Fcntl and IO. The order of processing
1015 these options is first C<only> (if present), then C<no> (if present).
1017 Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
1018 the extensions you want.
1020 If you unpack any additional extensions in the ext/ directory before
1021 running Configure, then Configure will offer to build those additional
1022 extensions as well. Most users probably shouldn't have to do this --
1023 it is usually easier to build additional extensions later after perl
1024 has been installed. However, if you wish to have those additional
1025 extensions statically linked into the perl binary, then this offers a
1026 convenient way to do that in one step. (It is not necessary, however;
1027 you can build and install extensions just fine even if you don't have
1028 dynamic loading. See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for more details.)
1029 Another way of specifying extra modules is described in
1030 L<"Adding extra modules to the build"> below.
1032 If you re-use an old config.sh but change your system (e.g. by
1033 adding libgdbm) Configure will still offer your old choices of extensions
1034 for the default answer, but it will also point out the discrepancy to
1037 =head2 Including locally-installed libraries
1039 Perl comes with interfaces to number of libraries, including threads,
1040 dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db. For the *db* extension, if
1041 Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
1042 automatically include that extension. The threading extension needs
1043 to be specified explicitly (see L</Threads>).
1045 Those libraries are not distributed with perl. If your header (.h) files
1046 for those libraries are not in a directory normally searched by your C
1047 compiler, then you will need to include the appropriate -I/your/directory
1048 option when prompted by Configure. If your libraries are not in a
1049 directory normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will
1050 need to include the appropriate -L/your/directory option when prompted
1051 by Configure. See the examples below.
1057 =item gdbm in /usr/local
1059 Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
1060 GDBM_File extension. This example assumes you have gdbm.h
1061 installed in /usr/local/include/gdbm.h and libgdbm.a installed in
1062 /usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a. Configure should figure all the
1063 necessary steps out automatically.
1065 Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
1066 your C compiler, you should include -I/usr/local/include, if it's
1067 not here yet. Similarly, when Configure prompts you for linker flags,
1068 you should include -L/usr/local/lib.
1070 If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
1071 linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
1074 Again, this should all happen automatically. This should also work if
1075 you have gdbm installed in any of (/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu,
1076 /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).
1078 =item BerkeleyDB in /usr/local/BerkeleyDB
1080 The version of BerkeleyDB distributed by Oracle installs in a
1081 version-specific directory by default, typically something like
1082 /usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7. To have Configure find that, you need to add
1083 -I/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/include to cc flags, as in the previous
1084 example, and you will also have to take extra steps to help Configure
1085 find -ldb. Specifically, when Configure prompts you for library
1086 directories, add /usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib to the list. Also, you
1087 will need to add appropriate linker flags to tell the runtime linker
1088 where to find the BerkeleyDB shared libraries.
1090 It is possible to specify this from the command line (all on one
1094 -Dlocincpth='/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/include \
1095 /usr/local/include' \
1096 -Dloclibpth='/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib /usr/local/lib' \
1097 -Aldflags='-R/usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.7/lib'
1099 locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
1100 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
1102 loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
1103 Configure will automatically add the appropriate -L directives.
1105 The addition to ldflags is so that the dynamic linker knows where to find
1106 the BerkeleyDB libraries. For Linux and Solaris, the -R option does that.
1107 Other systems may use different flags. Use the appropriate flag for your
1112 =head2 Specifying a logical root directory
1114 If you are cross-compiling, or are using a compiler which has it's own
1115 headers and libraries in a nonstandard location, and your compiler
1116 understands the C<--sysroot> option, you can use the C<-Dsysroot> option
1117 to specify the logical root directory under which all libraries and
1118 headers are searched for. This patch adjusts Configure to search under
1119 $sysroot, instead of /.
1121 --sysroot is added to ccflags and friends so that make in
1122 ExtUtils::MakeMaker, and other extensions, will use it.
1124 =head2 Overriding an old config.sh
1126 If you want to use an old config.sh produced by a previous run of
1127 Configure, but override some of the items with command line options, you
1128 need to use B<Configure -O>.
1130 =head2 GNU-style configure
1132 If you prefer the GNU-style configure command line interface, you can
1133 use the supplied configure.gnu command, e.g.
1135 CC=gcc ./configure.gnu
1137 The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure
1140 ./configure.gnu --help
1144 (The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems
1145 that would not distinguish the files "Configure" and "configure".)
1147 =head2 Malloc Issues
1149 Perl relies heavily on malloc(3) to grow data structures as needed,
1150 so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance of
1151 the malloc function on your system. The perl source is shipped with a
1152 version of malloc that has been optimized for the typical requests from
1153 perl, so there's a chance that it may be both faster and use less memory
1154 than your system malloc.
1156 However, if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are
1157 experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries
1158 that call malloc, then you should probably use your system's malloc.
1159 (Or, you might wish to explore the malloc flags discussed below.)
1163 =item Using the system malloc
1165 To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
1167 sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
1169 or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
1171 Note that Perl's malloc isn't always used by default; that actually
1172 depends on your system. For example, on Linux and FreeBSD (and many more
1173 systems), Configure chooses to use the system's malloc by default.
1174 See the appropriate file in the F<hints/> directory to see how the
1177 =item -DPERL_POLLUTE_MALLOC
1179 NOTE: This flag is enabled automatically on some platforms if you just
1180 run Configure to accept all the defaults.
1182 Perl's malloc family of functions are normally called Perl_malloc(),
1183 Perl_realloc(), Perl_calloc() and Perl_mfree().
1184 These names do not clash with the system versions of these functions.
1186 If this flag is enabled, however, Perl's malloc family of functions
1187 will have the same names as the system versions. This may be required
1188 sometimes if you have libraries that like to free() data that may have
1189 been allocated by Perl_malloc() and vice versa.
1191 Note that enabling this option may sometimes lead to duplicate symbols
1192 from the linker for malloc et al. In such cases, the system probably
1193 does not allow its malloc functions to be fully replaced with custom
1196 =item -DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS
1198 This flag enables debugging mstats, which is required to use the
1199 Devel::Peek::mstat() function. You cannot enable this unless you are
1200 using Perl's malloc, so a typical Configure command would be
1202 sh Configure -Accflags=-DPERL_DEBUGGING_MSTATS -Dusemymalloc
1204 to enable this option.
1208 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1210 If you run into problems, try some of the following ideas.
1211 If none of them help, then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1215 =item Running Configure Interactively
1217 If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
1218 Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
1221 All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
1222 have to wait for them. Once you've handled them (and your C compiler and
1223 flags) you can type &-d at the next Configure prompt and Configure
1224 will use the defaults from then on.
1226 If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
1227 config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
1228 instead. You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.
1232 Hint files tell Configure about a number of things:
1238 The peculiarities or conventions of particular platforms -- non-standard
1239 library locations and names, default installation locations for binaries,
1244 The deficiencies of the platform -- for example, library functions that,
1245 although present, are too badly broken to be usable; or limits on
1246 resources that are generously available on most platforms.
