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perlos2 (1)
>> perlos2 (1) ( Solaris man: Команды и прикладные программы пользовательского уровня )
perlos2 (1) ( Разные man: Команды и прикладные программы пользовательского уровня )
NAME
perlos2 - Perl under OS/2, DOS, Win0.3*, Win0.95 and WinNT.
SYNOPSIS
One can read this document in the following formats:
man perlos2
view perl perlos2
explorer perlos2.html
info perlos2
to list some (not all may be available simultaneously), or
it may be read asis: either as README.os2, or
pod/perlos2.pod.
To read the .INF version of documentation (very recommended)
outside of OS/2, one needs an IBM's reader (may be available
on IBM ftp sites (?) (URL anyone?)) or shipped with PC DOS
7.0 and IBM's Visual Age C++ 3.5.
A copy of a Win* viewer is contained in the "Just add OS/2
Warp" package
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/tools/jaow/jaow.zip
in ?:\JUST_ADD\view.exe. This gives one an access to EMX's
.INF docs as well (text form is available in /emx/doc in
EMX's distribution).
Note that if you have lynx.exe installed, you can follow WWW
links from this document in .INF format. If you have EMX
docs installed correctly, you can follow library links (you
need to have `view emxbook' working by setting `EMXBOOK'
environment variable as it is described in EMX docs).
DESCRIPTION
Target
The target is to make OS/2 the best supported platform for
using/building/developing Perl and Perlapplications, as
well as make Perl the best language to use under OS/2. The
secondary target is to try to make this work under DOS and
Win* as well (but not too hard).
The current state is quite close to this target. Known
limitations:
o Some *nix programs use fork() a lot, but currently
fork() is not supported after useing dynamically loaded
extensions.
o You need a separate perl executable perl__.exe (see the
perl__.exe manpage) to use PM code in your application
(like the forthcoming Perl/Tk).
o There is no simple way to access WPS objects. The only
way I know is via `OS2::REXX' extension (see the
OS2::REXX manpage), and we do not have access to
convenience methods of Object-REXX. (Is it possible at
all? I know of no Object-REXX API.)
Please keep this list up-to-date by informing me about other
items.
OtherOSes
Since OS/2 port of perl uses a remarkable EMX environment,
it can run (and build extensions, and - possibly - be build
itself) under any environment which can run EMX. The current
list is DOS, DOS-inside-OS/2, Win0.3*, Win0.95 and WinNT.
Out of many perl flavors, only one works, see the section on
"perl_.exe".
Note that not all features of Perl are available under these
environments. This depends on the features the extender -
most probably RSX - decided to implement.
Cf. the Prerequisites manpage.
Prerequisites
EMX EMX runtime is required (may be substituted by RSX).
Note that it is possible to make perl_.exe to run
under DOS without any external support by binding
emx.exe/rsx.exe to it, see the emxbind manpage. Note
that under DOS for best results one should use RSX
runtime, which has much more functions working (like
`fork', `popen' and so on). In fact RSX is required if
there is no VCPI present. Note the RSX requires DPMI.
Only the latest runtime is supported, currently
`0.9c'. Perl may run under earlier versions of EMX,
but this is not tested.
One can get different parts of EMX from, say
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/os2/emx09c/
ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/os2/unix/emx09c/
The runtime component should have the name emxrt.zip.
NOTE. It is enough to have emx.exe/rsx.exe on your
path. One does not need to specify them explicitly
(though this
emx perl_.exe -de 0
will work as well.)
RSX To run Perl on DPMI platforms one needs RSX runtime.
This is needed under DOS-inside-OS/2, Win0.3*, Win0.95
and WinNT (see the section on "Other OSes"). RSX would
not work with VCPI only, as EMX would, it requires
DMPI.
Having RSX and the latest sh.exe one gets a fully
functional *nix-ish environment under DOS, say,
`fork', ```' and pipe-`open' work. In fact, MakeMaker
works (for static build), so one can have Perl
development environment under DOS.
One can get RSX from, say
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/os2/emx09c/contrib
ftp://ftp.uni-bielefeld.de/pub/systems/msdos/misc
ftp://ftp.leo.org/pub/comp/os/os2/leo/devtools/emx+gcc/contrib
Contact the author on
`rainer@mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de'.
The latest sh.exe with DOS hooks is available at
ftp://ftp.math.ohio-state.edu/pub/users/ilya/os2/sh_dos.zip
HPFS Perl does not care about file systems, but to install
the whole perl library intact one needs a file system
which supports long file names.
Note that if you do not plan to build the perl itself,
it may be possible to fool EMX to truncate file names.
This is not supported, read EMX docs to see how to do
it.
pdksh To start external programs with complicated command
lines (like with pipes in between, and/or quoting of
arguments), Perl uses an external shell. With EMX port
such shell should be named <sh.exe>, and located
either in the wired-in-during-compile locations
(usually F:/bin), or in configurable location (see the
section on "PERL_SH_DIR").
For best results use EMX pdksh. The soon-to-be-
available standard binary (5.2.12?) runs under DOS
(with the RSX manpage) as well, meanwhile use the
binary from
ftp://ftp.math.ohio-state.edu/pub/users/ilya/os2/sh_dos.zip
StartingPerlprogramsunderOS/2(andDOSand...)
