| If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you |
| see. It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is |
| specially designed to be readable as is. |
| |
| =head1 NAME |
| |
| README.machten - Perl version 5 on Power MachTen systems |
| |
| =head1 DESCRIPTION |
| |
| This document describes how to build Perl 5 on Power MachTen systems, |
| and discusses a few wrinkles in the implementation. |
| |
| =head2 Perl version 5.8.x and greater not supported |
| |
| B<Power MachTen is not supported by versions of Perl later than |
| 5.6.x.> |
| If you wish to build a version from the 5.6 track, please |
| obtain a source distribution from the archive at |
| L<http://cpan.org/src/5.0/> and follow the instructions in its |
| README.machten file. |
| |
| MachTen is no longer supported by its developers, Tenon Intersystems. |
| A UNIX environment hosted on Mac OS Classic, MachTen has been |
| superseded by Mac OS X and by BSD and Linux implementations for Macintosh |
| hardware. |
| The final version of Power MachTen, 4.1.4, lacks many features found in |
| modern implementations of UNIX, and has a number of bugs. |
| These shortcomings prevent recent versions of Perl from being able to use |
| extensions on MachTen, and cause numerous test suite failures in the |
| perl core. |
| |
| In September 2003, a discussion on the MachTen mailing list determined |
| that there was no interest in making a later version of Perl build |
| successfully on MachTen. |
| Consequently, support for building Perl under MachTen has been suppressed |
| in Perl distributions published after February 2004. |
| The hints file, F<hints/machten.sh>, remains a part of the |
| distributions for reference purposes. |
| |
| =head2 Compiling Perl 5.6.x on MachTen |
| |
| To compile perl 5.6.x 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 F<hints/machten.sh> for more |
| information.) |
| |
| You should have at least 32 megabytes of free memory on your |
| system before running the C<make> command. |
| |
| For much more information on building perl -- for example, on how to |
| change the default installation directory -- see F<INSTALL>. |
| |
| =head2 Failures during C<make test> on MachTen |
| |
| =over 4 |
| |
| =item op/lexassign.t |
| |
| This test may fail when first run after building perl. It does not |
| fail subsequently. The cause is unknown. |
| |
| =item pragma/warnings.t |
| |
| Test 257 fails due to a failure to warn about attempts to read from a |
| filehandle which is a duplicate of stdout 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 L<stat>), resulting, among other things |
| in Perl's C<-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. |
| |
| =back |
| |
| =head2 Building external modules on MachTen |
| |
| To add an external module to perl, build in the normal way, which |
| is documented in L<ExtUtils::MakeMaker>, or which can be driven |
| automatically by the CPAN module (see L<CPAN>), which is part of the |
| standard 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 statically-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 C<install Bundle::CPAN>. When |
| installing a I<bundle> -- a group of modules 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 |
| statically-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. |
| |
| =head1 AUTHOR |
| |
| Dominic Dunlop <domo@computer.org> |
| |
| =head1 DATE |
| |
| Version 1.1.0 2004-02-13 |