1250 How best to optimize for the platform, both in terms of binary size
1251 and/or speed, and for Perl feature support. Because of wide variations in
1252 the implementation of shared libraries and of threading, for example,
1253 Configure often needs hints in order to be able to use these features.
1257 The perl distribution includes many system-specific hints files
1258 in the hints/ directory. If one of them matches your system, Configure
1259 will offer to use that hint file. Unless you have a very good reason
1260 not to, you should accept its offer.
1262 Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
1263 If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint
1264 file for further information. See hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive
1265 example. More information about writing good hints is in the
1266 hints/README.hints file, which also explains hint files known as
1269 Note that any hint file is read before any Policy file, meaning that
1270 Policy overrides hints -- see L</Site-wide Policy settings>.
1274 If you are re-using an old config.sh, it's possible that Configure
1275 detects different values from the ones specified in this file. You will
1276 almost always want to keep the previous value, unless you have changed
1277 something on your system.
1279 For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system
1280 and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run
1281 Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries.
1282 Now, Configure will find your gdbm include file and library and will
1285 *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
1286 The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"!
1287 Keep the previous value? [y]
1289 In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you
1290 should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to
1291 the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
1293 =item Changing Compilers
1295 If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
1296 probably not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or
1297 rename it, then rerun Configure with the options you want to use.
1299 =item Propagating your changes to config.sh
1301 If you make any changes to config.sh, you should propagate
1302 them to all the .SH files by running
1306 You will then have to rebuild by running
1311 =item config.over and config.arch
1313 You can also supply a shell script config.over to override
1314 Configure's guesses. It will get loaded up at the very end, just
1315 before config.sh is created. You have to be careful with this,
1316 however, as Configure does no checking that your changes make sense.
1317 This file is usually good for site-specific customizations.
1319 There is also another file that, if it exists, is loaded before the
1320 config.over, called config.arch. This file is intended to be per
1321 architecture, not per site, and usually it's the architecture-specific
1322 hints file that creates the config.arch.
1326 Many of the system dependencies are contained in config.h.
1327 Configure builds config.h by running the config_h.SH script.
1328 The values for the variables are taken from config.sh.
1330 If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware,
1331 though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be
1336 If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
1337 line, they can be made in cflags.SH. For instance, to turn off the
1338 optimizer on toke.c, find the switch structure marked 'or customize here',
1339 and add a line for toke.c ahead of the catch-all *) so that it now reads:
1344 toke) optimize='-g' ;;
1347 You should not edit the generated file cflags directly, as your changes
1348 will be lost the next time you run Configure, or if you edit config.sh.
1350 To explore various ways of changing ccflags from within a hint file,
1351 see the file hints/README.hints.
1353 To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh and change either
1354 $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run
1361 If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file
1362 Porting/config.sh to config.sh and edit your config.sh to reflect your
1363 system's peculiarities. See Porting/pumpkin.pod for more information.
1364 You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
1367 =item Porting information
1369 Specific information for the OS/2, Plan 9, VMS and Win32 ports is in the
1370 corresponding README files and subdirectories. Additional information,
1371 including a glossary of all those config.sh variables, is in the Porting
1372 subdirectory. Porting/Glossary should especially come in handy.
1374 Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out
1375 http://www.cpan.org/ports for current information on ports to
1376 various other operating systems.
1378 If you plan to port Perl to a new architecture, study carefully the
1379 section titled "Philosophical Issues in Patching and Porting Perl"
1380 in the file Porting/pumpkin.pod and the file pod/perlgit.pod.
1381 Study also how other non-UNIX ports have solved problems.
1385 =head2 Adding extra modules to the build
1387 You can specify extra modules or module bundles to be fetched from the
1388 CPAN and installed as part of the Perl build. Either use the -Dextras=...
1389 command line parameter to Configure, for example like this:
1391 Configure -Dextras="Bundle::LWP DBI"
1393 or answer first 'y' to the question 'Install any extra modules?' and
1394 then answer "Bundle::LWP DBI" to the 'Extras?' question.
1395 The module or the bundle names are as for the CPAN module 'install'
1396 command. This will only work if those modules are to be built as dynamic
1397 extensions. If you wish to include those extra modules as static
1398 extensions, see L<"Extensions"> above.
1400 Notice that because the CPAN module will be used to fetch the extra
1401 modules, you will need access to the CPAN, either via the Internet,
1402 or via a local copy such as a CD-ROM or a local CPAN mirror. If you
1403 do not, using the extra modules option will die horribly.
1405 Also notice that you yourself are responsible for satisfying any extra
1406 dependencies such as external headers or libraries BEFORE trying the
1407 build. For example: you will need to have the Foo database specific
1408 headers and libraries installed for the DBD::Foo module. The Configure
1409 process or the Perl build process will not help you with these.
1413 suidperl was an optional component of earlier releases of perl. It is no
1414 longer available. Instead, use a tool specifically designed to handle
1415 changes in privileges, such as B<sudo>.
1419 This will look for all the includes. The output is stored in makefile.
1420 The only difference between Makefile and makefile is the dependencies at
1421 the bottom of makefile. If you have to make any changes, you should edit
1422 makefile, not Makefile, since the Unix make command reads makefile first.
1423 (On non-Unix systems, the output may be stored in a different file.
1424 Check the value of $firstmakefile in your config.sh if in doubt.)
1426 Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
1431 This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.
1433 =head2 Expected errors
1435 These error reports are normal, and can be ignored:
1438 make: [extra.pods] Error 1 (ignored)
1440 make: [extras.make] Error 1 (ignored)
1442 =head2 What if it doesn't work?
1444 If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.
1445 If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and
1446 the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help,
1447 then see L<"Reporting Problems"> below.
1453 If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
1454 for further tips and information.
1458 If you can successfully build miniperl, but the process crashes
1459 during the building of extensions, run
1463 to test your version of miniperl.
1467 If you have any locale-related environment variables set, try unsetting
1468 them. I have some reports that some versions of IRIX hang while
1469 running B<./miniperl configpm> with locales other than the C locale.
1470 See the discussion under L<"make test"> below about locales and the
1471 whole L<perllocale/"LOCALE PROBLEMS"> section in the file
1472 pod/perllocale.pod. The latter is especially useful if you see something
1475 perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
1476 perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
1479 are supported and installed on your system.
1480 perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
1484 =item other environment variables
1486 Configure does not check for environment variables that can sometimes
1487 have a major influence on how perl is built or tested. For example,
1488 OBJECT_MODE on AIX determines the way the compiler and linker deal with
1489 their objects, but this is a variable that only influences build-time
1490 behaviour, and should not affect the perl scripts that are eventually
1491 executed by the perl binary. Other variables, like PERL_UNICODE,
1492 PERL5LIB, and PERL5OPT will influence the behaviour of the test suite.
1493 So if you are getting strange test failures, you may want to try
1494 retesting with the various PERL variables unset.
1498 If you get varargs problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
1499 correctly and that you are not passing -I/usr/include to gcc. When using
1500 gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define' and i_varargs='undef'
1501 in config.sh. The problem is usually solved by installing gcc
1502 correctly. If you do change config.sh, don't forget to propagate
1503 your changes (see L<"Propagating your changes to config.sh"> below).
