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- If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you see.
- It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is specially
- designed to be readable as is.
-
- =head1 NAME
-
- README.aix - Perl version 5 on IBM Unix (AIX) systems
-
- =head1 DESCRIPTION
-
- This document describes various features of IBM's Unix operating
- system (AIX) that will affect how Perl version 5 (hereafter just Perl)
- is compiled and/or runs.
-
- =head2 Compiling Perl 5 on AIX
-
- When compiling Perl, you must use an ANSI C compiler. AIX does not ship
- an ANSI compliant C-compiler with AIX by default, but binary builds of
- gcc for AIX are widely available.
-
- At the moment of writing, AIX supports two different native C compilers,
- for which you have to pay: B<xlC> and B<vac>. If you decide to use either
- of these two (which is quite a lot easier than using gcc), be sure to
- upgrade to the latest available patch level. Currently:
-
- xlC.C 3.1.4.10 or 3.6.6.0 or 4.0.2.2 or 5.0.2.9 or 6.0.0.3
- vac.C 4.4.0.3 or 5.0.2.6 or 6.0.0.1
-
- note that xlC has the OS version in the name as of version 4.0.2.0, so
- you will find xlC.C for AIX-5.0 as package
-
- xlC.aix50.rte 5.0.2.0 or 6.0.0.3
-
- subversions are not the same `latest' on all OS versions. For example,
- the latest xlC-5 on aix41 is 5.0.2.9, while on aix43, it is 5.0.2.7.
-
- Perl can be compiled with either IBM's ANSI C compiler or with gcc.
- The former is recommended, as not only can it compile Perl with no
- difficulty, but also can take advantage of features listed later that
- require the use of IBM compiler-specific command-line flags.
-
- The IBM's compiler patch levels 5.0.0.0 and 5.0.1.0 have compiler
- optimization bugs that affect compiling perl.c and regcomp.c,
- respectively. If Perl's configuration detects those compiler patch
- levels, optimization is turned off for the said source code files.
- Upgrading to at least 5.0.2.0 is recommended.
-
- If you decide to use gcc, make sure your installation is recent and
- complete, and be sure to read the Perl README file for more gcc-specific
- details. Please report any hoops you had to jump through to the development
- team.
-
- =head2 OS level
-
- Before installing the patches to the IBM C-compiler you need to know the
- level of patching for the Operating System. IBM's command 'oslevel' will
- show the base, but is not always complete (in this example oslevel shows
- 4.3.NULL, whereas the system might run most of 4.3.THREE):
-
- # oslevel
- 4.3.0.0
- # lslpp -l | grep 'bos.rte '
- bos.rte 4.3.3.75 COMMITTED Base Operating System Runtime
- bos.rte 4.3.2.0 COMMITTED Base Operating System Runtime
- #
-
- The same might happen to AIX 5.1 or other OS levels. As a side note, perl
- cannot be built without bos.adt.syscalls and bos.adt.libm installed
-
- # lslpp -l | egrep "syscalls|libm"
- bos.adt.libm 5.1.0.25 COMMITTED Base Application Development
- bos.adt.syscalls 5.1.0.36 COMMITTED System Calls Application
- #
-
- =head2 Building Dynamic Extensions on AIX
-
- AIX supports dynamically loadable objects as well as shared libraries.
- Shared libraries by convention end with the suffix .a, which is a bit
- misleading, as an archive can contain static as well as dynamic members.
- For perl dynamically loaded objects we use the .so suffix also used on
- many other platforms.
-
- Note that starting from Perl 5.7.2 (and consequently 5.8.0) and AIX 4.3
- or newer Perl uses the AIX native dynamic loading interface in the so
- called runtime linking mode instead of the emulated interface that was
- used in Perl releases 5.6.1 and earlier or, for AIX releases 4.2 and
- earlier. This change does break backward compatibility with compiled
- modules from earlier perl releases. The change was made to make Perl
- more compliant with other applications like Apache/mod_perl which are
- using the AIX native interface. This change also enables the use of C++
- code with static constructors and destructors in perl extensions, which
- was not possible using the emulated interface.
-
- =head2 The IBM ANSI C Compiler
-
- All defaults for Configure can be used.
-
- If you've chosen to use vac 4, be sure to run 4.4.0.3. Older versions
- will turn up nasty later on. For vac 5 be sure to run at least 5.0.1.0,
- but vac 5.0.2.6 or up is highly recommended. Note that since IBM has
- removed vac 5.0.2.1 through 5.0.2.5 from the software depot, these
- versions should be considered obsolete.
-
- Here's a brief lead of how to upgrade the compiler to the latest
- level. Of course this is subject to changes. You can only upgrade
- versions from ftp-available updates if the first three digit groups
- are the same (in where you can skip intermediate unlike the patches
- in the developer snapshots of perl), or to one version up where the
- `base' is available. In other words, the AIX compiler patches are
- cumulative.
-
- vac.C.4.4.0.1 => vac.C.4.4.0.3 is OK (vac.C.4.4.0.2 not needed)
- xlC.C.3.1.3.3 => xlC.C.3.1.4.10 is NOT OK (xlC.C.3.1.4.0 is not available)
-
- # ftp ftp.software.ibm.com
- Connected to service.boulder.ibm.com.
- : welcome message ...
- Name (ftp.software.ibm.com:merijn): anonymous
- 331 Guest login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password.
