Index Index for
Section 1
Index Alphabetical
listing for P
Bottom of page Bottom of
page		 

PERLVMESA(1)


NAME

  README.vmesa - building and installing Perl for VM/ESA.


SYNOPSIS

  This document will help you Configure, build, test and install Perl on
  VM/ESA.


DESCRIPTION

  This is a fully ported perl for VM/ESA 2.3.0.	 It may work on other
  versions, but that's the one we've tested it on.

  If you've downloaded the binary distribution, it needs to be installed
  below /usr/local.  Source code distributions have an automated `make
  install` step that means you do not need to extract the source code below
  /usr/local (though that is where it will be installed by default).  You may
  need to worry about the networking configuration files discussed in the
  last bullet below.

  Unpacking Perl Distribution on VM/ESA

  To extract an ASCII tar archive on VM/ESA, try this:

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

  Setup Perl and utilities on VM/ESA

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

    http://vm.marist.edu/~neale/vmoe.html

  Configure Perl on VM/ESA

  Once you've unpacked the distribution, run Configure (see INSTALL for full
  discussion of the Configure options), and then run make, then "make test"
  then "make install" (this last step may require UID=0 privileges).

  There is a "hints" file for vmesa that specifies the correct values for
  most things.	Some things to watch out for are:

  ·   this port does support dynamic loading but it's not had much testing

  ·   Don't turn on the compiler optimization flag "-O".  There's a bug in
      the compiler (APAR PQ18812) that generates some bad code the optimizer
      is on.

  ·   As VM/ESA doesn't fully support the fork() API programs relying on this
      call will not work. I've replaced fork()/exec() with spawn() and the
      standalone exec() with spawn(). This has a side effect when opening
      unnamed pipes in a shell script: there is no child process generated
      under.

  ·   At the moment the hints file for VM/ESA basically bypasses all of the
      automatic configuration process.	This is because Configure relies on:
      1. The header files living in the Byte File System (you could put the
      there if you want); 2. The C preprocessor including the #include
      statements in the preprocessor output (.i) file.

  Testing Anomalies of Perl on VM/ESA

  The `make test` step runs a Perl Verification Procedure, usually before
  installation.	 As the 5.6.1 kit was being assembled the following
  "failures" were known to appear on some machines during `make test` (mostly
  due to ASCII vs. EBCDIC conflicts), your results may differ:

  [the list of failures being compiled]

  Usage Hints for Perl on VM/ESA

  When using perl on VM/ESA 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 invocation.  See:

      head `whence perldoc`

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


AUTHORS

  Neale Ferguson.


SEE ALSO

  INSTALL, perlport, perlebcdic.

  Mailing list for Perl on VM/ESA

  If you are interested in the VM/ESA, z/OS (formerly known as OS/390) and
  POSIX-BC (BS2000) ports of Perl then see the perl-mvs mailing list.  To
  subscribe, send an empty message to perl-mvs-subscribe@perl.org.

  See also:

      http://lists.perl.org/showlist.cgi?name=perl-mvs

  There are web archives of the mailing list at:

      http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl-mvs/
      http://archive.develooper.com/perl-mvs@perl.org/

Index Index for
Section 1
Index Alphabetical
listing for P
Top of page Top of
page