Configure-time Options for Perl on Cygwin

The INSTALL document describes several Configure-time options. Some of these will work with Cygwin, others are not yet possible. Also, some of these are experimental. You can either select an option when Configure prompts you or you can define (undefine) symbols on the command line.

• * -Uusedl

Undefining this symbol forces Perl to be compiled statically.

• * -Uusemymalloc

By default Perl uses the malloc() included with the Perl source. If you want to force Perl to build with the system malloc() undefine this symbol.

• * -Uuseperlio

Undefining this symbol disables the PerlIO abstraction. PerlIO is now the default; it is not recommended to disable PerlIO.

• * -Dusemultiplicity

Multiplicity is required when embedding Perl in a C program and using more than one interpreter instance. This works with the Cygwin port.

• * -Duse64bitint

By default Perl uses 32 bit integers. If you want to use larger 64 bit integers, define this symbol.

• * -Duselongdouble

gcc supports long doubles (12 bytes). However, several additional long double math functions are necessary to use them within Perl ({atan2, cos, exp, floor, fmod, frexp, isnan, log, modf, pow, sin, sqrt}l, strtold). These are not yet available with Cygwin.

• * -Dusethreads

POSIX threads are implemented in Cygwin, define this symbol if you want a threaded perl.

• * -Duselargefiles

Cygwin uses 64-bit integers for internal size and position calculations, this will be correctly detected and defined by Configure.

• * -Dmksymlinks

Use this to build perl outside of the source tree. This works with Cygwin. Details can be found in the INSTALL document. This is the recommended way to build perl from sources.

Suspicious Warnings on Cygwin

You may see some messages during Configure that seem suspicious.

• * dlsym()

ld2 is needed to build dynamic libraries, but it does not exist when dlsym() checking occurs (it is not created until `make ' runs). You will see the following message:

  Checking whether your C<dlsym()> needs a leading underscore ...
  ld2: not found
  I can't compile and run the test program.
  I'm guessing that dlsym doesn't need a leading underscore.

Since the guess is correct, this is not a problem.

• * Win9x and d_eofnblk

Win9x does not correctly report EOF with a non-blocking read on a closed pipe. You will see the following messages:

  But it also returns -1 to signal EOF, so be careful!
  WARNING: you can't distinguish between EOF and no data!

  *** WHOA THERE!!! ***
      The recommended value for $d_eofnblk on this machine was "define"!
      Keep the recommended value? [y]

At least for consistency with WinNT, you should keep the recommended value.

• * Compiler/Preprocessor defines

The following error occurs because of the Cygwin #define of _LONG_DOUBLE :

  Guessing which symbols your C compiler and preprocessor define...
  try.c:<line#>: missing binary operator

This failure does not seem to cause any problems. With older gcc versions, "parse error" is reported instead of "missing binary operator".

MAKE ON CYGWIN

Simply run make and wait:

  make 2>&1 | tee log.make

Errors on Cygwin

Errors like these are normal:

  ...
  make: [extra.pods] Error 1 (ignored)
  ...
  make: [extras.make] Error 1 (ignored)

ld2 on Cygwin

During `make ', ld2 will be created and installed in your $installbin directory (where you said to put public executables). It does not wait until the `make install ' process to install the ld2 script, this is because the remainder of the `make ' refers to ld2 without fully specifying its path and does this from multiple subdirectories. The assumption is that $installbin is in your current PATH . If this is not the case `make ' will fail at some point. If this happens, just manually copy ld2 from the source directory to somewhere in your PATH .

TEST ON CYGWIN

There are two steps to running the test suite:

  make test 2>&1 | tee log.make-test

  cd t;./perl harness 2>&1 | tee ../log.harness

The same tests are run both times, but more information is provided when running as `./perl harness'.

Test results vary depending on your host system and your Cygwin configuration. If a test can pass in some Cygwin setup, it is always attempted and explainable test failures are documented. It is possible for Perl to pass all the tests, but it is more likely that some tests will fail for one of the reasons listed below.

