path: root/INSTALL

=head1 NAME

Install - Build and Installation guide for perl5.

=head1 SYNOPSIS

The basic steps to build and install perl5 are:

	rm -f config.sh
	sh Configure
	make
	make test
	make install

Each of these is explained in further detail below.

=head1 BUILDING PERL5

=head1 Start with a Fresh Distribution.

The results of a Configure run are stored in the config.sh file.  If
you are upgrading from a previous version of perl, or if you change
systems or compilers or make other significant changes, or if you are
experiencing difficulties building perl, you should probably I<not>
re-use your old config.sh.  Simply remove it or rename it, e.g.

	mv config.sh config.sh.old

Then run Configure.

=head1 Run Configure.

Configure will figure out various things about your system.  Some
things Configure will figure out for itself, other things it will ask
you about.  To accept the default, just press C<RETURN>.   The default
is almost always ok.

After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the
F<*.SH> files and offer to run B<make depend>.

Configure supports a number of useful options.  Run B<Configure -h>
to get a listing.  To compile with gcc, for example, you can run

	sh Configure -Dcc=gcc

This is the preferred way to specify gcc (or another alternative
compiler) so that the hints files can set appropriate defaults.

If you want to use your old config.sh but override some of the items
with command line options, you need to use B<Configure -O>.

If you are willing to accept all the defaults, and you want terse
output, you can run

	sh Configure -des

By default, for most systems, perl will be installed in
/usr/local/{bin, lib, man}.  You can specify a different 'prefix' for
the default installation directory, when Configure prompts you or by
using the Configure command line option -Dprefix='/some/directory',
e.g.

	sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl

If your prefix contains the string "perl", then the directories
are simplified.  For example, if you use prefix=/opt/perl,
then Configure will suggest /opt/perl/lib instead of
/usr/local/lib/perl5/.

By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading, if
your system supports it.  If you want to force perl to be compiled
statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or by
using the Configure command line option -Uusedl.

=head2 Extensions

By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which
appears to be supported.  For example, Configure will offer to build
GDBM_File only if it is able to find the gdbm library.  (See examples
below.)  DynaLoader and Fcntl are always built by default.  Configure
does not contain code to test for POSIX compliance, so POSIX is always
built by default as well.  If you wish to skip POSIX, you can set the
Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from the
Configure command line.  Similarly, the Safe extension is always built
by default, but you can skip it by setting the Configure variable
usesafe=false either in a hint file for from the command line.

In summary, here are the Configure command-line variables you can set
to turn off each extension:

    DB_File		i_db
    DynaLoader		(Must always be included)
    Fcntl		(Always included by default)
    GDBM_File		i_gdbm
    NDBM_File		i_ndbm
    ODBM_File		i_dbm
    POSIX		useposix
    SDBM_File		(Always included by default)
    Safe		usesafe
    Socket		d_socket

Thus to skip the NDBM_File extension, you can use

	sh Configure -Ui_ndbm

Again, this is taken care of automatically if you don't have the ndbm
library.

Of course, you may always run Configure interactively and select only
the Extensions you want.

Finally, if you have dynamic loading (most modern Unix systems do)
remember that these extensions do not increase the size of your perl
executable, nor do they impact start-up time, so you probably might as
well build all the ones that will work on your system.

=head2 GNU-style configure

If you prefer the GNU-style B<configure> command line interface, you can
use the supplied B<configure> command, e.g.

	CC=gcc ./configure

The B<configure> script emulates several of the more common configure
options.  Try

	./configure --help

for a listing.

Cross compiling is currently not supported.

=head2 Including locally-installed libraries

Perl5 comes with interfaces to number of database extensions, including
dbm, ndbm, gdbm, and Berkeley db.  For each extension, if
Configure can find the appropriate header files and libraries, it will
automatically include that extension.  The gdbm and db libraries
are B<not> included with perl.  See the library documentation for
how to obtain the libraries.

I<Note:>  If your database header (.h) files are not in a
directory normally searched by your C compiler, then you will need to
include the appropriate B<-I/your/directory> option when prompted by
Configure.  If your database library (.a) files are not in a directory
normally searched by your C compiler and linker, then you will need to
include the appropriate B<-L/your/directory> option when prompted by
Configure.  See the examples below.

=head2 Examples

=over 4

=item gdbm in /usr/local.

