PERLOS2(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLOS2(1)
NAME
perlos2 - Perl under OS/2, DOS, Win0.3*, Win0.95 and WinNT.
SYNOPSIS
One can read this document in the following formats:
man perlos2
view perl perlos2
explorer perlos2.html
info perlos2
to list some (not all may be available simultaneously), or it may be
read as is: either as README.os2, or pod/perlos2.pod.
To read the .INF version of documentation (very recommended) outside of
OS/2, one needs an IBM's reader (may be available on IBM ftp sites (?)
(URL anyone?)) or shipped with PC DOS 7.0 and IBM's Visual Age C++ 3.5.
A copy of a Win* viewer is contained in the "Just add OS/2 Warp" package
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/tools/jaow/jaow.zip
in ?:\JUST_ADD\view.exe. This gives one an access to EMX's .INF docs as
well (text form is available in /emx/doc in EMX's distribution). There
is also a different viewer named xview.
Note that if you have lynx.exe or netscape.exe installed, you can follow
WWW links from this document in .INF format. If you have EMX docs
installed correctly, you can follow library links (you need to have
"view emxbook" working by setting "EMXBOOK" environment variable as it
is described in EMX docs).
DESCRIPTION
Target
The target is to make OS/2 one of the best supported platform for
using/building/developing Perl and Perl applications, as well as make
Perl the best language to use under OS/2. The secondary target is to try
to make this work under DOS and Win* as well (but not too hard).
The current state is quite close to this target. Known limitations:
• Some *nix programs use fork() a lot; with the mostly useful flavors
of perl for OS/2 (there are several built simultaneously) this is
supported; but some flavors do not support this (e.g., when Perl is
called from inside REXX). Using fork() after useing dynamically
loading extensions would not work with very old versions of EMX.
• You need a separate perl executable perl__.exe (see "perl__.exe")
if you want to use PM code in your application (as Perl/Tk or
OpenGL Perl modules do) without having a text-mode window present.
While using the standard perl.exe from a text-mode window is
possible too, I have seen cases when this causes degradation of the
system stability. Using perl__.exe avoids such a degradation.
• There is no simple way to access WPS objects. The only way I know
is via "OS2::REXX" and "SOM" extensions (see OS2::REXX, SOM).
However, we do not have access to convenience methods of Object-
REXX. (Is it possible at all? I know of no Object-REXX API.) The
"SOM" extension (currently in alpha-text) may eventually remove
this shortcoming; however, due to the fact that DII is not
supported by the "SOM" module, using "SOM" is not as convenient as
one would like it.
Please keep this list up-to-date by informing me about other items.
Other OSes
Since OS/2 port of perl uses a remarkable EMX environment, it can run
(and build extensions, and - possibly - be built itself) under any
environment which can run EMX. The current list is DOS, DOS-inside-OS/2,
Win0.3*, Win0.95 and WinNT. Out of many perl flavors, only one works,
see "perl_.exe".
Note that not all features of Perl are available under these
environments. This depends on the features the extender - most probably
RSX - decided to implement.
Cf. "Prerequisites".
Prerequisites
EMX EMX runtime is required (may be substituted by RSX). Note that it
is possible to make perl_.exe to run under DOS without any
external support by binding emx.exe/rsx.exe to it, see emxbind(1).
Note that under DOS for best results one should use RSX runtime,
which has much more functions working (like "fork", "popen" and so
on). In fact RSX is required if there is no VCPI present. Note the
RSX requires DPMI. Many implementations of DPMI are known to be
very buggy, beware!
Only the latest runtime is supported, currently "0.9d fix 03".
Perl may run under earlier versions of EMX, but this is not
tested.
One can get different parts of EMX from, say
ftp://crydee.sai.msu.ru/pub/comp/os/os2/leo/gnu/emx+gcc/
http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/h-browse.php?dir=/pub/os2/dev/emx/v0.9d/
The runtime component should have the name emxrt.zip.
NOTE. When using emx.exe/rsx.exe, it is enough to have them on
your path. One does not need to specify them explicitly (though
this
emx perl_.exe -de 0
will work as well.)
RSX To run Perl on DPMI platforms one needs RSX runtime. This is
needed under DOS-inside-OS/2, Win0.3*, Win0.95 and WinNT (see
"Other OSes"). RSX would not work with VCPI only, as EMX would, it
requires DMPI.
Having RSX and the latest sh.exe one gets a fully functional
*nix-ish environment under DOS, say, "fork", `` and pipe-"open"
work. In fact, MakeMaker works (for static build), so one can have
Perl development environment under DOS.
One can get RSX from, say
http://cd.textfiles.com/hobbesos29804/disk1/EMX09C/
ftp://crydee.sai.msu.ru/pub/comp/os/os2/leo/gnu/emx+gcc/contrib/
Contact the author on "rainer@mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de".
The latest sh.exe with DOS hooks is available in
http://www.ilyaz.org/software/os2/
as sh_dos.zip or under similar names starting with "sh", "pdksh"
etc.
HPFS Perl does not care about file systems, but the perl library
contains many files with long names, so to install it intact one
needs a file system which supports long file names.
Note that if you do not plan to build the perl itself, it may be
possible to fool EMX to truncate file names. This is not
supported, read EMX docs to see how to do it.
pdksh To start external programs with complicated command lines (like
with pipes in between, and/or quoting of arguments), Perl uses an
external shell. With EMX port such shell should be named sh.exe,
and located either in the wired-in-during-compile locations
(usually F:/bin), or in configurable location (see
""PERL_SH_DIR"").
For best results use EMX pdksh. The standard binary (5.2.14 or
later) runs under DOS (with "RSX") as well, see
http://www.ilyaz.org/software/os2/
Starting Perl programs under OS/2 (and DOS and...)
