source: trunk/essentials/dev-lang/perl/README.amiga@ 3724

If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you
see. It is written in the POD format (see perlpod manpage) which is
specially designed to be readable as is.

=head1 NAME

perlamiga - Perl under Amiga OS

=head1 NOTE

B<Perl 5.8.0 cannot be built in AmigaOS.  You can use either the
maintenance release Perl 5.6.1 or the development release Perl 5.7.2
in AmigaOS.  See L</"PERL 5.8.0 BROKEN IN AMIGAOS"> if you want to help
fixing this problem.>

=head1 SYNOPSIS

One can read this document in the following formats:

        man perlamiga
        multiview perlamiga.guide

to list some (not all may be available simultaneously), or it may
be read I<as is>: either as F<README.amiga>, or F<pod/perlamiga.pod>.

A recent version of perl for the Amiga can be found at the Geek Gadgets
section of the Aminet:

      http://www.aminet.net/~aminet/dev/gg/index.html

=cut

Contents
 
 perlamiga - Perl under Amiga OS

       NAME 
       SYNOPSIS 
       DESCRIPTION 
         -  Prerequisites 
         -  Starting Perl programs under AmigaOS
         -  Shortcomings of Perl under AmigaOS
       INSTALLATION 
       Accessing documentation 
         -  Manpages 
         -  HTML 
         -  GNU info files 
         -  LaTeX docs 
       BUILD 
         -  Build Prerequisites 
         -  Getting the perl source 
         -  Application of the patches 
         -  Making 
         -  Testing 
         -  Installing the built perl 
       AUTHOR 
       SEE ALSO 

=head1 DESCRIPTION

=head2 Prerequisites for Compiling Perl on AmigaOS

=over 6

=item B<Unix emulation for AmigaOS: ixemul.library>

You need the Unix emulation for AmigaOS, whose most important part is
B<ixemul.library>. For a minimum setup, get the latest versions
of the following packages from the Aminet archives
( http://www.aminet.net/~aminet/ ):

        ixemul-bin
        ixemul-env-bin
        pdksh-bin

Note also that this is a minimum setup; you might want to add other
packages of B<ADE> (the I<Amiga Developers Environment>).

=item B<Version of Amiga OS>

You need at the very least AmigaOS version 2.0. Recommended is version 3.1.

=back

=head2 Starting Perl programs under AmigaOS

Start your Perl program F<foo> with arguments C<arg1 arg2 arg3> the
same way as on any other platform, by

        perl foo arg1 arg2 arg3

If you want to specify perl options C<-my_opts> to the perl itself (as
opposed to your program), use

        perl -my_opts foo arg1 arg2 arg3

Alternately, you can try to get a replacement for the system's B<Execute>
command that honors the #!/usr/bin/perl syntax in scripts and set the s-Bit
of your scripts. Then you can invoke your scripts like under UNIX with

        foo arg1 arg2 arg3

(Note that having *nixish full path to perl F</usr/bin/perl> is not
necessary, F<perl> would be enough, but having full path would make it
easier to use your script under *nix.)

=head2 Shortcomings of Perl under AmigaOS

Perl under AmigaOS lacks some features of perl under UNIX because of
deficiencies in the UNIX-emulation, most notably:

=over 6

=item *

fork()

=item * 

some features of the UNIX filesystem regarding link count and file dates

=item *

inplace operation (the -i switch) without backup file

=item *

umask() works, but the correct permissions are only set when the file is
finally close()d

=back

=head1 INSTALLATION

Change to the installation directory (most probably ADE:), and
extract the binary distribution:

lha -mraxe x perl-$VERSION-bin.lha

or

tar xvzpf perl-$VERSION-bin.tgz

(Of course you need lha or tar and gunzip for this.)

For installation of the Unix emulation, read the appropriate docs.

=head1 Accessing documentation

=head2 Manpages for Perl on AmigaOS

If you have C<man> installed on your system, and you installed perl
manpages, use something like this:

        man perlfunc
        man less
        man ExtUtils.MakeMaker

to access documentation for different components of Perl. Start with

        man perl

Note: You have to modify your man.conf file to search for manpages
in the /ade/lib/perl5/man/man3 directory, or the man pages for the
perl library will not be found. 

Note that dot (F<.>) is used as a package separator for documentation
for packages, and as usual, sometimes you need to give the section - C<3>
above - to avoid shadowing by the I<less(1) manpage>.


=head2 Perl HTML Documentation on AmigaOS

If you have some WWW browser available, you can build B<HTML> docs.
Cd to directory with F<.pod> files, and do like this

        cd /ade/lib/perl5/pod
        pod2html

After this you can direct your browser the file F<perl.html> in this
directory, and go ahead with reading docs.

Alternatively you may be able to get these docs prebuilt from C<CPAN>.

=head2 Perl GNU Info Files on AmigaOS

Users of C<Emacs> would appreciate it very much, especially with
C<CPerl> mode loaded. You need to get latest C<pod2info> from C<CPAN>,
or, alternately, prebuilt info pages.

=head2 Perl LaTeX Documentation on AmigaOS

Can be constructed using C<pod2latex>.

=head1 BUILDING PERL ON AMIGAOS

Here we discuss how to build Perl under AmigaOS.

=head2 Build Prerequisites for Perl on AmigaOS

You need to have the latest B<ixemul> (Unix emulation for Amiga)
from Aminet.

=head2 Getting the Perl Source for AmigaOS

You can either get the latest perl-for-amiga source from Ninemoons
and extract it with:

  tar xvzpf perl-$VERSION-src.tgz

or get the official source from CPAN:

  http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0

Extract it like this

  tar xvzpf perl-$VERSION.tar.gz

You will see a message about errors while extracting F<Configure>. This
is normal and expected. (There is a conflict with a similarly-named file
F<configure>, but it causes no harm.)

=head2 Making Perl on AmigaOS

Remember to use a hefty wad of stack (I use 2000000)

  sh configure.gnu --prefix=/gg

Now type

  make depend

Now!

  make

=head2 Testing Perl on AmigaOS

Now run

  make test

Some tests will be skipped because they need the fork() function:

F<io/pipe.t>, F<op/fork.t>, F<lib/filehand.t>, F<lib/open2.t>, F<lib/open3.t>, 
F<lib/io_pipe.t>, F<lib/io_sock.t>

=head2 Installing the built Perl on AmigaOS

Run

  make install

=head1 PERL 5.8.0 BROKEN IN AMIGAOS

As told above, Perl 5.6.1 was still good in AmigaOS, as was 5.7.2.
After Perl 5.7.2 (change #11423, see the Changes file, and the file
pod/perlhack.pod for how to get the individual changes) Perl dropped
its internal support for vfork(), and that was very probably the step
that broke AmigaOS (since the ixemul library has only vfork).  
The build finally fails when the ext/DynaLoader is being built, and
PERL ends up as "0" in the produced Makefile, trying to run "0" does
not quite work.  Also, executing miniperl in backticks seems to
generate nothing: very probably related to the (v)fork problems.
B<Fixing the breakage requires someone quite familiar with the ixemul
library, and how one is supposed to run external commands in AmigaOS
without fork().>

=head1 AUTHORS

Norbert Pueschel, pueschel@imsdd.meb.uni-bonn.de
Jan-Erik Karlsson, trg@privat.utfors.se

=head1 SEE ALSO

perl(1).

=cut