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   1  If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you see.
   2  It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is specially
   3  designed to be readable as is.
   4  
   5  =head1 NAME
   6  
   7  README.mint - Perl version 5 on Atari MiNT
   8  
   9  =head1 DESCRIPTION
  10  
  11  There is a binary version of perl available from the FreeMiNT project
  12  http://freemint.de/  You may wish to use this instead of trying to
  13  compile yourself.
  14  
  15  B<The following advice is from perl 5.004_02 and is probably rather
  16  out of date.>
  17  
  18  If you want to build perl yourself on MiNT (or maybe on an Atari without
  19  MiNT) you may want to accept some advice from somebody who already did it...
  20  
  21  There was a perl port for Atari ST done by ++jrb bammi@cadence.com.
  22  This port tried very hard to build on non-MiNT-systems.  For the
  23  sake of efficiency I've left this way.  Yet, I haven't removed bammi's
  24  patches but left them intact.  Unfortunately some of the files that
  25  bammi contributed to the perl distribution seem to have vanished?
  26  
  27  So, how can you distinguish my patches from bammi's patches?  All of
  28  bammi's stuff is embedded in "#ifdef atarist" preprocessor macros.
  29  My MiNT port uses "#ifdef __MINT__" instead (and unconditionally
  30  undefines "atarist".  If you want to continue on bammi's port, all 
  31  you have to do is to swap the "-D" and "-U" switches for "__MINT__"  
  32  and "atarist" in the variable ccflags.
  33  
  34  However, I think that my version will still run on non-MiNT-systems
  35  provided that the user has a Eunuchs-like environment (i.e. the
  36  standard envariables like $PATH, $HOME, ... are set, there is a
  37  POSIX compliant shell in /bin/sh, and...)
  38  
  39  =head1 Known problems with Perl on MiNT
  40  
  41  The problems you may encounter when building perl on your machine
  42  are most probably due to deficiencies in MiNT resp. the Atari
  43  platform in general.
  44  
  45  First of all, if you have less than 8 MB of RAM you shouldn't
  46  even try to build Perl yourself.  Better grab a binary pre-compiled
  47  version somewhere.  Even if you have more memory you should take
  48  some care.  Try to run in a fresh environment (without memory
  49  fragmented too much) with as few daemons, accessories, xcontrol
  50  modules etc. as possible.  If you run some AES you should 
  51  consider to start a console based environment instead.
  52  
  53  A problem has been reported with sed.  Sed is used to create
  54  some configuration files based on the answers you have given
  55  to the Configure script.  Unfortunately the Perl Configure script
  56  shows sed on MiNT its limits.  I have sed 2.05 with a stacksize
  57  of 64k and I have encountered no problems.  If sed crashes
  58  during your configuration process you should first try to
  59  augment sed's stacksize:
  60  
  61      fixstk 64k /usr/bin/sed
  62  
  63  (or similar).  If it still doesn't help you may have a look
  64  which other versions of sed are installed on your system.
  65  If you have a KGMD 1.0 installation you will find three
  66  in /usr/bin.  Have a look there.
  67  
  68  Perl has some "mammut" C files.  If gcc reports "internal
  69  compiler error: program cc1 got fatal signal 10" this is very
  70  likely due to a stack overflow in program cc1. Find cc1 
  71  and fix its stack.  I have made good experiences with 
  72  
  73      fixstk 2 cc1
  74  
  75  This doesn't establish a stack of 2 Bytes only as you might
  76  think.  It really reserves one half of the available memory
  77  for cc1's stack.  A setting of 1 would reserve the entire
  78  memory for cc1, 3 would reserve three fourths.  You will have
  79  to find out the value that suits to your system yourself.
  80  
  81  To find out the location of the program "cc1" simply type
  82  `gcc --print-prog-name cc1' at your shell prompt.
  83  
  84  Now run make (maybe "make -k").  If you get a fatal signal 10 
  85  increase cc1's stacksize, if you run out of memory you should 
  86  either decrease the stacksize or follow some more hints:
  87  
  88  Perl's building process is very handy on machines with a lot
  89  of virtual memory but may result in a disaster if you are short
  90  of memory.  If gcc fails to compile many source files you should
  91  reduce the optimization.  Grep for "optimize" in the file
  92  config.sh and change the flags.
  93  
  94  If only several huge files cause problems (actually it is not a
  95  matter of the file size resp. the amount of code but depends on
  96  the size of the individual functions) it is useful to bypass
  97  the make program and compile these files directly from the
  98  command line.  For example if you got something like the
  99  following from make:
 100  
 101      CCCMD = gcc -DPERL_CORE ....
 102      ...
 103      ...: virtual memory exhausted
 104  
 105  you should hack into the shell:
 106  
 107      gcc -DPERL_CORE ... toke.c
 108  
 109  Please note that you have to add the name of the source file
 110  (here toke.c) at the end.
