PERLMACHTEN(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLMACHTEN(1)NAME
README.machten - Perl version 5 on Power MachTen systems
DESCRIPTION
This document describes how to build Perl 5 on Power
MachTen systems, and discusses a few wrinkles in the
implementation.
Compiling Perl 5 on MachTen
To compile perl under MachTen 4.1.4 (and probably earlier
versions):
./Configure -de
make
make test
make install
This builds and installs a statically-linked perl;
MachTen's dynamic linking facilities are not adequate to
support Perl's use of dynamically linked libraries. (See
hints/machten.sh for more information.)
You should have at least 32 megabytes of free memory on
your system before running the "make" command.
For much more information on building perl -- for example,
on how to change the default installation directory -- see
INSTALL.
Failures during "make test"
op/lexassign.t
This test may fail when first run after building perl.
It does not fail subsequently. The cause is unknown.
pragma/warnings.t
Test 257 fails due to a failure to warn about attempts
to read from a filehandle which is a duplicate of std
out when stdout is attached to a pipe. The output of
the test contains a block comment which discusses a
different failure, not applicable to MachTen.
The root of the problem is that Machten does not
assign a file type to either end of a pipe (see the
stat manpage), resulting, among other things in Perl's
"-p" test failing on file descriptors belonging to
pipes. As a result, perl becomes confused, and the
test for reading from a write-only file fails. I am
reluctant to patch perl to get around this, as it's
clearly an OS bug (about which Tenon has been
informed), and limited in its effect on practical Perl
programs.
Building external modules
To add an external module to perl, build in the normal
way, which is documented in the ExtUtils::MakeMaker man
page, or which can be driven automatically by the CPAN
module (see the CPAN manpage), which is part of the stan
dard distribution. If you want to install a module which
contains XS code (C or C++ source which compiles to object
code for linking with perl), you will have to replace your
perl binary with a new version containing the new stati
cally-linked object module. The build process tells you
how to do this.
There is a gotcha, however, which users usually encounter
immediately they respond to CPAN's invitation to "install
Bundle::CPAN". When installing a bundle -- a group of mod
ules which together achieve some particular purpose, the
installation process for later modules in the bundle tends
to assume that earlier modules have been fully installed
and are available for use. This is not true on a stati
cally-linked system for earlier modules which contain XS
code. As a result the installation of the bundle fails.
The work-around is not to install the bundle as a one-shot
operation, but instead to see what modules it contains,
and install these one-at-a-time by hand in the order
given.
AUTHOR
Dominic Dunlop <domo@computer.org>
DATE
Version 1.0.1 2000-03-27
2001-03-03 perl v5.6.1 PERLMACHTEN(1)
