rm -f config.sh sh Configure make make test make install
# You may also wish to add these: (cd /usr/include && h2ph *.h sys/*.h) (cd pod && make html && mv *.html <www home dir>) (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.
This document is written in pod format as an easy way to indicate its structure. The pod format is described in pod/perlpod.pod, but you can read it as is with any pager or editor.
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.
make takes roughly 15 MB, though the actual total is likely to be quite
system-dependent. The installation directories need something on the order
of 7 MB, though again that value is system-dependent.
make realclean
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 not re-use your old config.sh. Simply remove it or rename it, e.g.
mv config.sh config.sh.old
If you wish to use your old config.sh, be especially attentive to the version and architecture-specific questions and answers. For example, the default directory for architecture-dependent library modules includes the version name. By default, Configure will reuse your old name (e.g. /opt/perl/lib/i86pc-solaris/5.003) even if you're running Configure for a different version, e.g. 5.004. Yes, 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 call themselves i486, while others use i586. 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.
RETURN. The default is almost always ok.
After it runs, Configure will perform variable substitution on all the *.SH files and offer to run make depend.
Configure supports a number of useful options. Run 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 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 /opt/perl/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 you can use the Configure command line option -Uusedl.
CC=gcc ./configure
The configure script emulates a few of the more common configure options. Try
./configure --help
for a listing.
Cross compiling is not supported.
For systems that do not distinguish the files ``Configure'' and ``configure'', Perl includes a copy of configure named configure.gnu.
Even if you do not have dynamic loading, you must still build the DynaLoader extension; you should just 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:
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)
NDBM_File i_ndbm
ODBM_File i_dbm
POSIX useposix
SDBM_File (Always included by default)
Opcode useopcode
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.
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 -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 -L/your/directory option when prompted by Configure. See the examples below.
Specifically, when Configure prompts you for flags for your C compiler, you
should include -I/usr/local/include.
When Configure prompts you for linker flags, you should include
-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
-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).
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"
locincpth is a space-separated list of include directories to search. Configure will
automatically add the appropriate -I directives.
loclibpth is a space-separated list of library directories to search. Configure will
automatically add the appropriate -L directives. If you have some libraries under /usr/local/ and others under
/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"
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/5.004 /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, man less would end up calling up Perl's less.pm module man page, rather than the 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/5.004 /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/perl5.004 after a later version is released, architecture-dependent libraries are stored in a version-specific directory, such as /usr/local/lib/perl5/archname/5.004/. In Perl 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.
Suppose you want to install perl under the /tmp/perl5 directory. You can edit config.sh and change all the install* variables to point to /tmp/perl5 instead of /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 config.over 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
# 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
Starting with Perl 5.003, all functions in the Perl C source code have been protected by default by the prefix Perl_ (or perl_) so that you may link with third-party libraries without fear of namespace collisions. This change broke compatibility with version 5.002, so installing 5.003 or 5.004 over 5.002 or earlier will force you to re-build and install all of your dynamically loadable extensions. (The standard extensions supplied with Perl are handled automatically). You can turn off this namespace protection by adding -DNO_EMBED to your ccflags variable in config.sh.
Perl 5.003's namespace protection was incomplete, but this has been fixed in 5.004. However, some sites may need to maintain complete binary compatibility with Perl 5.003. If you are building Perl for such a site, then when Configure asks if you want binary compatibility, answer ``y''.
On the other hand, if you are embedding perl into another application and want the maximum namespace protection, then you probably ought to answer ``n'' when Configure asks if you want binary compatibility.
The default answer of ``y'' to maintain binary compatibility is probably appropriate for almost everyone.
This PerlIO abstraction can be enabled either on the Configure command line with
sh Configure -Duseperlio
or interactively at the appropriate Configure prompt.
If you choose to use the PerlIO abstraction layer, there are two (experimental) possibilities for the underlying IO calls. These have been tested to some extent on some platforms, but are not guaranteed to work everywhere.
This option requires the 'sfio' package to have been built and installed. A (fairly old) version of sfio is in CPAN, and work is in progress to make it more easily buildable by adding Configure support.
You select this option by
sh Configure -Duseperlio -Dusesfio
If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure detects that you have sfio, then sfio will be the default suggested by Configure.
Note: On some systems, sfio's iffe configuration script fails to detect that you have an atexit function (or equivalent). Apparently, this is a problem at least for some
versions of Linux and SunOS 4.
