1PERLMACHTEN(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLMACHTEN(1)
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6 README.machten - Perl version 5 on Power MachTen systems
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9 This document describes how to build Perl 5 on Power MachTen systems,
10 and discusses a few wrinkles in the implementation.
11 Perl version 5.8.x and greater not supported
13 Power MachTen is not supported by versions of Perl later than 5.6.x.
14 If you wish to build a version from the 5.6 track, please obtain a
15 source distribution from the archive at <http://cpan.org/src/5.0/> and
16 follow the instructions in its README.machten file.
17 MachTen is no longer supported by its developers, Tenon Intersystems.
19 A UNIX environment hosted on Mac OS Classic, MachTen has been
20 superseded by Mac OS X and by BSD and Linux implementations for
21 Macintosh hardware. The final version of Power MachTen, 4.1.4, lacks
22 many features found in modern implementations of UNIX, and has a number
23 of bugs. These shortcomings prevent recent versions of Perl from being
24 able to use extensions on MachTen, and cause numerous test suite
25 failures in the perl core.
26 In September 2003, a discussion on the MachTen mailing list determined
28 that there was no interest in making a later version of Perl build
29 successfully on MachTen. Consequently, support for building Perl under
30 MachTen has been suppressed in Perl distributions published after
31 February 2004. The hints file, hints/machten.sh, remains a part of the
32 distributions for reference purposes.
33 Compiling Perl 5.6.x on MachTen
35 To compile perl 5.6.x under MachTen 4.1.4 (and probably earlier
36 versions):
37 ./Configure -de
39 make
40 make test
41 make install
42 This builds and installs a statically-linked perl; MachTen's dynamic
44 linking facilities are not adequate to support Perl's use of
45 dynamically linked libraries. (See hints/machten.sh for more
46 information.)
47 You should have at least 32 megabytes of free memory on your system
49 before running the "make" command.
50 For much more information on building perl -- for example, on how to
52 change the default installation directory -- see INSTALL.
53 Failures during "make test" on MachTen
55 op/lexassign.t
56 This test may fail when first run after building perl. It does not
57 fail subsequently. The cause is unknown.
58 pragma/warnings.t
60 Test 257 fails due to a failure to warn about attempts to read from
61 a filehandle which is a duplicate of stdout when stdout is attached
62 to a pipe. The output of the test contains a block comment which
63 discusses a different failure, not applicable to MachTen.
64 The root of the problem is that Machten does not assign a file type
66 to either end of a pipe (see stat), resulting, among other things
67 in Perl's "-p" test failing on file descriptors belonging to pipes.
68 As a result, perl becomes confused, and the test for reading from a
69 write-only file fails. I am reluctant to patch perl to get around
70 this, as it's clearly an OS bug (about which Tenon has been
71 informed), and limited in its effect on practical Perl programs.
72 Building external modules on MachTen
74 To add an external module to perl, build in the normal way, which is
75 documented in ExtUtils::MakeMaker, or which can be driven automatically
76 by the CPAN module (see CPAN), which is part of the standard
77 distribution. If you want to install a module which contains XS code
78 (C or C++ source which compiles to object code for linking with perl),
79 you will have to replace your perl binary with a new version containing
80 the new statically-linked object module. The build process tells you
81 how to do this.
82 There is a gotcha, however, which users usually encounter immediately
84 they respond to CPAN's invitation to "install Bundle::CPAN". When
85 installing a bundle -- a group of modules which together achieve some
86 particular purpose, the installation process for later modules in the
87 bundle tends to assume that earlier modules have been fully installed
88 and are available for use. This is not true on a statically-linked
89 system for earlier modules which contain XS code. As a result the
90 installation of the bundle fails. The work-around is not to install
91 the bundle as a one-shot operation, but instead to see what modules it
92 contains, and install these one-at-a-time by hand in the order given.
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95 Dominic Dunlop <domo@computer.org>
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98 Version 1.1.0 2004-02-13
99perl v5.10.1 2009-02-12 PERLMACHTEN(1)