Suppose you have gdbm and want Configure to find it and build the
GDBM_File extension.  This examples assumes you have F<gdbm.h>
installed in F</usr/local/include/gdbm.h> and F<libgdbm.a> installed in
F</usr/local/lib/libgdbm.a>.  Configure should figure all the
necessary steps out automatically.

Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for
your C compiler, you should include  C<-I/usr/local/include>.

When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
C<-L/usr/local/lib>.

If you are using dynamic loading, then when Configure prompts you for
linker flags for dynamic loading, you should again include
C<-L/usr/local/lib>.

Again, this should all happen automatically.  If you want to accept the
defaults for all the questions and have Configure print out only terse
messages, then you can just run

	sh Configure -des

and Configure should include the GDBM_File extension automatically.

This should actually work if you have gdbm installed in any of
(/usr/local, /opt/local, /usr/gnu, /opt/gnu, /usr/GNU, or /opt/GNU).

=item gdbm in /usr/you

Suppose you have gdbm installed in some place other than /usr/local/,
but you still want Configure to find it.  To be specific, assume  you
have F</usr/you/include/gdbm.h> and F</usr/you/lib/libgdbm.a>.  You
still have to add B<-I/usr/you/include> to cc flags, but you have to take
an extra step to help Configure find F<libgdbm.a>.  Specifically, when
Configure prompts you for library directories, you have to add
F</usr/you/lib> to the list.

It is possible to specify this from the command line too (all on one
line):

	sh Configure -des \
		-Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include" \
		-Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib"

C<locincpth> is a space-separated list of include directories to search.
Configure will automatically add the appropriate B<-I> directives.

C<loclibpth> is a space-separated list of library directories to search.
Configure will automatically add the appropriate B<-L> directives.  If
you have some libraries under F</usr/local/> and others under
F</usr/you>, then you have to include both, namely

	sh Configure -des \
		-Dlocincpth="/usr/you/include /usr/local/include" \
		-Dloclibpth="/usr/you/lib /usr/local/lib"

=back

=head2 Installation Directories.

The installation directories can all be changed by answering the
appropriate questions in Configure.  For convenience, all the
installation questions are near the beginning of Configure.

By default, Configure uses the following directories for
library files  (archname is a string like sun4-sunos, determined
by Configure)

	/usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.002
	/usr/local/lib/perl5/
	/usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/archname
	/usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl

and the following directories for manual pages:

	/usr/local/man/man1
	/usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3

(Actually, Configure recognizes the SVR3-style
/usr/local/man/l_man/man1 directories, if present, and uses those
instead.) The module man pages are stuck in that strange spot so that
they don't collide with other man pages stored in /usr/local/man/man3,
and so that Perl's man pages don't hide system man pages.  On some
systems, B<man less> would end up calling up Perl's less.pm module man
page, rather than the B<less> program.

If you specify a prefix that contains the string "perl", then the
directory structure is simplified.  For example, if you Configure
with -Dprefix=/opt/perl, then the defaults are

	/opt/perl/lib/archname/5.002
	/opt/perl/lib
	/opt/perl/lib/site_perl/archname
	/opt/perl/lib/site_perl

	/opt/perl/man/man1
	/opt/perl/man/man3

The perl executable will search the libraries in the order given
above.

The  directories site_perl and site_perl/archname are empty, but are
intended to be used for installing local or site-wide extensions.  Perl
will automatically look in these directories.  Previously, most sites
just put their local extensions in with the standard distribution.

In order to support using things like #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.002 after
a later version is released, architecture-dependent libraries are
stored in a version-specific directory, such as
/usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.002/.  In 5.000 and 5.001, these files
were just stored in /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/.  If you will not be
using 5.001 binaries, you can delete the standard extensions from the
/usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/ directory.  Locally-added extensions can
be moved to the site_perl and site_perl/archname directories.

Again, these are just the defaults, and can be changed as you run
Configure.

=head2 Changing the installation directory

Configure distinguishes between the directory in which perl (and its
associated files) should be installed and the directory in which it
will eventually reside.  For most sites, these two are the same; for
sites that use AFS, this distinction is handled automatically.
However, sites that use software such as B<depot> to manage software
packages may also wish to install perl into a different directory and
use that management software to move perl to its final destination.
This section describes how to do this.  Someday, Configure may support
an option C<-Dinstallprefix=/foo> to simplify this.

