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
- Build Prerequisites
- Getting the perl source
- Application of the patches
- Making
- Testing
- Installing the built perl
AUTHOR
SEE ALSO
=head1 DESCRIPTION
=head2 Prerequisites for Compiling Perl on AmigaOS
=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 6
=item *
fork()
=item *
some features of the UNIX filesystem regarding link count and file dates
=item *
inplace operation (the -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 for Perl on AmigaOS
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 Perl HTML Documentation on AmigaOS
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 Perl GNU Info Files on AmigaOS
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 Perl LaTeX Documentation on AmigaOS
Can be constructed using C<pod2latex>.
=head1 BUILDING PERL ON AMIGAOS
Here we discuss how to build Perl under AmigaOS.
=head2 Build Prerequisites for Perl on AmigaOS
You need to have the latest B<ixemul> (Unix emulation for Amiga)
from Aminet.
=head2 Getting the Perl Source for AmigaOS
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 Perl on AmigaOS
Remember to use a hefty wad of stack (I use 2000000)
sh configure.gnu --prefix=/gg
Now type
make depend
Now!
make
=head2 Testing Perl on AmigaOS
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 on AmigaOS
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