Start your Perl program foo.pl with arguments `arg1 arg2
arg3' the same way as on any other platform, by
perl foo.pl arg1 arg2 arg3
If you want to specify perl options `-my_opts' to the perl
itself (as opposed to to your program), use
perl -my_opts foo.pl arg1 arg2 arg3
Alternately, if you use OS/2-ish shell, like CMD or 4os2,
put the following at the start of your perl script:
extproc perl -S -my_opts
rename your program to foo.cmd, and start it by typing
foo arg1 arg2 arg3
Note that because of stupid OS/2 limitations the full path
of the perl script is not available when you use `extproc',
thus you are forced to use `-S' perl switch, and your script
should be on path. As a plus side, if you know a full path
to your script, you may still start it with
perl ../../blah/foo.cmd arg1 arg2 arg3
(note that the argument `-my_opts' is taken care of by the
`extproc' line in your script, see the section on "`extproc'
on the first line").
To understand what the above magic does, read perl docs
about `-S' switch - see the perlrun manpage, and cmdref
about `extproc':
view perl perlrun
man perlrun
view cmdref extproc
help extproc
or whatever method you prefer.
There are also endless possibilities to use executableextensions of 4os2, associations of WPS and so on...
However, if you use *nixish shell (like sh.exe supplied in
the binary distribution), you need to follow the syntax
specified in the Switches entry in the perlrun manpage.
Note that -S switch enables a search with additional
extensions .cmd, .btm, .bat, .pl as well.
StartingOS/2(andDOS)programsunderPerl
This is what system() (see the system entry in the perlfunc
manpage), ```' (see the I/O Operators entry in the perlop
manpage), and openpipe (see the open entry in the perlfunc
manpage) are for. (Avoid exec() (see the exec entry in the
perlfunc manpage) unless you know what you do).
Note however that to use some of these operators you need to
have a sh-syntax shell installed (see the section on
"Pdksh", the section on "Frequently asked questions"), and
perl should be able to find it (see the section on
"PERL_SH_DIR").
The cases when the shell is used are:
1 One-argument system() (see the system entry in the
perlfunc manpage), exec() (see the exec entry in the
perlfunc manpage) with redirection or shell meta-
characters;
2 Pipe-open (see the open entry in the perlfunc manpage)
with the command which contains redirection or shell
meta-characters;
3 Backticks ```' (see the I/O Operators entry in the
perlop manpage) with the command which contains
redirection or shell meta-characters;
4 If the executable called by system()/exec()/pipe-
open()/```' is a script with the "magic" `#!' line or
`extproc' line which specifies shell;
5 If the executable called by system()/exec()/pipe-
open()/```' is a script without "magic" line, and
`$ENV{EXECSHELL}' is set to shell;
6 If the executable called by system()/exec()/pipe-
open()/```' is not found;
7 For globbing (see the glob entry in the perlfunc
manpage, the I/O Operators entry in the perlop manpage).
For the sake of speed for a common case, in the above
algorithms backslashes in the command name are not
considered as shell metacharacters.
Perl starts scripts which begin with cookies `extproc' or
`#!' directly, without an intervention of shell. Perl uses
the same algorithm to find the executable as pdksh: if the
path on `#!' line does not work, and contains `/', then the
executable is searched in . and on `PATH'. To find
arguments for these scripts Perl uses a different algorithm
than pdksh: up to 3 arguments are recognized, and trailing
whitespace is stripped.
If a script does not contain such a cooky, then to avoid
calling sh.exe, Perl uses the same algorithm as pdksh: if
`$ENV{EXECSHELL}' is set, the script is given as the first
argument to this command, if not set, then `$ENV{COMSPEC}
/c' is used (or a hardwired guess if `$ENV{COMSPEC}' is not
set).
If starting scripts directly, Perl will use exactly the same
algorithm as for the search of script given by -S command-
line option: it will look in the current directory, then on
components of `$ENV{PATH}' using the following order of
appended extensions: no extension, .cmd, .btm, .bat, .pl.
Note that Perl will start to look for scripts only if OS/2
cannot start the specified application, thus `system 'blah''
will not look for a script if there is an executable file
blah.exeanywhere on `PATH'.
Note also that executable files on OS/2 can have an
arbitrary extension, but .exe will be automatically appended
if no dot is present in the name. The workaround as as
simple as that: since blah. and blah denote the same file,
to start an executable residing in file n:/bin/blah (no
extension) give an argument `n:/bin/blah.' to system().
The last note is that currently it is not straightforward to
start PM programs from VIO (=text-mode) Perl process and
visa versa. Either ensure that shell will be used, as in
`system 'cmd /c epm'', or start it using optional arguments
to system() documented in `OS2::Process' module. This is
considered a bug and should be fixed soon.
Frequently asked questions
Icannotrunexternalprograms
Did you run your programs with `-w' switch? See the 2
(and DOS) programs under Perl entry in the Starting OS
manpage.
Do you try to run internal shell commands, like ``copy a
b`' (internal for cmd.exe), or ``glob a*b`' (internal
for ksh)? You need to specify your shell explicitly,
like ``cmd /c copy a b`', since Perl cannot deduce which
commands are internal to your shell.
Icannotembedperlintomyprogram,oruseperl.dll from my
program." program."
