NAME
README.machten - Perl version 5 on Power MachTen systems
DESCRIPTION
This document describes how to build Perl 5 on Power MachTen systems,
and discusses a few wrinkles in the implementation.
Perl version 5.8.x and greater not supported
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 <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superseded by Mac OS X and by BSD and Linux implementations for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, hints/machten.sh, remains a part of the
distributions for reference purposes.
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 hints/machten.sh for more
information.)
You should have at least 32 megabytes of free memory on your system
before running the "make" command.
For much more information on building perl -- for example, on how to
change the default installation directory -- see INSTALL.
Failures during "make test" on MachTen
op/lexassign.t
This test may fail when first run after building perl. It does not
fail subsequently. The cause is unknown.
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 stat), resulting, among other things
in Perl’s "-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.
Building external modules on MachTen
To add an external module to perl, build in the normal way, which is
documented in ExtUtils::MakeMaker, or which can be driven automatically
by the CPAN module (see 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 "install Bundle::CPAN". When
installing a 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.
AUTHOR
Dominic Dunlop <domo@computer.org>
DATE
Version 1.1.0 2004-02-13