1504 See also the L<"vsprintf"> item below.
1508 If you get error messages such as the following (the exact line
1509 numbers and function name may vary in different versions of perl):
1511 util.c: In function 'Perl_form':
1512 util.c:1107: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
1513 proto.h:125: prototype declaration
1515 it might well be a symptom of the gcc "varargs problem". See the
1516 previous L<"varargs"> item.
1518 =item LD_LIBRARY_PATH
1520 If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
1521 the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. If you're creating a static
1522 Perl library (libperl.a rather than libperl.so) it should build
1523 fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
1524 of your local setup.
1528 If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
1529 try not using nm extraction. You can do this from the command line
1532 sh Configure -Uusenm
1534 or by answering the nm extraction question interactively.
1535 If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old
1538 =item umask not found
1540 If the build processes encounters errors relating to umask(), the problem
1541 is probably that Configure couldn't find your umask() system call.
1542 Check your config.sh. You should have d_umask='define'. If you don't,
1543 this is probably the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above. Also,
1544 try reading the hints file for your system for further information.
1548 If you run into problems with vsprintf in compiling util.c, the
1549 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1550 version of vsprintf(). Check whether your system has vprintf().
1551 (Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable
1552 d_vprintf in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
1556 If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong
1557 on a number of other common functions too. This is probably
1558 the L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1562 If you run into problems relating to do_aspawn or do_spawn, the
1563 problem is probably that Configure failed to detect your system's
1564 fork() function. Follow the procedure in the previous item
1565 on L<"nm extraction">.
1567 =item __inet_* errors
1569 If you receive unresolved symbol errors during Perl build and/or test
1570 referring to __inet_* symbols, check to see whether BIND 8.1 is
1571 installed. It installs a /usr/local/include/arpa/inet.h that refers to
1572 these symbols. Versions of BIND later than 8.1 do not install inet.h
1573 in that location and avoid the errors. You should probably update to a
1574 newer version of BIND (and remove the files the old one left behind).
1575 If you can't, you can either link with the updated resolver library
1576 provided with BIND 8.1 or rename /usr/local/bin/arpa/inet.h during the
1577 Perl build and test process to avoid the problem.
1579 =item .*_r() prototype NOT found
1581 On a related note, if you see a bunch of complaints like the above about
1582 reentrant functions -- specifically networking-related ones -- being
1583 present but without prototypes available, check to see if BIND 8.1 (or
1584 possibly other BIND 8 versions) is (or has been) installed. They install
1585 header files such as netdb.h into places such as /usr/local/include (or
1586 into another directory as specified at build/install time), at least
1587 optionally. Remove them or put them in someplace that isn't in the C
1588 preprocessor's header file include search path (determined by -I options
1589 plus defaults, normally /usr/include).
1591 =item #error "No DATAMODEL_NATIVE specified"
1593 This is a common error when trying to build perl on Solaris 2.6 with a
1594 gcc installation from Solaris 2.5 or 2.5.1. The Solaris header files
1595 changed, so you need to update your gcc installation. You can either
1596 rerun the fixincludes script from gcc or take the opportunity to
1597 update your gcc installation.
1601 If you can't compile successfully, try turning off your compiler's
1602 optimizer. Edit config.sh and change the line
1610 then propagate your changes with B<sh Configure -S> and rebuild
1611 with B<make depend; make>.
1613 =item Missing functions and Undefined symbols
1615 If the build of miniperl fails with a long list of missing functions or
1616 undefined symbols, check the libs variable in the config.sh file. It
1617 should look something like
1619 libs='-lsocket -lnsl -ldl -lm -lc'
1621 The exact libraries will vary from system to system, but you typically
1622 need to include at least the math library -lm. Normally, Configure
1623 will suggest the correct defaults. If the libs variable is empty, you
1624 need to start all over again. Run
1628 and start from the very beginning. This time, unless you are sure of
1629 what you are doing, accept the default list of libraries suggested by
1632 If the libs variable is missing -lm, there is a chance that libm.so.1
1633 is available, but the required (symbolic) link to libm.so is missing.
1634 (same could be the case for other libraries like libcrypt.so). You
1635 should check your installation for packages that create that link, and
1636 if no package is installed that supplies that link or you cannot install
1637 them, make the symbolic link yourself e.g.:
1639 $ rpm -qf /usr/lib64/libm.so
1640 glibc-devel-2.15-22.17.1.x86_64
1641 $ ls -lgo /usr/lib64/libm.so
1642 lrwxrwxrwx 1 16 Jan 7 2013 /usr/lib64/libm.so -> /lib64/libm.so.6
1646 $ sudo ln -s /lib64/libm.so.6 /lib64/libm.so
1648 If the libs variable looks correct, you might have the
1649 L<"nm extraction"> problem discussed above.
1651 If you still have missing routines or undefined symbols, you probably
1652 need to add some library or other, make a symbolic link like described
1653 above, or you need to undefine some feature that Configure thought was
1654 there but is defective or incomplete. If you used a hint file, see if
1655 it has any relevant advice. You can also look through through config.h
1656 for likely suspects.
1660 Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files (such as
1661 toke.c) without some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or
1662 allocate larger internal tables. You can customize the switches for
1663 each file in cflags.SH. It's okay to insert rules for specific files
1664 into makefile since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
1667 =item Missing dbmclose
1669 SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose(). An upgrade to 3.2.4
1670 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.
1672 =item error: too few arguments to function 'dbmclose'
1674 Building ODBM_File on some (Open)SUSE distributions might run into this
1675 error, as the header file is broken. There are two ways to deal with this
1677 1. Disable the use of ODBM_FILE
1679 Configure ... -Dnoextensions=ODBM_File
1681 2. Fix the header file, somewhat like this:
1683 --- a/usr/include/dbm.h 2010-03-24 08:54:59.000000000 +0100
1684 +++ b/usr/include/dbm.h 2010-03-24 08:55:15.000000000 +0100
1685 @@ -59,4 +59,4 @@ extern datum firstkey __P((void));
1687 extern datum nextkey __P((datum key));
1689 -extern int dbmclose __P((DBM *));
1690 +extern int dbmclose __P((void));
1692 =item Warning (mostly harmless): No library found for -lsomething
1694 If you see such a message during the building of an extension, but
1695 the extension passes its tests anyway (see L<"make test"> below),
1696 then don't worry about the warning message. The extension
1697 Makefile.PL goes looking for various libraries needed on various
1698 systems; few systems will need all the possible libraries listed.
1699 Most users will see warnings for the ones they don't have. The
1700 phrase 'mostly harmless' is intended to reassure you that nothing
1701 unusual is happening, and the build process is continuing.
1703 On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the
1706 Warning (mostly harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
1708 then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along
1709 the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File
1710 extension without the -lgdbm library.
1712 It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of
1713 this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not
1714 quite that tightly coordinated.