Is your program EMX-compiled with `-Zmt -Zcrtdll'?
If not, you need to build a stand-alone DLL for perl.
Contact me, I did it once. Sockets would not work, as a
lot of other stuff.
Did you use the ExtUtils::Embed manpage?
I had reports it does not work. Somebody would need to
fix it.
```' and pipe-`open' do not work under DOS.
This may a variant of just the section on "I cannot run
external programs", or a deeper problem. Basically: you need
RSX (see the section on "Prerequisites") for these commands
to work, and you may need a port of sh.exe which understands
command arguments. One of such ports is listed in the
section on "Prerequisites" under RSX. Do not forget to set
variable `the section on "PERL_SH_DIR"' as well.
DPMI is required for RSX.
Cannotstart`find.exe"pattern"file'
Use one of
system 'cmd', '/c', 'find "pattern" file';
`cmd /c 'find "pattern" file'`
This would start find.exe via cmd.exe via `sh.exe' via
`perl.exe', but this is a price to pay if you want to use
non-conforming program. In fact find.exe cannot be started
at all using C library API only. Otherwise the following
command-lines were equivalent:
find "pattern" file
find pattern file
INSTALLATION
Automaticbinaryinstallation
The most convenient way of installing perl is via perl
installer install.exe. Just follow the instructions, and 99%
of the installation blues would go away.
Note however, that you need to have unzip.exe on your path,
and EMX environment running. The latter means that if you
just installed EMX, and made all the needed changes to
Config.sys, you may need to reboot in between. Check EMX
runtime by running
emxrev
A folder is created on your desktop which contains some
useful objects.
Thingsnottakencareofbyautomaticbinaryinstallation:
`PERL_BADLANG' may be needed if you change your codepage
after perl installation, and the new value is
not supported by EMX. See the section on
"PERL_BADLANG".
`PERL_BADFREE' see the section on "PERL_BADFREE".
Config.pm This file resides somewhere deep in the
location you installed your perl library,
find it out by
perl -MConfig -le "print $INC{'Config.pm'}"
While most important values in this file are
updated by the binary installer, some of them
may need to be hand-edited. I know no such
data, please keep me informed if you find
one.
NOTE. Because of a typo the binary installer of 5.00305
would install a variable `PERL_SHPATH' into Config.sys.
Please remove this variable and put `the PERL_SH_DIR
manpage' instead.
Manualbinaryinstallation
As of version 5.00305, OS/2 perl binary distribution comes
split into 11 components. Unfortunately, to enable
configurable binary installation, the file paths in the zip
files are not absolute, but relative to some directory.
Note that the extraction with the stored paths is still
necessary (default with unzip, specify `-d' to pkunzip).
However, you need to know where to extract the files. You
need also to manually change entries in Config.sys to
reflect where did you put the files. Note that if you have
some primitive unzipper (like pkunzip), you may get a lot of
warnings/errors during unzipping. Upgrade to `(w)unzip'.
Below is the sample of what to do to reproduce the
configuration on my machine:
Perl VIO and PM executables (dynamically linked)
unzip perl_exc.zip *.exe *.ico -d f:/emx.add/bin
unzip perl_exc.zip *.dll -d f:/emx.add/dll
(have the directories with `*.exe' on PATH, and `*.dll'
on LIBPATH);
Perl_ VIO executable (statically linked)
unzip perl_aou.zip -d f:/emx.add/bin
(have the directory on PATH);
Executables for Perl utilities
unzip perl_utl.zip -d f:/emx.add/bin
(have the directory on PATH);
Main Perl library
unzip perl_mlb.zip -d f:/perllib/lib
If this directory is preserved, you do not need to change
anything. However, for perl to find it if it is changed,
you need to `set PERLLIB_PREFIX' in Config.sys, see the
section on "PERLLIB_PREFIX".
Additional Perl modules
unzip perl_ste.zip -d f:/perllib/lib/site_perl
If you do not change this directory, do nothing.
Otherwise put this directory and subdirectory ./os2 in
`PERLLIB' or `PERL5LIB' variable. Do not use `PERL5LIB'
unless you have it set already. See the ENVIRONMENT entry
in the perl manpage.
Tools to compile Perl modules
unzip perl_blb.zip -d f:/perllib/lib
If this directory is preserved, you do not need to change
anything. However, for perl to find it if it is changed,
you need to `set PERLLIB_PREFIX' in Config.sys, see the
section on "PERLLIB_PREFIX".
Manpages for Perl and utilities
unzip perl_man.zip -d f:/perllib/man
This directory should better be on `MANPATH'. You need to
have a working man to access these files.
Manpages for Perl modules
unzip perl_mam.zip -d f:/perllib/man
This directory should better be on `MANPATH'. You need to
have a working man to access these files.
Source for Perl documentation
unzip perl_pod.zip -d f:/perllib/lib
This is used by by `perldoc' program (see the perldoc
manpage), and may be used to generate HTML documentation
usable by WWW browsers, and documentation in zillions of
other formats: `info', `LaTeX', `Acrobat', `FrameMaker'
and so on.
Perl manual in .INF format
unzip perl_inf.zip -d d:/os2/book
This directory should better be on `BOOKSHELF'.