Start your Perl program foo.pl with arguments "arg1 arg2 arg3" the same
way as on any other platform, by
perl foo.pl arg1 arg2 arg3
If you want to specify perl options "-my_opts" to the perl itself (as
opposed to your program), use
perl -my_opts foo.pl arg1 arg2 arg3
Alternately, if you use OS/2-ish shell, like CMD or 4os2, put the
following at the start of your perl script:
extproc perl -S -my_opts
rename your program to foo.cmd, and start it by typing
foo arg1 arg2 arg3
Note that because of stupid OS/2 limitations the full path of the perl
script is not available when you use "extproc", thus you are forced to
use "-S" perl switch, and your script should be on the "PATH". As a plus
side, if you know a full path to your script, you may still start it
with
perl ../../blah/foo.cmd arg1 arg2 arg3
(note that the argument "-my_opts" is taken care of by the "extproc"
line in your script, see "extproc" on the first line).
To understand what the above magic does, read perl docs about "-S"
switch - see perlrun, and cmdref about "extproc":
view perl perlrun
man perlrun
view cmdref extproc
help extproc
or whatever method you prefer.
There are also endless possibilities to use executable extensions of
4os2, associations of WPS and so on... However, if you use *nixish shell
(like sh.exe supplied in the binary distribution), you need to follow
the syntax specified in "Command Switches" in perlrun.
Note that -S switch supports scripts with additional extensions .cmd,
.btm, .bat, .pl as well.
Starting OS/2 (and DOS) programs under Perl
This is what system() (see "system" in perlfunc), `` (see "I/O
Operators" in perlop), and open pipe (see "open" in perlfunc) are for.
(Avoid exec() (see "exec" in perlfunc) unless you know what you do).
Note however that to use some of these operators you need to have a sh-
syntax shell installed (see "Pdksh", "Frequently asked questions"), and
perl should be able to find it (see ""PERL_SH_DIR"").
The cases when the shell is used are:
1. One-argument system() (see "system" in perlfunc), exec() (see "exec"
in perlfunc) with redirection or shell meta-characters;
2. Pipe-open (see "open" in perlfunc) with the command which contains
redirection or shell meta-characters;
3. Backticks `` (see "I/O Operators" in perlop) with the command which
contains redirection or shell meta-characters;
4. If the executable called by system()/exec()/pipe-open()/`` is a
script with the "magic" "#!" line or "extproc" line which specifies
shell;
5. If the executable called by system()/exec()/pipe-open()/`` is a
script without "magic" line, and $ENV{EXECSHELL} is set to shell;
6. If the executable called by system()/exec()/pipe-open()/`` is not
found (is not this remark obsolete?);
7. For globbing (see "glob" in perlfunc, "I/O Operators" in perlop)
(obsolete? Perl uses builtin globbing nowadays...).
For the sake of speed for a common case, in the above algorithms
backslashes in the command name are not considered as shell
metacharacters.
Perl starts scripts which begin with cookies "extproc" or "#!" directly,
without an intervention of shell. Perl uses the same algorithm to find
the executable as pdksh: if the path on "#!" line does not work, and
contains "/", then the directory part of the executable is ignored, and
the executable is searched in . and on "PATH". To find arguments for
these scripts Perl uses a different algorithm than pdksh: up to 3
arguments are recognized, and trailing whitespace is stripped.
If a script does not contain such a cooky, then to avoid calling sh.exe,
Perl uses the same algorithm as pdksh: if $ENV{EXECSHELL} is set, the
script is given as the first argument to this command, if not set, then
"$ENV{COMSPEC} /c" is used (or a hardwired guess if $ENV{COMSPEC} is not
set).
When starting scripts directly, Perl uses exactly the same algorithm as
for the search of script given by -S command-line option: it will look
in the current directory, then on components of $ENV{PATH} using the
following order of appended extensions: no extension, .cmd, .btm, .bat,
.pl.
Note that Perl will start to look for scripts only if OS/2 cannot start
the specified application, thus "system 'blah'" will not look for a
script if there is an executable file blah.exe anywhere on "PATH". In
other words, "PATH" is essentially searched twice: once by the OS for an
executable, then by Perl for scripts.
Note also that executable files on OS/2 can have an arbitrary extension,
but .exe will be automatically appended if no dot is present in the
name. The workaround is as simple as that: since blah. and blah denote
the same file (at list on FAT and HPFS file systems), to start an
executable residing in file n:/bin/blah (no extension) give an argument
"n:/bin/blah." (dot appended) to system().
Perl will start PM programs from VIO (=text-mode) Perl process in a
separate PM session; the opposite is not true: when you start a non-PM
program from a PM Perl process, Perl would not run it in a separate
session. If a separate session is desired, either ensure that shell
will be used, as in "system 'cmd /c myprog'", or start it using optional
arguments to system() documented in "OS2::Process" module. This is
considered to be a feature.
Frequently asked questions
"It does not work"
Perl binary distributions come with a testperl.cmd script which tries to
detect common problems with misconfigured installations. There is a
pretty large chance it will discover which step of the installation you
managed to goof. ";-)"
I cannot run external programs
• Did you run your programs with "-w" switch? See "Starting OS/2 (and
DOS) programs under Perl".
• Do you try to run internal shell commands, like `copy a b` (internal
for cmd.exe), or `glob a*b` (internal for ksh)? You need to specify
your shell explicitly, like `cmd /c copy a b`, since Perl cannot
deduce which commands are internal to your shell.
I cannot embed perl into my program, or use perl.dll from my program.
Is your program EMX-compiled with "-Zmt -Zcrtdll"?
Well, nowadays Perl DLL should be usable from a differently compiled
program too... If you can run Perl code from REXX scripts (see
OS2::REXX), then there are some other aspect of interaction which
are overlooked by the current hackish code to support differently-
compiled principal programs.
