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   1  If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you
   2  see. It is written in the POD format (see perlpod manpage) which is
   3  specially designed to be readable as is.
   4  
   5  =head1 NAME
   6  
   7  perlamiga - Perl under Amiga OS
   8  
   9  =head1 NOTE
  10  
  11  B<Perl 5.8.0 cannot be built in AmigaOS.  You can use either the
  12  maintenance release Perl 5.6.1 or the development release Perl 5.7.2
  13  in AmigaOS.  See L</"PERL 5.8.0 BROKEN IN AMIGAOS"> if you want to help
  14  fixing this problem.>
  15  
  16  =head1 SYNOPSIS
  17  
  18  One can read this document in the following formats:
  19  
  20      man perlamiga
  21      multiview perlamiga.guide
  22  
  23  to list some (not all may be available simultaneously), or it may
  24  be read I<as is>: either as F<README.amiga>, or F<pod/perlamiga.pod>.
  25  
  26  A recent version of perl for the Amiga can be found at the Geek Gadgets
  27  section of the Aminet:
  28  
  29        http://www.aminet.net/~aminet/dev/gg
  30  
  31  =cut
  32  
  33  Contents
  34   
  35   perlamiga - Perl under Amiga OS
  36  
  37         NAME 
  38         SYNOPSIS 
  39         DESCRIPTION 
  40           -  Prerequisites 
  41           -  Starting Perl programs under AmigaOS
  42           -  Shortcomings of Perl under AmigaOS
  43         INSTALLATION 
  44         Accessing documentation 
  45           -  Manpages 
  46           -  HTML 
  47           -  GNU info files 
  48           -  LaTeX docs 
  49         BUILD 
  50           -  Build Prerequisites 
  51           -  Getting the perl source 
  52           -  Application of the patches 
  53           -  Making 
  54           -  Testing 
  55           -  Installing the built perl 
  56         AUTHOR 
  57         SEE ALSO 
  58  
  59  =head1 DESCRIPTION
  60  
  61  =head2 Prerequisites for Compiling Perl on AmigaOS
  62  
  63  =over 6
  64  
  65  =item B<Unix emulation for AmigaOS: ixemul.library>
  66  
  67  You need the Unix emulation for AmigaOS, whose most important part is
  68  B<ixemul.library>. For a minimum setup, get the latest versions
  69  of the following packages from the Aminet archives
  70  ( http://www.aminet.net/~aminet/ ):
  71  
  72      ixemul-bin
  73      ixemul-env-bin
  74      pdksh-bin
  75  
  76  Note also that this is a minimum setup; you might want to add other
  77  packages of B<ADE> (the I<Amiga Developers Environment>).
  78  
  79  =item B<Version of Amiga OS>
  80  
  81  You need at the very least AmigaOS version 2.0. Recommended is version 3.1.
  82  
  83  =back
  84  
  85  =head2 Starting Perl programs under AmigaOS
  86  
  87  Start your Perl program F<foo> with arguments C<arg1 arg2 arg3> the
  88  same way as on any other platform, by
  89  
  90      perl foo arg1 arg2 arg3
  91  
  92  If you want to specify perl options C<-my_opts> to the perl itself (as
  93  opposed to your program), use
  94  
  95      perl -my_opts foo arg1 arg2 arg3
  96  
  97  Alternately, you can try to get a replacement for the system's B<Execute>
  98  command that honors the #!/usr/bin/perl syntax in scripts and set the s-Bit
  99  of your scripts. Then you can invoke your scripts like under UNIX with
 100  
 101      foo arg1 arg2 arg3
 102  
 103  (Note that having *nixish full path to perl F</usr/bin/perl> is not
 104  necessary, F<perl> would be enough, but having full path would make it
 105  easier to use your script under *nix.)
 106  
 107  =head2 Shortcomings of Perl under AmigaOS
 108  
 109  Perl under AmigaOS lacks some features of perl under UNIX because of
 110  deficiencies in the UNIX-emulation, most notably:
 111  
 112  =over 6
 113  
 114  =item *
 115  
 116  fork()
 117  
 118  =item * 
 119  
 120  some features of the UNIX filesystem regarding link count and file dates
 121  
 122  =item *
 123  
 124  inplace operation (the -i switch) without backup file
 125  
 126  =item *
 127  
 128  umask() works, but the correct permissions are only set when the file is
 129  finally close()d
 130  
 131  =back
 132  
 133  =head1 INSTALLATION
 134  
 135  Change to the installation directory (most probably ADE:), and
 136  extract the binary distribution:
 137  
 138  lha -mraxe x perl-$VERSION-bin.lha
 139  
 140  or
 141  
 142  tar xvzpf perl-$VERSION-bin.tgz
 143  
 144  (Of course you need lha or tar and gunzip for this.)
