path: root/README.amiga

If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you
see. It is written in the POD format (see perlpod manpage) which is
specially designed to be readable as is.

=head1 NAME

perlamiga - Perl under Amiga OS

=head1 SYNOPSIS

One can read this document in the following formats:

	man perlamiga
	multiview perlamiga.guide

to list some (not all may be available simultaneously), or it may
be read I<as is>: either as F<README.amiga>, or F<pod/perlamiga.pod>.

A recent version of perl for the Amiga can be found at the Geek Gadgets
section of the Aminet:

      http://www.aminet.net/~aminet/dirs/dev_gg.html

=cut

Contents
 
 perlamiga - Perl under Amiga OS

       NAME 
       SYNOPSIS 
       DESCRIPTION 
         -  Prerequisites 
         -  Starting Perl programs under AmigaOS
         -  Shortcomings of Perl under AmigaOS
       INSTALLATION 
       Accessing documentation 
         -  Manpages 
         -  HTML 
         -  GNU info files 
         -  LaTeX docs 
       BUILD 
         -  Build Prerequisites 
         -  Getting the perl source 
         -  Application of the patches 
         -  Making 
         -  Testing 
         -  Installing the built perl 
       AUTHOR 
       SEE ALSO 

=head1 DESCRIPTION

=head2 Prerequisites for Compiling Perl on AmigaOS

=over 6

=item B<Unix emulation for AmigaOS: ixemul.library>

You need the Unix emulation for AmigaOS, whose most important part is
B<ixemul.library>. For a minimum setup, get the latest versions
of the following packages from the Aminet archives
( http://www.aminet.net/~aminet/ ):

	ixemul-bin
	ixemul-env-bin
	pdksh-bin

Note also that this is a minimum setup; you might want to add other
packages of B<ADE> (the I<Amiga Developers Environment>).

=item B<Version of Amiga OS>

You need at the very least AmigaOS version 2.0. Recommended is version 3.1.

=back

=head2 Starting Perl programs under AmigaOS

Start your Perl program F<foo> with arguments C<arg1 arg2 arg3> the
same way as on any other platform, by

	perl foo arg1 arg2 arg3

If you want to specify perl options C<-my_opts> to the perl itself (as
opposed to your program), use

	perl -my_opts foo arg1 arg2 arg3

Alternately, you can try to get a replacement for the system's B<Execute>
command that honors the #!/usr/bin/perl syntax in scripts and set the s-Bit
of your scripts. Then you can invoke your scripts like under UNIX with

	foo arg1 arg2 arg3

(Note that having *nixish full path to perl F</usr/bin/perl> is not
necessary, F<perl> would be enough, but having full path would make it
easier to use your script under *nix.)

=head2 Shortcomings of Perl under AmigaOS

Perl under AmigaOS lacks some features of perl under UNIX because of
deficiencies in the UNIX-emulation, most notably:

=over 6

=item *

fork()

=item * 

some features of the UNIX filesystem regarding link count and file dates

=item *

inplace operation (the -i switch) without backup file

=item *

umask() works, but the correct permissions are only set when the file is
finally close()d

=back

=head1 INSTALLATION

Change to the installation directory (most probably ADE:), and
extract the binary distribution:

lha -mraxe x perl-$VERSION-bin.lha

or

tar xvzpf perl-$VERSION-bin.tgz

(Of course you need lha or tar and gunzip for this.)

For installation of the Unix emulation, read the appropriate docs.

=head1 Accessing documentation

=head2 Manpages for Perl on AmigaOS

If you have C<man> installed on your system, and you installed perl
manpages, use something like this:

	man perlfunc
	man less
	man ExtUtils.MakeMaker

to access documentation for different components of Perl. Start with

	man perl

Note: You have to modify your man.conf file to search for manpages
in the /ade/lib/perl5/man/man3 directory, or the man pages for the
perl library will not be found. 

Note that dot (F<.>) is used as a package separator for documentation
for packages, and as usual, sometimes you need to give the section - C<3>
above - to avoid shadowing by the I<less(1) manpage>.


=head2 Perl HTML Documentation on AmigaOS

If you have some WWW browser available, you can build B<HTML> docs.
Cd to directory with F<.pod> files, and do like this

	cd /ade/lib/perl5/pod
	pod2html

After this you can direct your browser the file F<perl.html> in this
directory, and go ahead with reading docs.

Alternatively you may be able to get these docs prebuilt from C<CPAN>.

=head2 Perl GNU Info Files on AmigaOS

Users of C<Emacs> would appreciate it very much, especially with
C<CPerl> mode loaded. You need to get latest C<pod2info> from C<CPAN>,
or, alternately, prebuilt info pages.

=head2 Perl LaTeX Documentation on AmigaOS

Can be constructed using C<pod2latex>.

=head1 BUILDING PERL ON AMIGAOS

Here we discuss how to build Perl under AmigaOS.

=head2 Build Prerequisites for Perl on AmigaOS

You need to have the latest B<ixemul> (Unix emulation for Amiga)
from Aminet.

=head2 Getting the Perl Source for AmigaOS

You can either get the latest perl-for-amiga source from Ninemoons
and extract it with:

  tar xvzpf perl-$VERSION-src.tgz

or get the official source from CPAN:

  http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0

Extract it like this

  tar xvzpf perl-$VERSION.tar.gz

You will see a message about errors while extracting F<Configure>. This
is normal and expected. (There is a conflict with a similarly-named file
F<configure>, but it causes no harm.)

=head2 Making Perl on AmigaOS

Remember to use a hefty wad of stack (I use 2000000)

  sh configure.gnu --prefix=/gg

Now type

  make depend

Now!

  make

=head2 Testing Perl on AmigaOS

Now run

  make test

Some tests will be skipped because they need the fork() function:

F<io/pipe.t>, F<op/fork.t>, F<lib/filehand.t>, F<lib/open2.t>, F<lib/open3.t>, 
F<lib/io_pipe.t>, F<lib/io_sock.t>

=head2 Installing the built Perl on AmigaOS

Run

  make install

=head1 AUTHORS

Norbert Pueschel, pueschel@imsdd.meb.uni-bonn.de
Jan-Erik Karlsson, trg@privat.utfors.se

=head1 SEE ALSO

perl(1).

=cut