If everything else fails, you need to build a stand-alone DLL for
perl. Contact me, I did it once. Sockets would not work, as a lot of
other stuff.
Did you use ExtUtils::Embed?
Some time ago I had reports it does not work. Nowadays it is
checked in the Perl test suite, so grep ./t subdirectory of the
build tree (as well as *.t files in the ./lib subdirectory) to find
how it should be done "correctly".
`` and pipe-"open" do not work under DOS
This may a variant of just "I cannot run external programs", or a deeper
problem. Basically: you need RSX (see "Prerequisites") for these
commands to work, and you may need a port of sh.exe which understands
command arguments. One of such ports is listed in "Prerequisites" under
RSX. Do not forget to set variable ""PERL_SH_DIR"" as well.
DPMI is required for RSX.
Cannot start "find.exe "pattern" file"
The whole idea of the "standard C API to start applications" is that the
forms "foo" and "foo" of program arguments are completely
interchangeable. find breaks this paradigm;
find "pattern" file
find pattern file
are not equivalent; find cannot be started directly using the above API.
One needs a way to surround the doublequotes in some other quoting
construction, necessarily having an extra non-Unixish shell in between.
Use one of
system 'cmd', '/c', 'find "pattern" file';
`cmd /c 'find "pattern" file'`
This would start find.exe via cmd.exe via "sh.exe" via "perl.exe", but
this is a price to pay if you want to use non-conforming program.
INSTALLATION
Automatic binary installation
The most convenient way of installing a binary distribution of perl is
via perl installer install.exe. Just follow the instructions, and 99% of
the installation blues would go away.
Note however, that you need to have unzip.exe on your path, and EMX
environment running. The latter means that if you just installed EMX,
and made all the needed changes to Config.sys, you may need to reboot in
between. Check EMX runtime by running
emxrev
Binary installer also creates a folder on your desktop with some useful
objects. If you need to change some aspects of the work of the binary
installer, feel free to edit the file Perl.pkg. This may be useful
e.g., if you need to run the installer many times and do not want to
make many interactive changes in the GUI.
Things not taken care of by automatic binary installation:
"PERL_BADLANG" may be needed if you change your codepage after perl
installation, and the new value is not supported by EMX.
See ""PERL_BADLANG"".
"PERL_BADFREE" see ""PERL_BADFREE"".
Config.pm This file resides somewhere deep in the location you
installed your perl library, find it out by
perl -MConfig -le "print $INC{'Config.pm'}"
While most important values in this file are updated by
the binary installer, some of them may need to be hand-
edited. I know no such data, please keep me informed if
you find one. Moreover, manual changes to the installed
version may need to be accompanied by an edit of this
file.
NOTE. Because of a typo the binary installer of 5.00305 would install a
variable "PERL_SHPATH" into Config.sys. Please remove this variable and
put "PERL_SH_DIR" instead.
Manual binary installation
As of version 5.00305, OS/2 perl binary distribution comes split into 11
components. Unfortunately, to enable configurable binary installation,
the file paths in the zip files are not absolute, but relative to some
directory.
Note that the extraction with the stored paths is still necessary
(default with unzip, specify "-d" to pkunzip). However, you need to know
where to extract the files. You need also to manually change entries in
Config.sys to reflect where did you put the files. Note that if you have
some primitive unzipper (like "pkunzip"), you may get a lot of
warnings/errors during unzipping. Upgrade to "(w)unzip".
Below is the sample of what to do to reproduce the configuration on my
machine. In VIEW.EXE you can press "Ctrl-Insert" now, and cut-and-paste
from the resulting file - created in the directory you started VIEW.EXE
from.
For each component, we mention environment variables related to each
installation directory. Either choose directories to match your values
of the variables, or create/append-to variables to take into account the
directories.
Perl VIO and PM executables (dynamically linked)
unzip perl_exc.zip *.exe *.ico -d f:/emx.add/bin
unzip perl_exc.zip *.dll -d f:/emx.add/dll
(have the directories with "*.exe" on PATH, and "*.dll" on LIBPATH);
Perl_ VIO executable (statically linked)
unzip perl_aou.zip -d f:/emx.add/bin
(have the directory on PATH);
Executables for Perl utilities
unzip perl_utl.zip -d f:/emx.add/bin
(have the directory on PATH);
Main Perl library
unzip perl_mlb.zip -d f:/perllib/lib
If this directory is exactly the same as the prefix which was
compiled into perl.exe, you do not need to change anything. However,
for perl to find the library if you use a different path, you need to
"set PERLLIB_PREFIX" in Config.sys, see ""PERLLIB_PREFIX"".
Additional Perl modules
unzip perl_ste.zip -d f:/perllib/lib/site_perl/5.40.1/
Same remark as above applies. Additionally, if this directory is not
one of directories on @INC (and @INC is influenced by
"PERLLIB_PREFIX"), you need to put this directory and subdirectory
./os2 in "PERLLIB" or "PERL5LIB" variable. Do not use "PERL5LIB"
unless you have it set already. See "ENVIRONMENT" in perl.
[Check whether this extraction directory is still applicable with the
new directory structure layout!]
Tools to compile Perl modules
unzip perl_blb.zip -d f:/perllib/lib
Same remark as for perl_ste.zip.
Manpages for Perl and utilities
unzip perl_man.zip -d f:/perllib/man
This directory should better be on "MANPATH". You need to have a
working man to access these files.
Manpages for Perl modules
unzip perl_mam.zip -d f:/perllib/man
This directory should better be on "MANPATH". You need to have a
working man to access these files.
Source for Perl documentation
unzip perl_pod.zip -d f:/perllib/lib
This is used by the "perldoc" program (see perldoc), and may be used
to generate HTML documentation usable by WWW browsers, and
documentation in zillions of other formats: "info", "LaTeX",
"Acrobat", "FrameMaker" and so on. [Use programs such as pod2latex
etc.]
