1PERLMACOSX(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLMACOSX(1)
2
6 perlmacosx - Perl under Mac OS X
7
9 This document briefly describes Perl under Mac OS X.
10 curl -O https://www.cpan.org/src/perl-5.36.0.tar.gz
12 tar -xzf perl-5.36.0.tar.gz
13 cd perl-5.36.0
14 ./Configure -des -Dprefix=/usr/local/
15 make
16 make test
17 sudo make install
18
20 The latest Perl release (5.36.0 as of this writing) builds without
21 changes under all versions of Mac OS X from 10.3 "Panther" onwards.
22 In order to build your own version of Perl you will need 'make', which
24 is part of Apple's developer tools - also known as Xcode. From Mac OS X
25 10.7 "Lion" onwards, it can be downloaded separately as the 'Command
26 Line Tools' bundle directly from
27 <https://developer.apple.com/downloads/> (you will need a free account
28 to log in), or as a part of the Xcode suite, freely available at the
29 App Store. Xcode is a pretty big app, so unless you already have it or
30 really want it, you are advised to get the 'Command Line Tools' bundle
31 separately from the link above. If you want to do it from within Xcode,
32 go to Xcode -> Preferences -> Downloads and select the 'Command Line
33 Tools' option.
34 Between Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther" and 10.6 "Snow Leopard", the 'Command
36 Line Tools' bundle was called 'unix tools', and was usually supplied
37 with Mac OS install DVDs.
38 Earlier Mac OS X releases (10.2 "Jaguar" and older) did not include a
40 completely thread-safe libc, so threading is not fully supported. Also,
41 earlier releases included a buggy libdb, so some of the DB_File tests
42 are known to fail on those releases.
43 Installation Prefix
45 The default installation location for this release uses the traditional
46 UNIX directory layout under /usr/local. This is the recommended
47 location for most users, and will leave the Apple-supplied Perl and its
48 modules undisturbed.
49 Using an installation prefix of '/usr' will result in a directory
51 layout that mirrors that of Apple's default Perl, with core modules
52 stored in '/System/Library/Perl/${version}', CPAN modules stored in
53 '/Library/Perl/${version}', and the addition of
54 '/Network/Library/Perl/${version}' to @INC for modules that are stored
55 on a file server and used by many Macs.
56 SDK support
58 First, export the path to the SDK into the build environment:
59 export SDK=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.8.sdk
61 Please make sure the SDK version (i.e. the numbers right before '.sdk')
63 matches your system's (in this case, Mac OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion"), as
64 it is possible to have more than one SDK installed. Also make sure the
65 path exists in your system, and if it doesn't please make sure the SDK
66 is properly installed, as it should come with the 'Command Line Tools'
67 bundle mentioned above. Finally, if you have an older Mac OS X (10.6
68 "Snow Leopard" and below) running Xcode 4.2 or lower, the SDK path
69 might be something like '/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.3.9.sdk'.
70 You can use the SDK by exporting some additions to Perl's 'ccflags' and
72 '..flags' config variables:
73 ./Configure -Accflags="-nostdinc -B$SDK/usr/include/gcc \
75 -B$SDK/usr/lib/gcc -isystem$SDK/usr/include \
76 -F$SDK/System/Library/Frameworks" \
77 -Aldflags="-Wl,-syslibroot,$SDK" \
78 -de
79 Universal Binary support
81 Note: From Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" onwards, Apple only supports
82 Intel-based hardware. This means you can safely skip this section
83 unless you have an older Apple computer running on ppc or wish to
84 create a perl binary with backwards compatibility.
85 You can compile perl as a universal binary (built for both ppc and
87 intel). In Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger", you must export the 'u' variant of
88 the SDK:
89 export SDK=/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk
91 Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" and above do not require the 'u' variant.
93 In addition to the compiler flags used to select the SDK, also add the
95 flags for creating a universal binary:
96 ./Configure -Accflags="-arch i686 -arch ppc -nostdinc \
98 -B$SDK/usr/include/gcc \
99 -B$SDK/usr/lib/gcc -isystem$SDK/usr/include \
100 -F$SDK/System/Library/Frameworks" \
101 -Aldflags="-arch i686 -arch ppc -Wl,-syslibroot,$SDK" \
102 -de
103 Keep in mind that these compiler and linker settings will also be used
105 when building CPAN modules. For XS modules to be compiled as a
106 universal binary, any libraries it links to must also be universal
107 binaries. The system libraries that Apple includes with the 10.4u SDK
108 are all universal, but user-installed libraries may need to be re-
109 installed as universal binaries.
110 64-bit PPC support
112 Follow the instructions in INSTALL to build perl with support for
113 64-bit integers ("use64bitint") or both 64-bit integers and 64-bit
114 addressing ("use64bitall"). In the latter case, the resulting binary
115 will run only on G5-based hosts.
116 Support for 64-bit addressing is experimental: some aspects of Perl may
118 be omitted or buggy. Note the messages output by Configure for further
119 information. Please use <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues> to
120 submit a problem report in the event that you encounter difficulties.
121 When building 64-bit modules, it is your responsibility to ensure that
123 linked external libraries and frameworks provide 64-bit support: if
124 they do not, module building may appear to succeed, but attempts to use
125 the module will result in run-time dynamic linking errors, and
126 subsequent test failures. You can use "file" to discover the
127 architectures supported by a library:
128 $ file libgdbm.3.0.0.dylib
130 libgdbm.3.0.0.dylib: Mach-O fat file with 2 architectures
131 libgdbm.3.0.0.dylib (for architecture ppc): Mach-O dynamically linked shared library ppc
132 libgdbm.3.0.0.dylib (for architecture ppc64): Mach-O 64-bit dynamically linked shared library ppc64
133 Note that this issue precludes the building of many Macintosh-specific
135 CPAN modules ("Mac::*"), as the required Apple frameworks do not
136 provide PPC64 support. Similarly, downloads from Fink or Darwinports
137 are unlikely to provide 64-bit support; the libraries must be rebuilt
138 from source with the appropriate compiler and linker flags. For further
139 information, see Apple's 64-Bit Transition Guide at
140 <https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/64bitPorting/transition/transition.html>.