Pdksh
unzip perl_sh.zip -d f:/bin
This is used by perl to run external commands which
explicitly require shell, like the commands using
redirection and shellmetacharacters. It is also used
instead of explicit /bin/sh.
Set `PERL_SH_DIR' (see the section on "PERL_SH_DIR") if
you move sh.exe from the above location.
Note. It may be possible to use some other sh-compatible
shell (nottested).
After you installed the components you needed and updated
the Config.sys correspondingly, you need to hand-edit
Config.pm. This file resides somewhere deep in the location
you installed your perl library, find it out by
perl -MConfig -le "print $INC{'Config.pm'}"
You need to correct all the entries which look like file
paths (they currently start with `f:/').
Warning
The automatic and manual perl installation leave precompiled
paths inside perl executables. While these paths are
overwriteable (see the section on "PERLLIB_PREFIX", the
section on "PERL_SH_DIR"), one may get better results by
binary editing of paths inside the executables/DLLs.
Accessing documentation
Depending on how you built/installed perl you may have
(otherwise identical) Perl documentation in the following
formats:
OS/2 .INF file
Most probably the most convenient form. Under OS/2 view it
as
view perl
view perl perlfunc
view perl less
view perl ExtUtils::MakeMaker
(currently the last two may hit a wrong location, but this
may improve soon). Under Win* see the section on "SYNOPSIS".
If you want to build the docs yourself, and have OS/2toolkit, run
pod2ipf > perl.ipf
in /perllib/lib/pod directory, then
ipfc /inf perl.ipf
(Expect a lot of errors during the both steps.) Now move it
on your BOOKSHELF path.
Plaintext
If you have perl documentation in the source form, perl
utilities installed, and GNU groff installed, you may use
perldoc perlfunc
perldoc less
perldoc ExtUtils::MakeMaker
to access the perl documentation in the text form (note that
you may get better results using perl manpages).
Alternately, try running pod2text on .pod files.
Manpages
If you have man installed on your system, and you installed
perl manpages, use something like this:
man perlfunc
man 3 less
man ExtUtils.MakeMaker
to access documentation for different components of Perl.
Start with
man perl
Note that dot (.) is used as a package separator for
documentation for packages, and as usual, sometimes you need
to give the section - `3' above - to avoid shadowing by the
less(1)manpage.
Make sure that the directory above the directory with
manpages is on our `MANPATH', like this
set MANPATH=c:/man;f:/perllib/man
HTML
If you have some WWW browser available, installed the Perl
documentation in the source form, and Perl utilities, you
can build HTML docs. Cd to directory with .pod files, and do
like this
cd f:/perllib/lib/pod
pod2html
After this you can direct your browser the file perl.html in
this directory, and go ahead with reading docs, like this:
explore file:///f:/perllib/lib/pod/perl.html
Alternatively you may be able to get these docs prebuilt
from CPAN.
GNU`info' files
Users of Emacs would appreciate it very much, especially
with `CPerl' mode loaded. You need to get latest `pod2info'
from `CPAN', or, alternately, prebuilt info pages.
for `Acrobat' are available on CPAN (for slightly old
version of perl).
`LaTeX' docs
can be constructed using `pod2latex'.
BUILD
Here we discuss how to build Perl under OS/2. There is an
alternative (but maybe older) view on the section on
"/www.shadow.net/~troc/os2perl.html" in the http: manpage.
Prerequisites
You need to have the latest EMX development environment, the
full GNU tool suite (gawk renamed to awk, and GNU find.exe
earlier on path than the OS/2 find.exe, same with sort.exe,
to check use
find --version
sort --version
). You need the latest version of pdksh installed as sh.exe.
Check that you have BSD libraries and headers installed, and
- optionally - Berkeley DB headers and libraries, and crypt.
Possible locations to get this from are
ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/os2/unix/
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/os2/unix/
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/os2/dev32/
ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/os2/emx09c/
It is reported that the following archives contain enough
utils to build perl: gnufutil.zip, gnusutil.zip,
gnututil.zip, gnused.zip, gnupatch.zip, gnuawk.zip,
gnumake.zip and ksh527rt.zip. Note that all these utilities
are known to be available from LEO:
ftp://ftp.leo.org/pub/comp/os/os2/leo/gnu
Make sure that no copies or perl are currently running.
Later steps of the build may fail since an older version of
perl.dll loaded into memory may be found.
Also make sure that you have /tmp directory on the current
drive, and . directory in your `LIBPATH'. One may try to
correct the latter condition by
set BEGINLIBPATH .
if you use something like CMD.EXE or latest versions of
4os2.exe.
Make sure your gcc is good for `-Zomf' linking: run
`omflibs' script in /emx/lib directory.
Check that you have link386 installed. It comes standard
with OS/2, but may be not installed due to customization. If
typing
link386
shows you do not have it, do Selectiveinstall, and choose
`Link object modules' in Optionalsystemutilities/More. If
you get into link386, press `Ctrl-C'.
Gettingperlsource
You need to fetch the latest perl source (including
developers releases). With some probability it is located in
http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/5.0
http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/5.0/unsupported
If not, you may need to dig in the indices to find it in the
directory of the current maintainer.
