source: trunk/third/perl/README.amiga @ 17035

If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you
see. It is written in the POD format (see perlpod manpage) which is
specially designed to be readable as is.

=head1 NAME

perlamiga - Perl under Amiga OS

=head1 SYNOPSIS

One can read this document in the following formats:

        man perlamiga
        multiview perlamiga.guide

to list some (not all may be available simultaneously), or it may
be read I<as is>: either as F<README.amiga>, or F<pod/perlamiga.pod>.

A recent version of perl for the Amiga can be found at the Geek Gadgets
section of the Aminet:
  
      http://www.aminet.net/~aminet/dirs/dev_gg.html

=cut

Contents
 
 perlamiga - Perl under Amiga OS

       NAME 
       SYNOPSIS 
       DESCRIPTION 
         -  Prerequisites 
         -  Starting Perl programs under AmigaOS
         -  Shortcomings of Perl under AmigaOS
       INSTALLATION 
       Accessing documentation 
         -  Manpages 
         -  HTML 
         -  GNU info files 
         -  LaTeX docs 
       BUILD 
         -  Prerequisites 
         -  Getting the perl source 
         -  Application of the patches 
         -  Making 
         -  Testing 
         -  Installing the built perl 
       AUTHOR 
       SEE ALSO 

=head1 DESCRIPTION

=head2 Prerequisites

=over 6

=item B<Unix emulation for AmigaOS: ixemul.library>

You need the Unix emulation for AmigaOS, whose most important part is
B<ixemul.library>. For a minimum setup, get the latest versions
of the following packages from the Aminet archives (http://www.aminet.net/~aminet/):

        ixemul-bin
        ixemul-env-bin
        pdksh-bin

Note also that this is a minimum setup; you might want to add other
packages of B<ADE> (the I<Amiga Developers Environment>).

=item B<Version of Amiga OS>

You need at the very least AmigaOS version 2.0. Recommended is version 3.1.

=back

=head2 Starting Perl programs under AmigaOS

Start your Perl program F<foo> with arguments C<arg1 arg2 arg3> the
same way as on any other platform, by

        perl foo arg1 arg2 arg3

If you want to specify perl options C<-my_opts> to the perl itself (as
opposed to to your program), use

        perl -my_opts foo arg1 arg2 arg3

Alternately, you can try to get a replacement for the system's B<Execute>
command that honors the #!/usr/bin/perl syntax in scripts and set the s-Bit
of your scripts. Then you can invoke your scripts like under UNIX with

        foo arg1 arg2 arg3

(Note that having *nixish full path to perl F</usr/bin/perl> is not
necessary, F<perl> would be enough, but having full path would make it
easier to use your script under *nix.)

=head2 Shortcomings of Perl under AmigaOS

Perl under AmigaOS lacks some features of perl under UNIX because of
deficiencies in the UNIX-emulation, most notably:

=over 4

=item * 

fork()

=item *

some features of the UNIX filesystem regarding link count and file dates

=item *

inplace operation (the B<-i> switch) without backup file

=item *

umask() works, but the correct permissions are only set when the file is
finally close()d

=back

=head1 INSTALLATION

Change to the installation directory (most probably ADE:), and
extract the binary distribution:

lha -mraxe x perl-$VERSION-bin.lha

or

tar xvzpf perl-$VERSION-bin.tgz

(Of course you need lha or tar and gunzip for this.)

For installation of the Unix emulation, read the appropriate docs.

=head1 Accessing documentation

=head2 Manpages

If you have C<man> installed on your system, and you installed perl
manpages, use something like this:

        man perlfunc
        man less
        man ExtUtils.MakeMaker

to access documentation for different components of Perl. Start with

        man perl

Note: You have to modify your man.conf file to search for manpages
in the /ade/lib/perl5/man/man3 directory, or the man pages for the
perl library will not be found. 

Note that dot (F<.>) is used as a package separator for documentation
for packages, and as usual, sometimes you need to give the section - C<3>
above - to avoid shadowing by the I<less(1) manpage>.


=head2 B<HTML>

If you have some WWW browser available, you can build B<HTML> docs.
Cd to directory with F<.pod> files, and do like this

        cd /ade/lib/perl5/pod
        pod2html

After this you can direct your browser the file F<perl.html> in this
directory, and go ahead with reading docs.

Alternatively you may be able to get these docs prebuilt from C<CPAN>.

=head2 B<GNU> C<info> files

Users of C<Emacs> would appreciate it very much, especially with
C<CPerl> mode loaded. You need to get latest C<pod2info> from C<CPAN>,
or, alternately, prebuilt info pages.

=head2 C<LaTeX> docs

can be constructed using C<pod2latex>.

=head1 BUILD

Here we discuss how to build Perl under AmigaOS.

=head2 Prerequisites

You need to have the latest B<ixemul> (Unix emulation for Amiga)
from Aminet.

=head2 Getting the perl source

You can either get the latest perl-for-amiga source from Ninemoons
and extract it with:

  tar xvzpf perl-$VERSION-src.tgz

or get the official source from CPAN:

  http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/5.0

Extract it like this

  tar xvzpf perl-$VERSION.tar.gz

You will see a message about errors while extracting F<Configure>. This
is normal and expected. (There is a conflict with a similarly-named file
F<configure>, but it causes no harm.)

=head2 Making

=over 4

=item *

remember to use a healthy sized stack (I used 2000000)

=item *

your PATH environment variable must include /bin (e.g. ".:/bin" is good)
(or, more precisely, it must include the directory where you have your
basic UNIX utilities like test, cat, sed, and so on)

=item *
        
  sh Configure -Dprefix=/ade -Dloclibpth=/ade/lib

=item *

fix makedepend

        In the file 'makedepend' there are three spots like this `$cat ...`:
        a for loop near line 75, an egrep near line 161, and a for loop near
        line 175.  In all those spots using an editor change the $cat to
        /bin/cat.

=item *

now type make depend

        When the make depend has ended load the gnumakefile into
        an editor and go to the end of the file.

        Move upwards in the file until you reach av.o: EXTERN.h
        and delete all lines down to # WARNING: Put....

=item *

now go to the x2p directory

        Load the gnumakefile into an editor.

        Go to the end moveup until you reach hash.o: EXTERN.h
        and delete all lines dowonwards until you reach a line saying

        # WARNING: Put nothing....

=item *

Now!

  make

=back

=head2 Testing

Now run

  make test

Some tests will be skipped because they need the fork() function:

F<io/pipe.t>, F<op/fork.t>, F<lib/filehand.t>, F<lib/open2.t>, F<lib/open3.t>, 
F<lib/io_pipe.t>, F<lib/io_sock.t>

=head2 Installing the built perl

Run

  make install

=head1 AUTHORS

Norbert Pueschel, pueschel@imsdd.meb.uni-bonn.de
Jan-Erik Karlsson, trg@privat.utfors.se

=head1 SEE ALSO

perl(1).

=cut