PERLMACOSX(1)	       Perl Programmers Reference Guide 	 PERLMACOSX(1)



NAME
       README.macosx - Perl under Mac OS X

SYNOPSIS
       This document briefly describes perl under Mac OS X.

DESCRIPTION
       The latest Perl release (5.8.8 as of this writing) builds without
       changes under Mac OS X. Under 10.3 "Panther" and newer OS versions, all
       self-tests pass, and all standard features are supported.

       Earlier Mac OS X releases (10.2 "Jaguar" and older) did not include a
       completely thread-safe libc, so threading is not fully supported. Also,
       earlier releases included a buggy libdb, so some of the DB_File tests
       are known to fail on those releases.

       Installation Prefix

       The default installation location for this release uses the traditional
       UNIX directory layout under /usr/local. This is the recommended loca
       tion for most users, and will leave the Apple-supplied Perl and its
       modules undisturbed.

       Using an installation prefix of /usr will result in a directory lay
       out that mirrors that of Apples default Perl, with core modules stored
       in /System/Library/Perl/${version}, CPAN modules stored in
       /Library/Perl/${version}, and the addition of /Net
       work/Library/Perl/${version} to @INC for modules that are stored on a
       file server and used by many Macs.

       SDK support

       First, export the path to the SDK into the build environment:

	   export SDK=/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.3.9.sdk

       Use an SDK by exporting some additions to Perls ccflags and
       ..flags config variables:

	   ./Configure -Accflags="-nostdinc -B$SDK/usr/include/gcc \
				  -B$SDK/usr/lib/gcc -isystem$SDK/usr/include \
				  -F$SDK/System/Library/Frameworks" \
		       -Aldflags="-Wl,-syslibroot,$SDK" \
		       -de

       Universal Binary support

       To compile perl as a universal binary (built for both ppc and intel),
       export the SDK variable as above, selecting the 10.4u SDK:

	   export SDK=/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk

       In addition to the compiler flags used to select the SDK, also add the
       flags for creating a universal binary:

	   ./Configure -Accflags="-arch i686 -arch ppc -nostdinc -B$SDK/usr/include/gcc \
				  -B$SDK/usr/lib/gcc -isystem$SDK/usr/include \
				  -F$SDK/System/Library/Frameworks" \
		       -Aldflags="-arch i686 -arch ppc -Wl,-syslibroot,$SDK" \
		       -de

       Keep in mind that these compiler and linker settings will also be used
       when building CPAN modules. For XS modules to be compiled as a univer
       sal binary, any libraries it links to must also be universal binaries.
       The system libraries that Apple includes with the 10.4u SDK are all
       universal, but user-installed libraries may need to be re-installed as
       universal binaries.

       libperl and Prebinding

       Mac OS X ships with a dynamically-loaded libperl, but the default for
       this release is to compile a static libperl. The reason for this is
       pre-binding. Dynamic libraries can be pre-bound to a specific address
       in memory in order to decrease load time. To do this, one needs to be
       aware of the location and size of all previously-loaded libraries.
       Apple collects this information as part of their overall OS build pro
       cess, and thus has easy access to it when building Perl, but ordinary
       users would need to go to a great deal of effort to obtain the informa
       tion needed for pre-binding.

       You can override the default and build a shared libperl if you wish
       (Configure ... -Duseshrlib), but the load time on pre-10.4 OS releases
       will be greater than either the static library, or Apples pre-bound
       dynamic library.

       With 10.4 "Tiger" and newer, Apple has all but eliminated the perfor
       mance penalty for non-prebound libraries.

       Updating Apples Perl

       In a word - dont, at least without a *very* good reason. Your scripts
       can just as easily begin with "#!/usr/local/bin/perl" as with
       "#!/usr/bin/perl". Scripts supplied by Apple and other third parties as
       part of installation packages and such have generally only been tested
       with the /usr/bin/perl thats installed by Apple.

       If you find that you do need to update the system Perl, one issue worth
       keeping in mind is the question of static vs. dynamic libraries. If you
       upgrade using the default static libperl, you will find that the
       dynamic libperl supplied by Apple will not be deleted. If both
       libraries are present when an application that links against libperl is
       built, ld will link against the dynamic library by default. So, if you
       need to replace Apples dynamic libperl with a static libperl, you need
       to be sure to delete the older dynamic library after youve installed
       the update.

