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 9B<This document needs to be updated, but we don't know what it should say. 10Please submit comments to L<https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues>.> 11 12=head1 DESCRIPTION 13 14This document describes various features of IBM's OS/400 operating 15system that will affect how Perl version 5 (hereafter just Perl) is 16compiled and/or runs. 17 18By far the easiest way to build Perl for OS/400 is to use the PASE 19(Portable Application Solutions Environment), for more information see 20L<http://www.iseries.ibm.com/developer/factory/pase/index.html> 21This environment allows one to use AIX APIs while programming, and it 22provides a runtime that allows AIX binaries to execute directly on the 23PowerPC iSeries. 24 25=head2 Compiling Perl for OS/400 PASE 26 27The recommended way to build Perl for the OS/400 PASE is to build the 28Perl 5 source code (release 5.8.1 or later) under AIX. 29 30The trick is to give a special parameter to the Configure shell script 31when running it on AIX: 32 33 sh Configure -DPASE ... 34 35The default installation directory of Perl under PASE is /QOpenSys/perl. 36This can be modified if needed with Configure parameter -Dprefix=/some/dir. 37 38Starting from OS/400 V5R2 the IBM Visual Age compiler is supported 39on OS/400 PASE, so it is possible to build Perl natively on OS/400. 40The easier way, however, is to compile in AIX, as just described. 41 42If you don't want to install the compiled Perl in AIX into /QOpenSys 43(for packaging it before copying it to PASE), you can use a Configure 44parameter: -Dinstallprefix=/tmp/QOpenSys/perl. This will cause the 45"make install" to install everything into that directory, while the 46installed files still think they are (will be) in /QOpenSys/perl. 47 48If building natively on PASE, please do the build under the /QOpenSys 49directory, since Perl is happier when built on a case sensitive filesystem. 50 51=head2 Installing Perl in OS/400 PASE 52 53If you are compiling on AIX, simply do a "make install" on the AIX box. 54Once the install finishes, tar up the /QOpenSys/perl directory. Transfer 55the tarball to the OS/400 using FTP with the following commands: 56 57 > binary 58 > site namefmt 1 59 > put perl.tar /QOpenSys 60 61Once you have it on, simply bring up a PASE shell and extract the tarball. 62 63If you are compiling in PASE, then "make install" is the only thing you 64will need to do. 65 66The default path for perl binary is /QOpenSys/perl/bin/perl. You'll 67want to symlink /QOpenSys/usr/bin/perl to this file so you don't have 68to modify your path. 69 70=head2 Using Perl in OS/400 PASE 71 72Perl in PASE may be used in the same manner as you would use Perl on AIX. 73 74Scripts starting with #!/usr/bin/perl should work if you have 75/QOpenSys/usr/bin/perl symlinked to your perl binary. This will not 76work if you've done a setuid/setgid or have environment variable 77PASE_EXEC_QOPENSYS="N". If you have V5R1, you'll need to get the 78latest PTFs to have this feature. Scripts starting with 79#!/QOpenSys/perl/bin/perl should always work. 80 81=head2 Known Problems 82 83When compiling in PASE, there is no "oslevel" command. Therefore, 84you may want to create a script called "oslevel" that echoes the 85level of AIX that your version of PASE runtime supports. If you're 86unsure, consult your documentation or use "4.3.3.0". 87 88If you have test cases that fail, check for the existence of spool files. 89The test case may be trying to use a syscall that is not implemented 90in PASE. To avoid the SIGILL, try setting the PASE_SYSCALL_NOSIGILL 91environment variable or have a handler for the SIGILL. If you can 92compile programs for PASE, run the config script and edit config.sh 93when it gives you the option. If you want to remove fchdir(), which 94isn't implement in V5R1, simply change the line that says: 95 96d_fchdir='define' 97 98to 99 100d_fchdir='undef' 101 102and then compile Perl. The places where fchdir() is used have 103alternatives for systems that do not have fchdir() available. 104 105=head2 Perl on ILE 106 107There exists a port of Perl to the ILE environment. This port, however, 108is based quite an old release of Perl, Perl 5.00502 (August 1998). 109(As of July 2002 the latest release of Perl is 5.8.0, and even 5.6.1 110has been out since April 2001.) If you need to run Perl on ILE, though, 111you may need this older port: L<http://www.cpan.org/ports/#os400> 112Note that any Perl release later than 5.00502 has not been ported to ILE. 113 114If you need to use Perl in the ILE environment, you may want to consider 115using Qp2RunPase() to call the PASE version of Perl. 116 117=head1 AUTHORS 118 119Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi@iki.fi> 120Bryan Logan <bryanlog@us.ibm.com> 121David Larson <larson1@us.ibm.com> 122 123=cut 124