Quick cycle of developers release may break the OS/2 build
time to time, looking into
http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/os2/ilyaz/
may indicate the latest release which was publicly released
by the maintainer. Note that the release may include some
additional patches to apply to the current source of perl.
Extract it like this
tar vzxf perl5.00409.tar.gz
You may see a message about errors while extracting
Configure. This is because there is a conflict with a
similarly-named file configure.
Change to the directory of extraction.
Applicationofthepatches
You need to apply the patches in ./os2/diff.* like this:
gnupatch -p0 < os2\diff.configure
You may also need to apply the patches supplied with the
binary distribution of perl.
Note also that the db.lib and db.a from the EMX distribution
are not suitable for multi-threaded compile (note that
currently perl is not multithread-safe, but is compiled as
multithreaded for compatibility with XFree86-OS/2). Get a
corrected one from
ftp://ftp.math.ohio-state.edu/pub/users/ilya/os2/db_mt.zip
To make `-p' filetest work, one may also need to apply the
following patch to EMX headers:
--- /emx/include/sys/stat.h.orig Thu May 23 13:48:16 1996
+++ /emx/include/sys/stat.h Sun Jul 12 14:11:32 1998
@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@ struct stat
#endif
#if !defined (S_IFMT)
-#define S_IFMT 0160000 /* Mask for file type */
+#define S_IFMT 0170000 /* Mask for file type */
#define S_IFIFO 0010000 /* Pipe */
#define S_IFCHR 0020000 /* Character device */
#define S_IFDIR 0040000 /* Directory */
Hand-editing
You may look into the file ./hints/os2.sh and correct
anything wrong you find there. I do not expect it is needed
anywhere.
Making
sh Configure -des -D prefix=f:/perllib
`prefix' means: where to install the resulting perl library.
Giving correct prefix you may avoid the need to specify
`PERLLIB_PREFIX', see the section on "PERLLIB_PREFIX".
Ignorethemessageaboutmissing `ln', andabout `-c' optiontotr. In fact if you can trace where the latter spurious
warning comes from, please inform me.
Now
make
At some moment the built may die, reporting a versionmismatch or unabletorunperl. This means that most of the
build has been finished, and it is the time to move the
constructed perl.dll to some absolute location in LIBPATH.
After this is done the build should finish without a lot of
fuss. Onecanavoidtheinterruptionifonehasthecorrectprebuiltversionofperl.dllonLIBPATH, butprobablythisisnotneededanymore, sinceminiperl.exeislinkedstaticallynow.
Warnings which are safe to ignore: mkfifo() redefined inside
POSIX.c.
Testing
If you haven't yet moved perl.dll onto LIBPATH, do it now
(alternatively, if you have a previous perl installation
you'd rather not disrupt until this one is installed, copy
perl.dll to the t directory).
Now run
make test
All tests should succeed (with some of them skipped). Note
that on one of the systems I see intermittent failures of
io/pipe.t subtest 9. Any help to track what happens with
this test is appreciated.
Some tests may generate extra messages similar to
A lot of `bad free'
in database tests related to Berkeley DB. This is a
confirmed bug of DB. You may disable this warnings, see
the section on "PERL_BADFREE".
There is not much we can do with it (but apparently it
does not cause any real error with data).
Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT
This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications.
*nix applications die in silence. It is considered a
feature. One can easily disable this by appropriate
sighandlers.
However the test engine bleeds these message to screen
in unexpected moments. Two messages of this kind should
be present during testing.
Two lib/io_* tests may generate popups (system error
`SYS3175'), but should succeed anyway. This is due to a bug
of EMX related to fork()ing with dynamically loaded
libraries.
I submitted a patch to EMX which makes it possible to fork()
with EMX dynamic libraries loaded, which makes lib/io* tests
pass without skipping offended tests. This means that soon
the number of skipped tests may decrease yet more.
To get finer test reports, call
perl t/harness
The report with io/pipe.t failing may look like this:
Failed Test Status Wstat Total Fail Failed List of failed
------------------------------------------------------------
io/pipe.t 12 1 8.33% 9
7 tests skipped, plus 56 subtests skipped.
Failed 1/195 test scripts, 99.49% okay. 1/6542 subtests failed, 99.98% okay.
The reasons for most important skipped tests are:
op/fs.t
18 Checks `atime' and `mtime' of `stat()' -
unfortunately, HPFS provides only 2sec time
granularity (for compatibility with FAT?).
25 Checks `truncate()' on a filehandle just opened
for write - I do not know why this should or
should not work.
lib/io_pipe.t
Checks `IO::Pipe' module. Some feature of EMX - test
fork()s with dynamic extension loaded - unsupported
now.
lib/io_sock.t
Checks `IO::Socket' module. Some feature of EMX -
test fork()s with dynamic extension loaded -
unsupported now.
op/stat.t
Checks `stat()'. Tests:
4 Checks `atime' and `mtime' of `stat()' -
unfortunately, HPFS provides only 2sec time
granularity (for compatibility with FAT?).
lib/io_udp.t
It never terminates, apparently some bug in storing
the last socket from which we obtained a message.
Installingthebuiltperl
If you haven't yet moved perl.dll onto LIBPATH, do it now.
Run
make install
It would put the generated files into needed locations.
Manually put perl.exe, perl__.exe and perl___.exe to a
location on your PATH, perl.dll to a location on your
LIBPATH.