1716 =item sh: ar: not found
1718 This is a message from your shell telling you that the command 'ar'
1719 was not found. You need to check your PATH environment variable to
1720 make sure that it includes the directory with the 'ar' command. This
1721 is a common problem on Solaris, where 'ar' is in the /usr/ccs/bin
1724 =item db-recno failure on tests 51, 53 and 55
1726 Old versions of the DB library (including the DB library which comes
1727 with FreeBSD 2.1) had broken handling of recno databases with modified
1728 bval settings. Upgrade your DB library or OS.
1730 =item Bad arg length for semctl, is XX, should be ZZZ
1732 If you get this error message from the F<cpan/IPC-SysV/t/sem.t> test, your
1733 System V IPC may be broken. The XX typically is 20, and that is what ZZZ
1734 also should be. Consider upgrading your OS, or reconfiguring your OS
1735 to include the System V semaphores.
1737 =item cpan/IPC-SysV/t/sem........semget: No space left on device
1739 Either your account or the whole system has run out of semaphores. Or
1740 both. Either list the semaphores with "ipcs" and remove the unneeded
1741 ones (which ones these are depends on your system and applications)
1742 with "ipcrm -s SEMAPHORE_ID_HERE" or configure more semaphores to your
1747 If you mix GNU binutils (nm, ld, ar) with equivalent vendor-supplied
1748 tools you may be in for some trouble. For example creating archives
1749 with an old GNU 'ar' and then using a new current vendor-supplied 'ld'
1750 may lead into linking problems. Either recompile your GNU binutils
1751 under your current operating system release, or modify your PATH not
1752 to include the GNU utils before running Configure, or specify the
1753 vendor-supplied utilities explicitly to Configure, for example by
1754 Configure -Dar=/bin/ar.
1756 =item THIS PACKAGE SEEMS TO BE INCOMPLETE
1758 The F<Configure> program has not been able to find all the files which
1759 make up the complete Perl distribution. You may have a damaged source
1760 archive file (in which case you may also have seen messages such as
1761 C<gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file> and C<tar: Unexpected EOF on
1762 archive file>), or you may have obtained a structurally-sound but
1763 incomplete archive. In either case, try downloading again from the
1764 official site named at the start of this document. If you do find
1765 that any site is carrying a corrupted or incomplete source code
1766 archive, please report it to the site's maintainer.
1768 =item invalid token: ##
1770 You are using a non-ANSI-compliant C compiler. To compile Perl, you
1771 need to use a compiler that supports ANSI C. If there is a README
1772 file for your system, it may have further details on your compiler
1777 Some additional things that have been reported:
1779 Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.
1781 NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.
1783 UTS may need one or more of -K or -g, and #undef LSTAT.
1785 FreeBSD can fail the F<cpan/IPC-SysV/t/sem.t> test if SysV IPC has not been
1786 configured in the kernel. Perl tries to detect this, though, and
1787 you will get a message telling you what to do.
1789 Building Perl on a system that has also BIND (headers and libraries)
1790 installed may run into troubles because BIND installs its own netdb.h
1791 and socket.h, which may not agree with the operating system's ideas of
1792 the same files. Similarly, including -lbind may conflict with libc's
1793 view of the world. You may have to tweak -Dlocincpth and -Dloclibpth
1798 =head2 Cross-compilation
1800 Perl can be cross-compiled. It is just not trivial, cross-compilation
1801 rarely is. Perl is routinely cross-compiled for several platforms: as of
1802 January 2014, these include Android, Blackberry 10, PocketPC aka
1803 WinCE, ARM Linux, and Solaris. Previous versions of
1804 Perl also provided support for Open Zaurus, Symbian, and
1805 the IBM OS/400, but it's unknown if those ports are still functional.
1806 These platforms are known as the B<target> platforms, while the systems
1807 where the compilation takes place are the B<host> platforms.
1809 What makes the situation difficult is that first of all,
1810 cross-compilation environments vary significantly in how they are set
1811 up and used, and secondly because the primary way of configuring Perl
1812 (using the rather large Unix-tool-dependent Configure script) is not
1813 awfully well suited for cross-compilation. However, starting from
1814 version 5.18.0, the Configure script also knows two ways of supporting
1815 cross-compilation, so please keep reading.
1817 See the following files for more information about compiling Perl for
1818 the particular platforms:
1822 =item WinCE/PocketPC
1824 L<README.ce or perlce|perlce>
1828 L<"Cross-compilation" in README.android or
1829 perlandroid|perlandroid/Cross-compilation>
1833 L<"Cross-compilation" in README.qnx or perlqnx|perlqnx/Cross-compilation>
1837 L<"CROSS-COMPILATION" in README.solaris or
1838 perlsolaris|perlsolaris/CROSS-COMPILATION>
1842 This document; See below.
1846 Packaging and transferring either the core Perl modules or CPAN
1847 modules to the target platform is also left up to the each
1848 cross-compilation environment. Often the cross-compilation target
1849 platforms are somewhat limited in diskspace: see the section
1850 L<Minimizing the Perl installation> to learn more of the minimal set
1851 of files required for a functional Perl installation.
1853 For some cross-compilation environments the Configure option
1854 C<-Dinstallprefix=...> might be handy, see L<Changing the installation
1857 About the cross-compilation support of Configure: There's two forms.
1858 The more common one requires some way of transferring and running
1859 executables in the target system, such as an ssh connection; this is the
1860 C<./Configure -Dusecrosscompile -Dtargethost=...> route. The second
1861 method doesn't need access to the target system, but requires you to
1862 provide a config.sh, and and a canned Makefile; the rest of this section
1863 describes the former.
1865 This cross-compilation setup of Configure has successfully been used in
1866 a wide variety of setups, such as a 64-bit OS X host for an Android ARM
1867 target, or an amd64 Linux host targeting x86 Solaris, or even Windows.
1869 To run Configure in cross-compilation mode the basic switch that
1870 has to be used is C<-Dusecrosscompile>:
1872 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile -D...
1874 This will make the cpp symbol USE_CROSS_COMPILE and the %Config
1875 symbol C<usecrosscompile> available.
1877 During the Configure and build, certain helper scripts will be created
1878 into the Cross/ subdirectory. The scripts are used to execute a
1879 cross-compiled executable, and to transfer files to and from the
1880 target host. The execution scripts are named F<run-*> and the
1881 transfer scripts F<to-*> and F<from-*>. The part after the dash is
1882 the method to use for remote execution and transfer: by default the
1883 methods are B<ssh> and B<scp>, thus making the scripts F<run-ssh>,
1884 F<to-scp>, and F<from-scp>.
1886 To configure the scripts for a target host and a directory (in which
1887 the execution will happen and which is to and from where the transfer
1888 happens), supply Configure with
1890 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir
1892 The targethost is what e.g. ssh will use as the hostname, the targetdir
1893 must exist (the scripts won't create it), the targetdir defaults to /tmp.
1894 You can also specify a username to use for ssh/rsh logins
1898 but in case you don't, "root" will be used. Similarly, you can specify
1899 a non-standard (i.e. not 22) port for the connection, if applicable,
1904 If the name of C<cc> has the usual GNU C semantics for cross
1905 compilers, that is, CPU-OS-gcc, the target architecture (C<targetarch>),
1906 plus names of the C<ar>, C<nm>, and C<ranlib> will also be automatically
1907 chosen to be CPU-OS-ar and so on.
