PERLAIX(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLAIX(1)
NAME
README.aix - Perl version 5 on IBM Unix (AIX) systems
DESCRIPTION
This document describes various features of IBM's Unix operating system (AIX) that will affect how
Perl version 5 (hereafter just Perl) is compiled and/or runs.
Compiling Perl 5 on AIX
When compiling Perl, you must use an ANSI C compiler. AIX does not ship an ANSI compliant C-compiler
with AIX by default, but binary builds of gcc for AIX are widely available.
At the moment of writing, AIX supports two different native C compilers, for which you have to pay:
xlC and vac. If you decide to use either of these two (which is quite a lot easier than using gcc),
be sure to upgrade to the latest available patch level. Currently:
xlC.C 3.1.4.10 or 3.6.6.0 or 4.0.2.2 or 5.0.2.9 or 6.0.0.3
vac.C 4.4.0.3 or 5.0.2.6 or 6.0.0.1
note that xlC has the OS version in the name as of version 4.0.2.0, so you will find xlC.C for
AIX-5.0 as package
xlC.aix50.rte 5.0.2.0 or 6.0.0.3
subversions are not the same "latest" on all OS versions. For example, the latest xlC-5 on aix41 is
5.0.2.9, while on aix43, it is 5.0.2.7.
Perl can be compiled with either IBM's ANSI C compiler or with gcc. The former is recommended, as
not only can it compile Perl with no difficulty, but also can take advantage of features listed later
that require the use of IBM compiler-specific command-line flags.
The IBM's compiler patch levels 5.0.0.0 and 5.0.1.0 have compiler optimization bugs that affect com-piling compiling
piling perl.c and regcomp.c, respectively. If Perl's configuration detects those compiler patch lev-els, levels,
els, optimization is turned off for the said source code files. Upgrading to at least 5.0.2.0 is
recommended.
If you decide to use gcc, make sure your installation is recent and complete, and be sure to read the
Perl README file for more gcc-specific details. Please report any hoops you had to jump through to
the development team.
OS level
Before installing the patches to the IBM C-compiler you need to know the level of patching for the
Operating System. IBM's command 'oslevel' will show the base, but is not always complete (in this
example oslevel shows 4.3.NULL, whereas the system might run most of 4.3.THREE):
# oslevel
4.3.0.0
# lslpp -l | grep 'bos.rte '
bos.rte 4.3.3.75 COMMITTED Base Operating System Runtime
bos.rte 4.3.2.0 COMMITTED Base Operating System Runtime
#
The same might happen to AIX 5.1 or other OS levels. As a side note, perl cannot be built without
bos.adt.syscalls and bos.adt.libm installed
# lslpp -l | egrep "syscalls|libm"
bos.adt.libm 5.1.0.25 COMMITTED Base Application Development
bos.adt.syscalls 5.1.0.36 COMMITTED System Calls Application
#
Building Dynamic Extensions on AIX
AIX supports dynamically loadable objects as well as shared libraries. Shared libraries by conven-tion convention
tion end with the suffix .a, which is a bit misleading, as an archive can contain static as well as
dynamic members. For perl dynamically loaded objects we use the .so suffix also used on many other
platforms.
Note that starting from Perl 5.7.2 (and consequently 5.8.0) and AIX 4.3 or newer Perl uses the AIX
native dynamic loading interface in the so called runtime linking mode instead of the emulated inter-face interface
face that was used in Perl releases 5.6.1 and earlier or, for AIX releases 4.2 and earlier. This
change does break backward compatibility with compiled modules from earlier perl releases. The
change was made to make Perl more compliant with other applications like Apache/mod_perl which are
using the AIX native interface. This change also enables the use of C++ code with static constructors
and destructors in perl extensions, which was not possible using the emulated interface.
The IBM ANSI C Compiler
All defaults for Configure can be used.
If you've chosen to use vac 4, be sure to run 4.4.0.3. Older versions will turn up nasty later on.
For vac 5 be sure to run at least 5.0.1.0, but vac 5.0.2.6 or up is highly recommended. Note that
since IBM has removed vac 5.0.2.1 through 5.0.2.5 from the software depot, these versions should be
considered obsolete.
Here's a brief lead of how to upgrade the compiler to the latest level. Of course this is subject to
changes. You can only upgrade versions from ftp-available updates if the first three digit groups
are the same (in where you can skip intermediate unlike the patches in the developer snapshots of
perl), or to one version up where the "base" is available. In other words, the AIX compiler patches
are cumulative.
vac.C.4.4.0.1 => vac.C.4.4.0.3 is OK (vac.C.4.4.0.2 not needed)
xlC.C.3.1.3.3 => xlC.C.3.1.4.10 is NOT OK (xlC.C.3.1.4.0 is not available)
# ftp ftp.software.ibm.com
Connected to service.boulder.ibm.com.
: welcome message ...