 145  
 146  For installation of the Unix emulation, read the appropriate docs.
 147  
 148  =head1 Accessing documentation
 149  
 150  =head2 Manpages for Perl on AmigaOS
 151  
 152  If you have C<man> installed on your system, and you installed perl
 153  manpages, use something like this:
 154  
 155      man perlfunc
 156      man less
 157      man ExtUtils.MakeMaker
 158  
 159  to access documentation for different components of Perl. Start with
 160  
 161      man perl
 162  
 163  Note: You have to modify your man.conf file to search for manpages
 164  in the /ade/lib/perl5/man/man3 directory, or the man pages for the
 165  perl library will not be found. 
 166  
 167  Note that dot (F<.>) is used as a package separator for documentation
 168  for packages, and as usual, sometimes you need to give the section - C<3>
 169  above - to avoid shadowing by the I<less(1) manpage>.
 170  
 171  
 172  =head2 Perl HTML Documentation on AmigaOS
 173  
 174  If you have some WWW browser available, you can build B<HTML> docs.
 175  Cd to directory with F<.pod> files, and do like this
 176  
 177      cd /ade/lib/perl5/pod
 178      pod2html
 179  
 180  After this you can direct your browser the file F<perl.html> in this
 181  directory, and go ahead with reading docs.
 182  
 183  Alternatively you may be able to get these docs prebuilt from C<CPAN>.
 184  
 185  =head2 Perl GNU Info Files on AmigaOS
 186  
 187  Users of C<Emacs> would appreciate it very much, especially with
 188  C<CPerl> mode loaded. You need to get latest C<pod2info> from C<CPAN>,
 189  or, alternately, prebuilt info pages.
 190  
 191  =head2 Perl LaTeX Documentation on AmigaOS
 192  
 193  Can be constructed using C<pod2latex>.
 194  
 195  =head1 BUILDING PERL ON AMIGAOS
 196  
 197  Here we discuss how to build Perl under AmigaOS.
 198  
 199  =head2 Build Prerequisites for Perl on AmigaOS
 200  
 201  You need to have the latest B<ixemul> (Unix emulation for Amiga)
 202  from Aminet.
 203  
 204  =head2 Getting the Perl Source for AmigaOS
 205  
 206  You can either get the latest perl-for-amiga source from Ninemoons
 207  and extract it with:
 208  
 209    tar xvzpf perl-$VERSION-src.tgz
 210  
 211  or get the official source from CPAN:
 212  
 213    http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0
 214  
 215  Extract it like this
 216  
 217    tar xvzpf perl-$VERSION.tar.gz
 218  
 219  You will see a message about errors while extracting F<Configure>. This
 220  is normal and expected. (There is a conflict with a similarly-named file
 221  F<configure>, but it causes no harm.)
 222  
 223  =head2 Making Perl on AmigaOS
 224  
 225  Remember to use a hefty wad of stack (I use 2000000)
 226  
 227    sh configure.gnu --prefix=/gg
 228  
 229  Now type
 230  
 231    make depend
 232  
 233  Now!
 234  
 235    make
 236  
 237  =head2 Testing Perl on AmigaOS
 238  
 239  Now run
 240  
 241    make test
 242  
 243  Some tests will be skipped because they need the fork() function:
 244  
 245  F<io/pipe.t>, F<op/fork.t>, F<lib/filehand.t>, F<lib/open2.t>, F<lib/open3.t>, 
 246  F<lib/io_pipe.t>, F<lib/io_sock.t>
 247  
 248  =head2 Installing the built Perl on AmigaOS
 249  
 250  Run
 251  
 252    make install
 253  
 254  =head1 PERL 5.8.0 BROKEN IN AMIGAOS
 255  
 256  As told above, Perl 5.6.1 was still good in AmigaOS, as was 5.7.2.
 257  After Perl 5.7.2 (change #11423, see the Changes file, and the file
 258  pod/perlhack.pod for how to get the individual changes) Perl dropped
 259  its internal support for vfork(), and that was very probably the step
 260  that broke AmigaOS (since the ixemul library has only vfork).  
 261  The build finally fails when the ext/DynaLoader is being built, and
 262  PERL ends up as "0" in the produced Makefile, trying to run "0" does
 263  not quite work.  Also, executing miniperl in backticks seems to
 264  generate nothing: very probably related to the (v)fork problems.
 265  B<Fixing the breakage requires someone quite familiar with the ixemul
 266  library, and how one is supposed to run external commands in AmigaOS
 267  without fork().>
 268  
 269  =head1 AUTHORS
 270  
 271  Norbert Pueschel, pueschel@imsdd.meb.uni-bonn.de
 272  Jan-Erik Karlsson, trg@privat.utfors.se
 273  
 274  =head1 SEE ALSO
 275  
 276  perl(1).
 277  
 278  =cut