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- 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
-
- README.beos - Perl version 5 on BeOS
-
- =head1 DESCRIPTION
-
- Notes for building Perl under BeOS.
-
- =head2 General Issues with Perl on BeOS
-
- To compile perl under BeOS R4 x86:
-
- ./Configure -d
-
- and hit ^C when it asks you if you want to make changes to config.sh;
- edit config.sh and do the following:
- change d_socket='define' to ='undef';
- remove SDBM, Errno, and Socket from dynamic_ext= and nonxs_ext=;
- add '#define bool short' to x2p/a2p.h;
-
- ../Configure -S; make; make install
-
- cd ~/config/lib; ln -s 5.00502/BeOS-BePC/CORE/libperl.so .
-
- (substitute 5.00502 with the appropriate filename)
-
- =head2 BeOS Release-specific Notes
-
- =over 4
-
- =item R4 x86
-
- Dynamic loading finally works! Yay! This means you can compile your
- own modules into perl. However, Sockets and Errno still don't work.
- (Hopefully, sockets will at least work by R5, if not sooner.)
-
- =item R4 PPC
-
- I have not tested this. I rather severely doubt that dynamic loading
- will work. (My BeBox is in pieces right now, following a nasty disk
- crash.) You may have to disable dynamic loading to get the thing to
- compile at all. (use `./Configure` without -d, and say 'no' to 'Build
- a shared libperl.so'.)
-
- =back
-
- =head2 Contact Information
-
- If you have comments, problem reports, or even patches or bugfixes (gasp!)
- please email me.
-
- 28 Jan 1999
- Tom Spindler
- dogcow@isi.net
-
- =head2 Update 2002-05-30
-
- The following tests fail on 5.8.0 Perl in BeOS Personal 5.03:
-
- t/op/lfs............................FAILED at test 17
- t/op/magic..........................FAILED at test 24
- ext/Fcntl/t/syslfs..................FAILED at test 17
- ext/File/Glob/t/basic...............FAILED at test 3
- ext/POSIX/t/sigaction...............FAILED at test 13
- ext/POSIX/t/waitpid.................FAILED at test 1
-
- The reasons for the failures are as follows:
-
- =over 4
-
- =item *
-
- The t/op/lfs and ext/Fcntl/t/syslfs failures indicate that the
- LFS (large file support, files larger than 2 gigabytes) doesn't
- work from Perl (BeFS itself is well capable of supporting large
- files). What fails is that trying to position the file pointer
- past 2 gigabytes doesn't work right, the position gets truncated
- to its lower 32 bits.
-
- =item *
-
- The op/magic failures look like something funny going on with $0 and
- $^X that I can't now figure out: none of the generated pathnames are
- wrong as such, they just seem to accumulate "./" prefixes and infixes
- in ways that define logic.
-
- =item *
-
- The Glob/t/basic indicates a bug in the getpw*() functions:
- they do not always return the correct user db entries.
-
- =item *
-
- The sigaction #13 means that signal mask doesn't get properly restored
- if sigaction returns early.
-
- =item *
-
- The waitpid failure means that after there are no more child
- processes, waitpid is supposed to start returning -1 (and set
- errno to ECHILD). In BeOS, it doesn't seem to.
-
- =back
-
- Disclaimer: I just installed BeOS Personal Edition 5.0 and the
- Developer Tools, that is the whole extent of my BeOS expertise,
- so please don't ask me for further help in BeOS Perl problems.
-
- jhi@iki.fi
-