| If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you see. |
| It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is specially |
| designed to be readable as is. |
| |
| =head1 NAME |
| |
| perlaix - Perl version 5 on IBM AIX (UNIX) systems |
| |
| =head1 DESCRIPTION |
| |
| This document describes various features of IBM's UNIX operating |
| system AIX that will affect how Perl version 5 (hereafter just Perl) |
| is compiled and/or runs. |
| |
| =head2 Compiling Perl 5 on AIX |
| |
| For information on compilers on older versions of AIX, see L<Compiling |
| Perl 5 on older AIX versions up to 4.3.3>. |
| |
| When compiling Perl, you must use an ANSI C compiler. AIX does not ship |
| an ANSI compliant C compiler with AIX by default, but binary builds of |
| gcc for AIX are widely available. A version of gcc is also included in |
| the AIX Toolbox which is shipped with AIX. |
| |
| =head2 Supported Compilers |
| |
| Currently all versions of IBM's "xlc", "xlc_r", "cc", "cc_r" or |
| "vac" ANSI/C compiler will work for building Perl if that compiler |
| works on your system. |
| |
| If you plan to link Perl to any module that requires thread-support, |
| like DBD::Oracle, it is better to use the _r version of the compiler. |
| This will not build a threaded Perl, but a thread-enabled Perl. See |
| also L<Threaded Perl> later on. |
| |
| As of writing (2010-09) only the I<IBM XL C for AIX> or I<IBM XL C/C++ |
| for AIX> compiler is supported by IBM on AIX 5L/6.1/7.1. |
| |
| The following compiler versions are currently supported by IBM: |
| |
| IBM XL C and IBM XL C/C++ V8, V9, V10, V11 |
| |
| The XL C for AIX is integrated in the XL C/C++ for AIX compiler and |
| therefore also supported. |
| |
| If you choose XL C/C++ V9 you need APAR IZ35785 installed |
| otherwise the integrated SDBM_File do not compile correctly due |
| to an optimization bug. You can circumvent this problem by |
| adding -qipa to the optimization flags (-Doptimize='-O -qipa'). |
| The PTF for APAR IZ35785 which solves this problem is available |
| from IBM (April 2009 PTF for XL C/C++ Enterprise Edition for AIX, V9.0). |
| |
| If you choose XL C/C++ V11 you need the April 2010 PTF (or newer) |
| installed otherwise you will not get a working Perl version. |
| |
| Perl can be compiled with either IBM's ANSI C compiler or with gcc. |
| The former is recommended, as not only it can compile Perl with no |
| difficulty, but also can take advantage of features listed later |
| that require the use of IBM compiler-specific command-line flags. |
| |
| If you decide to use gcc, make sure your installation is recent and |
| complete, and be sure to read the Perl INSTALL file for more gcc-specific |
| details. Please report any hoops you had to jump through to the |
| development team. |
| |
| =head2 Incompatibility with AIX Toolbox lib gdbm |
| |
| If the AIX Toolbox version of lib gdbm < 1.8.3-5 is installed on your |
| system then Perl will not work. This library contains the header files |
| /opt/freeware/include/gdbm/dbm.h|ndbm.h which conflict with the AIX |
| system versions. The lib gdbm will be automatically removed from the |
| wanted libraries if the presence of one of these two header files is |
| detected. If you want to build Perl with GDBM support then please install |
| at least gdbm-devel-1.8.3-5 (or higher). |
| |
| =head2 Perl 5 was successfully compiled and tested on: |
| |
| Perl | AIX Level | Compiler Level | w th | w/o th |
| -------+---------------------+-------------------------+------+------- |
| 5.12.2 |5.1 TL9 32 bit | XL C/C++ V7 | OK | OK |
| 5.12.2 |5.1 TL9 64 bit | XL C/C++ V7 | OK | OK |
| 5.12.2 |5.2 TL10 SP8 32 bit | XL C/C++ V8 | OK | OK |
| 5.12.2 |5.2 TL10 SP8 32 bit | gcc 3.2.2 | OK | OK |
| 5.12.2 |5.2 TL10 SP8 64 bit | XL C/C++ V8 | OK | OK |
| 5.12.2 |5.3 TL8 SP8 32 bit | XL C/C++ V9 + IZ35785 | OK | OK |
| 5.12.2 |5.3 TL8 SP8 32 bit | gcc 4.2.4 | OK | OK |
| 5.12.2 |5.3 TL8 SP8 64 bit | XL C/C++ V9 + IZ35785 | OK | OK |
| 5.12.2 |5.3 TL10 SP3 32 bit | XL C/C++ V11 + Apr 2010 | OK | OK |
| 5.12.2 |5.3 TL10 SP3 64 bit | XL C/C++ V11 + Apr 2010 | OK | OK |
| 5.12.2 |6.1 TL1 SP7 32 bit | XL C/C++ V10 | OK | OK |
| 5.12.2 |6.1 TL1 SP7 64 bit | XL C/C++ V10 | OK | OK |