Suppose you want to install perl under the F</tmp/perl5> directory.
You can edit F<config.sh> and change all the install* variables to
point to F</tmp/perl5> instead of F</usr/local/wherever>.  You could
also set them all from the Configure command line.  Or, you can
automate this process by placing the following lines in a file
F<config.over> B<before> you run Configure (replace /tmp/perl5 by a
directory of your choice):

    installprefix=/tmp/perl5
    test -d $installprefix || mkdir $installprefix
    test -d $installprefix/bin || mkdir $installprefix/bin
    installarchlib=`echo $installarchlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
    installbin=`echo $installbin | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
    installman1dir=`echo $installman1dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
    installman3dir=`echo $installman3dir | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
    installprivlib=`echo $installprivlib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
    installscript=`echo $installscript | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
    installsitelib=`echo $installsitelib | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`
    installsitearch=`echo $installsitearch | sed "s!$prefix!$installprefix!"`

Then, you can Configure and install in the usual way:

    sh Configure -des
    make
    make test
    make install

=head2 Creating an installable tar archive

If you need to install perl on many identical systems, it is
convenient to compile it once and create an archive that can be
installed on multiple systems.  Here's one way to do that:

    # Set up config.over to install perl into a different directory,
    # e.g. /tmp/perl5 (see previous part).
    sh Configure -des
    make
    make test
    make install
    cd /tmp/perl5
    tar cvf ../perl5-archive.tar .
    # Then, on each machine where you want to install perl,
    cd /usr/local  # Or wherever you specified as $prefix
    tar xvf perl5-archive.tar

=head2 What if it doesn't work?

=over 4

=item Running Configure Interactively

If Configure runs into trouble, remember that you can always run
Configure interactively so that you can check (and correct) its
guesses.

All the installation questions have been moved to the top, so you don't
have to wait for them.  Once you've handled them (and your C compiler &
flags) you can type   '&-d'  at the next Configure prompt and Configure
will use the defaults from then on.

If you find yourself trying obscure command line incantations and
config.over tricks, I recommend you run Configure interactively
instead.  You'll probably save yourself time in the long run.

=item Hint files.

The perl distribution includes a number of system-specific hints files
in the hints/ directory.  If one of them matches your system, Configure
will offer to use that hint file.

Several of the hint files contain additional important information.
If you have any problems, it is a good idea to read the relevant hint
file for further information.  See F<hints/solaris_2.sh> for an
extensive example.

=item Changing Compilers

If you change compilers or make other significant changes, you should
probably I<not> re-use your old config.sh.  Simply remove it or
rename it, e.g. mv config.sh config.sh.old.  Then rerun Configure
with the options you want to use.

This is a common source of problems.  If you change from B<cc> to
B<gcc>, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.

=item Propagating your changes

If you later make any changes to F<config.sh>, you should propagate
them to all the .SH files by running  B<sh Configure -S>.

=item config.over

You can also supply a shell script config.over to over-ride Configure's
guesses.  It will get loaded up at the very end, just before config.sh
is created.  You have to be careful with this, however, as Configure
does no checking that your changes make sense.  See the section on
changing the installation directory for an example.

=item config.h

Many of the system dependencies are contained in F<config.h>.
F<Configure> builds F<config.h> by running the F<config_h.SH> script.
The values for the variables are taken from F<config.sh>.

If there are any problems, you can edit F<config.h> directly.  Beware,
though, that the next time you run B<Configure>, your changes will be
lost.

=item cflags

If you have any additional changes to make to the C compiler command
line, they can be made in F<cflags.SH>.  For instance, to turn off the
optimizer on F<toke.c>, find the line in the switch structure for
F<toke.c> and put the command C<optimize='-g'> before the C<;;>.  You
can also edit F<cflags> directly, but beware that your changes will be
lost the next time you run B<Configure>.

To change the C flags for all the files, edit F<config.sh>
and change either C<$ccflags> or C<$optimize>,
and then re-run  B<sh Configure -S ; make depend>.

=item No sh.

If you don't have sh, you'll have to copy the sample file config_H to
config.h and edit the config.h to reflect your system's peculiarities.
You'll probably also have to extensively modify the extension building
mechanism.

=back

=head1 make depend

This will look for all the includes.
The output is stored in F<makefile>.  The only difference between
F<Makefile> and F<makefile> is the dependencies at the bottom of
F<makefile>.  If you have to make any changes, you should edit
F<makefile>, not F<Makefile> since the Unix B<make> command reads
F<makefile> first.

Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed
explicitly above.

=head1 make

This will attempt to make perl in the current directory.

If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas.

=over 4

=item *

If you used a hint file, try reading the comments in the hint file
for further tips and information.

=item *

If you can't compile successfully, try adding a C<-DCRIPPLED_CC> flag.
(Just because you get no errors doesn't mean it compiled right!)
This simplifies some complicated expressions for compilers that
get indigestion easily.  If that has no effect, try turning off
optimization.  If you have missing routines, you probably need to
add some library or other, or you need to undefine some feature that
Configure thought was there but is defective or incomplete.

=item *

Some compilers will not compile or optimize the larger files without
some extra switches to use larger jump offsets or allocate larger
internal tables.  You can customize the switches for each file in
F<cflags>.  It's okay to insert rules for specific files into
F<makefile> since a default rule only takes effect in the absence of a
specific rule.

=item *

If you can successfully build F<miniperl>, but the process crashes
during the building of extensions, you should run

    	make minitest

to test your version of miniperl.

=item *

Some additional things that have been reported for either perl4 or perl5:

Genix may need to use libc rather than libc_s, or #undef VARARGS.

NCR Tower 32 (OS 2.01.01) may need -W2,-Sl,2000 and #undef MKDIR.

UTS may need one or more of B<-DCRIPPLED_CC>, B<-K> or B<-g>, and undef LSTAT.

If you get syntax errors on '(', try -DCRIPPLED_CC.

Machines with half-implemented dbm routines will need to #undef I_ODBM

SCO prior to 3.2.4 may be missing dbmclose().  An upgrade to 3.2.4
that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose()) may be available.

If you get duplicates upon linking for malloc et al, say -DHIDEMYMALLOC.

If you get duplicate function definitions (a perl function has the
same name as another function on your system) try -DEMBED.

If you get varags problems with gcc, be sure that gcc is installed
correctly.  When using gcc, you should probably have i_stdarg='define'
and i_varags='undef' in config.sh.  The problem is usually solved
by running fixincludes correctly.

If you wish to use dynamic loading on SunOS or Solaris, and you
have GNU as and GNU ld installed, you may need to add B<-B/bin/> to
your $ccflags and $ldflags so that the system's versions of as
and ld are used.

If you run into dynamic loading problems, check your setting of
the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable.  Perl should build
fine with LD_LIBRARY_PATH unset, though that may depend on details
of your local set-up.

If Configure seems to be having trouble finding library functions,
try not using nm extraction.  You can do this from the command line
with

	sh Configure -Uusenm

=back

=head1 make test

This will run the regression tests on the perl you just made.  If it
doesn't say "All tests successful" then something went wrong.  See the
file F<t/README> in the F<t> subdirectory.  Note that you can't run it
in background if this disables opening of /dev/tty.  If B<make test>
bombs out, just B<cd> to the F<t> directory and run B<TEST> by hand
to see if it makes any difference.
If individual tests bomb, you can run them by hand, e.g.,

	./perl op/groups.t

B<NOTE>: one possible reason for errors is that some external programs
may be broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
C<make test> exercises them. This may happen for example if you have
one or more of these environment variables set:
C<LC_ALL LC_CTYPE LANG>. In certain UNIXes especially the non-English
locales are known to cause programs to exhibit mysterious errors.
If you have any of the above environment variables set, please try
C<setenv LC_ALL C> or <LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL>, for C<csh>-style and
C<Bourne>-style shells, respectively, from the command line and then
retry C<make test>. If the tests then succeed, you may have a broken
program that is confusing the testing. Please run the troublesome test
by hand as shown above and see whether you can locate the program.
Look for things like:
C<exec, `backquoted command`, system, open("|...")> or C<open("...|")>.
All these mean that Perl is trying to run some external program.
=head1 INSTALLING PERL5

=head1 make install

This will put perl into the public directory you specified to
B<Configure>; by default this is F</usr/local/bin>.  It will also try
to put the man pages in a reasonable place.  It will not nroff the man
page, however.  You may need to be root to run B<make install>.  If you
are not root, you must own the directories in question and you should
ignore any messages about chown not working.