You can test if you have this problem by trying the following shell script. (You may have to add some extra cflags and libraries. A portable version of this may eventually make its way into Configure.)
#!/bin/sh
cat > try.c <<'EOCP'
#include <stdio.h>
main() { printf("42\n"); }
EOCP
cc -o try try.c -lsfio
val=`./try`
if test X$val = X42; then
echo "Your sfio looks ok"
else
echo "Your sfio has the exit problem."
fi
If you have this problem, the fix is to go back to your sfio sources and correct iffe's guess about atexit (or whatever is appropriate for your platform.)
There also might be a more recent release of Sfio that fixes your problem.
This configuration should work on all platforms (but might not).
You select this option via:
sh Configure -Duseperlio -Uusesfio
If you have already selected -Duseperlio, and if Configure does not detect sfio, then this will be the default suggested by Configure.
On some systems that support dynamic loading, it may be possible to replace libperl.a with a shared libperl.so. If you anticipate building several different perl binaries (e.g. by embedding libperl into different programs, or by using the optional compiler extension), then you might wish to build a shared libperl.so so that all your binaries can share the same library.
The disadvantages are that there may be a significant performance penalty associated with the shared libperl.so, and that the overall mechanism is still rather fragile with respect to different versions and upgrades.
In terms of performance, on my test system (Solaris 2.5_x86) the perl test suite took roughly 15% longer to run with the shared libperl.so. Your system and typical applications may well give quite different results.
The default name for the shared library is typically something like libperl.so.3.2 (for Perl 5.003_02) or libperl.so.302 or simply libperl.so. Configure tries to guess a sensible naming convention based on your C library name. Since the library gets installed in a version-specific architecture-dependent directory, the exact name isn't very important anyway, as long as your linker is happy.
For some systems (mostly SVR4), building a shared libperl is required for dynamic loading to work, and hence is already the default.
You can elect to build a shared libperl by
sh Configure -Duseshrplib
To actually build perl, you must add the current working directory to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable before running make. You can do this with
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=`pwd`:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
for Bourne-style shells, or
setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH `pwd`
for Csh-style shells. You *MUST* do this before running make. Folks running NeXT OPENSTEP must substitute DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH for LD_LIBRARY_PATH above.
There is also an potential problem with the shared perl library if you want to have more than one ``flavor'' of the same version of perl (e.g. with and without -DDEBUGGING). For example, suppose you build and install a standard Perl 5.004 with a shared library. Then, suppose you try to build Perl 5.004 with -DDEBUGGING enabled, but everything else the same, including all the installation directories. How can you ensure that your newly built perl will link with your newly built libperl.so.4 rather with the installed libperl.so.4? The answer is that you might not be able to. The installation directory is encoded in the perl binary with the LD_RUN_PATH environment variable (or equivalent ld command-line option). On Solaris, you can override that with LD_LIBRARY_PATH; on Linux you can't.
The only reliable answer is that you should specify a different directory for the architecture-dependent library for your -DDEBUGGING version of perl. You can do this with by changing all the *archlib* variables in config.sh, namely archlib, archlib_exp, and installarchlib, to point to your new architecture-dependent library.
malloc to grow data structures as
needed, so perl's performance can be noticeably affected by the performance
of the malloc function on your system.
The perl source is shipped with a version of malloc that is very fast but
somewhat wasteful of space. On the other hand, your system's
malloc function is probably a bit slower but also a bit more
frugal.
For many uses, speed is probably the most important consideration, so the default behavior (for most systems) is to use the malloc supplied with perl. However, if you will be running very large applications (e.g. Tk or PDL) or if your system already has an excellent malloc, or if you are experiencing difficulties with extensions that use third-party libraries that call malloc, then you might wish to use your system's malloc. (Or, you might wish to explore the experimental malloc flags discussed below.)
To build without perl's malloc, you can use the Configure command
sh Configure -Uusemymalloc
or you can answer 'n' at the appropriate interactive Configure prompt.
DEBUGGING_MSTATS is defined, you can extract malloc statistics from the Perl interpreter.
The overhead this imposes is not large (perl just twiddles integers at
malloc/free/sbrk time). When you run perl with the environment variable PERL_DEBUG_MSTATS set to either 1 or 2, the interpreter will dump statistics to stderr at
exit time and (with a value of 2) after compilation. If you install the
Devel::Peek module you can get the statistics whenever you like by invoking
its mstat function.