Name (ftp.software.ibm.com:merijn): anonymous
331 Guest login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password.
Password:
... accepted login stuff
ftp> cd /aix/fixes/v4/
ftp> dir other other.ll
output to local-file: other.ll? y
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
226 Transfer complete.
ftp> dir xlc xlc.ll
output to local-file: xlc.ll? y
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
226 Transfer complete.
ftp> bye
... goodbye messages
# ls -l *.ll
-rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn system 1169432 Nov 2 17:29 other.ll
-rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn system 29170 Nov 2 17:29 xlc.ll
On AIX 4.2 using xlC, we continue:
# lslpp -l | fgrep 'xlC.C '
xlC.C 3.1.4.9 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler
xlC.C 3.1.4.0 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler
# grep 'xlC.C.3.1.4.*.bff' xlc.ll
-rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6286336 Jul 22 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.1.bff
-rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6173696 Aug 24 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.10.bff
-rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6319104 Aug 14 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.2.bff
-rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6316032 Oct 21 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.3.bff
-rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6315008 Dec 20 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.4.bff
-rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6178816 Mar 28 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.5.bff
-rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6188032 May 22 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.6.bff
-rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6191104 Sep 5 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.7.bff
-rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6185984 Jan 13 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.8.bff
-rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6169600 May 27 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.9.bff
# wget ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/fixes/v4/xlc/xlC.C.3.1.4.10.bff
#
On AIX 4.3 using vac, we continue:
# lslpp -l | grep 'vac.C '
vac.C 5.0.2.2 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler
vac.C 5.0.2.0 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler
# grep 'vac.C.5.0.2.*.bff' other.ll
-rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 13592576 Apr 16 2001 vac.C.5.0.2.0.bff
-rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 14133248 Apr 9 2002 vac.C.5.0.2.3.bff
-rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 14173184 May 20 2002 vac.C.5.0.2.4.bff
-rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 14192640 Nov 22 2002 vac.C.5.0.2.6.bff
# wget ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/fixes/v4/other/vac.C.5.0.2.6.bff
#
Likewise on all other OS levels. Then execute the following command, and fill in its choices
# smit install_update
-> Install and Update from LATEST Available Software
* INPUT device / directory for software [ vac.C.5.0.2.6.bff ]
[ OK ]
[ OK ]
Follow the messages ... and you're done.
If you like a more web-like approach, a good start point can be http://www14.soft-
ware.ibm.com/webapp/download/downloadaz.jsp and click "C for AIX", and follow the instructions.
The usenm option
If linking miniperl
cc -o miniperl ... miniperlmain.o opmini.o perl.o ... -lm -lc ...
causes error like this
ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .aintl
ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .copysignl
ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .syscall
ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .eaccess
ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .setresuid
ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .setresgid
ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .setproctitle
ld: 0711-345 Use the -bloadmap or -bnoquiet option to obtain more information.
you could retry with
make realclean
rm config.sh
./Configure -Dusenm ...
which makes Configure to use the "nm" tool when scanning for library symbols, which usually is not
done in AIX.
Related to this, you probably should not use the "-r" option of Configure in AIX, because that
affects of how the "nm" tool is used.
Using GNU's gcc for building perl
Using gcc-3.x (tested with 3.0.4, 3.1, and 3.2) now works out of the box, as do recent gcc-2.9 builds
available directly from IBM as part of their Linux compatibility packages, available here:
http://www.ibm.com/servers/aix/products/aixos/linux/
Using Large Files with Perl
Should yield no problems.
Threaded Perl
Threads seem to work OK, though at the moment not all tests pass when threads are used in combination
with 64-bit configurations.
You may get a warning when doing a threaded build:
"pp_sys.c", line 4640.39: 1506-280 (W) Function argument assignment between types "unsigned char*" and "const void*" is not allowed.
The exact line number may vary, but if the warning (W) comes from a line line this
hent = PerlSock_gethostbyaddr(addr, (Netdb_hlen_t) addrlen, addrtype);
in the "pp_ghostent" function, you may ignore it safely. The warning is caused by the reentrant
variant of gethostbyaddr() having a slightly different prototype than its non-reentrant variant, but
the difference is not really significant here.
64-bit Perl
If your AIX is installed with 64-bit support, you can expect 64-bit configurations to work. In combi-
nation with threads some tests might still fail.
AIX 4.2 and extensions using C++ with statics
In AIX 4.2 Perl extensions that use C++ functions that use statics may have problems in that the
statics are not getting initialized. In newer AIX releases this has been solved by linking Perl with
the libC_r library, but unfortunately in AIX 4.2 the said library has an obscure bug where the vari-
ous functions related to time (such as time() and gettimeofday()) return broken values, and therefore
in AIX 4.2 Perl is not linked against the libC_r.
AUTHOR
H.Merijn Brand <h.m.brand@xs4all.nl>
DATE
Version 0.0.6: 23 Dec 2002
perl v5.8.8 2006-01-07 PERLAIX(1)
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