| 5.13 |7.1 TL0 SP1 32 bit | XL C/C++ V11 + Jul 2010 | OK | OK |
| 5.13 |7.1 TL0 SP1 64 bit | XL C/C++ V11 + Jul 2010 | OK | OK |
| |
| w th = with thread support |
| w/o th = without thread support |
| OK = tested |
| |
| Successfully tested means that all "make test" runs finish with a |
| result of 100% OK. All tests were conducted with -Duseshrplib set. |
| |
| All tests were conducted on the oldest supported AIX technology level |
| with the latest support package applied. If the tested AIX version is |
| out of support (AIX 4.3.3, 5.1, 5.2) then the last available support |
| level was used. |
| |
| =head2 Building Dynamic Extensions on AIX |
| |
| Starting from Perl 5.7.2 (and consequently 5.8.x / 5.10.x / 5.12.x) |
| and AIX 4.3 or newer Perl uses the AIX native dynamic loading interface |
| in the so called runtime linking mode instead of the emulated interface |
| that was used in Perl releases 5.6.1 and earlier or, for AIX releases |
| 4.2 and earlier. This change does break backward compatibility with |
| compiled modules from earlier Perl releases. The change was made to make |
| Perl more compliant with other applications like Apache/mod_perl which are |
| using the AIX native interface. This change also enables the use of |
| C++ code with static constructors and destructors in Perl extensions, |
| which was not possible using the emulated interface. |
| |
| It is highly recommended to use the new interface. |
| |
| =head2 Using Large Files with Perl |
| |
| Should yield no problems. |
| |
| =head2 Threaded Perl |
| |
| Should yield no problems with AIX 5.1 / 5.2 / 5.3 / 6.1 / 7.1. |
| |
| IBM uses the AIX system Perl (V5.6.0 on AIX 5.1 and V5.8.2 on |
| AIX 5.2 / 5.3 and 6.1; V5.8.8 on AIX 5.3 TL11 and AIX 6.1 TL4; V5.10.1 |
| on AIX 7.1) for some AIX system scripts. If you switch the links in |
| /usr/bin from the AIX system Perl (/usr/opt/perl5) to the newly build |
| Perl then you get the same features as with the IBM AIX system Perl if |
| the threaded options are used. |
| |
| The threaded Perl build works also on AIX 5.1 but the IBM Perl |
| build (Perl v5.6.0) is not threaded on AIX 5.1. |
| |
| Perl 5.12 an newer is not compatible with the IBM fileset perl.libext. |
| |
| =head2 64-bit Perl |
| |
| If your AIX system is installed with 64-bit support, you can expect 64-bit |
| configurations to work. If you want to use 64-bit Perl on AIX 6.1 |
| you need an APAR for a libc.a bug which affects (n)dbm_XXX functions. |
| The APAR number for this problem is IZ39077. |
| |
| If you need more memory (larger data segment) for your Perl programs you |
| can set: |
| |
| /etc/security/limits |
| default: (or your user) |
| data = -1 (default is 262144 * 512 byte) |
| |
| With the default setting the size is limited to 128MB. |
| The -1 removes this limit. If the "make test" fails please change |
| your /etc/security/limits as stated above. |
| |
| =head2 Recommended Options AIX 5.1/5.2/5.3/6.1 and 7.1 (threaded/32-bit) |
| |
| With the following options you get a threaded Perl version which |
| passes all make tests in threaded 32-bit mode, which is the default |
| configuration for the Perl builds that AIX ships with. |
| |
| rm config.sh |
| ./Configure \ |
| -d \ |
| -Dcc=cc_r \ |
| -Duseshrplib \ |
| -Dusethreads \ |
| -Dprefix=/usr/opt/perl5_32 |
| |
| The -Dprefix option will install Perl in a directory parallel to the |
| IBM AIX system Perl installation. |
| |
| =head2 Recommended Options AIX 5.1/5.2/5.3/6.1 and 7.1 (32-bit) |
| |
| With the following options you get a Perl version which passes |
| all make tests in 32-bit mode. |
| |
| rm config.sh |
| ./Configure \ |
| -d \ |
| -Dcc=cc_r \ |
| -Duseshrplib \ |
| -Dprefix=/usr/opt/perl5_32 |
| |
| The -Dprefix option will install Perl in a directory parallel to the |
| IBM AIX system Perl installation. |
| |
| =head2 Recommended Options AIX 5.1/5.2/5.3/6.1 and 7.1 (threaded/64-bit) |
| |
| With the following options you get a threaded Perl version which |
| passes all make tests in 64-bit mode. |
| |
| export OBJECT_MODE=64 / setenv OBJECT_MODE 64 (depending on your shell) |
| |
| rm config.sh |
| ./Configure \ |
| -d \ |
| -Dcc=cc_r \ |
| -Duseshrplib \ |
| -Dusethreads \ |
| -Duse64bitall \ |
| -Dprefix=/usr/opt/perl5_64 |
