1If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you see. 2It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is specially 3designed to be readable as is. 4 5=head1 NAME 6 7perlos400 - Perl version 5 on OS/400 8 9=head1 DESCRIPTION 10 11This document describes various features of IBM's OS/400 operating 12system that will affect how Perl version 5 (hereafter just Perl) is 13compiled and/or runs. 14 15By far the easiest way to build Perl for OS/400 is to use the PASE 16(Portable Application Solutions Environment), for more information see 17L<http://www.iseries.ibm.com/developer/factory/pase/index.html> 18This environment allows one to use AIX APIs while programming, and it 19provides a runtime that allows AIX binaries to execute directly on the 20PowerPC iSeries. 21 22=head2 Compiling Perl for OS/400 PASE 23 24The recommended way to build Perl for the OS/400 PASE is to build the 25Perl 5 source code (release 5.8.1 or later) under AIX. 26 27The trick is to give a special parameter to the Configure shell script 28when running it on AIX: 29 30 sh Configure -DPASE ... 31 32The default installation directory of Perl under PASE is /QOpenSys/perl. 33This can be modified if needed with Configure parameter -Dprefix=/some/dir. 34 35Starting from OS/400 V5R2 the IBM Visual Age compiler is supported 36on OS/400 PASE, so it is possible to build Perl natively on OS/400. 37The easier way, however, is to compile in AIX, as just described. 38 39If you don't want to install the compiled Perl in AIX into /QOpenSys 40(for packaging it before copying it to PASE), you can use a Configure 41parameter: -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/QOpenSys/perl. This will cause the 42"make install" to install everything into that directory, while the 43installed files still think they are (will be) in /QOpenSys/perl. 44 45If building natively on PASE, please do the build under the /QOpenSys 46directory, since Perl is happier when built on a case sensitive filesystem. 47 48=head2 Installing Perl in OS/400 PASE 49 50If you are compiling on AIX, simply do a "make install" on the AIX box. 51Once the install finishes, tar up the /QOpenSys/perl directory. Transfer 52the tarball to the OS/400 using FTP with the following commands: 53 54 > binary 55 > site namefmt 1 56 > put perl.tar /QOpenSys 57 58Once you have it on, simply bring up a PASE shell and extract the tarball. 59 60If you are compiling in PASE, then "make install" is the only thing you 61will need to do. 62 63The default path for perl binary is /QOpenSys/perl/bin/perl. You'll 64want to symlink /QOpenSys/usr/bin/perl to this file so you don't have 65to modify your path. 66 67=head2 Using Perl in OS/400 PASE 68 69Perl in PASE may be used in the same manner as you would use Perl on AIX. 70 71Scripts starting with #!/usr/bin/perl should work if you have 72/QOpenSys/usr/bin/perl symlinked to your perl binary. This will not 73work if you've done a setuid/setgid or have environment variable 74PASE_EXEC_QOPENSYS="N". If you have V5R1, you'll need to get the 75latest PTFs to have this feature. Scripts starting with 76#!/QOpenSys/perl/bin/perl should always work. 77 78=head2 Known Problems 79 80When compiling in PASE, there is no "oslevel" command. Therefore, 81you may want to create a script called "oslevel" that echoes the 82level of AIX that your version of PASE runtime supports. If you're 83unsure, consult your documentation or use "4.3.3.0". 84 85If you have test cases that fail, check for the existence of spool files. 86The test case may be trying to use a syscall that is not implemented 87in PASE. To avoid the SIGILL, try setting the PASE_SYSCALL_NOSIGILL 88environment variable or have a handler for the SIGILL. If you can 89compile programs for PASE, run the config script and edit config.sh 90when it gives you the option. If you want to remove fchdir(), which 91isn't implement in V5R1, simply change the line that says: 92 93d_fchdir='define' 94 95to 96 97d_fchdir='undef' 98 99and then compile Perl. The places where fchdir() is used have 100alternatives for systems that do not have fchdir() available. 101 102=head2 Perl on ILE 103 104There exists a port of Perl to the ILE environment. This port, however, 105is based quite an old release of Perl, Perl 5.00502 (August 1998). 106(As of July 2002 the latest release of Perl is 5.8.0, and even 5.6.1 107has been out since April 2001.) If you need to run Perl on ILE, though, 108you may need this older port: L<http://www.cpan.org/ports/#os400> 109Note that any Perl release later than 5.00502 has not been ported to ILE. 110 111If you need to use Perl in the ILE environment, you may want to consider 112using Qp2RunPase() to call the PASE version of Perl. 113 114=head1 AUTHORS 115 116Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi@iki.fi> 117Bryan Logan <bryanlog@us.ibm.com> 118David Larson <larson1@us.ibm.com> 119 120=cut 121