NAME

README.os390 - building and installing Perl for OS/390.

SYNOPSIS

This document will help you Configure, build, test and install Perl on OS/390 Unix System Services.

DESCRIPTION

This is a fully ported perl for OS/390 Release 3, 5 and 6. It may work on other versions, but those are the ones we've tested it on.

You may need to carry out some system configuration tasks before running the Configure script for perl.

Unpacking

Gunzip/gzip for OS/390 is discussed at:

   http://www.s390.ibm.com/products/oe/bpxqp1.html

to extract an ASCII tar archive on OS/390, try this:

   pax -o to=IBM-1047,from=ISO8859-1 -r < latest.tar

Setup and utilities

Be sure that your yacc installation is in place including any necessary parser template files. If you have not already done so then be sure to:

  cp /samples/yyparse.c /etc

This may also be a good time to ensure that your /etc/protocol file and either your /etc/resolv.conf or /etc/hosts files are in place.

GNU make for OS/390, which may be required for the build of perl, is available from:

  http://www.mks.com/s390/gnu/index.htm

Once you've unpacked the distribution, run ``sh Configure'' (see INSTALL for a full discussion of the Configure options). There is a ``hints'' file for os390 that specifies the correct values for most things. Some things to watch out for include:

Some of the parser default template files in /samples are needed in /etc. In particular be sure that you at least copy /samples/yyparse.c to /etc before running perl's Configure. This step ensures successful extraction of EBCDIC versions of parser files such as perly.c.
This port doesn't support dynamic loading. Although OS/390 has support for DLLs, there are some differences that cause problems for perl.
You may see a ``WHOA THERE!!!'' message for $d_shmatprototype it is OK to keep the recommended ``define''.
Don't turn on the compiler optimization flag ``-O''. There's a bug in either the optimizer or perl that causes perl to not work correctly when the optimizer is on.
Some of the configuration files in /etc used by the networking APIs are either missing or have the wrong names. In particular, make sure that there's either an /etc/resolv.conf or and /etc/hosts, so that gethostbyname() works, and make sure that the file /etc/proto has been renamed to /etc/protocol (NOT /etc/protocols, as used by other Unix systems).

Build, test, install

Simply put:

    sh Configure
    make
    make test

if everything looks ok then:

    make install

this last step may or may not require UID=0 privileges depending on how you answered the questions that Configure asked and whether or not you have write access to the directories you specified.

Usage Hints

When using perl on OS/390 please keep in mind that the EBCDIC and ASCII character sets are different. Perl builtin functions that may behave differently under EBCDIC are mentioned in the perlport.pod document.

OpenEdition (UNIX System Services) does not (yet) support the #! means of script invokation. See:

    head `whence perldoc`

for an example of how to use the ``eval exec'' trick to ask the shell to have perl run your scripts for you.

Extensions

You can build xs based extensions to Perl for OS/390 but will need to follow the instructions in ExtUtils::MakeMaker for building statically linked perl binaries. In most cases people have reported better results with GNU make rather than the system's /bin/make.

AUTHORS

David Fiander and Peter Prymmer.

HISTORY

This document was originally written by David Fiander for the 5.005 release of Perl.

This document was podified for the 5.005_03 release of perl 11 March 1999.

README.os390 - building and installing Perl for OS/390.