perlmacosx(1)


NAME

   perlmacosx - Perl under Mac OS X

SYNOPSIS

   This document briefly describes Perl under Mac OS X.

     curl -O http://www.cpan.org/src/perl-5.24.1.tar.gz
     tar -xzf perl-5.24.1.tar.gz
     cd perl-5.24.1
     ./Configure -des -Dprefix=/usr/local/
     make
     make test
     sudo make install

DESCRIPTION

   The latest Perl release (5.24.1 as of this writing) builds without
   changes under all versions of Mac OS X from 10.3 "Panther" onwards.

   In order to build your own version of Perl you will need 'make', which
   is part of Apple's developer tools - also known as Xcode. From Mac OS X
   10.7 "Lion" onwards, it can be downloaded separately as the 'Command
   Line Tools' bundle directly from
   <https://developer.apple.com/downloads/> (you will need a free account
   to log in), or as a part of the Xcode suite, freely available at the
   App Store. Xcode is a pretty big app, so unless you already have it or
   really want it, you are advised to get the 'Command Line Tools' bundle
   separately from the link above. If you want to do it from within Xcode,
   go to Xcode -> Preferences -> Downloads and select the 'Command Line
   Tools' option.

   Between Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther" and 10.6 "Snow Leopard", the 'Command
   Line Tools' bundle was called 'unix tools', and was usually supplied
   with Mac OS install DVDs.

   Earlier Mac OS X releases (10.2 "Jaguar" and older) did not include a
   completely thread-safe libc, so threading is not fully supported. Also,
   earlier releases included a buggy libdb, so some of the DB_File tests
   are known to fail on those releases.

   Installation Prefix
   The default installation location for this release uses the traditional
   UNIX directory layout under /usr/local. This is the recommended
   location for most users, and will leave the Apple-supplied Perl and its
   modules undisturbed.

   Using an installation prefix of '/usr' will result in a directory
   layout that mirrors that of Apple's default Perl, with core modules
   stored in '/System/Library/Perl/${version}', CPAN modules stored in
   '/Library/Perl/${version}', and the addition of
   '/Network/Library/Perl/${version}' to @INC for modules that are stored
   on a file server and used by many Macs.

   SDK support
   First, export the path to the SDK into the build environment:

    export SDK=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.8.sdk

   Please make sure the SDK version (i.e. the numbers right before '.sdk')
   matches your system's (in this case, Mac OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion"), as
   it is possible to have more than one SDK installed. Also make sure the
   path exists in your system, and if it doesn't please make sure the SDK
   is properly installed, as it should come with the 'Command Line Tools'
   bundle mentioned above. Finally, if you have an older Mac OS X (10.6
   "Snow Leopard" and below) running Xcode 4.2 or lower, the SDK path
   might be something like '/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.3.9.sdk'.

   You can use the SDK by exporting some additions to Perl's 'ccflags' and
   '..flags' config variables:

       ./Configure -Accflags="-nostdinc -B$SDK/usr/include/gcc \
                              -B$SDK/usr/lib/gcc -isystem$SDK/usr/include \
                              -F$SDK/System/Library/Frameworks" \
                   -Aldflags="-Wl,-syslibroot,$SDK" \
                   -de

   Universal Binary support
   Note: From Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" onwards, Apple only supports
   Intel-based hardware. This means you can safely skip this section
   unless you have an older Apple computer running on ppc or wish to
   create a perl binary with backwards compatibility.

   You can compile perl as a universal binary (built for both ppc and
   intel).  In Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger", you must export the 'u' variant of
   the SDK:

       export SDK=/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk

   Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" and above do not require the 'u' variant.

   In addition to the compiler flags used to select the SDK, also add the
   flags for creating a universal binary:

    ./Configure -Accflags="-arch i686 -arch ppc -nostdinc               \
                            -B$SDK/usr/include/gcc                      \
                           -B$SDK/usr/lib/gcc -isystem$SDK/usr/include  \
                           -F$SDK/System/Library/Frameworks"            \
                -Aldflags="-arch i686 -arch ppc -Wl,-syslibroot,$SDK"   \
                -de

   Keep in mind that these compiler and linker settings will also be used
   when building CPAN modules. For XS modules to be compiled as a
   universal binary, any libraries it links to must also be universal
   binaries. The system libraries that Apple includes with the 10.4u SDK
   are all universal, but user-installed libraries may need to be re-
   installed as universal binaries.

   64-bit PPC support
   Follow the instructions in INSTALL to build perl with support for
   64-bit integers ("use64bitint") or both 64-bit integers and 64-bit
   addressing ("use64bitall"). In the latter case, the resulting binary
   will run only on G5-based hosts.

   Support for 64-bit addressing is experimental: some aspects of Perl may
   be omitted or buggy. Note the messages output by Configure for further
   information. Please use "perlbug" to submit a problem report in the
   event that you encounter difficulties.