Run
make cmdscripts INSTALLCMDDIR=d:/ir/on/path
to convert perl utilities to .cmd files and put them on
PATH. You need to put .EXE-utilities on path manually. They
are installed in `$prefix/bin', here `$prefix' is what you
gave to Configure, see the Making manpage.
`a.out'-style build
Proceed as above, but make perl_.exe (see the section on
"perl_.exe") by
make perl_
test and install by
make aout_test
make aout_install
Manually put perl_.exe to a location on your PATH.
Since `perl_' has the extensions prebuilt, it does not
suffer from the dynamicextensions + fork() syndrome, thus
the failing tests look like
Failed Test Status Wstat Total Fail Failed List of failed
---------------------------------------------------------------
io/fs.t 26 11 42.31% 2-5, 7-11, 18, 25
op/stat.t 56 5 8.93% 3-4, 20, 35, 39
Failed 2/118 test scripts, 98.31% okay. 16/2445 subtests failed, 99.35% okay.
Note. The build process for `perl_' doesnotknow about all
the dependencies, so you should make sure that anything is
up-to-date, say, by doing
make perl.dll
first.
Build FAQ
Some`/' became `\' in pdksh.
You have a very old pdksh. See the Prerequisites manpage.
`'errno'' - unresolved external
You do not have MT-safe db.lib. See the Prerequisites
manpage.
Problemswithtrorsed
reported with very old version of tr and sed.
Someproblem(forgetwhich;-)
You have an older version of perl.dll on your LIBPATH, which
broke the build of extensions.
Library...notfound
You did not run `omflibs'. See the Prerequisites manpage.
Segfaultinmake
You use an old version of GNU make. See the Prerequisites
manpage.
Specific (mis)features of OS/2 port
`setpriority', `getpriority'
Note that these functions are compatible with *nix, not with
the older ports of '94 - 95. The priorities are absolute, go
from 32 to -95, lower is quicker. 0 is the default priority.
`system()'
Multi-argument form of `system()' allows an additional
numeric argument. The meaning of this argument is described
in the OS2::Process manpage.
`extproc' on the first line
If the first chars of a script are `"extproc "', this line
is treated as `#!'-line, thus all the switches on this line
are processed (twice if script was started via cmd.exe).
Additionalmodules:
the OS2::Process manpage, the OS2::REXX manpage, the
OS2::PrfDB manpage, the OS2::ExtAttr manpage. These modules
provide access to additional numeric argument for `system'
and to the list of the running processes, to DLLs having
functions with REXX signature and to REXX runtime, to OS/2
databases in the .INI format, and to Extended Attributes.
Two additional extensions by Andreas Kaiser, `OS2::UPM', and
`OS2::FTP', are included into my ftp directory, mirrored on
CPAN.
Prebuiltmethods:
`File::Copy::syscopy'
used by `File::Copy::copy', see the File::Copy manpage.
`DynaLoader::mod2fname'
used by `DynaLoader' for DLL name mangling.
`Cwd::current_drive()'
Self explanatory.
`Cwd::sys_chdir(name)'
leaves drive as it is.
`Cwd::change_drive(name)'
`Cwd::sys_is_absolute(name)'
means has drive letter and is_rooted.
`Cwd::sys_is_rooted(name)'
means has leading `[/\\]' (maybe after a drive-letter:).
`Cwd::sys_is_relative(name)'
means changes with current dir.
`Cwd::sys_cwd(name)'
Interface to cwd from EMX. Used by `Cwd::cwd'.
`Cwd::sys_abspath(name, dir)'
Really really odious function to implement. Returns
absolute name of file which would have `name' if CWD
were `dir'. `Dir' defaults to the current dir.
`Cwd::extLibpath([type])'
Get current value of extended library search path. If
`type' is present and true, works with END_LIBPATH,
otherwise with `BEGIN_LIBPATH'.
`Cwd::extLibpath_set( path [, type ] )'
Set current value of extended library search path. If
`type' is present and true, works with END_LIBPATH,
otherwise with `BEGIN_LIBPATH'.
(Note that some of these may be moved to different libraries
- eventually).
Misfeatures
Since flock(3) is present in EMX, but is not functional,
it is emulated by perl. To disable the emulations, set
environment variable `USE_PERL_FLOCK=0'.
Here is the list of things which may be "broken" on EMX
(from EMX docs):
o The functions recvmsg(3), sendmsg(3), and
socketpair(3) are not implemented.
osock_init(3) is not required and not implemented.
oflock(3) is not yet implemented (dummy function).
(Perl has a workaround.)
okill(3): Special treatment of PID=0, PID=1 and
PID=-1 is not implemented.
owaitpid(3):
WUNTRACED
Not implemented.
waitpid() is not implemented for negative values of PID.
Note that `kill -9' does not work with the current
version of EMX.
Since sh.exe is used for globing (see the glob entry in
the perlfunc manpage), the bugs of sh.exe plague perl as
well.
In particular, uppercase letters do not work in
`[...]'-patterns with the current pdksh.
Modifications
Perl modifies some standard C library calls in the following
ways:
`popen' `my_popen' uses sh.exe if shell is required, cf.
the section on "PERL_SH_DIR".