Perl manual in .INF format
unzip perl_inf.zip -d d:/os2/book
This directory should better be on "BOOKSHELF".
Pdksh
unzip perl_sh.zip -d f:/bin
This is used by perl to run external commands which explicitly
require shell, like the commands using redirection and shell
metacharacters. It is also used instead of explicit /bin/sh.
Set "PERL_SH_DIR" (see ""PERL_SH_DIR"") if you move sh.exe from the
above location.
Note. It may be possible to use some other sh-compatible shell
(untested).
After you installed the components you needed and updated the Config.sys
correspondingly, you need to hand-edit Config.pm. This file resides
somewhere deep in the location you installed your perl library, find it
out by
perl -MConfig -le "print $INC{'Config.pm'}"
You need to correct all the entries which look like file paths (they
currently start with "f:/").
Warning
The automatic and manual perl installation leave precompiled paths
inside perl executables. While these paths are overwritable (see
""PERLLIB_PREFIX"", ""PERL_SH_DIR""), some people may prefer binary
editing of paths inside the executables/DLLs.
Accessing documentation
Depending on how you built/installed perl you may have (otherwise
identical) Perl documentation in the following formats:
OS/2 .INF file
Most probably the most convenient form. Under OS/2 view it as
view perl
view perl perlfunc
view perl less
view perl ExtUtils::MakeMaker
(currently the last two may hit a wrong location, but this may improve
soon). Under Win* see "SYNOPSIS".
If you want to build the docs yourself, and have OS/2 toolkit, run
pod2ipf > perl.ipf
in /perllib/lib/pod directory, then
ipfc /inf perl.ipf
(Expect a lot of errors during the both steps.) Now move it on your
BOOKSHELF path.
Plain text
If you have perl documentation in the source form, perl utilities
installed, and GNU groff installed, you may use
perldoc perlfunc
perldoc less
perldoc ExtUtils::MakeMaker
to access the perl documentation in the text form (note that you may get
better results using perl manpages).
Alternately, try running pod2text on .pod files.
Manpages
If you have man installed on your system, and you installed perl
manpages, use something like this:
man perlfunc
man 3 less
man ExtUtils.MakeMaker
to access documentation for different components of Perl. Start with
man perl
Note that dot (.) is used as a package separator for documentation for
packages, and as usual, sometimes you need to give the section - 3 above
- to avoid shadowing by the less(1) manpage.
Make sure that the directory above the directory with manpages is on our
"MANPATH", like this
set MANPATH=c:/man;f:/perllib/man
for Perl manpages in "f:/perllib/man/man1/" etc.
HTML
If you have some WWW browser available, installed the Perl documentation
in the source form, and Perl utilities, you can build HTML docs. Cd to
directory with .pod files, and do like this
cd f:/perllib/lib/pod
pod2html
After this you can direct your browser the file perl.html in this
directory, and go ahead with reading docs, like this:
explore file:///f:/perllib/lib/pod/perl.html
Alternatively you may be able to get these docs prebuilt from CPAN.
GNU "info" files
Users of Emacs would appreciate it very much, especially with "CPerl"
mode loaded. You need to get latest "pod2texi" from "CPAN", or,
alternately, the prebuilt info pages.
PDF files
for "Acrobat" are available on CPAN (may be for slightly older version
of perl).
"LaTeX" docs
can be constructed using "pod2latex".
BUILD
Here we discuss how to build Perl under OS/2.
The short story
Assume that you are a seasoned porter, so are sure that all the
necessary tools are already present on your system, and you know how to
get the Perl source distribution. Untar it, change to the extract
directory, and
gnupatch -p0 < os2\diff.configure
sh Configure -des -D prefix=f:/perllib
make
make test
make install
make aout_test
make aout_install
This puts the executables in f:/perllib/bin. Manually move them to the
"PATH", manually move the built perl*.dll to "LIBPATH" (here for Perl
DLL * is a not-very-meaningful hex checksum), and run
make installcmd INSTALLCMDDIR=d:/ir/on/path
Assuming that the "man"-files were put on an appropriate location, this
completes the installation of minimal Perl system. (The binary
distribution contains also a lot of additional modules, and the
documentation in INF format.)
What follows is a detailed guide through these steps.
Prerequisites
You need to have the latest EMX development environment, the full GNU
tool suite (gawk renamed to awk, and GNU find.exe earlier on path than
the OS/2 find.exe, same with sort.exe, to check use
find --version
sort --version
). You need the latest version of pdksh installed as sh.exe.
Check that you have BSD libraries and headers installed, and -
optionally - Berkeley DB headers and libraries, and crypt.
Possible locations to get the files:
ftp://ftp.uni-heidelberg.de/pub/os2/unix/
http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/h-browse.php?dir=/pub/os2
http://cd.textfiles.com/hobbesos29804/disk1/DEV32/
http://cd.textfiles.com/hobbesos29804/disk1/EMX09C/
It is reported that the following archives contain enough utils to build
perl: gnufutil.zip, gnusutil.zip, gnututil.zip, gnused.zip,
gnupatch.zip, gnuawk.zip, gnumake.zip, gnugrep.zip, bsddev.zip and
ksh527rt.zip (or a later version). Note that all these utilities are
known to be available from LEO:
ftp://crydee.sai.msu.ru/pub/comp/os/os2/leo/gnu/
Note also that the db.lib and db.a from the EMX distribution are not
suitable for multi-threaded compile (even single-threaded flavor of Perl
uses multi-threaded C RTL, for compatibility with XFree86-OS/2). Get a
corrected one from
http://www.ilyaz.org/software/os2/db_mt.zip
If you have exactly the same version of Perl installed already, make
sure that no copies or perl are currently running. Later steps of the
build may fail since an older version of perl.dll loaded into memory may
be found. Running "make test" becomes meaningless, since the test are
checking a previous build of perl (this situation is detected and
reported by os2/os2_base.t test). Do not forget to unset
"PERL_EMXLOAD_SEC" in environment.
