


PERLOS390(1)     Perl Programmers Reference Guide    PERLOS390(1)


NAME
       README.os390 - building and installing Perl for OS/390.

SYNOPSIS
       This document will help you Configure, build, test and
       install Perl on OS/390 Unix System Services.

DESCRIPTION
       This is a fully ported perl for OS/390 Release 3, 5 and 6.
       It may work on other versions, but those are the ones
       we've tested it on.

       You may need to carry out some system configuration tasks
       before running the Configure script for perl.

       Unpacking

       Gunzip/gzip for OS/390 is discussed at:

          http://www.s390.ibm.com/products/oe/bpxqp1.html

       to extract an ASCII tar archive on OS/390, try this:

          pax -o to=IBM-1047,from=ISO8859-1 -r < latest.tar


       Setup and utilities

       Be sure that your yacc installation is in place including
       any necessary parser template files. If you have not
       already done so then be sure to:

         cp /samples/yyparse.c /etc

       This may also be a good time to ensure that your /etc/pro-
       tocol file and either your /etc/resolv.conf or /etc/hosts
       files are in place.

       GNU make for OS/390, which may be required for the build
       of perl, is available from:

         http://www.mks.com/s390/gnu/index.htm


       Configure

       Once you've unpacked the distribution, run "sh Configure"
       (see INSTALL for a full discussion of the Configure
       options).  There is a "hints" file for os390 that speci-
       fies the correct values for most things.  Some things to
       watch out for include:

       o   Some of the parser default template files in /samples
           are needed in /etc.  In particular be sure that you at



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PERLOS390(1)     Perl Programmers Reference Guide    PERLOS390(1)


           least copy /samples/yyparse.c to /etc before running
           perl's Configure.  This step ensures successful
           extraction of EBCDIC versions of parser files such as
           perly.c.

       o   This port doesn't support dynamic loading.  Although
           OS/390 has support for DLLs, there are some differ-
           ences that cause problems for perl.

       o   You may see a "WHOA THERE!!!" message for $d_shmatpro-
           totype it is OK to keep the recommended "define".

       o   Don't turn on the compiler optimization flag "-O".
           There's a bug in either the optimizer or perl that
           causes perl to not work correctly when the optimizer
           is on.

       o   Some of the configuration files in /etc used by the
           networking APIs are either missing or have the wrong
           names.  In particular, make sure that there's either
           an /etc/resolv.conf or and /etc/hosts, so that geth-
           ostbyname() works, and make sure that the file
           /etc/proto has been renamed to /etc/protocol (NOT
           /etc/protocols, as used by other Unix systems).

       Build, test, install

       Simply put:

           sh Configure
           make
           make test

       if everything looks ok then:

           make install

       this last step may or may not require UID=0 privileges
       depending on how you answered the questions that Configure
       asked and whether or not you have write access to the
       directories you specified.

       Usage Hints

       When using perl on OS/390 please keep in mind that the
       EBCDIC and ASCII character sets are different.  Perl
       builtin functions that may behave differently under EBCDIC
       are mentioned in the perlport.pod document.

       OpenEdition (UNIX System Services) does not (yet) support
       the #! means of script invokation.  See:

           head `whence perldoc`




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PERLOS390(1)     Perl Programmers Reference Guide    PERLOS390(1)


       for an example of how to use the "eval exec" trick to ask
       the shell to have perl run your scripts for you.

       Extensions

       You can build xs based extensions to Perl for OS/390 but
       will need to follow the instructions in ExtUtils::Make-
       Maker for building statically linked perl binaries.  In
       most cases people have reported better results with GNU
       make rather than the system's /bin/make.

AUTHORS
       David Fiander and Peter Prymmer.

SEE ALSO
       the INSTALL manpage, the perlport manpage, the ExtU-
       tils::MakeMaker manpage.

       Mailing list

       The Perl Institute (http://www.perl.org/) maintains a
       perl-mvs mailing list of interest to all folks building
       and/or using perl on EBCDIC platforms.  To subscibe, send
       a message of:

           subscribe perl-mvs

       to majordomo@perl.org.

HISTORY
       This document was originally written by David Fiander for
       the 5.005 release of Perl.

       This document was podified for the 5.005_03 release of
       perl 11 March 1999.






















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