EMERGENCY_SBRK is defined, running out of memory need not be a fatal error: a memory pool
can allocated by assigning to the special variable $^M. See perlvar for more details.
PACK_MALLOC is defined, malloc.c uses a slightly different algorithm for small
allocations (up to 64 bytes long). Such small allocations are quite common
in typical Perl scripts.
The expected memory savings (with 8-byte alignment in alignbytes) is about 20% for typical Perl usage. The expected slowdown due to the
additional malloc overhead is in fractions of a percent. (It is hard to
measure because of the effect of the saved memory on speed).
TWO_POT_OPTIMIZE is defined, malloc.c uses a slightly different algorithm for large
allocations that are close to a power of two (starting with 16K). Such
allocations are typical for big hashes and special-purpose scripts,
especially image processing. If you will be manipulating very large blocks
with sizes close to powers of two, it might be wise to define this macro.
The expected saving of memory is 0-100% (100% in applications which require most memory in such 2**n chunks). The expected slowdown is negligible.
For example, you can replace the rand and srand
functions in the perl source by any other random number generator by a
trick such as the following:
sh Configure -Dccflags='-Drand=random -Dsrand=srandom'
or by adding -Drand=random and -Dsrandom=srandom to your ccflags at the appropriate Configure prompt. (You may also have to
adjust Configure's guess for 'randbits' as well.)
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 and
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.
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 hints/solaris_2.sh for an extensive example.
*** WHOA THERE!!! *** The recommended value for $d_tzname on this machine was "undef"! Keep the recommended value? [y]
You should always keep the recommended value unless, after reading the relevant section of the hint file, you are sure you want to try overriding it.
If you are re-using an old config.sh, the word ``previous'' will be used instead of ``recommended''. Again, you will almost always want to keep the previous value, unless you have changed something on your system.
For example, suppose you have added libgdbm.a to your system and you decide to reconfigure perl to use GDBM_File. When you run Configure again, you will need to add -lgdbm to the list of libraries. Now, Configure will find your gdbm library and will issue a message:
*** WHOA THERE!!! *** The previous value for $i_gdbm on this machine was "undef"! Keep the previous value? [y]
In this case, you do not want to keep the previous value, so you should answer 'n'. (You'll also have to manually add GDBM_File to the list of dynamic extensions to build.)
This is a common source of problems. If you change from cc to gcc, you should almost always remove your old config.sh.
make depend make
If there are any problems, you can edit config.h directly. Beware, though, that the next time you run Configure, your changes will be lost.
optimize='-g' before the ;;. You can also edit cflags directly, but beware that your changes will be lost the next time you run Configure.
To change the C flags for all the files, edit config.sh
and change either $ccflags or $optimize, and then re-run sh Configure -S ; make depend.
Ports for other systems may also be available. You should check out http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports for current information on ports to various other operating systems.
$firstmakefile in your config.sh if in
doubt.)
Configure will offer to do this step for you, so it isn't listed explicitly above.
If you can't compile successfully, try some of the following ideas. If none of them help, and careful reading of the error message and the relevant manual pages on your system doesn't help, you can send a message to either the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup or to perlbug@perl.com with an accurate description of your problem. See Reporting Problems below.
make minitest
to test your version of miniperl.
util.c: In function `Perl_croak':
util.c:962: number of arguments doesn't match prototype
proto.h:45: prototype declaration
it might well be a symptom of the gcc ``varargs problem''. See the previous varargs item.
$lddlflags so
that the system's versions of as and ld are used. Alternatively, you can
use the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX environment variable to ensure that Sun's as and ld
are used. Consult your gcc documentation for further information on the -B option and the GCC_EXEC_PREFIX variable.
The reason this causes a problem is quite subtle. The file libdl.so.1.0 actually *only* contains functions which generate 'stub interception failed' errors! The runtime linker intercepts links to ``/usr/lib/libdl.so.1.0'' and links in internal implementation of those functions instead. [Thanks to Tim Bunce for this explanation.]
sh Configure -Uusenm
or by answering the nm extraction question interactively. If you have previously run Configure, you should not reuse your old config.sh.
vsprintf. Check whether your system has vprintf.