 111  
 112  If none of this helps, you're helpless.  Wait for a binary
 113  release.  If you have succeeded you may encounter another problem
 114  at the linking process.  If gcc complains that it can't find
 115  some libraries within the perl distribution you probably have
 116  an old linker.  If it complains for example about "file not
 117  found for xxx.olb" you should cd into the directory in
 118  question and
 119  
 120      ln -s libxxx.a xxx.olb
 121  
 122  This will fix the problem.
 123  
 124  This version (5.00402) of perl has passed most of the tests on my system:
 125  
 126   Failed Test  Status Wstat Total Fail  Failed  List of failed
 127   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 128   io/pipe.t                    10    2  20.00%  7, 9
 129   io/tell.t                    13    1   7.69%  12
 130   lib/complex.t               762   13   1.71%  84-85, 248-251, 257, 272-273,
 131                                                 371, 380, 419-420
 132   lib/io_pipe.t                10    1  10.00%  9
 133   lib/io_tell.t                13    1   7.69%  12
 134   op/magic.t                   30    2   6.67%  29-30
 135   Failed 6/152 test scripts, 96.05% okay. 20/4359 subtests failed, 99.54% okay.
 136  
 137  Pipes always cause problems with MiNT, it's actually a surprise that
 138  most of the tests did work.  I've got no idea why the "tell" test failed,
 139  this shouldn't mean too big a problem however.
 140  
 141  Most of the failures of lib/complex seem to be harmless, actually errors
 142  far right to the decimal point...  Two failures seem to be serious:
 143  The sign of the results is reversed.  I would say that this is due
 144  to minor bugs in the portable math lib that I compiled perl with.
 145  
 146  I haven't bothered very much to find the reason for the failures
 147  with op/magic.t and op/stat.t.  Maybe you'll find it out.
 148  
 149  ##########################################################################
 150  
 151  Another possible problem may arise from the implementation of the "pwd" 
 152  command.  It happened to add a carriage return and newline to its output 
 153  no matter what the setting of $UNIXMODE is.  This is quite annoying since many
 154  library modules for perl take the output of pwd, chop off the
 155  trailing newline character and then expect to see a valid path in
 156  that.  But the carriage return (last but second character!) isn't
 157  chopped off.  You can either try to patch all library modules (at
 158  the price of performance for the extra transformation) or you can
 159  use my version of pwd that doesn't suffer from this deficiency.
 160  
 161  The fixed implementation is in the mint subdirectory.  Running
 162  "Configure" will attempt to build and install it if necessary
 163  (hints/mint.sh will do this work) but you can build and install it
 164  explicitly by:
 165  
 166      cd mint
 167      make install
 168  
 169  This is the fastest solution.
 170  
 171  Just in case you want to go the hard way: perl won't even build with a
 172  broken pwd!  You will have to fix the library modules
 173  (ext/POSIX/POSIX.pm, lib/Cwd.pm, lib/pwd.pl) at last after building
 174  miniperl.
 175  
 176  A major nuisance of current MiNTLib versions is the implementation
 177  of system() which is far from being POSIX compliant.  A real system()
 178  should fork and then exec /bin/sh with its argument as a command
 179  line to the shell.  The MiNTLib system() however doesn't expect
 180  that every user has a POSIX shell in /bin/sh.  It tries to work
 181  around the problem by forking and exec'ing the first token in its argument
 182  string.  To get a little bit of compliance to POSIX system() it
 183  tries to handle at least redirection ("<" or ">") on its own 
 184  behalf.  
 185  
 186  This isn't a good idea since many programs expect that they can
 187  pass a command line to system() that exploits all features of a
 188  POSIX shell.  If you use the MiNTLib version of system() with
 189  perl the Perl function system() will suffer from the same deficiencies.
 190  
 191  You will find a fixed version of system() in the mint subdirectory.
 192  You can easily insert this version into your system libc:
 193  
 194      cd mint
 195      make system.o
 196      ar r /usr/lib/libc.a
 197      ranlib /usr/lib/libc.a
 198  
 199  If you are suspicious you should either back up your libc before
 200  or extract the original system.o from your libc with 
 201  "ar x /usr/lib/libc.a system.o".  You can then backup the system.o
 202  module somewhere before you succeed.
 203  
 204  Anything missing?  Yep, I've almost forgotten...  
 205  No file in this distribution without a fine saying.  Take this one:
 206  
 207      "From a thief you should learn: (1) to work at night;
 208      (2) if one cannot gain what one wants in one night to
 209      try again the next night; (3) to love one's coworkers
 210      just as thieves love each other; (4) to be willing to
 211      risk one's life even for a little thing; (5) not to 
 212      attach too much value to things even though one has 
 213      risked one's life for them - just as a thief will resell
 214      a stolen article for a fraction of its real value; 
 215      (6) to withstand all kinds of beatings and tortures
 216      but to remain what you are; and (7) to believe your
 217      work is worthwhile and not be willing to change it."
 218  
 219              -- Rabbi Dov Baer, Maggid of Mezeritch
 220  
 221  OK, this was my motto while working on Perl for MiNT, especially rule (1)...
 222  
 223  Have fun with Perl!
 224  
 225  =head1 AUTHOR
 226  
 227  Guido Flohr
 228  
 229      mailto:guido@FreeMiNT.de