       Known problems

       If you have installed extra libraries such as GDBM through Fink (in
       other words, you have libraries under /sw/lib), or libdlcompat to
       /usr/local/lib, you may need to be extra careful when running Configure
       to not to confuse Configure and Perl about which libraries to use.
       Being confused will show up for example as "dyld" errors about symbol
       problems, for example during "make test". The safest bet is to run Con
       figure as

	   Configure ... -Uloclibpth -Dlibpth=/usr/lib

       to make Configure look only into the system libraries.  If you have
       some extra library directories that you really want to use (such as
       newer Berkeley DB libraries in pre-Panther systems), add those to the
       libpth:

	   Configure ... -Uloclibpth -Dlibpth=/usr/lib /opt/lib

       The default of building Perl statically may cause problems with complex
       applications like Tk: in that case consider building shared Perl

	   Configure ... -Duseshrplib

       but remember that theres a startup cost to pay in that case (see above
       "libperl and Prebinding").

       Starting with Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4), Apple shipped broken locale files
       for the eu_ES locale (Basque-Spain).  In previous releases of Perl,
       this resulted in failures in the "lib/locale" test. These failures have
       been supressed in the current release of Perl by making the test ignore
       the broken locale.  If you need to use the eu_ES locale, you should
       contact Apple support.

       MacPerl

       Quite a bit has been written about MacPerl, the Perl distribution for
       "Classic MacOS" - that is, versions 9 and earlier of MacOS. Because it
       runs in environment thats very different from that of UNIX, many
       things are done differently in MacPerl. Modules are installed using a
       different procedure, Perl itself is built differently, path names are
       different, etc.

       From the perspective of a Perl programmer, Mac OS X is more like a tra
       ditional UNIX than Classic MacOS. If you find documentation that refers
       to a special procedure thats needed for MacOS thats drastically dif
       ferent from the instructions provided for UNIX, the MacOS instructions
       are quite often intended for MacPerl on Classic MacOS. In that case,
       the correct procedure on Mac OS X is usually to follow the UNIX
       instructions, rather than the MacPerl instructions.

       Carbon

       MacPerl ships with a number of modules that are used to access the
       classic MacOS toolbox. Many of these modules have been updated to use
       Mac OS Xs newer "Carbon" toolbox, and are available from CPAN in the
       "Mac::Carbon" module.

       Cocoa

       There are two ways to use Cocoa from Perl. Apples PerlObjCBridge mod
       ule, included with Mac OS X, can be used by standalone scripts to
       access Foundation (i.e. non-GUI) classes and objects.

       An alternative is CamelBones, a framework that allows access to both
       Foundation and AppKit classes and objects, so that full GUI applica
       tions can be built in Perl. CamelBones can be found on SourceForge, at
       .

Starting From Scratch
       Unfortunately it is not that difficult somehow manage to break ones
       Mac OS X Perl rather severely.  If all else fails and you want to
       really, REALLY, start from scratch and remove even your Apple Perl
       installation (which has become corrupted somehow), the following
       instructions should do it.  Please think twice before following these
       instructions: they are much like conducting brain surgery to yourself.
       Without anesthesia.  We will not come to fix your system if you do
       this.

       First, get rid of the libperl.dylib:

	   # cd /System/Library/Perl/darwin/CORE
	   # rm libperl.dylib

       Then delete every .bundle file found anywhere in the folders:

	   /System/Library/Perl
	   /Library/Perl

       You can find them for example by

	   # find /System/Library/Perl /Library/Perl -name *.bundle -print

       After this you can either copy Perl from your operating system media
       (you will need at least the /System/Library/Perl and /usr/bin/perl), or
       rebuild Perl from the source code with "Configure -Dprefix=/usr -Duser
       shrplib" NOTE: the "-Dprefix=/usr" to replace the system Perl works
       much better with Perl 5.8.1 and later, in Perl 5.8.0 the settings were
       not quite right.

       "Pacifist" from CharlesSoft () is a nice
       way to extract the Perl binaries from the OS media, without having to
       reinstall the entire OS.

AUTHOR
       This README was written by Sherm Pendley , and sub
       sequently updated by Dominic Dunlop .  The "Starting
       From Scratch" recipe was contributed by John Montbriand .

DATE
       Last modified 2005-11-07.



perl v5.8.8			  2008-04-25			 PERLMACOSX(1)