1908 (The C<ld> requires more thought and will be chosen later by Configure
1909 as appropriate). This will also aid in guessing the proper
1910 operating system name for the target, which has other repercussions, like
1911 better defaults and possibly critical fixes for the platform. If
1912 Configure isn't guessing the OS name properly, you may need to either add
1913 a hint file redirecting Configure's guess, or modify Configure to make
1916 If your compiler doesn't follow that convention, you will also need to
1917 specify which target environment to use, as well as C<ar> and friends:
1919 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux
1923 Additionally, a cross-compilation toolchain will usually install it's own
1924 logical system root somewhere -- that is, it'll create a directory
1925 somewhere which includes subdirectories like C<'include'> or C<'lib'>. For
1926 example, you may end up with F</skiff/local/arm-linux>, where
1927 F</skiff/local/arm-linux/bin> holds the binaries for cross-compilation,
1928 F</skiff/local/arm-linux/include> has the headers, and
1929 F</skiff/local/arm-linux/lib> has the library files.
1930 If this is the case, and you are using a compiler that understands
1931 C<--sysroot>, like gcc or clang, you'll want to specify the
1932 C<-Dsysroot> option for Configure:
1934 -Dsysroot=/skiff/local/arm-linux
1936 However, if your don't have a suitable directory to pass to C<-Dsysroot>,
1937 you will also need to specify which target environment to use:
1939 -Dusrinc=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1940 -Dincpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/include
1941 -Dlibpth=/skiff/local/arm-linux/lib
1943 In addition to the default execution/transfer methods you can also
1944 choose B<rsh> for execution, and B<rcp> or B<cp> for transfer,
1947 -Dtargetrun=rsh -Dtargetto=rcp -Dtargetfrom=cp
1949 Putting it all together:
1951 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1952 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1953 -Dtargetdir=/tar/get/dir \
1955 -Dtargetarch=arm-linux \
1956 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1957 -Dsysroot=/skiff/local/arm-linux \
1960 or if you are happy with the defaults:
1962 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1963 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1964 -Dcc=arm-linux-gcc \
1967 Another example where the cross-compiler has been installed under
1968 F</usr/local/arm/2.95.5>:
1970 sh ./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
1971 -Dtargethost=so.me.ho.st \
1972 -Dcc=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5/bin/arm-linux-gcc \
1973 -Dsysroot=/usr/local/arm/2.95.5
1975 There is also a C<targetenv> option for Configure which can be used
1976 to modify the environment of the target just before testing begins
1977 during 'make test'. For example, if the target system has a nonstandard
1978 /tmp location, you could do this:
1980 -Dtargetenv="export TMPDIR=/other/tmp;"
1982 If you are planning on cross-compiling to several platforms, or some
1983 other thing that would involve running Configure several times, there are
1984 two options that can be used to speed things up considerably.
1985 As a bit of background, when you
1986 call Configure with C<-Dusecrosscompile>, it begins by actually partially
1987 building a miniperl on the host machine, as well as the generate_uudmap
1988 binary, and we end up using that during the build.
1989 So instead of building that new perl every single time, you can build it
1990 just once in a separate directory, and then pass the resulting binaries
1991 to Configure like this:
1993 -Dhostperl=/path/to/second/build/dir/miniperl
1994 -Dhostgenerate=/path/to/second/build/dir/generate_uudmap
1996 Much less commonly, if you are cross-compiling from an ASCII host to an
1997 EBCDIC target, or vise versa, you'll have to pass C<-Uhostgenerate> to
1998 Configure, to signify that you want to build a generate_uudmap binary
1999 that, during make, will be run on the target system.
2003 This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made. If
2004 'make test' doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went
2007 Note that you can't run the tests in background if this disables
2008 opening of /dev/tty. You can use 'make test-notty' in that case but
2009 a few tty tests will be skipped.
2011 =head2 What if make test doesn't work?
2013 If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./TEST
2014 by hand to see if it makes any difference.
2016 One way to get more detailed information about failed tests and
2017 individual subtests is to run the harness from the t directory:
2019 cd t ; ./perl harness <list of tests>
2021 (this assumes that most basic tests succeed, since harness uses
2022 complicated constructs). If no list of tests is provided, harness
2025 If individual tests fail, you can often run them by hand (from the main
2026 perl directory), e.g.,
2028 ./perl -MTestInit t/op/groups.t
2030 You should also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful
2031 comments that apply to your system. You may also need to setup your
2032 shared library path if you get errors like:
2034 /sbin/loader: Fatal Error: cannot map libperl.so
2036 The file t/README in the t subdirectory contains more information about
2037 running and modifying tests.
2039 See L</"Building a shared Perl library"> earlier in this document.
2045 Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs
2046 may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
2047 'make test' exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have
2048 one or more of these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
2049 LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, the non-English locales
2050 are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
2052 If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
2058 LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
2060 for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry
2061 make test. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken program that
2062 is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test by hand as
2063 shown above and see whether you can locate the program. Look for
2064 things like: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...") or
2065 open("...|"). All these mean that Perl is trying to run some
2068 =item Timing problems
2070 Several tests in the test suite check timing functions, such as
2071 sleep(), and see if they return in a reasonable amount of time.
2072 If your system is quite busy and doesn't respond quickly enough,
2073 these tests might fail. If possible, try running the tests again
2074 with the system under a lighter load. These timing-sensitive
2075 and load-sensitive tests include F<t/op/alarm.t>,
2076 F<dist/Time-HiRes/t/alarm.t>, F<dist/Time-HiRes/t/clock.t>,
2077 F<dist/Time-HiRes/t/itimer.t>, F<dist/Time-HiRes/t/usleep.t>,
2078 F<dist/threads-shared/t/waithires.t>,
2079 F<dist/threads-shared/t/stress.t>, F<lib/Benchmark.t>,
2080 F<lib/Memoize/t/expmod_t.t>, and F<lib/Memoize/t/speed.t>.
2082 You might also experience some failures in F<t/op/stat.t> if you build
2083 perl on an NFS filesystem, if the remote clock and the system clock are
2088 On some systems, particularly those with smaller amounts of RAM, some
2089 of the tests in t/op/pat.t may fail with an "Out of memory" message.
2090 For example, on my SparcStation IPC with 12 MB of RAM, in perl5.5.670,
2091 test 85 will fail if run under either t/TEST or t/harness.
2093 Try stopping other jobs on the system and then running the test by itself:
2095 ./perl -MTestInit t/op/pat.t
2097 to see if you have any better luck. If your perl still fails this
2098 test, it does not necessarily mean you have a broken perl. This test
2099 tries to exercise the regular expression subsystem quite thoroughly,
2100 and may well be far more demanding than your normal usage.
