Megalopatch for Configure: Andy's new installation schemes;

introduce usefull64bits, beautify and regularize the various
type probes; introduce d_lseekproto.

p4raw-id: //depot/cfgperl@5253

1 files changed, 30 insertions, 6 deletions

diff --git a/pod/perldelta.pod b/pod/perldelta.pod
index 4fd3ce49bd..90c81de852 100644
--- a/pod/perldelta.pod
+++ b/pod/perldelta.pod
@@ -386,12 +386,20 @@ process starts.  Run C<Configure -h> to find out the full C<-A> syntax.
 
 =head2 Enhanced Installation Directories
 
-The installation structure has been enriched to improve the support for 
-maintaining multiple versions of perl, to provide locations for
-vendor-supplied modules and scripts, and to ease maintenance of
-locally-added modules and scripts.  See the section on Installation 
-Directories in the INSTALL file for complete details.  For most users
-building and installing from source, the defaults should be fine.
+The installation structure has been enriched to improve the support
+for maintaining multiple versions of perl, to provide locations for
+vendor-supplied modules, scripts, and manpages, and to ease maintenance
+of locally-added modules, scripts, and manpages.  See the section on
+Installation Directories in the INSTALL file for complete details.
+For most users building and installing from source, the defaults should
+be fine.
+
+If you previously used C<Configure -Dsitelib> or C<-Dsitearch> to set
+special values for library directories, you might wish to consider using
+the new C<-Dsiteprefix> setting instead.  Also, if you wish to re-use a
+config.sh file from an earlier version of perl, you should be sure to
+check that Configure makes sensible choices for the new directories.
+See INSTALL for complete details.
 
 =head1 Core Changes
 
@@ -672,6 +680,22 @@ change.  Bit arithmetics for bit vector scalars (created by vec()) are
 not limited in their width, you can use the & | ^ ~ operators on such
 scalars.
 
+There are actually two modes of 64-bitness: the first one is achieved
+using Configure -Duse64bits and the second one using Configure
+-Dusefull64bits.  The difference is that the first one is minimal and
+the second one maximal.  The first one does only as much as is
+required to get 64-bit integers into Perl (this may mean, for example,
+using "long longs") while your memory may still be limited to 2
+gigabytes (because your pointers most likely are 32-bit); the second
+one goes all the way by attempting to switch also longs (and pointers)
+being 64-bit.  This may create an even more binary incompatible Perl
+than -Duse64bits: the resulting executable may not run at all in a
+CPU-bit box, or you may have to reboot/reconfigure/rebuild your
+operating system to be 64-bit aware.
+
+Natively 64-bit systems like Alpha and Cray need neither -Duse64bits
+nor -Dusefull64bits.
+
 Last but not least: note that due to Perl's habit of always using
 floating point numbers the quads are still not true integers.
 When quads overflow their limits (0...18_446_744_073_709_551_615 unsigned,