If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing
anything, you can run

	./perl installperl -n
	./perl installman -n

B<make install> will install the following:

	perl,
	    perl5.nnn	where nnn is the current release number.  This
			will be a link to perl.
	suidperl,
	    sperl5.nnn	If you requested setuid emulation.
	a2p          	awk-to-perl translator
	cppstdin	This is used by perl -P, if your cc -E can't
			read from stdin.
	c2ph, pstruct	Scripts for handling C structures in header files.
	s2p		sed-to-perl translator
	find2perl	find-to-perl translator
	h2xs		Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions.
	perlbug		Tool to report bugs in Perl.
	perldoc		Tool to read perl's pod documentation.
	pod2html,	Converters from perl's pod documentation format
	pod2latex, and 	to other useful formats.
	pod2man

	library files	in $privlib and $archlib specified to
			Configure, usually under /usr/local/lib/perl5/.
	man pages	in the location specified to Configure, usually
			something like /usr/local/man/man1.
	module		in the location specified to Configure, usually
	man pages	under /usr/local/lib/perl5/man/man3.
	pod/*.pod	in $privlib/pod/.

Installperl will also create the library directories $siteperl and
$sitearch listed in config.sh.  Usually, these are something like
	/usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/
	/usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/$archname
where $archname is something like sun4-sunos.  These directories
will be used for installing extensions.

Perl's *.h header files and the libperl.a library are also
installed under $archlib so that any user may later build new
extensions even if the Perl source is no longer available.

The libperl.a library is only needed for building new
extensions and linking them statically into a new perl executable.
If you will not be doing that, then you may safely delete
$archlib/libperl.a after perl is installed.

make install may also offer to install perl in a "standard" location.

Most of the documentation in the pod/ directory is also available
in HTML and LaTeX format.  Type

	cd pod; make html; cd ..

to generate the html versions, and

	cd pod; make tex; cd ..

to generate the LaTeX versions.

=head1 Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5.

You can safely install the current version of perl5 and still run
scripts under the old binaries.  Instead of starting your script with
#!/usr/local/bin/perl, just start it with #!/usr/local/bin/perl5.001
(or whatever version you want to run.)

The architecture-dependent files are stored in a version-specific
directory (such as F</usr/local/lib/perl5/sun4-sunos/5.002>) so that
they are still accessible.  I<Note:> perl5.000 and perl5.001 did not
put their architecture-dependent libraries in a version-specific
directory.  They are simply in F</usr/local/lib/perl5/$archname>.  If
you will not be using 5.000 or 5.001, you may safely remove those
files.

The standard library files in F</usr/local/lib/perl5>
should be useable by all versions of perl5.

Most extensions will probably not need to be recompiled to use with a newer
version of perl.  If you do run into problems, and you want to continue
to use the old version of perl along with your extension, simply move
those extension files to the appropriate version directory, such as
F</usr/local/lib/perl/archname/5.002>.  Then perl5.002 will find your
files in the 5.002 directory, and newer versions of perl will find your
newer extension in the site_perl directory.

Some users may prefer to keep all versions of perl in completely
separate directories.  One convenient way to do this is by
using a separate prefix for each version, such as

	sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl5.002

and adding /opt/perl5.002/bin to the shell PATH variable.  Such users
may also wish to add a symbolic link /usr/local/bin/perl so that
scripts can still start with #!/usr/local/bin/perl.

=head1 Coexistence with perl4

You can safely install perl5 even if you want to keep perl4 around.

By default, the perl5 libraries go into F</usr/local/lib/perl5/>, so
they don't override the perl4 libraries in F</usr/local/lib/perl/>.

In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
F<perl4.036>.  That will not be touched by the perl5 installation
process.  Most perl4 scripts should run just fine under perl5.
However, if you have any scripts that require perl4, you can replace
the C<#!> line at the top of them by C<#!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036>
(or whatever the appropriate pathname is).

=head1 DOCUMENTATION

Read the manual entries before running perl.  The main documentation is
in the pod/ subdirectory and should have been installed during the
build process.  Type B<man perl> to get started.  Alternatively, you
can type B<perldoc perl> to use the supplied B<perldoc> script.  This
is sometimes useful for finding things in the library modules.

=head1 AUTHOR

Andy Dougherty <doughera@lafcol.lafayette.edu>, borrowing I<very> heavily
from the original README by Larry Wall.

=head 2 LAST MODIFIED

04 January 1996