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.
15 If you wish to build a version from the 5.6 track, please obtain a
16 source distribution from the archive at <http://cpan.org/src/5.0/> and
17 follow the instructions in its README.machten file.
18 MachTen is no longer supported by its developers, Tenon Intersystems.
20 A UNIX environment hosted on Mac OS Classic, MachTen has been super‐
21 seded by Mac OS X and by BSD and Linux implementations for Macintosh
22 hardware. The final version of Power MachTen, 4.1.4, lacks many fea‐
23 tures found in modern implementations of UNIX, and has a number of
24 bugs. These shortcomings prevent recent versions of Perl from being
25 able to use extensions on MachTen, and cause numerous test suite fail‐
26 ures in the perl core.
27 In September 2003, a discussion on the MachTen mailing list determined
29 that there was no interest in making a later version of Perl build suc‐
30 cessfully on MachTen. Consequently, support for building Perl under
31 MachTen has been suppressed in Perl distributions published after Feb‐
32 ruary 2004. The hints file, hints/machten.sh, remains a part of the
33 distributions for reference purposes.
34 Compiling Perl 5.6.x on MachTen
36 To compile perl 5.6.x under MachTen 4.1.4 (and probably earlier ver‐
38 sions):
39 ./Configure -de
41 make
42 make test
43 make install
44 This builds and installs a statically-linked perl; MachTen's dynamic
46 linking facilities are not adequate to support Perl's use of dynami‐
47 cally linked libraries. (See hints/machten.sh for more information.)
48 You should have at least 32 megabytes of free memory on your system
50 before running the "make" command.
51 For much more information on building perl -- for example, on how to
53 change the default installation directory -- see INSTALL.
54 Failures during "make test" on MachTen
56 op/lexassign.t
58 This test may fail when first run after building perl. It does not
59 fail subsequently. The cause is unknown.
60 pragma/warnings.t
62 Test 257 fails due to a failure to warn about attempts to read from
63 a filehandle which is a duplicate of stdout when stdout is attached
64 to a pipe. The output of the test contains a block comment which
65 discusses a different failure, not applicable to MachTen.
66 The root of the problem is that Machten does not assign a file type
68 to either end of a pipe (see stat), resulting, among other things
69 in Perl's "-p" test failing on file descriptors belonging to pipes.
70 As a result, perl becomes confused, and the test for reading from a
71 write-only file fails. I am reluctant to patch perl to get around
72 this, as it's clearly an OS bug (about which Tenon has been
73 informed), and limited in its effect on practical Perl programs.
74 Building external modules on MachTen
76 To add an external module to perl, build in the normal way, which is
78 documented in ExtUtils::MakeMaker, or which can be driven automatically
79 by the CPAN module (see CPAN), which is part of the standard distribu‐
80 tion. If you want to install a module which contains XS code (C or C++
81 source which compiles to object code for linking with perl), you will
82 have to replace your perl binary with a new version containing the new
83 statically-linked object module. The build process tells you how to do
84 this.
85 There is a gotcha, however, which users usually encounter immediately
87 they respond to CPAN's invitation to "install Bundle::CPAN". When
88 installing a bundle -- a group of modules which together achieve some
89 particular purpose, the installation process for later modules in the
90 bundle tends to assume that earlier modules have been fully installed
91 and are available for use. This is not true on a statically-linked
92 system for earlier modules which contain XS code. As a result the
93 installation of the bundle fails. The work-around is not to install
94 the bundle as a one-shot operation, but instead to see what modules it
95 contains, and install these one-at-a-time by hand in the order given.
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98 Dominic Dunlop <domo@computer.org>
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101 Version 1.1.0 2004-02-13
102perl v5.8.8 2006-01-07 PERLMACHTEN(1)