141 libperl and Prebinding
143 Mac OS X ships with a dynamically-loaded libperl, but the default for
144 this release is to compile a static libperl. The reason for this is
145 pre-binding. Dynamic libraries can be pre-bound to a specific address
146 in memory in order to decrease load time. To do this, one needs to be
147 aware of the location and size of all previously-loaded libraries.
148 Apple collects this information as part of their overall OS build
149 process, and thus has easy access to it when building Perl, but
150 ordinary users would need to go to a great deal of effort to obtain the
151 information needed for pre-binding.
152 You can override the default and build a shared libperl if you wish
154 (Configure ... -Duseshrplib).
155 With Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" and newer, there is almost no performance
157 penalty for non-prebound libraries. Earlier releases will suffer a
158 greater load time than either the static library, or Apple's pre-bound
159 dynamic library.
160 Updating Apple's Perl
162 In a word - don't, at least not without a *very* good reason. Your
163 scripts can just as easily begin with "#!/usr/local/bin/perl" as with
164 "#!/usr/bin/perl". Scripts supplied by Apple and other third parties as
165 part of installation packages and such have generally only been tested
166 with the /usr/bin/perl that's installed by Apple.
167 If you find that you do need to update the system Perl, one issue worth
169 keeping in mind is the question of static vs. dynamic libraries. If you
170 upgrade using the default static libperl, you will find that the
171 dynamic libperl supplied by Apple will not be deleted. If both
172 libraries are present when an application that links against libperl is
173 built, ld will link against the dynamic library by default. So, if you
174 need to replace Apple's dynamic libperl with a static libperl, you need
175 to be sure to delete the older dynamic library after you've installed
176 the update.
177 Known problems
179 If you have installed extra libraries such as GDBM through Fink (in
180 other words, you have libraries under /sw/lib), or libdlcompat to
181 /usr/local/lib, you may need to be extra careful when running Configure
182 to not to confuse Configure and Perl about which libraries to use.
183 Being confused will show up for example as "dyld" errors about symbol
184 problems, for example during "make test". The safest bet is to run
185 Configure as
186 Configure ... -Uloclibpth -Dlibpth=/usr/lib
188 to make Configure look only into the system libraries. If you have
190 some extra library directories that you really want to use (such as
191 newer Berkeley DB libraries in pre-Panther systems), add those to the
192 libpth:
193 Configure ... -Uloclibpth -Dlibpth='/usr/lib /opt/lib'
195 The default of building Perl statically may cause problems with complex
197 applications like Tk: in that case consider building shared Perl
198 Configure ... -Duseshrplib
200 but remember that there's a startup cost to pay in that case (see above
202 "libperl and Prebinding").
203 Starting with Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4), Apple shipped broken locale files
205 for the eu_ES locale (Basque-Spain). In previous releases of Perl,
206 this resulted in failures in the lib/locale test. These failures have
207 been suppressed in the current release of Perl by making the test
208 ignore the broken locale. If you need to use the eu_ES locale, you
209 should contact Apple support.
210 Cocoa
212 There are two ways to use Cocoa from Perl. Apple's PerlObjCBridge
213 module, included with Mac OS X, can be used by standalone scripts to
214 access Foundation (i.e. non-GUI) classes and objects.
215 An alternative is CamelBones, a framework that allows access to both
217 Foundation and AppKit classes and objects, so that full GUI
218 applications can be built in Perl. CamelBones can be found on
219 SourceForge, at <https://www.sourceforge.net/projects/camelbones/>.
220
222 Unfortunately it is not that difficult somehow manage to break one's
223 Mac OS X Perl rather severely. If all else fails and you want to
224 really, REALLY, start from scratch and remove even your Apple Perl
225 installation (which has become corrupted somehow), the following
226 instructions should do it. Please think twice before following these
227 instructions: they are much like conducting brain surgery to yourself.
228 Without anesthesia. We will not come to fix your system if you do
229 this.
230 First, get rid of the libperl.dylib:
232 # cd /System/Library/Perl/darwin/CORE
234 # rm libperl.dylib
235 Then delete every .bundle file found anywhere in the folders:
237 /System/Library/Perl
239 /Library/Perl
240 You can find them for example by
242 # find /System/Library/Perl /Library/Perl -name '*.bundle' -print
244 After this you can either copy Perl from your operating system media
246 (you will need at least the /System/Library/Perl and /usr/bin/perl), or
247 rebuild Perl from the source code with "Configure -Dprefix=/usr
248 -Duseshrplib" NOTE: the "-Dprefix=/usr" to replace the system Perl
249 works much better with Perl 5.8.1 and later, in Perl 5.8.0 the settings
250 were not quite right.
251 "Pacifist" from CharlesSoft (<https://www.charlessoft.com/>) is a nice
253 way to extract the Perl binaries from the OS media, without having to
254 reinstall the entire OS.
255
257 This README was written by Sherm Pendley <sherm@dot-app.org>, and
258 subsequently updated by Dominic Dunlop <domo@computer.org> and Breno G.
259 de Oliveira <garu@cpan.org>. The "Starting From Scratch" recipe was
260 contributed by John Montbriand <montbriand@apple.com>.
261
263 Last modified 2013-04-29.
264perl v5.36.0 2022-08-30 PERLMACOSX(1)