File Permissions on Cygwin

UNIX file permissions are based on sets of mode bits for {read,write,execute} for each {user,group,other}. By default Cygwin only tracks the Win32 read-only attribute represented as the UNIX file user write bit (files are always readable, files are executable if they have a .{com,bat,exe} extension or begin with #! , directories are always readable and executable). On WinNT with the ntea CYGWIN setting, the additional mode bits are stored as extended file attributes. On WinNT with the ntsec CYGWIN setting, permissions use the standard WinNT security descriptors and access control lists. Without one of these options, these tests will fail (listing not updated yet):

  Failed Test           List of failed
  ------------------------------------
  io/fs.t               5, 7, 9-10
  lib/anydbm.t          2
  lib/db-btree.t        20
  lib/db-hash.t         16
  lib/db-recno.t        18
  lib/gdbm.t            2
  lib/ndbm.t            2
  lib/odbm.t            2
  lib/sdbm.t            2
  op/stat.t             9, 20 (.tmp not an executable extension)

NDBM_File and ODBM_File do not work on FAT filesystems

Do not use NDBM_File or ODBM_File on FAT filesystem. They can be built on a FAT filesystem, but many tests will fail:

 ../ext/NDBM_File/ndbm.t       13  3328    71   59  83.10%  1-2 4 16-71
 ../ext/ODBM_File/odbm.t      255 65280    ??   ??       %  ??
 ../lib/AnyDBM_File.t           2   512    12    2  16.67%  1 4
 ../lib/Memoize/t/errors.t      0   139    11    5  45.45%  7-11
 ../lib/Memoize/t/tie_ndbm.t   13  3328     4    4 100.00%  1-4
 run/fresh_perl.t                          97    1   1.03%  91

If you intend to run only on FAT (or if using AnyDBM_File on FAT), run Configure with the -Ui_ndbm and -Ui_dbm options to prevent NDBM_File and ODBM_File being built.

With NTFS (and CYGWIN=ntsec), there should be no problems even if perl was built on FAT.

fork() failures in io_* tests

A fork() failure may result in the following tests failing:

  ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_multihomed.t
  ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_sock.t
  ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_unix.t

See comment on fork in Miscellaneous below.

Script Portability on Cygwin

Cygwin does an outstanding job of providing UNIX-like semantics on top of Win32 systems. However, in addition to the items noted above, there are some differences that you should know about. This is a very brief guide to portability, more information can be found in the Cygwin documentation.

• * Pathnames

Cygwin pathnames can be separated by forward (/) or backward (\\) slashes. They may also begin with drive letters (C:) or Universal Naming Codes (//UNC). DOS device names (aux, con, prn, com*, lpt?, nul) are invalid as base filenames. However, they can be used in extensions (e.g., hello.aux). Names may contain all printable characters except these:

  : * ? " < > |

File names are case insensitive, but case preserving. A pathname that contains a backslash or drive letter is a Win32 pathname (and not subject to the translations applied to POSIX style pathnames).

• * Text/Binary

When a file is opened it is in either text or binary mode. In text mode a file is subject to CR/LF/Ctrl-Z translations. With Cygwin, the default mode for an open() is determined by the mode of the mount that underlies the file. Perl provides a binmode() function to set binary mode on files that otherwise would be treated as text. sysopen() with the O_TEXT flag sets text mode on files that otherwise would be treated as binary:

    sysopen(FOO, "bar", O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TEXT)

lseek() , tell() and sysseek() only work with files opened in binary mode.

The text/binary issue is covered at length in the Cygwin documentation.

• * PerlIO

PerlIO overrides the default Cygwin Text/Binary behaviour. A file will always treated as binary, regardless which mode of the mount it lives on, just like it is in UNIX. So CR/LF translation needs to be requested in either the open() call like this:

  open(FH, ">:crlf", "out.txt");

which will do conversion from LF to CR/LF on the output, or in the environment settings (add this to your .bashrc):

  export PERLIO=crlf

which will pull in the crlf PerlIO layer which does LF -> CRLF conversion on every output generated by perl.

• * .exe

The Cygwin stat() , lstat() and readlink() functions make the .exe extension transparent by looking for foo.exe when you ask for foo (unless a foo also exists). Cygwin does not require a .exe extension, but gcc adds it automatically when building a program. However, when accessing an executable as a normal file (e.g., cp in a makefile) the .exe is not transparent. The install included with Cygwin automatically appends a .exe when necessary.

• * chown()

On WinNT chown() can change a file's user and group IDs. On Win9x chown() is a no-op, although this is appropriate since there is no security model.

• * Miscellaneous

File locking using the F_GETLK command to fcntl() is a stub that returns ENOSYS .

Win9x can not rename() an open file (although WinNT can).

The Cygwin chroot() implementation has holes (it can not restrict file access by native Win32 programs).

Inplace editing perl -i of files doesn't work without doing a backup of the file being edited perl -i.bak because of windowish restrictions, therefore Perl adds the suffix .bak automatically if you use perl -i without specifying a backup extension.