Also make sure that you have /tmp directory on the current drive, and .
directory in your "LIBPATH". One may try to correct the latter condition
by
set BEGINLIBPATH .\.
if you use something like CMD.EXE or latest versions of 4os2.exe.
(Setting BEGINLIBPATH to just "." is ignored by the OS/2 kernel.)
Make sure your gcc is good for "-Zomf" linking: run "omflibs" script in
/emx/lib directory.
Check that you have link386 installed. It comes standard with OS/2, but
may be not installed due to customization. If typing
link386
shows you do not have it, do Selective install, and choose "Link object
modules" in Optional system utilities/More. If you get into link386
prompts, press "Ctrl-C" to exit.
Getting perl source
You need to fetch the latest perl source (including developers
releases). With some probability it is located in
http://www.cpan.org/src/
http://www.cpan.org/src/unsupported
If not, you may need to dig in the indices to find it in the directory
of the current maintainer.
Quick cycle of developers release may break the OS/2 build time to time,
looking into
http://www.cpan.org/ports/os2/
may indicate the latest release which was publicly released by the
maintainer. Note that the release may include some additional patches to
apply to the current source of perl.
Extract it like this
tar vzxf perl5.00409.tar.gz
You may see a message about errors while extracting Configure. This is
because there is a conflict with a similarly-named file configure.
Change to the directory of extraction.
Application of the patches
You need to apply the patches in ./os2/diff.* like this:
gnupatch -p0 < os2\diff.configure
You may also need to apply the patches supplied with the binary
distribution of perl. It also makes sense to look on the perl5-porters
mailing list for the latest OS/2-related patches (see
<http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/>). Such
patches usually contain strings "/os2/" and "patch", so it makes sense
looking for these strings.
Hand-editing
You may look into the file ./hints/os2.sh and correct anything wrong you
find there. I do not expect it is needed anywhere.
Making
sh Configure -des -D prefix=f:/perllib
"prefix" means: where to install the resulting perl library. Giving
correct prefix you may avoid the need to specify "PERLLIB_PREFIX", see
""PERLLIB_PREFIX"".
Ignore the message about missing "ln", and about "-c" option to tr. The
latter is most probably already fixed, if you see it and can trace where
the latter spurious warning comes from, please inform me.
Now
make
At some moment the built may die, reporting a version mismatch or unable
to run perl. This means that you do not have . in your LIBPATH, so
perl.exe cannot find the needed perl67B2.dll (treat these hex digits as
line noise). After this is fixed the build should finish without a lot
of fuss.
Testing
Now run
make test
All tests should succeed (with some of them skipped). If you have the
same version of Perl installed, it is crucial that you have "." early in
your LIBPATH (or in BEGINLIBPATH), otherwise your tests will most
probably test the wrong version of Perl.
Some tests may generate extra messages similar to
A lot of "bad free"
in database tests related to Berkeley DB. This should be fixed
already. If it persists, you may disable this warnings, see
""PERL_BADFREE"".
Process terminated by SIGTERM/SIGINT
This is a standard message issued by OS/2 applications. *nix
applications die in silence. It is considered to be a feature. One
can easily disable this by appropriate sighandlers.
However the test engine bleeds these message to screen in unexpected
moments. Two messages of this kind should be present during testing.
To get finer test reports, call
perl t/harness
The report with io/pipe.t failing may look like this:
Failed Test Status Wstat Total Fail Failed List of failed
------------------------------------------------------------
io/pipe.t 12 1 8.33% 9
7 tests skipped, plus 56 subtests skipped.
Failed 1/195 test scripts, 99.49% okay. 1/6542 subtests failed,
99.98% okay.
The reasons for most important skipped tests are:
op/fs.t
18 Checks "atime" and "mtime" of stat() - unfortunately, HPFS
provides only 2sec time granularity (for compatibility with
FAT?).
25 Checks truncate() on a filehandle just opened for write - I
do not know why this should or should not work.
op/stat.t
Checks stat(). Tests:
4 Checks "atime" and "mtime" of stat() - unfortunately, HPFS
provides only 2sec time granularity (for compatibility with
FAT?).
Installing the built perl
If you haven't yet moved "perl*.dll" onto LIBPATH, do it now.
Run
make install
It would put the generated files into needed locations. Manually put
perl.exe, perl__.exe and perl___.exe to a location on your PATH,
perl.dll to a location on your LIBPATH.
Run
make installcmd INSTALLCMDDIR=d:/ir/on/path
to convert perl utilities to .cmd files and put them on PATH. You need
to put .EXE-utilities on path manually. They are installed in
"$prefix/bin", here $prefix is what you gave to Configure, see "Making".
If you use "man", either move the installed */man/ directories to your
"MANPATH", or modify "MANPATH" to match the location. (One could have
avoided this by providing a correct "manpath" option to ./Configure, or
editing ./config.sh between configuring and making steps.)
"a.out"-style build
Proceed as above, but make perl_.exe (see "perl_.exe") by
make perl_
test and install by
make aout_test
make aout_install
Manually put perl_.exe to a location on your PATH.
Note. The build process for "perl_" does not know about all the
dependencies, so you should make sure that anything is up-to-date, say,
by doing
make perl_dll
first.
Building a binary distribution
[This section provides a short overview only...]
Building should proceed differently depending on whether the version of
perl you install is already present and used on your system, or is a new
version not yet used. The description below assumes that the version is
new, so installing its DLLs and .pm files will not disrupt the operation
of your system even if some intermediate steps are not yet fully
working.
