Perl Programmer's Reference Guide.pdf

Perl Programmers Reference Guide

Version 5.005_02

18−Oct−1998

"There’s more than one way to do it."

−− Larry Wall, Author of the Perl Programming Language

Author: Perl5−Porters

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INSTALL Perl Programmers Reference Guide INSTALL

NAME

make test

make install

# You may also wish to add these:

(cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h)

(installhtml −−help)

(cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)

Each of these is explained in further detail below.

For information on non−Unix systems, see the section on "Porting information" below.

For information on what‘s new in this release, see the pod/perldelta.pod file. For more detailed information

about specific changes, see the Changes file.

DESCRIPTION

You should probably at least skim through this entire document before proceeding.

If you‘re building Perl on a non−Unix system, you should also read the README file specific to your

operating system, since this may provide additional or different instructions for building Perl.

If there is a hint file for your system (in the hints/ directory) you should also read that hint file for specific

information for your system. (Unixware users should use the svr4.sh hint file.)

WARNING: This version is not binary compatible with Perl 5.004.

Starting with Perl 5.004_50 there were many deep and far−reaching changes to the language internals. If

you have dynamically loaded extensions that you built under perl 5.003 or 5.004, you can continue to use

them with 5.004, but you will need to rebuild and reinstall those extensions to use them 5.005. See the

discussions below on "Coexistence with earlier versions of perl5" and "Upgrading from 5.004 to 5.005" for

directories need something on the order of 10 MB, though again that value is system−dependent.

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INSTALL Perl Programmers Reference Guide INSTALL

Start with a Fresh Distribution

or

make realclean

The only difference between the two is that make distclean also removes your old config.sh and Policy.sh

files.

Configure should probably check and correct for this, but it doesn‘t, presently. Similarly, if you used a

shared libperl.so (see below) with version numbers, you will probably want to adjust them as well.

Also, be careful to check your architecture name. Some Linux systems (such as Debian) use i386, while

others may use i486, i586, or i686. If you pick up a precompiled binary, it might not use the same name.

In short, if you wish to use your old config.sh, I recommend running Configure interactively rather than

blindly accepting the defaults.

If your reason to reuse your old config.sh is to save your particular installation choices, then you can

probably achieve the same effect by using the new Policy.sh file. See the section on

"Site−wide Policy settings" below.

Run Configure

To compile with gcc, for example, you should run

sh Configure −Dcc=gcc

appropriate defaults.

command line option −Dprefix=‘/some/directory‘, e.g.

sh Configure −Dprefix=/opt/perl

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INSTALL Perl Programmers Reference Guide INSTALL

however, of overwriting a version of perl supplied by your vendor. In any case, system administrators are

strongly encouraged to put (symlinks to) perl and its accompanying utilities, such as perldoc, into a directory

typically found along a user‘s PATH, or in another obvious and convenient place.

By default, Configure will compile perl to use dynamic loading if your system supports it. If you want to

force perl to be compiled statically, you can either choose this when Configure prompts you or you can use

the Configure command line option −Uusedl.

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

sh Configure −des

For my Solaris system, I usually use

sh Configure −Dprefix=/opt/perl −Doptimize=’−xpentium −xO4’ −des

If you prefer the GNU−style configure command line interface, you can use the supplied configure.gnu

CC=gcc ./configure.gnu

The configure.gnu script emulates a few of the more common configure options. Try

Cross compiling is not supported.

(The file is called configure.gnu to avoid problems on systems that would not distinguish the files

By default, Configure will offer to build every extension which appears to be supported. For example,

Configure variable useposix=false either in a hint file or from the Configure command line. Similarly, the

useopcode=false either in a hint file for from the command line.

modules, located under the ext/ subdirectory.

build the stub dl_none.xs version. (Configure will suggest this as the default.)

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

B (Always included by default)

DB_File i_db

DynaLoader (Must always be included as a static extension)

Fcntl (Always included by default)

GDBM_File i_gdbm

IO (Always included by default)

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