`tmpnam' is created using `TMP' or `TEMP' environment
variable, via `tempnam'.
`tmpfile'
If the current directory is not writable, file is
created using modified `tmpnam', so there may be a
race condition.
`ctermid'
a dummy implementation.
`stat' `os2_stat' special-cases /dev/tty and /dev/con.
`flock' Since flock(3) is present in EMX, but is not
functional, it is emulated by perl. To disable the
emulations, set environment variable
`USE_PERL_FLOCK=0'.
Perl flavors
Because of idiosyncrasies of OS/2 one cannot have all the
eggs in the same basket (though EMX environment tries hard
to overcome this limitations, so the situation may somehow
improve). There are 4 executables for Perl provided by the
distribution:
perl.exe
The main workhorse. This is a chimera executable: it is
compiled as an `a.out'-style executable, but is linked with
`omf'-style dynamic library perl.dll, and with dynamic CRT
DLL. This executable is a VIO application.
It can load perl dynamic extensions, and it can fork().
Unfortunately, with the current version of EMX it cannot
fork() with dynamic extensions loaded (may be fixed by
patches to EMX).
Note. Keep in mind that fork() is needed to open a pipe to
yourself.
perl_.exe
This is a statically linked `a.out'-style executable. It can
fork(), but cannot load dynamic Perl extensions. The
supplied executable has a lot of extensions prebuilt, thus
there are situations when it can perform tasks not possible
using perl.exe, like fork()ing when having some standard
extension loaded. This executable is a VIO application.
Note. A better behaviour could be obtained from `perl.exe'
if it were statically linked with standard Perlextensions,
but dynamically linked with the PerlDLL and CRT DLL. Then
it would be able to fork() with standard extensions, and
would be able to dynamically load arbitrary extensions. Some
changes to Makefiles and hint files should be necessary to
achieve this.
ThisisalsotheonlyexecutablewithdoesnotrequireOS/2.
The friends locked into `M$' world would appreciate the fact
that this executable runs under DOS, Win0.3*, Win0.95 and
WinNT with an appropriate extender. See the section on
"Other OSes".
perl__.exe
This is the same executable as perl___.exe, but it is a PM
application.
Note. Usually STDIN, STDERR, and STDOUT of a PM application
are redirected to `nul'. However, it is possible to see them
if you start `perl__.exe' from a PM program which emulates a
console window, like Shellmode of Emacs or EPM. Thus it ispossible to use Perl debugger (see the perldebug manpage) to
debug your PM application.
This flavor is required if you load extensions which use PM,
like the forthcoming `Perl/Tk'.
perl___.exe
This is an `omf'-style executable which is dynamically
linked to perl.dll and CRT DLL. I know no advantages of this
executable over `perl.exe', but it cannot fork() at all.
Well, one advantage is that the build process is not so
convoluted as with `perl.exe'.
It is a VIO application.
Whystrangenames?
Since Perl processes the `#!'-line (cf. the DESCRIPTION
entry in the perlrun manpage, the Switches entry in the
perlrun manpage, the Not a perl script entry in the perldiag
manpage, the No Perl script found in input entry in the
perldiag manpage), it should know when a program isaPerl.
There is some naming convention which allows Perl to
distinguish correct lines from wrong ones. The above names
are almost the only names allowed by this convention which
do not contain digits (which have absolutely different
semantics).
Whydynamiclinking?
Well, having several executables dynamically linked to the
same huge library has its advantages, but this would not
substantiate the additional work to make it compile. The
reason is stupid-but-quick "hard" dynamic linking used by
OS/2.
The address tables of DLLs are patched only once, when they
are loaded. The addresses of entry points into DLLs are
guaranteed to be the same for all programs which use the
same DLL, which reduces the amount of runtime patching -
once DLL is loaded, its code is read-only.
While this allows some performance advantages, this makes
life terrible for developers, since the above scheme makes
it impossible for a DLL to be resolved to a symbol in the
.EXE file, since this would need a DLL to have different
relocations tables for the executables which use it.
However, a Perl extension is forced to use some symbols from
the perl executable, say to know how to find the arguments
provided on the perl internal evaluation stack. The solution
is that the main code of interpreter should be contained in
a DLL, and the .EXE file just loads this DLL into memory and
supplies command-arguments.
This greatly increases the load time for the application (as
well as the number of problems during compilation). Since
interpreter is in a DLL, the CRT is basically forced to
reside in a DLL as well (otherwise extensions would not be
able to use CRT).
Whychimerabuild?
Current EMX environment does not allow DLLs compiled using
Unixish `a.out' format to export symbols for data. This
forces `omf'-style compile of perl.dll.
Current EMX environment does not allow .EXE files compiled
in `omf' format to fork(). fork() is needed for exactly
three Perl operations:
explicit fork()
in the script, and
open FH, "|-"
open FH, "-|"
opening pipes to itself.
While these operations are not questions of life and death,
a lot of useful scripts use them. This forces `a.out'-style
compile of perl.exe.
ENVIRONMENT
Here we list environment variables with are either OS/2- and
DOS- and Win*-specific, or are more important under OS/2
than under other OSes.
`PERLLIB_PREFIX'
Specific for EMX port. Should have the form
path1;path2
or
path1 path2
If the beginning of some prebuilt path matches path1, it is
substituted with path2.