- Password:
- ... accepted login stuff
- ftp> cd /aix/fixes/v4/
- ftp> dir other other.ll
- output to local-file: other.ll? y
- 200 PORT command successful.
- 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
- 226 Transfer complete.
- ftp> dir xlc xlc.ll
- output to local-file: xlc.ll? y
- 200 PORT command successful.
- 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
- 226 Transfer complete.
- ftp> bye
- ... goodbye messages
- # ls -l *.ll
- -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn system 1169432 Nov 2 17:29 other.ll
- -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn system 29170 Nov 2 17:29 xlc.ll
-
- On AIX 4.2 using xlC, we continue:
-
- # lslpp -l | fgrep 'xlC.C '
- xlC.C 3.1.4.9 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler
- xlC.C 3.1.4.0 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler
- # grep 'xlC.C.3.1.4.*.bff' xlc.ll
- -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6286336 Jul 22 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.1.bff
- -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6173696 Aug 24 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.10.bff
- -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6319104 Aug 14 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.2.bff
- -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6316032 Oct 21 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.3.bff
- -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6315008 Dec 20 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.4.bff
- -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6178816 Mar 28 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.5.bff
- -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6188032 May 22 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.6.bff
- -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6191104 Sep 5 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.7.bff
- -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6185984 Jan 13 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.8.bff
- -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6169600 May 27 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.9.bff
- # wget ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/fixes/v4/xlc/xlC.C.3.1.4.10.bff
- #
-
- On AIX 4.3 using vac, we continue:
-
- # lslpp -l | grep 'vac.C '
- vac.C 5.0.2.2 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler
- vac.C 5.0.2.0 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler
- # grep 'vac.C.5.0.2.*.bff' other.ll
- -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 13592576 Apr 16 2001 vac.C.5.0.2.0.bff
- -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 14133248 Apr 9 2002 vac.C.5.0.2.3.bff
- -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 14173184 May 20 2002 vac.C.5.0.2.4.bff
- -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 14192640 Nov 22 2002 vac.C.5.0.2.6.bff
- # wget ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/fixes/v4/other/vac.C.5.0.2.6.bff
- #
-
- Likewise on all other OS levels. Then execute the following command, and
- fill in its choices
-
- # smit install_update
- -> Install and Update from LATEST Available Software
- * INPUT device / directory for software [ vac.C.5.0.2.6.bff ]
- [ OK ]
- [ OK ]
-
- Follow the messages ... and you're done.
-
- If you like a more web-like approach, a good start point can be
- http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/download/downloadaz.jsp and click
- "C for AIX", and follow the instructions.
-
- =head2 The usenm option
-
- If linking miniperl
-
- cc -o miniperl ... miniperlmain.o opmini.o perl.o ... -lm -lc ...
-
- causes error like this
-
- ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .aintl
- ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .copysignl
- ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .syscall
- ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .eaccess
- ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .setresuid
- ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .setresgid
- ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .setproctitle
- ld: 0711-345 Use the -bloadmap or -bnoquiet option to obtain more information.
-
- you could retry with
-
- make realclean
- rm config.sh
- ./Configure -Dusenm ...
-
- which makes Configure to use the C<nm> tool when scanning for library
- symbols, which usually is not done in AIX.
-
- Related to this, you probably should not use the C<-r> option of
- Configure in AIX, because that affects of how the C<nm> tool is used.
-
- =head2 Using GNU's gcc for building perl
-
- Using gcc-3.x (tested with 3.0.4, 3.1, and 3.2) now works out of the box,
- as do recent gcc-2.9 builds available directly from IBM as part of their
- Linux compatibility packages, available here:
-
- http://www.ibm.com/servers/aix/products/aixos/linux/
-
- =head2 Using Large Files with Perl
-
- Should yield no problems.
-
- =head2 Threaded Perl
-
- Threads seem to work OK, though at the moment not all tests pass when
- threads are used in combination with 64-bit configurations.
-
- You may get a warning when doing a threaded build:
-
- "pp_sys.c", line 4640.39: 1506-280 (W) Function argument assignment between types "unsigned char*" and "const void*" is not allowed.
-
- The exact line number may vary, but if the warning (W) comes from a line
- line this
-
- hent = PerlSock_gethostbyaddr(addr, (Netdb_hlen_t) addrlen, addrtype);
-
- in the "pp_ghostent" function, you may ignore it safely. The warning
- is caused by the reentrant variant of gethostbyaddr() having a slightly
- different prototype than its non-reentrant variant, but the difference
- is not really significant here.
-
- =head2 64-bit Perl
-
- If your AIX is installed with 64-bit support, you can expect 64-bit
- configurations to work. In combination with threads some tests might
- still fail.
-
- =head2 AIX 4.2 and extensions using C++ with statics
-
- In AIX 4.2 Perl extensions that use C++ functions that use statics
- may have problems in that the statics are not getting initialized.
- In newer AIX releases this has been solved by linking Perl with
- the libC_r library, but unfortunately in AIX 4.2 the said library
- has an obscure bug where the various functions related to time
- (such as time() and gettimeofday()) return broken values, and
- therefore in AIX 4.2 Perl is not linked against the libC_r.
-
- =head1 AUTHOR
-
- H.Merijn Brand <h.m.brand@xs4all.nl>
-
- =head1 DATE
-
- Version 0.0.6: 23 Dec 2002
-
- =cut
-