| |
| This document is written in pod format hence there are punctuation |
| characters in odd places. Do not worry, you've apparently got |
| the ASCII->EBCDIC translation worked out correctly. You can read |
| more about pod in pod/perlpod.pod or the short summary in the |
| INSTALL file. |
| |
| =head1 NAME |
| |
| README.vmesa - building and installing Perl for VM/ESA. |
| |
| =head1 SYNOPSIS |
| |
| This document will help you Configure, build, test and install Perl |
| on VM/ESA. |
| |
| =head1 DESCRIPTION |
| |
| This is a fully ported perl for VM/ESA 2.3.0. It may work on |
| other versions, but that's the one we've tested it on. |
| |
| If you've downloaded the binary distribution, it needs to be |
| installed below /usr/local. Source code distributions have an |
| automated "make install" step that means you do not need to extract |
| the source code below /usr/local (though that is where it will be |
| installed by default). You may need to worry about the networking |
| configuration files discussed in the last bullet below. |
| |
| =head2 Unpacking Perl Distribution on VM/ESA |
| |
| To extract an ASCII tar archive on VM/ESA, try this: |
| |
| pax -o to=IBM-1047,from=ISO8859-1 -r < latest.tar |
| |
| =head2 Setup Perl and utilities on VM/ESA |
| |
| GNU make for VM/ESA, which may be required for the build of perl, |
| is available from: |
| |
| http://vm.marist.edu/~neale/vmoe.html |
| |
| =head2 Configure Perl on VM/ESA |
| |
| Once you've unpacked the distribution, run Configure (see INSTALL for |
| full discussion of the Configure options), and then run make, then |
| "make test" then "make install" (this last step may require UID=0 |
| privileges). |
| |
| There is a "hints" file for vmesa that specifies the correct values |
| for most things. Some things to watch out for are: |
| |
| =over 4 |
| |
| =item * |
| |
| this port does support dynamic loading but it's not had much testing |
| |
| =item * |
| |
| Don't turn on the compiler optimization flag "-O". There's |
| a bug in the compiler (APAR PQ18812) that generates some bad code |
| the optimizer is on. |
| |
| =item * |
| |
| As VM/ESA doesn't fully support the fork() API programs relying on |
| this call will not work. I've replaced fork()/exec() with spawn() |
| and the standalone exec() with spawn(). This has a side effect when |
| opening unnamed pipes in a shell script: there is no child process |
| generated under. |
| |
| =item * |
| |
| At the moment the hints file for VM/ESA basically bypasses all of the |
| automatic configuration process. This is because Configure relies on: |
| 1. The header files living in the Byte File System (you could put the |
| there if you want); 2. The C preprocessor including the #include |
| statements in the preprocessor output (.i) file. |
| |
| =back |
| |
| =head2 Testing Anomalies of Perl on VM/ESA |
| |
| The "make test" step runs a Perl Verification Procedure, usually before |
| installation. As the 5.6.1 kit was being assembled |
| the following "failures" were known to appear on some machines |
| during "make test" (mostly due to ASCII vs. EBCDIC conflicts), |
| your results may differ: |
| |
| [the list of failures being compiled] |
| |
| =head2 Usage Hints for Perl on VM/ESA |
| |
| When using perl on VM/ESA please keep in mind that the EBCDIC and ASCII |
| character sets are different. Perl builtin functions that may behave |
| differently under EBCDIC are mentioned in the perlport.pod document. |
| |
| OpenEdition (UNIX System Services) does not (yet) support the #! means |
| of script invocation. |
| See: |
| |
| head `whence perldoc` |
| |
| for an example of how to use the "eval exec" trick to ask the shell to |
| have perl run your scripts for you. |
| |
| =head1 AUTHORS |
| |
| Neale Ferguson. |
| |
| =head1 SEE ALSO |
| |
| L<INSTALL>, L<perlport>, L<perlebcdic>. |
| |
| =head2 Mailing list for Perl on VM/ESA |
| |
| If you are interested in the VM/ESA, z/OS (formerly known as OS/390) |
| and POSIX-BC (BS2000) ports of Perl then see the perl-mvs mailing list. |
| To subscribe, send an empty message to perl-mvs-subscribe@perl.org. |
| |
| See also: |
| |
| http://lists.perl.org/showlist.cgi?name=perl-mvs |
| |
| There are web archives of the mailing list at: |
| |
| http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl-mvs/ |
| http://archive.develooper.com/perl-mvs@perl.org/ |
| |
| =cut |
| |