PERLMACHTEN(1)   Perl Programmers Reference Guide  PERLMACHTEN(1)



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  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 Clas-
       sic, MachTen has been superseded by Mac OS X and by BSD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.  Con-
       sequently, 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 std-
           out 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 read-
           ing 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 mod-
       ules 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 stati-
       cally-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 

DATE
       Version 1.1.0 2004-02-13



perl v5.8.8                 2006-01-07             PERLMACHTEN(1)