The other cases require a little bit more convoluted procedures. Below
I suppose that the current version of Perl is 5.8.2, so the executables
are named accordingly.
1. Fully build and test the Perl distribution. Make sure that no tests
are failing with "test" and "aout_test" targets; fix the bugs in
Perl and the Perl test suite detected by these tests. Make sure
that "all_test" make target runs as clean as possible. Check that
os2/perlrexx.cmd runs fine.
2. Fully install Perl, including "installcmd" target. Copy the
generated DLLs to "LIBPATH"; copy the numbered Perl executables (as
in perl5.8.2.exe) to "PATH"; copy "perl_.exe" to "PATH" as
"perl_5.8.2.exe". Think whether you need backward-compatibility
DLLs. In most cases you do not need to install them yet; but
sometime this may simplify the following steps.
3. Make sure that "CPAN.pm" can download files from CPAN. If not, you
may need to manually install "Net::FTP".
4. Install the bundle "Bundle::OS2_default"
perl5.8.2 -MCPAN -e "install Bundle::OS2_default" < nul |& tee 00cpan_i_1
This may take a couple of hours on 1GHz processor (when run the
first time). And this should not be necessarily a smooth procedure.
Some modules may not specify required dependencies, so one may need
to repeat this procedure several times until the results stabilize.
perl5.8.2 -MCPAN -e "install Bundle::OS2_default" < nul |& tee 00cpan_i_2
perl5.8.2 -MCPAN -e "install Bundle::OS2_default" < nul |& tee 00cpan_i_3
Even after they stabilize, some tests may fail.
Fix as many discovered bugs as possible. Document all the bugs
which are not fixed, and all the failures with unknown reasons.
Inspect the produced logs 00cpan_i_1 to find suspiciously skipped
tests, and other fishy events.
Keep in mind that installation of some modules may fail too: for
example, the DLLs to update may be already loaded by CPAN.pm.
Inspect the "install" logs (in the example above 00cpan_i_1 etc) for
errors, and install things manually, as in
cd $CPANHOME/.cpan/build/Digest-MD5-2.31
make install
Some distributions may fail some tests, but you may want to install
them anyway (as above, or via "force install" command of "CPAN.pm"
shell-mode).
Since this procedure may take quite a long time to complete, it
makes sense to "freeze" your CPAN configuration by disabling
periodic updates of the local copy of CPAN index: set "index_expire"
to some big value (I use 365), then save the settings
CPAN> o conf index_expire 365
CPAN> o conf commit
Reset back to the default value 1 when you are finished.
5. When satisfied with the results, rerun the "installcmd" target. Now
you can copy "perl5.8.2.exe" to "perl.exe", and install the other
OMF-build executables: "perl__.exe" etc. They are ready to be used.
6. Change to the "./pod" directory of the build tree, download the Perl
logo CamelGrayBig.BMP, and run
( perl2ipf > perl.ipf ) |& tee 00ipf
ipfc /INF perl.ipf |& tee 00inf
This produces the Perl docs online book "perl.INF". Install in on
"BOOKSHELF" path.
7. Now is the time to build statically linked executable perl_.exe
which includes newly-installed via "Bundle::OS2_default" modules.
Doing testing via "CPAN.pm" is going to be painfully slow, since it
statically links a new executable per XS extension.
Here is a possible workaround: create a toplevel Makefile.PL in
$CPANHOME/.cpan/build/ with contents being (compare with "Making
executables with a custom collection of statically loaded
extensions")
use ExtUtils::MakeMaker;
WriteMakefile NAME => 'dummy';
execute this as
perl_5.8.2.exe Makefile.PL <nul |& tee 00aout_c1
make -k all test <nul |& 00aout_t1
Again, this procedure should not be absolutely smooth. Some
"Makefile.PL"'s in subdirectories may be buggy, and would not run as
"child" scripts. The interdependency of modules can strike you;
however, since non-XS modules are already installed, the
prerequisites of most modules have a very good chance to be present.
If you discover some glitches, move directories of problematic
modules to a different location; if these modules are non-XS
modules, you may just ignore them - they are already installed; the
remaining, XS, modules you need to install manually one by one.
After each such removal you need to rerun the "Makefile.PL"/"make"
process; usually this procedure converges soon. (But be sure to
convert all the necessary external C libraries from .lib format to
.a format: run one of
emxaout foo.lib
emximp -o foo.a foo.lib
whichever is appropriate.) Also, make sure that the DLLs for
external libraries are usable with executables compiled without
"-Zmtd" options.
When you are sure that only a few subdirectories lead to failures,
you may want to add "-j4" option to "make" to speed up skipping
subdirectories with already finished build.
When you are satisfied with the results of tests, install the build
C libraries for extensions:
make install |& tee 00aout_i
Now you can rename the file ./perl.exe generated during the last
phase to perl_5.8.2.exe; place it on "PATH"; if there is an inter-
dependency between some XS modules, you may need to repeat the
"test"/"install" loop with this new executable and some excluded
modules - until the procedure converges.
Now you have all the necessary .a libraries for these Perl modules
in the places where Perl builder can find it. Use the perl builder:
change to an empty directory, create a "dummy" Makefile.PL again,
and run
perl_5.8.2.exe Makefile.PL |& tee 00c
make perl |& tee 00p
This should create an executable ./perl.exe with all the statically
loaded extensions built in. Compare the generated perlmain.c files
to make sure that during the iterations the number of loaded
extensions only increases. Rename ./perl.exe to perl_5.8.2.exe on
"PATH".
When it converges, you got a functional variant of perl_5.8.2.exe;
copy it to "perl_.exe". You are done with generation of the local
Perl installation.