2102 =item libgcc_s.so.1: cannot open shared object file
2104 This message has been reported on gcc-3.2.3 and earlier installed with
2105 a non-standard prefix. Setting the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable
2106 (or equivalent) to include gcc's lib/ directory with the libgcc_s.so.1
2107 shared library should fix the problem.
2109 =item Failures from lib/File/Temp/t/security saying "system possibly insecure"
2111 First, such warnings are not necessarily serious or indicative of a
2112 real security threat. That being said, they bear investigating.
2114 Note that each of the tests is run twice. The first time is in the
2115 directory returned by File::Spec->tmpdir() (often /tmp on Unix
2116 systems), and the second time in the directory from which the test was
2117 run (usually the 't' directory, if the test was run as part of 'make
2120 The tests may fail for the following reasons:
2122 (1) If the directory the tests are being run in is owned by somebody
2123 other than the user running the tests, or by root (uid 0).
2125 This failure can happen if the Perl source code distribution is
2126 unpacked in such a way that the user IDs in the distribution package
2127 are used as-is. Some tar programs do this.
2129 (2) If the directory the tests are being run in is writable by group or
2130 by others, and there is no sticky bit set for the directory. (With
2131 UNIX/POSIX semantics, write access to a directory means the right to
2132 add or remove files in that directory. The 'sticky bit' is a feature
2133 used in some UNIXes to give extra protection to files: if the bit is
2134 set for a directory, no one but the owner (or root) can remove that
2135 file even if the permissions would otherwise allow file removal by
2138 This failure may or may not be a real problem: it depends on the
2139 permissions policy used on this particular system. This failure can
2140 also happen if the system either doesn't support the sticky bit (this
2141 is the case with many non-UNIX platforms: in principle File::Temp
2142 should know about these platforms and skip the tests), or if the system
2143 supports the sticky bit but for some reason or reasons it is not being
2144 used. This is, for example, the case with HP-UX: as of HP-UX release
2145 11.00, the sticky bit is very much supported, but HP-UX doesn't use it
2146 on its /tmp directory as shipped. Also, as with the permissions, some
2147 local policy might dictate that the stickiness is not used.
2149 (3) If the system supports the POSIX 'chown giveaway' feature and if
2150 any of the parent directories of the temporary file back to the root
2151 directory are 'unsafe', using the definitions given above in (1) and
2152 (2). For Unix systems, this is usually not an issue if you are
2153 building on a local disk. See the documentation for the File::Temp
2154 module for more information about 'chown giveaway'.
2156 See the documentation for the File::Temp module for more information
2157 about the various security aspects of temporary files.
2161 The core distribution can now run its regression tests in parallel on
2162 Unix-like platforms. Instead of running C<make test>, set C<TEST_JOBS>
2163 in your environment to the number of tests to run in parallel, and run
2164 C<make test_harness>. On a Bourne-like shell, this can be done as
2166 TEST_JOBS=3 make test_harness # Run 3 tests in parallel
2168 An environment variable is used, rather than parallel make itself,
2169 because L<TAP::Harness> needs to be able to schedule individual
2170 non-conflicting test scripts itself, and there is no standard interface
2171 to C<make> utilities to interact with their job schedulers.
2175 This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
2176 Configure; by default this is /usr/local/bin. It will also try to put
2177 the man pages in a reasonable place. It will not nroff the man pages,
2178 however. You may need to be root to run B<make install>. If you are not
2179 root, you must still have permission to install into the directories
2180 in question and you should ignore any messages about chown not working.
2182 If "make install" just says "'install' is up to date" or something
2183 similar, you may be on a case-insensitive filesystems such as Mac's HFS+,
2184 and you should say "make install-all". (This confusion is brought to you
2185 by the Perl distribution having a file called INSTALL.)
2187 =head2 Installing perl under different names
2189 If you want to install perl under a name other than "perl" (for example,
2190 when installing perl with special features enabled, such as debugging),
2191 indicate the alternate name on the "make install" line, such as:
2193 make install PERLNAME=myperl
2195 You can separately change the base used for versioned names (like
2196 "perl5.8.9") by setting PERLNAME_VERBASE, like
2198 make install PERLNAME=perl5 PERLNAME_VERBASE=perl
2200 This can be useful if you have to install perl as "perl5" (e.g. to avoid
2201 conflicts with an ancient version in /usr/bin supplied by your vendor).
2202 Without this the versioned binary would be called "perl55.8.8".
2204 =head2 Installing perl under a different directory
2206 You can install perl under a different destination directory by using
2207 the DESTDIR variable during C<make install>, with a command like
2209 make install DESTDIR=/tmp/perl5
2211 DESTDIR is automatically prepended to all the installation paths. See
2212 the example in L<"DESTDIR"> above.
2214 =head2 Installed files
2216 If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
2217 anything, you can run
2219 ./perl installperl -n
2220 ./perl installman -n
2222 make install will install the following:
2227 perl5.n.n where 5.n.n is the current release number. This
2228 will be a link to perl.
2232 cppstdin This is used by the deprecated switch perl -P,
2233 if your cc -E can't read from stdin.
2234 c2ph, pstruct Scripts for handling C structures in header
2236 corelist Shows versions of modules that come with
2239 cpan The CPAN shell.
2240 enc2xs Encoding module generator.
2241 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C
2243 h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
2244 instmodsh A shell to examine installed modules.
2245 libnetcfg Configure libnet.
2246 perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl.
2247 perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
2248 perlivp Perl Installation Verification Procedure.
2249 piconv A Perl implementation of the encoding conversion
2251 pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules.
2252 pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format
2256 podchecker POD syntax checker.
2257 podselect Prints sections of POD documentation.
2258 prove A command-line tool for running tests.
2259 psed A Perl implementation of sed.
2260 ptar A Perl implementation of tar.
2261 ptardiff A diff for tar archives.
2262 ptargrep A grep for tar archives.
2263 shasum A tool to print or check SHA checksums.
2264 splain Describe Perl warnings and errors.
2265 xsubpp Compiler to convert Perl XS code into C code.
2266 zipdetails display the internal structure of zip files
2270 in $privlib and $archlib specified to
2271 Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
2275 man pages in $man1dir, usually /usr/local/man/man1.
2277 pages in $man3dir, usually /usr/local/man/man3.
2278 pod/*.pod in $privlib/pod/.
2280 installperl will also create the directories listed above
2281 in L<"Installation Directories">.
2283 Perl's *.h header files and the libperl library are also installed
2284 under $archlib so that any user may later build new modules, run the
2285 optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
2286 program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
2288 =head2 Installing only version-specific parts
2290 Sometimes you only want to install the version-specific parts of the perl
2291 installation. For example, you may wish to install a newer version of
2292 perl alongside an already installed production version without
2293 disabling installation of new modules for the production version.
2294 To only install the version-specific parts of the perl installation, run
2296 Configure -Dversiononly
2298 or answer 'y' to the appropriate Configure prompt. Alternatively,
2299 you can just manually run
2301 ./perl installperl -v
2303 and skip installman altogether.