Should be used if the perl library is moved from the default
location in preference to `PERL(5)LIB', since this would not
leave wrong entries in @INC. Say, if the compiled version
of perl looks for @INC in f:/perllib/lib, and you want to
install the library in h:/opt/gnu, do
set PERLLIB_PREFIX=f:/perllib/lib;h:/opt/gnu
`PERL_BADLANG'
If 1, perl ignores setlocale() failing. May be useful with
some strange locales.
`PERL_BADFREE'
If 1, perl would not warn of in case of unwarranted free().
May be useful in conjunction with the module DB_File, since
Berkeley DB memory handling code is buggy.
`PERL_SH_DIR'
Specific for EMX port. Gives the directory part of the
location for sh.exe.
`USE_PERL_FLOCK'
Specific for EMX port. Since flock(3) is present in EMX, but
is not functional, it is emulated by perl. To disable the
emulations, set environment variable `USE_PERL_FLOCK=0'.
`TMP' or `TEMP'
Specific for EMX port. Used as storage place for temporary
files, most notably `-e' scripts.
Evolution
Here we list major changes which could make you by surprise.
Priorities
`setpriority' and `getpriority' are not compatible with
earlier ports by Andreas Kaiser. See `"setpriority,
getpriority"'.
DLLnamemangling
With the release 5.003_01 the dynamically loadable libraries
should be rebuilt. In particular, DLLs are now created with
the names which contain a checksum, thus allowing workaround
for OS/2 scheme of caching DLLs.
Threading
As of release 5.003_01 perl is linked to multithreaded CRT
DLL. If perl itself is not compiled multithread-enabled, so
will not be perl malloc(). However, extensions may use
multiple thread on their own risk.
Needed to compile `Perl/Tk' for XFree86-OS/2 out-of-the-box.
Callstoexternalprograms
Due to a popular demand the perl external program calling
has been changed wrt Andreas Kaiser's port. If perl needs
to call an external program viashell, the f:/bin/sh.exe
will be called, or whatever is the override, see the section
on "PERL_SH_DIR".
Thus means that you need to get some copy of a sh.exe as
well (I use one from pdksh). The drive F: above is set up
automatically during the build to a correct value on the
builder machine, but is overridable at runtime,
Reasons: a consensus on `perl5-porters' was that perl should
use one non-overridable shell per platform. The obvious
choices for OS/2 are cmd.exe and sh.exe. Having perl build
itself would be impossible with cmd.exe as a shell, thus I
picked up `sh.exe'. Thus assures almost 100% compatibility
with the scripts coming from *nix. As an added benefit this
works as well under DOS if you use DOS-enabled port of pdksh
(see the section on "Prerequisites").
Disadvantages: currently sh.exe of pdksh calls external
programs via fork()/exec(), and there is no functioning
exec() on OS/2. exec() is emulated by EMX by asyncroneous
call while the caller waits for child completion (to pretend
that the `pid' did not change). This means that 1 extra copy
of sh.exe is made active via fork()/exec(), which may lead
to some resources taken from the system (even if we do not
count extra work needed for fork()ing).
Note that this a lesser issue now when we do not spawn
sh.exe unless needed (metachars found).
One can always start cmd.exe explicitly via
system 'cmd', '/c', 'mycmd', 'arg1', 'arg2', ...
If you need to use cmd.exe, and do not want to hand-edit
thousands of your scripts, the long-term solution proposed
on p5-p is to have a directive
use OS2::Cmd;
which will override system(), exec(), ```', and
`open(,'...|')'. With current perl you may override only
system(), readpipe() - the explicit version of ```', and
maybe exec(). The code will substitute the one-argument call
to system() by `CORE::system('cmd.exe', '/c', shift)'.
If you have some working code for `OS2::Cmd', please send it
to me, I will include it into distribution. I have no need
for such a module, so cannot test it.
For the details of the current situation with calling
external programs, see the 2 (and DOS) programs under Perl
entry in the Starting OS manpage.
External scripts may be called by name. Perl will try
the same extensions as when processing -S command-line
switch.
Memoryallocation
Perl uses its own malloc() under OS/2 - interpreters are
usually malloc-bound for speed, but perl is not, since its
malloc is lightning-fast. Perl-memory-usage-tuned
benchmarks show that Perl's malloc is 5 times quickier than
EMX one. I do not have convincing data about memory
footpring, but a (pretty random) benchmark showed that Perl
one is 5% better.
Combination of perl's malloc() and rigid DLL name resolution
creates a special problem with library functions which
expect their return value to be free()d by system's free().
To facilitate extensions which need to call such functions,
system memory-allocation functions are still available with
the prefix `emx_' added. (Currently only DLL perl has this,
it should propagate to perl_.exe shortly.)
Threads
One can build perl with thread support enabled by providing
`-D usethreads' option to Configure. Currently OS/2 support
of threads is very preliminary.
Most notable problems:
`COND_WAIT'
may have a race condition. Needs a reimplementation (in
terms of chaining waiting threads, with linker list
stored in per-thread structure?).
os2.c
has a couple of static variables used in OS/2-specific
functions. (Need to be moved to per-thread structure,
or serialized?)
Note that these problems should not discourage
experimenting, since they have a low probability of
affecting small programs.