8. Make sure that the installed modules are actually installed in the
location of the new Perl, and are not inherited from entries of @INC
given for inheritance from the older versions of Perl: set
"PERLLIB_582_PREFIX" to redirect the new version of Perl to a new
location, and copy the installed files to this new location. Redo
the tests to make sure that the versions of modules inherited from
older versions of Perl are not needed.
Actually, the log output of pod2ipf(1) during the step 6 gives a
very detailed info about which modules are loaded from which place;
so you may use it as an additional verification tool.
Check that some temporary files did not make into the perl install
tree. Run something like this
pfind . -f "!(/\.(pm|pl|ix|al|h|a|lib|txt|pod|imp|bs|dll|ld|bs|inc|xbm|yml|cgi|uu|e2x|skip|packlist|eg|cfg|html|pub|enc|all|ini|po|pot)$/i or /^\w+$/") | less
in the install tree (both top one and sitelib one).
Compress all the DLLs with lxlite. The tiny .exe can be compressed
with "/c:max" (the bug only appears when there is a fixup in the
last 6 bytes of a page (?); since the tiny executables are much
smaller than a page, the bug will not hit). Do not compress
"perl_.exe" - it would not work under DOS.
9. Now you can generate the binary distribution. This is done by
running the test of the CPAN distribution "OS2::SoftInstaller".
Tune up the file test.pl to suit the layout of current version of
Perl first. Do not forget to pack the necessary external DLLs
accordingly. Include the description of the bugs and test suite
failures you could not fix. Include the small-stack versions of
Perl executables from Perl build directory.
Include perl5.def so that people can relink the perl DLL preserving
the binary compatibility, or can create compatibility DLLs. Include
the diff files ("diff -pu old new") of fixes you did so that people
can rebuild your version. Include perl5.map so that one can use
remote debugging.
10. Share what you did with the other people. Relax. Enjoy fruits of
your work.
11. Brace yourself for thanks, bug reports, hate mail and spam coming as
result of the previous step. No good deed should remain unpunished!
Building custom .EXE files
The Perl executables can be easily rebuilt at any moment. Moreover, one
can use the embedding interface (see perlembed) to make very customized
executables.
Making executables with a custom collection of statically loaded extensions
It is a little bit easier to do so while decreasing the list of
statically loaded extensions. We discuss this case only here.
1. Change to an empty directory, and create a placeholder
<Makefile.PL>:
use ExtUtils::MakeMaker;
WriteMakefile NAME => 'dummy';
2. Run it with the flavor of Perl (perl.exe or perl_.exe) you want to
rebuild.
perl_ Makefile.PL
3. Ask it to create new Perl executable:
make perl
(you may need to manually add "PERLTYPE=-DPERL_CORE" to this
commandline on some versions of Perl; the symptom is that the
command-line globbing does not work from OS/2 shells with the newly-
compiled executable; check with
.\perl.exe -wle "print for @ARGV" *
).
4. The previous step created perlmain.c which contains a list of
newXS() calls near the end. Removing unnecessary calls, and
rerunning
make perl
will produce a customized executable.
Making executables with a custom search-paths
The default perl executable is flexible enough to support most usages.
However, one may want something yet more flexible; for example, one may
want to find Perl DLL relatively to the location of the EXE file; or one
may want to ignore the environment when setting the Perl-library search
patch, etc.
If you fill comfortable with embedding interface (see perlembed), such
things are easy to do repeating the steps outlined in "Making
executables with a custom collection of statically loaded extensions",
and doing more comprehensive edits to main() of perlmain.c. The people
with little desire to understand Perl can just rename main(), and do
necessary modification in a custom main() which calls the renamed
function in appropriate time.
However, there is a third way: perl DLL exports the main() function and
several callbacks to customize the search path. Below is a complete
example of a "Perl loader" which
1. Looks for Perl DLL in the directory "$exedir/../dll";
2. Prepends the above directory to "BEGINLIBPATH";
3. Fails if the Perl DLL found via "BEGINLIBPATH" is different from
what was loaded on step 1; e.g., another process could have loaded
it from "LIBPATH" or from a different value of "BEGINLIBPATH". In
these cases one needs to modify the setting of the system so that
this other process either does not run, or loads the DLL from
"BEGINLIBPATH" with "LIBPATHSTRICT=T" (available with kernels after
September 2000).