   When building 64-bit modules, it is your responsibility to ensure that
   linked external libraries and frameworks provide 64-bit support: if
   they do not, module building may appear to succeed, but attempts to use
   the module will result in run-time dynamic linking errors, and
   subsequent test failures.  You can use "file" to discover the
   architectures supported by a library:

       $ file libgdbm.3.0.0.dylib
       libgdbm.3.0.0.dylib: Mach-O fat file with 2 architectures
       libgdbm.3.0.0.dylib (for architecture ppc):      Mach-O dynamically linked shared library ppc
       libgdbm.3.0.0.dylib (for architecture ppc64):    Mach-O 64-bit dynamically linked shared library ppc64

   Note that this issue precludes the building of many Macintosh-specific
   CPAN modules ("Mac::*"), as the required Apple frameworks do not
   provide PPC64 support. Similarly, downloads from Fink or Darwinports
   are unlikely to provide 64-bit support; the libraries must be rebuilt
   from source with the appropriate compiler and linker flags. For further
   information, see Apple's 64-Bit Transition Guide at
   <http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/64bitPorting/index.html>.

   libperl and Prebinding
   Mac OS X ships with a dynamically-loaded libperl, but the default for
   this release is to compile a static libperl. The reason for this is
   pre-binding. Dynamic libraries can be pre-bound to a specific address
   in memory in order to decrease load time. To do this, one needs to be
   aware of the location and size of all previously-loaded libraries.
   Apple collects this information as part of their overall OS build
   process, and thus has easy access to it when building Perl, but
   ordinary users would need to go to a great deal of effort to obtain the
   information needed for pre-binding.

   You can override the default and build a shared libperl if you wish
   (Configure...-Duseshrplib).

   With Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" and newer, there is almost no performance
   penalty for non-prebound libraries. Earlier releases will suffer a
   greater load time than either the static library, or Apple's pre-bound
   dynamic library.

   Updating Apple's Perl
   In a word - don't, at least not without a *very* good reason. Your
   scripts can just as easily begin with "#!/usr/local/bin/perl" as with
   "#!/usr/bin/perl". Scripts supplied by Apple and other third parties as
   part of installation packages and such have generally only been tested
   with the /usr/bin/perl that's installed by Apple.

   If you find that you do need to update the system Perl, one issue worth
   keeping in mind is the question of static vs. dynamic libraries. If you
   upgrade using the default static libperl, you will find that the
   dynamic libperl supplied by Apple will not be deleted. If both
   libraries are present when an application that links against libperl is
   built, ld will link against the dynamic library by default. So, if you
   need to replace Apple's dynamic libperl with a static libperl, you need
   to be sure to delete the older dynamic library after you've installed
   the update.

   Known problems
   If you have installed extra libraries such as GDBM through Fink (in
   other words, you have libraries under /sw/lib), or libdlcompat to
   /usr/local/lib, you may need to be extra careful when running Configure
   to not to confuse Configure and Perl about which libraries to use.
   Being confused will show up for example as "dyld" errors about symbol
   problems, for example during "make test". The safest bet is to run
   Configure as

       Configure ... -Uloclibpth -Dlibpth=/usr/lib

   to make Configure look only into the system libraries.  If you have
   some extra library directories that you really want to use (such as
   newer Berkeley DB libraries in pre-Panther systems), add those to the
   libpth:

       Configure ... -Uloclibpth -Dlibpth='/usr/lib /opt/lib'

   The default of building Perl statically may cause problems with complex
   applications like Tk: in that case consider building shared Perl

       Configure ... -Duseshrplib

   but remember that there's a startup cost to pay in that case (see above
   "libperl and Prebinding").

   Starting with Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4), Apple shipped broken locale files
   for the eu_ES locale (Basque-Spain).  In previous releases of Perl,
   this resulted in failures in the lib/locale test. These failures have
   been suppressed in the current release of Perl by making the test
   ignore the broken locale.  If you need to use the eu_ES locale, you
   should contact Apple support.

   Cocoa
   There are two ways to use Cocoa from Perl. Apple's PerlObjCBridge
   module, included with Mac OS X, can be used by standalone scripts to
   access Foundation (i.e. non-GUI) classes and objects.

   An alternative is CamelBones, a framework that allows access to both
   Foundation and AppKit classes and objects, so that full GUI
   applications can be built in Perl. CamelBones can be found on
   SourceForge, at <http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/camelbones/>.

Starting From Scratch

   Unfortunately it is not that difficult somehow manage to break one's
   Mac OS X Perl rather severely.  If all else fails and you want to
   really, REALLY, start from scratch and remove even your Apple Perl
   installation (which has become corrupted somehow), the following
   instructions should do it.  Please think twice before following these
   instructions: they are much like conducting brain surgery to yourself.
   Without anesthesia.  We will not come to fix your system if you do
   this.

   First, get rid of the libperl.dylib:

       # cd /System/Library/Perl/darwin/CORE
       # rm libperl.dylib

   Then delete every .bundle file found anywhere in the folders:

       /System/Library/Perl
       /Library/Perl

   You can find them for example by

       # find /System/Library/Perl /Library/Perl -name '*.bundle' -print

   After this you can either copy Perl from your operating system media
   (you will need at least the /System/Library/Perl and /usr/bin/perl), or
   rebuild Perl from the source code with "Configure -Dprefix=/usr
   -Duseshrplib" NOTE: the "-Dprefix=/usr" to replace the system Perl
   works much better with Perl 5.8.1 and later, in Perl 5.8.0 the settings
   were not quite right.

   "Pacifist" from CharlesSoft (<http://www.charlessoft.com/>) is a nice
   way to extract the Perl binaries from the OS media, without having to
   reinstall the entire OS.

AUTHOR

   This README was written by Sherm Pendley <sherm@dot-app.org>, and
   subsequently updated by Dominic Dunlop <domo@computer.org> and Breno G.
   de Oliveira <garu@cpan.org>. The "Starting From Scratch" recipe was
   contributed by John Montbriand <montbriand@apple.com>.

DATE

   Last modified 2013-04-29.





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