| |
| =head2 Recommended Options AIX 5.1/5.2/5.3/6.1 and 7.1 (64-bit) |
| |
| With the following options you get a Perl version which passes all |
| make tests in 64-bit mode. |
| |
| export OBJECT_MODE=64 / setenv OBJECT_MODE 64 (depending on your shell) |
| |
| rm config.sh |
| ./Configure \ |
| -d \ |
| -Dcc=cc_r \ |
| -Duseshrplib \ |
| -Duse64bitall \ |
| -Dprefix=/usr/opt/perl5_64 |
| |
| The -Dprefix option will install Perl in a directory parallel to the |
| IBM AIX system Perl installation. |
| |
| If you choose gcc to compile 64-bit Perl then you need to add the |
| following option: |
| |
| -Dcc='gcc -maix64' |
| |
| |
| =head2 Compiling Perl 5 on older AIX versions up to 4.3.3 |
| |
| Due to the fact that AIX 4.3.3 reached end-of-service in December 31, |
| 2003 this information is provided as is. The Perl versions prior to |
| Perl 5.8.9 could be compiled on AIX up to 4.3.3 with the following |
| settings (your mileage may vary): |
| |
| When compiling Perl, you must use an ANSI C compiler. AIX does not ship |
| an ANSI compliant C-compiler with AIX by default, but binary builds of |
| gcc for AIX are widely available. |
| |
| At the moment of writing, AIX supports two different native C compilers, |
| for which you have to pay: B<xlC> and B<vac>. If you decide to use either |
| of these two (which is quite a lot easier than using gcc), be sure to |
| upgrade to the latest available patch level. Currently: |
| |
| xlC.C 3.1.4.10 or 3.6.6.0 or 4.0.2.2 or 5.0.2.9 or 6.0.0.3 |
| vac.C 4.4.0.3 or 5.0.2.6 or 6.0.0.1 |
| |
| note that xlC has the OS version in the name as of version 4.0.2.0, so |
| you will find xlC.C for AIX-5.0 as package |
| |
| xlC.aix50.rte 5.0.2.0 or 6.0.0.3 |
| |
| subversions are not the same "latest" on all OS versions. For example, |
| the latest xlC-5 on aix41 is 5.0.2.9, while on aix43, it is 5.0.2.7. |
| |
| Perl can be compiled with either IBM's ANSI C compiler or with gcc. |
| The former is recommended, as not only can it compile Perl with no |
| difficulty, but also can take advantage of features listed later that |
| require the use of IBM compiler-specific command-line flags. |
| |
| The IBM's compiler patch levels 5.0.0.0 and 5.0.1.0 have compiler |
| optimization bugs that affect compiling perl.c and regcomp.c, |
| respectively. If Perl's configuration detects those compiler patch |
| levels, optimization is turned off for the said source code files. |
| Upgrading to at least 5.0.2.0 is recommended. |
| |
| If you decide to use gcc, make sure your installation is recent and |
| complete, and be sure to read the Perl INSTALL file for more gcc-specific |
| details. Please report any hoops you had to jump through to the development |
| team. |
| |
| =head2 OS level |
| |
| Before installing the patches to the IBM C-compiler you need to know the |
| level of patching for the Operating System. IBM's command 'oslevel' will |
| show the base, but is not always complete (in this example oslevel shows |
| 4.3.NULL, whereas the system might run most of 4.3.THREE): |
| |
| # oslevel |
| 4.3.0.0 |
| # lslpp -l | grep 'bos.rte ' |
| bos.rte 4.3.3.75 COMMITTED Base Operating System Runtime |
| bos.rte 4.3.2.0 COMMITTED Base Operating System Runtime |
| # |
| |
| The same might happen to AIX 5.1 or other OS levels. As a side note, Perl |
| cannot be built without bos.adt.syscalls and bos.adt.libm installed |
| |
| # lslpp -l | egrep "syscalls|libm" |
| bos.adt.libm 5.1.0.25 COMMITTED Base Application Development |
| bos.adt.syscalls 5.1.0.36 COMMITTED System Calls Application |
| # |
| |
| =head2 Building Dynamic Extensions on AIX E<lt> 5L |
| |
| AIX supports dynamically loadable objects as well as shared libraries. |
| Shared libraries by convention end with the suffix .a, which is a bit |
| misleading, as an archive can contain static as well as dynamic members. |
| For Perl dynamically loaded objects we use the .so suffix also used on |
| many other platforms. |
| |
| Note that starting from Perl 5.7.2 (and consequently 5.8.0) and AIX 4.3 |
| or newer Perl uses the AIX native dynamic loading interface in the so |
| called runtime linking mode instead of the emulated interface that was |
| used in Perl releases 5.6.1 and earlier or, for AIX releases 4.2 and |