(Virtually all modern Unix systems do.) Then, check the variable d_vprintf
in config.sh. If your system has vprintf, it should be:
d_vprintf='define'
If Configure guessed wrong, it is likely that Configure guessed wrong on a number of other common functions too. You are probably better off re-running Configure without using nm extraction (see previous item).
optimize='-O'
to something like
optimize=' '
then propagate your changes with sh Configure -S and rebuild with make depend; make.
-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.
dbmclose. An upgrade to
3.2.4 that includes libdbm.nfs (which includes dbmclose) may
be available.
On the other hand, if you are building GDBM_File and you get the message
Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lgdbm
then it's likely you're going to run into trouble somewhere along the line, since it's hard to see how you can use the GDBM_File extension without the -lgdbm library.
It is true that, in principle, Configure could have figured all of this out, but Configure and the extension building process are not quite that tightly coordinated.
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 -DCRIPPLED_CC, -K or -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
If make test bombs out, just cd to the t directory and run ./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
Another way to get more detailed information about failed tests and individual subtests is to cd to the t directory and run
./perl harness
(this assumes that most tests succeed, since harness uses complicated constructs).
You can also read the individual tests to see if there are any helpful comments that apply to your system.
Note: One possible reason for errors is that some external programs may be
broken due to the combination of your environment and the way
make test exercises them. For example, this may happen if you have one or more of
these environment variables set: LC_ALL LC_CTYPE
LC_COLLATE LANG. In some versions of UNIX, 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
setenv LC_ALL C
(for C shell) or
LC_ALL=C;export LC_ALL
for Bourne or Korn shell) from the command line and then retry 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: exec, `backquoted command`, system, open or
open. All these mean that Perl is trying to run some external program.
If you want to see exactly what will happen without installing anything, you can run
./perl installperl -n ./perl installman -n
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 h2ph Extract constants and simple macros from C headers h2xs Converts C .h header files to Perl extensions. perlbug Tool to report bugs in Perl. perldoc Tool to read perl's pod documentation. pl2pm Convert Perl 4 .pl files to Perl 5 .pm modules pod2html, Converters from perl's pod documentation format pod2latex, to other useful formats. pod2man, and pod2text splain Describe Perl warnings and errors
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
$archlib so that any user may later build new extensions, run
the optional Perl compiler, or embed the perl interpreter into another
program even if the Perl source is no longer available.
The architecture-dependent files are stored in a version-specific directory (such as /usr/local/lib/perl5/sun4-sunos/5.004) so that they are still accessible. Note: Perl 5.000 and 5.001 did not put their architecture-dependent libraries in a version-specific directory. They are simply in /usr/local/lib/perl5/$archname. If you will not be using 5.000 or 5.001, you may safely remove those files.
The standard library files in /usr/local/lib/perl5 should be usable 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 /usr/local/lib/perl/archname/5.003. Then Perl 5.003 will find your files in the 5.003 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/perl5.004
and adding /opt/perl5.004/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.
By default, the perl5 libraries go into /usr/local/lib/perl5/, so they don't override the perl4 libraries in /usr/local/lib/perl/.
In your /usr/local/bin directory, you should have a binary named
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 #! line at the top of them by #!/usr/local/bin/perl4.036
(or whatever the appropriate pathname is). See pod/perltrap.pod for
possible problems running perl4 scripts under perl5.
sun4-solaris) and VERSION is the version of perl you are building (for example, 5.004).
Note: Due to differences in the C and perl languages, the conversion of the header files is not perfect. You will probably have to hand-edit some of the converted files to get them to parse correctly. For example, h2ph breaks spectacularly on type casting and certain structures.
cd pod && make html && mv *.html <www home dir>
where www home dir is wherever your site keeps HTML files.
(cd pod && make tex && <process the latex files>)
Please include the output of the ./myconfig shell script that comes with the distribution. Alternatively, you can use the perlbug program that comes with the perl distribution, but you need to have perl compiled and installed before you can use it.
You might also find helpful information in the Porting directory of the perl distribution.
Under UNIX, you can produce a documentation book in postscript form along with its Table of Contents by going to the pod/ subdirectory and running (either):
./roffitall -groff # If you have GNU groff installed ./roffitall -psroff # If you have psroff
This will leave you with two postscript files ready to be printed. (You may need to fix the roffitall command to use your local troff set-up.)
Note that you must have performed the installation already before running the above, since the script collects the installed files to generate the documentation.