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 perlbeos - Perl version 5.8+ on BeOS =head1 DESCRIPTION This file contains instructions how to build Perl under BeOS and lists known problems. =head1 BUILD AND INSTALL =head2 Requirements I have built and tested Perl 5.8.6 and 5.9.1 under BeOS R5 x86 net server. I can't say anything with regard to PPC. Since Perl 5.8.0 had been released for BeOS BONE, I suspect, there is a good chance, that it still compiles on a BONE system. The only change I've made, that affects BONE systems is the recognition of whether it is a BONE system or not in F<hints/beos.sh>. Now network socket support should remain enabled on BONE systems. This might as well break the build, though. As more recent versions of autoconf require flock() support, I wrote a flock() emulation (flock_server) and released it on BeBits: http://www.bebits.com/app/4030 If you want to build a Perl with flock() support, you have to install this package first. =head2 Configure With flock() support: CFLAGS=-I/path/to/flock/server/headers ./configure.gnu \ --prefix=/boot/home/config Replace C</path/to/flock/server/headers> with the path to the directory containing the C<flock.h> header. Without flock() support: ./configure.gnu --prefix=/boot/home/config =head2 Build With flock() support: make LDLOADLIBS="-lnet -lflock" Without flock() support: make LDLOADLIBS="-lnet" C<-lnet> is needed on net server systems only and if the compiler doesn't add it automatically (Be's R5 gcc does, Oliver Tappe's gcc 2.95.3 does not). =head2 Install Install all perl files: make install Create a symlink for libperl: cd ~/config/lib; ln -s perl5/5.8.6/BePC-beos/CORE/libperl.so . Replace C<5.8.6> with your respective version of Perl. =head1 KNOWN PROBLEMS =over 4 =item * Network socket support is disabled for BeOS R5 net server. I didn't dare yet to try enabling it and see what problems occur. =item * The LFS (large file support) tests (F<t/op/lfs> and F<xt/Fcntl/t/syslfs>) are disabled as seeking beyond 2 GB is broken according to jhi@iki.fi who was the last one checking the BeOS port and updating this file before me. Haven't checked this myself. =item * The F<t/io/fflush> test fails at #6. As far as I can tell, this is caused by a bug in the BeOS pipes implementation that occurs when starting other child processes. In the particular test case a C<system("perl -e 0")> flushes the stdout pipe of another child process. =item * The F<ext/POSIX/t/waitpid> test fails at #1. After all child processes are gone BeOS' waitpid(-1,...) returns 0 instead of -1 (as it should). No idea how to fix this. =back =head1 CONTACT For BeOS specifics problems feel free to mail to: Ingo Weinhold <bonefish@cs.tu-berlin.de> Last update: 2004-12-16