Using fork() after loading multiple dlls may fail with an internal cygwin error like the following:

  C:\CYGWIN\BIN\PERL.EXE: *** couldn't allocate memory 0x10000(4128768) for 'C:\CYGWIN\LIB\PERL5\5.6.1\CYGWIN-MULTI\AUTO\SOCKET\SOCKET.DLL' alignment, Win32 error 8

    200 [main] perl 377147 sync_with_child: child -395691(0xB8) died before initialization with status code 0x1
   1370 [main] perl 377147 sync_with_child: *** child state child loading dlls

Use the rebase utility to resolve the conflicting dll addresses. The rebase package is included in the Cygwin netrelease. Use setup.exe from http://www.cygwin.com/setup.exe to install it and run rebaseall.

INSTALL PERL ON CYGWIN

This will install Perl, including man pages.

  make install 2>&1 | tee log.make-install

NOTE: If STDERR is redirected `make install ' will not prompt you to install perl into /usr/bin.

You may need to be Administrator to run `make install '. If you are not, you must have write access to the directories in question.

Information on installing the Perl documentation in HTML format can be found in the INSTALL document.

MANIFEST ON CYGWIN

These are the files in the Perl release that contain references to Cygwin. These very brief notes attempt to explain the reason for all conditional code. Hopefully, keeping this up to date will allow the Cygwin port to be kept as clean as possible (listing not updated yet).

• Documentation

  INSTALL README.cygwin README.win32 MANIFEST
  Changes Changes5.005 Changes5.004 Changes5.6
  pod/perl.pod pod/perlport.pod pod/perlfaq3.pod
  pod/perldelta.pod pod/perl5004delta.pod pod/perl56delta.pod
  pod/perlhist.pod pod/perlmodlib.pod perl/buildtoc pod/perltoc.pod

• Build, Configure, Make, Install

  cygwin/Makefile.SHs
  cygwin/ld2.in
  cygwin/perlld.in
  ext/IPC/SysV/hints/cygwin.pl
  ext/NDBM_File/hints/cygwin.pl
  ext/ODBM_File/hints/cygwin.pl
  hints/cygwin.sh
  Configure             - help finding hints from uname,
                          shared libperl required for dynamic loading
  Makefile.SH           - linklibperl
  Porting/patchls       - cygwin in port list
  installman            - man pages with :: translated to .
  installperl           - install dll/ld2/perlld, install to pods
  makedepend.SH         - uwinfix

• Tests

  t/io/tell.t           - binmode
  t/lib/b.t             - ignore Cwd from os_extras
  t/lib/glob-basic.t    - Win32 directory list access differs from read mode
  t/op/magic.t          - $^X/symlink WORKAROUND, s/.exe//
  t/op/stat.t           - no /dev, skip Win32 ftCreationTime quirk
                          (cache manager sometimes preserves ctime of file
                          previously created and deleted), no -u (setuid)

• Compiled Perl Source

  EXTERN.h              - __declspec(dllimport)
  XSUB.h                - __declspec(dllexport)
  cygwin/cygwin.c       - os_extras (getcwd, spawn)
  perl.c                - os_extras
  perl.h                - binmode
  doio.c                - win9x can not rename a file when it is open
  pp_sys.c              - do not define h_errno, pp_system with spawn
  util.c                - use setenv

• Compiled Module Source

  ext/POSIX/POSIX.xs    - tzname defined externally
  ext/SDBM_File/sdbm/pair.c
                        - EXTCONST needs to be redefined from EXTERN.h
  ext/SDBM_File/sdbm/sdbm.c
                        - binary open

• Perl Modules/Scripts

  lib/Cwd.pm            - hook to internal Cwd::cwd
  lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm
                        - require MM_Cygwin.pm
  lib/ExtUtils/MM_Cygwin.pm
                        - canonpath, cflags, manifypods, perl_archive
  lib/File/Find.pm      - on remote drives stat() always sets st_nlink to 1
  lib/File/Spec/Unix.pm - preserve //unc
  lib/File/Temp.pm      - no directory sticky bit
  lib/perl5db.pl        - use stdin not /dev/tty
  utils/perldoc.PL      - version comment

BUGS ON CYGWIN

Support for swapping real and effective user and group IDs is incomplete. On WinNT Cygwin provides setuid() , seteuid() , setgid() and setegid() . However, additional Cygwin calls for manipulating WinNT access tokens and security contexts are required.

AUTHORS

Charles Wilson <cwilson@ece.gatech.edu>, Eric Fifer <egf7@columbia.edu>, alexander smishlajev <als@turnhere.com>, Steven Morlock <newspost@morlock.net>, Sebastien Barre <Sebastien.Barre@utc.fr>, Teun Burgers <burgers@ecn.nl>, Gerrit P. Haase <gp@familiehaase.de>.

HISTORY

Last updated: 2003-08-12