| earlier. This change does break backward compatibility with compiled |
| modules from earlier Perl releases. The change was made to make Perl |
| more compliant with other applications like Apache/mod_perl which are |
| using the AIX native interface. This change also enables the use of C++ |
| code with static constructors and destructors in Perl extensions, which |
| was not possible using the emulated interface. |
| |
| =head2 The IBM ANSI C Compiler |
| |
| All defaults for Configure can be used. |
| |
| If you've chosen to use vac 4, be sure to run 4.4.0.3. Older versions |
| will turn up nasty later on. For vac 5 be sure to run at least 5.0.1.0, |
| but vac 5.0.2.6 or up is highly recommended. Note that since IBM has |
| removed vac 5.0.2.1 through 5.0.2.5 from the software depot, these |
| versions should be considered obsolete. |
| |
| Here's a brief lead of how to upgrade the compiler to the latest |
| level. Of course this is subject to changes. You can only upgrade |
| versions from ftp-available updates if the first three digit groups |
| are the same (in where you can skip intermediate unlike the patches |
| in the developer snapshots of Perl), or to one version up where the |
| "base" is available. In other words, the AIX compiler patches are |
| cumulative. |
| |
| vac.C.4.4.0.1 => vac.C.4.4.0.3 is OK (vac.C.4.4.0.2 not needed) |
| xlC.C.3.1.3.3 => xlC.C.3.1.4.10 is NOT OK (xlC.C.3.1.4.0 is not available) |
| |
| # ftp ftp.software.ibm.com |
| Connected to service.boulder.ibm.com. |
| : welcome message ... |
| Name (ftp.software.ibm.com:merijn): anonymous |
| 331 Guest login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password. |
| Password: |
| ... accepted login stuff |
| ftp> cd /aix/fixes/v4/ |
| ftp> dir other other.ll |
| output to local-file: other.ll? y |
| 200 PORT command successful. |
| 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls. |
| 226 Transfer complete. |
| ftp> dir xlc xlc.ll |
| output to local-file: xlc.ll? y |
| 200 PORT command successful. |
| 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls. |
| 226 Transfer complete. |
| ftp> bye |
| ... goodbye messages |
| # ls -l *.ll |
| -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn system 1169432 Nov 2 17:29 other.ll |
| -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn system 29170 Nov 2 17:29 xlc.ll |
| |
| On AIX 4.2 using xlC, we continue: |
| |
| # lslpp -l | fgrep 'xlC.C ' |
| xlC.C 3.1.4.9 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler |
| xlC.C 3.1.4.0 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler |
| # grep 'xlC.C.3.1.4.*.bff' xlc.ll |
| -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6286336 Jul 22 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.1.bff |
| -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6173696 Aug 24 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.10.bff |
| -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6319104 Aug 14 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.2.bff |
| -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6316032 Oct 21 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.3.bff |
| -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6315008 Dec 20 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.4.bff |
| -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6178816 Mar 28 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.5.bff |
| -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6188032 May 22 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.6.bff |
| -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6191104 Sep 5 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.7.bff |
| -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6185984 Jan 13 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.8.bff |
| -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6169600 May 27 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.9.bff |
| # wget ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/fixes/v4/xlc/xlC.C.3.1.4.10.bff |
| # |
| |
| On AIX 4.3 using vac, we continue: |
| |
| # lslpp -l | grep 'vac.C ' |
| vac.C 5.0.2.2 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler |
| vac.C 5.0.2.0 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler |
| # grep 'vac.C.5.0.2.*.bff' other.ll |
| -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 13592576 Apr 16 2001 vac.C.5.0.2.0.bff |
| -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 14133248 Apr 9 2002 vac.C.5.0.2.3.bff |
| -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 14173184 May 20 2002 vac.C.5.0.2.4.bff |
| -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 14192640 Nov 22 2002 vac.C.5.0.2.6.bff |
| # wget ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/fixes/v4/other/vac.C.5.0.2.6.bff |
| # |
| |
| Likewise on all other OS levels. Then execute the following command, and |
| fill in its choices |
| |
| # smit install_update |
| -> Install and Update from LATEST Available Software |
| * INPUT device / directory for software [ vac.C.5.0.2.6.bff ] |
| [ OK ] |
| [ OK ] |
| |
| Follow the messages ... and you're done. |
| |
| If you like a more web-like approach, a good start point can be |
| http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/download/downloadaz.jsp and click |
| "C for AIX", and follow the instructions. |
| |
| =head2 The usenm option |
| |
| If linking miniperl |
| |
| cc -o miniperl ... miniperlmain.o opmini.o perl.o ... -lm -lc ... |
| |
| causes error like this |
| |
| ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .aintl |
| ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .copysignl |
| ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .syscall |
| ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .eaccess |
| ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .setresuid |
| ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .setresgid |
| ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .setproctitle |
| ld: 0711-345 Use the -bloadmap or -bnoquiet option to obtain more information. |
| |
| you could retry with |
| |
| make realclean |
| rm config.sh |
| ./Configure -Dusenm ... |
| |
| which makes Configure to use the C<nm> tool when scanning for library |
| symbols, which usually is not done in AIX. |
| |
| Related to this, you probably should not use the C<-r> option of |
| Configure in AIX, because that affects of how the C<nm> tool is used. |
| |
| =head2 Using GNU's gcc for building Perl |
| |
| Using gcc-3.x (tested with 3.0.4, 3.1, and 3.2) now works out of the box, |
| as do recent gcc-2.9 builds available directly from IBM as part of their |
| Linux compatibility packages, available here: |
| |
| http://www.ibm.com/servers/aix/products/aixos/linux/ |
| |
| =head2 Using Large Files with Perl E<lt> 5L |
| |
| Should yield no problems. |
| |
| =head2 Threaded Perl E<lt> 5L |
| |
| Threads seem to work OK, though at the moment not all tests pass when |
| threads are used in combination with 64-bit configurations. |
| |
| You may get a warning when doing a threaded build: |
| |
| "pp_sys.c", line 4640.39: 1506-280 (W) Function argument assignment |
| between types "unsigned char*" and "const void*" is not allowed. |
| |
| The exact line number may vary, but if the warning (W) comes from a line |
| line this |
| |
| hent = PerlSock_gethostbyaddr(addr, (Netdb_hlen_t) addrlen, addrtype); |
| |
| in the "pp_ghostent" function, you may ignore it safely. The warning |
| is caused by the reentrant variant of gethostbyaddr() having a slightly |
| different prototype than its non-reentrant variant, but the difference |
| is not really significant here. |
| |
| =head2 64-bit Perl E<lt> 5L |
| |
| If your AIX is installed with 64-bit support, you can expect 64-bit |
| configurations to work. In combination with threads some tests might |
| still fail. |
| |
| =head2 AIX 4.2 and extensions using C++ with statics |
| |
| In AIX 4.2 Perl extensions that use C++ functions that use statics |
| may have problems in that the statics are not getting initialized. |
| In newer AIX releases this has been solved by linking Perl with |
| the libC_r library, but unfortunately in AIX 4.2 the said library |
| has an obscure bug where the various functions related to time |
| (such as time() and gettimeofday()) return broken values, and |
| therefore in AIX 4.2 Perl is not linked against the libC_r. |
| |
| =head1 AUTHORS |
| |
| Rainer Tammer <tammer@tammer.net> |
| |
| =cut |