2305 See also L<"Maintaining completely separate versions"> for another
2308 =head1 cd /usr/include; h2ph *.h sys/*.h
2310 Some perl scripts need to be able to obtain information from the
2311 system header files. This command will convert the most commonly used
2312 header files in /usr/include into files that can be easily interpreted
2313 by perl. These files will be placed in the architecture-dependent
2314 library ($archlib) directory you specified to Configure.
2316 Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion
2317 of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to
2318 hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly.
2319 For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain
2322 =head1 installhtml --help
2324 Some sites may wish to make perl documentation available in HTML
2325 format. The installhtml utility can be used to convert pod
2326 documentation into linked HTML files and install them.
2328 Currently, the supplied ./installhtml script does not make use of the
2329 html Configure variables. This should be fixed in a future release.
2331 The following command-line is an example of one used to convert
2336 --podpath=lib:ext:pod:vms \
2338 --htmldir=/perl/nmanual \
2339 --htmlroot=/perl/nmanual \
2340 --splithead=pod/perlipc \
2341 --splititem=pod/perlfunc \
2344 See the documentation in installhtml for more details. It can take
2345 many minutes to execute a large installation and you should expect to
2346 see warnings like "no title", "unexpected directive" and "cannot
2347 resolve" as the files are processed. We are aware of these problems
2348 (and would welcome patches for them).
2350 You may find it helpful to run installhtml twice. That should reduce
2351 the number of "cannot resolve" warnings.
2353 =head1 cd pod && make tex && (process the latex files)
2355 Some sites may also wish to make the documentation in the pod/ directory
2356 available in TeX format. Type
2358 (cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
2360 =head1 Starting all over again
2362 If you wish to rebuild perl from the same build directory, you should
2363 clean it out with the command
2371 The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes
2372 your old config.sh and Policy.sh files. (A plain 'make clean' is now
2373 eqivalent to 'make realclean'.)
2375 If you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you
2376 change systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if
2377 you are experiencing difficulties building perl, you should not reuse
2380 If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular
2381 installation choices, then you can probably achieve the same effect by
2382 using the Policy.sh file. See the section on L<"Site-wide Policy
2385 =head1 Reporting Problems
2387 Wherever possible please use the perlbug tool supplied with this Perl
2388 to report problems, as it automatically includes summary configuration
2389 information about your perl, which may help us track down problems far
2390 more quickly. But first you should read the advice in this file,
2391 carefully re-read the error message and check the relevant manual pages
2392 on your system, as these may help you find an immediate solution. If
2393 you are not sure whether what you are seeing is a bug, you can send a
2394 message describing the problem to the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup to
2397 The perlbug tool is installed along with perl, so after you have
2398 completed C<make install> it should be possible to run it with plain
2399 C<perlbug>. If the install fails, or you want to report problems with
2400 C<make test> without installing perl, then you can use C<make nok> to
2401 run perlbug to report the problem, or run it by hand from this source
2402 directory with C<./perl -Ilib utils/perlbug>
2404 If the build fails too early to run perlbug uninstalled, then please
2405 B<run> the C<./myconfig> shell script, and mail its output along with
2406 an accurate description of your problem to perlbug@perl.org
2408 If Configure itself fails, and does not generate a config.sh file
2409 (needed to run C<./myconfig>), then please mail perlbug@perl.org the
2410 description of how Configure fails along with details of your system
2411 -- for example the output from running C<uname -a>
2413 Please try to make your message brief but clear. Brief, clear bug
2414 reports tend to get answered more quickly. Please don't worry if your
2415 written English is not great -- what matters is how well you describe
2416 the important technical details of the problem you have encountered,
2417 not whether your grammar and spelling is flawless.
2419 Trim out unnecessary information. Do not include large files (such as
2420 config.sh or a complete Configure or make log) unless absolutely
2421 necessary. Do not include a complete transcript of your build
2422 session. Just include the failing commands, the relevant error
2423 messages, and whatever preceding commands are necessary to give the
2424 appropriate context. Plain text should usually be sufficient -- fancy
2425 attachments or encodings may actually reduce the number of people who
2426 read your message. Your message will get relayed to over 400
2427 subscribers around the world so please try to keep it brief but clear.
2429 If the bug you are reporting has security implications which make it
2430 inappropriate to send to a publicly archived mailing list, then see
2431 L<perlsec/SECURITY VULNERABILITY CONTACT INFORMATION>
2432 for details of how to report the issue.
2434 If you are unsure what makes a good bug report please read "How to
2435 report Bugs Effectively" by Simon Tatham:
2436 http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html
2438 =head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5
2440 Perl 5.24.0 is not binary compatible with earlier versions of Perl.
2441 In other words, you will have to recompile your XS modules.
2443 In general, you can usually safely upgrade from one version of Perl
2444 (e.g. 5.X.Y) to another similar minor version (e.g. 5.X.(Y+1))) without
2445 re-compiling all of your extensions. You can also safely leave the old
2446 version around in case the new version causes you problems for some
2449 Usually, most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to be
2450 used with a newer version of Perl. Here is how it is supposed to work.
2451 (These examples assume you accept all the Configure defaults.)
2453 Suppose you already have version 5.8.7 installed. The directories
2454 searched by 5.8.7 are typically like:
2456 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.7/$archname
2457 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.7
2458 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7/$archname
2459 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
2461 Now, suppose you install version 5.8.8. The directories
2462 searched by version 5.8.8 will be:
2464 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.8/$archname
2465 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.8.8
2466 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8/$archname
2467 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8
2469 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7/$archname
2470 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
2471 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2473 Notice the last three entries -- Perl understands the default structure
2474 of the $sitelib directories and will look back in older, compatible
2475 directories. This way, modules installed under 5.8.7 will continue
2476 to be usable by 5.8.7 but will also accessible to 5.8.8. Further,
2477 suppose that you upgrade a module to one which requires features
2478 present only in 5.8.8. That new module will get installed into
2479 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8 and will be available to 5.8.8,
2480 but will not interfere with the 5.8.7 version.
2482 The last entry, /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/, is there so that
2483 5.6.0 and above will look for 5.004-era pure perl modules.
2485 Lastly, suppose you now install 5.10.0, which is not binary compatible
2486 with 5.8.x. The directories searched by 5.10.0 (if you don't change the
2487 Configure defaults) will be:
2489 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.10.0/$archname
2490 /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.10.0
2491 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0/$archname
2492 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.0
2494 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.8
2496 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7
2498 /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
2500 Note that the earlier $archname entries are now gone, but pure perl
2501 modules from earlier versions will still be found.
2503 This way, you can choose to share compatible extensions, but also upgrade
2504 to a newer version of an extension that may be incompatible with earlier
2505 versions, without breaking the earlier versions' installations.
2507 =head2 Maintaining completely separate versions
2509 Many users prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
2510 separate directories. This guarantees that an update to one version
2511 won't interfere with another version. (The defaults guarantee this for
2512 libraries after 5.6.0, but not for executables. TODO?) One convenient
2513 way to do this is by using a separate prefix for each version, such as
2515 sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.24.0
2517 and adding /opt/perl5.24.0/bin to the shell PATH variable. Such users
2518 may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
2519 scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.
