Man1 - perlmacosx.1perl

The default installation location for this release uses the traditional UNIX directory layout under /usr/local. This is the recommended location for most users, and will leave the Apple-supplied Perl and its modules undisturbed.

Using an installation prefix of ’/usr’ will result in a directory layout that mirrors that of Apple’s default Perl, with core modules stored in ’/System/Library/Perl/\({version}', CPAN modules stored in '/Library/Perl/\){version}’, and the addition of ’/Network/Library/Perl/${version}’ to @INC for modules that are stored on a file server and used by many Macs.

First, export the path to the SDK into the build environment:

export SDK=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.8.sdk

Please make sure the SDK version (i.e. the numbers right before ’.sdk’) matches your system’s (in this case, Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion), as it is possible to have more than one SDK installed. Also make sure the path exists in your system, and if it doesn’t please make sure the SDK is properly installed, as it should come with the ’Command Line Tools’ bundle mentioned above. Finally, if you have an older Mac OS X (10.6 Snow Leopard and below) running Xcode 4.2 or lower, the SDK path might be something like /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.3.9.sdk.

You can use the SDK by exporting some additions to Perl’s ’ccflags’ and ’..flags’ config variables:

./Configure -Accflags=“-nostdinc -B$SDK/usr/include/gcc \ -B$SDK/usr/lib/gcc -isystem$SDK/usr/include \ -F$SDK/System/Library/Frameworks” \ -Aldflags=“-Wl,-syslibroot,$SDK” \ -de

Note: From Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard onwards, Apple only supports Intel-based hardware. This means you can safely skip this section unless you have an older Apple computer running on ppc or wish to create a perl binary with backwards compatibility.

You can compile perl as a universal binary (built for both ppc and intel). In Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, you must export the ’u’ variant of the SDK:

export SDK=/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and above do not require the ’u’ variant.

In addition to the compiler flags used to select the SDK, also add the flags for creating a universal binary:

./Configure -Accflags=“-arch i686 -arch ppc -nostdinc \ -B$SDK/usr/include/gcc \ -B$SDK/usr/lib/gcc -isystem$SDK/usr/include \ -F$SDK/System/Library/Frameworks” \ -Aldflags=“-arch i686 -arch ppc -Wl,-syslibroot,$SDK” \ -de

Keep in mind that these compiler and linker settings will also be used when building CPAN modules. For XS modules to be compiled as a universal binary, any libraries it links to must also be universal binaries. The system libraries that Apple includes with the 10.4u SDK are all universal, but user-installed libraries may need to be re-installed as universal binaries.

Follow the instructions in INSTALL to build perl with support for 64-bit integers (use64bitint) or both 64-bit integers and 64-bit addressing (use64bitall). In the latter case, the resulting binary will run only on G5-based hosts.

Support for 64-bit addressing is experimental: some aspects of Perl may be omitted or buggy. Note the messages output by Configure for further information. Please use https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues to submit a problem report in the event that you encounter difficulties.

When building 64-bit modules, it is your responsibility to ensure that linked external libraries and frameworks provide 64-bit support: if they do not, module building may appear to succeed, but attempts to use the module will result in run-time dynamic linking errors, and subsequent test failures. You can use file to discover the architectures supported by a library:

$ file libgdbm.3.0.0.dylib libgdbm.3.0.0.dylib: Mach-O fat file with 2 architectures libgdbm.3.0.0.dylib (for architecture ppc): Mach-O dynamically linked shared library ppc libgdbm.3.0.0.dylib (for architecture ppc64): Mach-O 64-bit dynamically linked shared library ppc64

Note that this issue precludes the building of many Macintosh-specific CPAN modules (Mac::*), as the required Apple frameworks do not provide PPC64 support. Similarly, downloads from Fink or Darwinports are unlikely to provide 64-bit support; the libraries must be rebuilt from source with the appropriate compiler and linker flags. For further information, see Apple’s 64-Bit Transition Guide at https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/64bitPorting/transition/transition.html.

Mac OS X ships with a dynamically-loaded libperl, but the default for this release is to compile a static libperl. The reason for this is pre-binding. Dynamic libraries can be pre-bound to a specific address in memory in order to decrease load time. To do this, one needs to be aware of the location and size of all previously-loaded libraries. Apple collects this information as part of their overall OS build process, and thus has easy access to it when building Perl, but ordinary users would need to go to a great deal of effort to obtain the information needed for pre-binding.

You can override the default and build a shared libperl if you wish (Configure … -Duseshrplib).

With Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and newer, there is almost no performance penalty for non-prebound libraries. Earlier releases will suffer a greater load time than either the static library, or Apple’s pre-bound dynamic library.

In a word - don’t, at least not without a very good reason. Your scripts can just as easily begin with #!/usr/local/bin/perl as with #!/usr/bin/perl. Scripts supplied by Apple and other third parties as part of installation packages and such have generally only been tested with the /usr/bin/perl that’s installed by Apple.

If you find that you do need to update the system Perl, one issue worth keeping in mind is the question of static vs. dynamic libraries. If you upgrade using the default static libperl, you will find that the dynamic libperl supplied by Apple will not be deleted. If both libraries are present when an application that links against libperl is built, ld will link against the dynamic library by default. So, if you need to replace Apple’s dynamic libperl with a static libperl, you need to be sure to delete the older dynamic library after you’ve installed the update.

If you have installed extra libraries such as GDBM through Fink (in other words, you have libraries under /sw/lib), or libdlcompat to /usr/local/lib, you may need to be extra careful when running Configure to not to confuse Configure and Perl about which libraries to use. Being confused will show up for example as dyld errors about symbol problems, for example during make test. The safest bet is to run Configure as

Configure … -Uloclibpth -Dlibpth=/usr/lib

to make Configure look only into the system libraries. If you have some extra library directories that you really want to use (such as newer Berkeley DB libraries in pre-Panther systems), add those to the libpth:

Configure … -Uloclibpth -Dlibpth=/usr/lib /opt/lib

The default of building Perl statically may cause problems with complex applications like Tk: in that case consider building shared Perl

Configure … -Duseshrplib

but remember that there’s a startup cost to pay in that case (see above libperl and Prebinding).

Starting with Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4), Apple shipped broken locale files for the eu_ES locale (Basque-Spain). In previous releases of Perl, this resulted in failures in the lib/locale test. These failures have been suppressed in the current release of Perl by making the test ignore the broken locale. If you need to use the eu_ES locale, you should contact Apple support.

There are two ways to use Cocoa from Perl. Apple’s PerlObjCBridge module, included with Mac OS X, can be used by standalone scripts to access Foundation (i.e. non-GUI) classes and objects.

An alternative is CamelBones, a framework that allows access to both Foundation and AppKit classes and objects, so that full GUI applications can be built in Perl. CamelBones can be found on SourceForge, at https://www.sourceforge.net/projects/camelbones/.