2521 Others might share a common directory for maintenance sub-versions
2522 (e.g. 5.10 for all 5.10.x versions), but change directory with
2525 If you are installing a development subversion, you probably ought to
2526 seriously consider using a separate directory, since development
2527 subversions may not have all the compatibility wrinkles ironed out
2530 =head2 Upgrading from v5.22 or earlier
2532 B<Perl 5.24.0 may not be binary compatible with Perl v5.22 or
2533 earlier Perl releases.> Perl modules having binary parts
2534 (meaning that a C compiler is used) will have to be recompiled to be
2535 used with 5.24.0. If you find you do need to rebuild an extension with
2536 5.24.0, you may safely do so without disturbing the older
2537 installations. (See L<"Coexistence with earlier versions of perl 5">
2540 See your installed copy of the perllocal.pod file for a (possibly
2541 incomplete) list of locally installed modules. Note that you want
2542 perllocal.pod, not perllocale.pod, for installed module information.
2544 =head1 Minimizing the Perl installation
2546 The following section is meant for people worrying about squeezing the
2547 Perl installation into minimal systems (for example when installing
2548 operating systems, or in really small filesystems).
2550 Leaving out as many extensions as possible is an obvious way:
2551 Encode, with its big conversion tables, consumes a lot of
2552 space. On the other hand, you cannot throw away everything. The
2553 Fcntl module is pretty essential. If you need to do network
2554 programming, you'll appreciate the Socket module, and so forth: it all
2555 depends on what do you need to do.
2557 In the following we offer two different slimmed down installation
2558 recipes. They are informative, not normative: the choice of files
2559 depends on what you need.
2561 Firstly, the bare minimum to run this script
2565 foreach my $f (</*>) {
2569 in Linux with perl-5.24.0 is as follows (under $Config{prefix}):
2572 ./lib/perl5/5.24.0/strict.pm
2573 ./lib/perl5/5.24.0/warnings.pm
2574 ./lib/perl5/5.24.0/i686-linux/File/Glob.pm
2575 ./lib/perl5/5.24.0/feature.pm
2576 ./lib/perl5/5.24.0/XSLoader.pm
2577 ./lib/perl5/5.24.0/i686-linux/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2579 Secondly, for perl-5.10.1, the Debian perl-base package contains 591
2580 files, (of which 510 are for lib/unicore) totaling about 3.5MB in its
2581 i386 version. Omitting the lib/unicore/* files for brevity, the
2582 remaining files are:
2586 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Config.pm
2587 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Config_git.pl
2588 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Config_heavy.pl
2589 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Cwd.pm
2590 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/DynaLoader.pm
2591 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Errno.pm
2592 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Fcntl.pm
2593 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/File/Glob.pm
2594 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Hash/Util.pm
2595 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO.pm
2596 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/File.pm
2597 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/Handle.pm
2598 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/Pipe.pm
2599 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/Seekable.pm
2600 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/Select.pm
2601 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/Socket.pm
2602 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/Socket/INET.pm
2603 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/IO/Socket/UNIX.pm
2604 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/List/Util.pm
2605 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/POSIX.pm
2606 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Scalar/Util.pm
2607 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/Socket.pm
2608 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/XSLoader.pm
2609 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/Cwd/Cwd.so
2610 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/DynaLoader/autosplit.ix
2611 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_expandspec.al
2612 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_find_symbol_anywhere.al
2613 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/DynaLoader/dl_findfile.al
2614 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/Fcntl/Fcntl.so
2615 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/File/Glob/Glob.so
2616 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/Hash/Util/Util.so
2617 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/IO/IO.so
2618 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/List/Util/Util.so
2619 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/POSIX/POSIX.so
2620 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/POSIX/autosplit.ix
2621 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/POSIX/load_imports.al
2622 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/auto/Socket/Socket.so
2623 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/lib.pm
2624 /usr/lib/perl/5.10.1/re.pm
2625 /usr/share/doc/perl/AUTHORS.gz
2626 /usr/share/doc/perl/Documentation
2627 /usr/share/doc/perl/README.Debian
2628 /usr/share/doc/perl/changelog.Debian.gz
2629 /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright
2630 /usr/share/lintian/overrides/perl-base
2631 /usr/share/man/man1/perl.1.gz
2632 /usr/share/man/man1/perl5.10.1.1.gz
2633 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/AutoLoader.pm
2634 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Carp.pm
2635 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Carp/Heavy.pm
2636 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Exporter.pm
2637 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Exporter/Heavy.pm
2638 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/File/Spec.pm
2639 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/File/Spec/Unix.pm
2640 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/FileHandle.pm
2641 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Getopt/Long.pm
2642 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/IPC/Open2.pm
2643 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/IPC/Open3.pm
2644 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/SelectSaver.pm
2645 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Symbol.pm
2646 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Text/ParseWords.pm
2647 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Text/Tabs.pm
2648 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Text/Wrap.pm
2649 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/Tie/Hash.pm
2650 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/attributes.pm
2651 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/base.pm
2652 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/bytes.pm
2653 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/bytes_heavy.pl
2654 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/constant.pm
2655 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/fields.pm
2656 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/integer.pm
2657 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/locale.pm
2658 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/overload.pm
2659 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/strict.pm
2660 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/unicore/*
2661 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/utf8.pm
2662 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/utf8_heavy.pl
2663 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/vars.pm
2664 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/warnings.pm
2665 /usr/share/perl/5.10.1/warnings/register.pm
2667 A nice trick to find out the minimal set of Perl library files you will
2668 need to run a Perl program is
2670 perl -e 'do "prog.pl"; END { print "$_\n" for sort keys %INC }'
2672 (this will not find libraries required in runtime, unfortunately, but
2673 it's a minimal set) and if you want to find out all the files you can
2674 use something like the below
2676 strace perl -le 'do "x.pl"' 2>&1 \
2677 | perl -nle '/^open\(\"(.+?)"/ && print $1'
2679 (The 'strace' is Linux-specific, other similar utilities include 'truss'
2682 =head2 C<-DNO_MATHOMS>
2684 If you configure perl with C<-Accflags=-DNO_MATHOMS>, the functions from
2685 F<mathoms.c> will not be compiled in. Those functions are no longer used
2686 by perl itself; for source compatibility reasons, though, they weren't
2689 =head1 DOCUMENTATION
2691 Read the manual entries before running perl. The main documentation
2692 is in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
2693 build process. Type B<man perl> to get started. Alternatively, you
2694 can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied perldoc script. This is
2695 sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.
2699 Original author: Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu , borrowing very
2700 heavily from the original README by Larry Wall, with lots of helpful
2701 feedback and additions from the perl5-porters@perl.org folks.
2703 If you have problems, corrections, or questions, please see
2704 L<"Reporting Problems"> above.
2706 =head1 REDISTRIBUTION
2708 This document is part of the Perl package and may be distributed under
2709 the same terms as perl itself, with the following additional request:
2710 If you are distributing a modified version of perl (perhaps as part of
2711 a larger package) please B<do> modify these installation instructions
2712 and the contact information to match your distribution.