4. Loads Perl library from "$exedir/../dll/lib/".
5. Uses Bourne shell from "$exedir/../dll/sh/ksh.exe".
For best results compile the C file below with the same options as the
Perl DLL. However, a lot of functionality will work even if the
executable is not an EMX applications, e.g., if compiled with
gcc -Wall -DDOSISH -DOS2=1 -O2 -s -Zomf -Zsys perl-starter.c \
-DPERL_DLL_BASENAME=\"perl312F\" -Zstack 8192 -Zlinker /PM:VIO
Here is the sample C file:
#define INCL_DOS
#define INCL_NOPM
/* These are needed for compile if os2.h includes os2tk.h, not
* os2emx.h */
#define INCL_DOSPROCESS
#include <os2.h>
#include "EXTERN.h"
#define PERL_IN_MINIPERLMAIN_C
#include "perl.h"
static char *me;
HMODULE handle;
static void
die_with(char *msg1, char *msg2, char *msg3, char *msg4)
{
ULONG c;
char *s = " error: ";
DosWrite(2, me, strlen(me), &c);
DosWrite(2, s, strlen(s), &c);
DosWrite(2, msg1, strlen(msg1), &c);
DosWrite(2, msg2, strlen(msg2), &c);
DosWrite(2, msg3, strlen(msg3), &c);
DosWrite(2, msg4, strlen(msg4), &c);
DosWrite(2, "\r\n", 2, &c);
exit(255);
}
typedef ULONG (*fill_extLibpath_t)(int type,
char *pre,
char *post,
int replace,
char *msg);
typedef int (*main_t)(int type, char *argv[], char *env[]);
typedef int (*handler_t)(void* data, int which);
#ifndef PERL_DLL_BASENAME
# define PERL_DLL_BASENAME "perl"
#endif
static HMODULE
load_perl_dll(char *basename)
{
char buf[300], fail[260];
STRLEN l, dirl;
fill_extLibpath_t f;
ULONG rc_fullname;
HMODULE handle, handle1;
if (_execname(buf, sizeof(buf) - 13) != 0)
die_with("Can't find full path: ", strerror(errno), "", "");
/* XXXX Fill 'me' with new value */
l = strlen(buf);
while (l && buf[l-1] != '/' && buf[l-1] != '\\')
l--;
dirl = l - 1;
strcpy(buf + l, basename);
l += strlen(basename);
strcpy(buf + l, ".dll");
if ( (rc_fullname = DosLoadModule(fail, sizeof fail, buf, &handle))
!= 0
&& DosLoadModule(fail, sizeof fail, basename, &handle) != 0 )
die_with("Can't load DLL ", buf, "", "");
if (rc_fullname)
return handle; /* was loaded with short name; all is fine */
if (DosQueryProcAddr(handle, 0, "fill_extLibpath", (PFN*)&f))
die_with(buf,
": DLL exports no symbol ",
"fill_extLibpath",
"");
buf[dirl] = 0;
if (f(0 /*BEGINLIBPATH*/, buf /* prepend */, NULL /* append */,
0 /* keep old value */, me))
die_with(me, ": prepending BEGINLIBPATH", "", "");
if (DosLoadModule(fail, sizeof fail, basename, &handle1) != 0)
die_with(me,
": finding perl DLL again via BEGINLIBPATH",
"",
"");
buf[dirl] = '\\';
if (handle1 != handle) {
if (DosQueryModuleName(handle1, sizeof(fail), fail))
strcpy(fail, "???");
die_with(buf,
":\n\tperl DLL via BEGINLIBPATH is different: \n\t",
fail,
"\n\tYou may need to manipulate global BEGINLIBPATH"
" and LIBPATHSTRICT"
"\n\tso that the other copy is loaded via"
BEGINLIBPATH.");
}
return handle;
}
int
main(int argc, char **argv, char **env)
{
main_t f;
handler_t h;
me = argv[0];
/**/
handle = load_perl_dll(PERL_DLL_BASENAME);
if (DosQueryProcAddr(handle,
0,
"Perl_OS2_handler_install",
(PFN*)&h))
die_with(PERL_DLL_BASENAME,
": DLL exports no symbol ",
"Perl_OS2_handler_install",
"");
if ( !h((void *)"~installprefix", Perlos2_handler_perllib_from)
|| !h((void *)"~dll", Perlos2_handler_perllib_to)
|| !h((void *)"~dll/sh/ksh.exe", Perlos2_handler_perl_sh) )
die_with(PERL_DLL_BASENAME,
": Can't install @INC manglers",
"",
"");
if (DosQueryProcAddr(handle, 0, "dll_perlmain", (PFN*)&f))
die_with(PERL_DLL_BASENAME,
": DLL exports no symbol ",
"dll_perlmain",
"");
return f(argc, argv, env);
}
Build FAQ
Some "/" became "\" in pdksh
You have a very old pdksh. See "Prerequisites".
'errno' - unresolved external
You do not have MT-safe db.lib. See "Prerequisites".
Problems with tr or sed
reported with very old version of tr and sed.
Some problem (forget which ;-)
You have an older version of perl.dll on your LIBPATH, which broke the
build of extensions.
Library ... not found
You did not run "omflibs". See "Prerequisites".
Segfault in make
You use an old version of GNU make. See "Prerequisites".
op/sprintf test failure
This can result from a bug in emx sprintf which was fixed in 0.9d fix
03.
Specific (mis)features of OS/2 port
"setpriority", "getpriority"
Note that these functions are compatible with *nix, not with the older
ports of '94 - 95. The priorities are absolute, go from 32 to -95, lower
is quicker. 0 is the default priority.
WARNING. Calling "getpriority" on a non-existing process could lock the
system before Warp3 fixpak22. Starting with Warp3, Perl will use a
workaround: it aborts getpriority() if the process is not present. This
is not possible on older versions "2.*", and has a race condition
anyway.
system()
Multi-argument form of system() allows an additional numeric argument.
The meaning of this argument is described in OS2::Process.
When finding a program to run, Perl first asks the OS to look for
executables on "PATH" (OS/2 adds extension .exe if no extension is
present). If not found, it looks for a script with possible extensions
added in this order: no extension, .cmd, .btm, .bat, .pl. If found,
Perl checks the start of the file for magic strings "#!" and "extproc ".
If found, Perl uses the rest of the first line as the beginning of the
command line to run this script. The only mangling done to the first
line is extraction of arguments (currently up to 3), and ignoring of the
path-part of the "interpreter" name if it can't be found using the full
path.
E.g., "system 'foo', 'bar', 'baz'" may lead Perl to finding
C:/emx/bin/foo.cmd with the first line being
extproc /bin/bash -x -c
If /bin/bash.exe is not found, then Perl looks for an executable
bash.exe on "PATH". If found in C:/emx.add/bin/bash.exe, then the above
system() is translated to
system qw(C:/emx.add/bin/bash.exe -x -c C:/emx/bin/foo.cmd bar baz)
One additional translation is performed: instead of /bin/sh Perl uses
the hardwired-or-customized shell (see ""PERL_SH_DIR"").
The above search for "interpreter" is recursive: if bash executable is
not found, but bash.btm is found, Perl will investigate its first line
etc. The only hardwired limit on the recursion depth is implicit: there
is a limit 4 on the number of additional arguments inserted before the
actual arguments given to system(). In particular, if no additional
arguments are specified on the "magic" first lines, then the limit on
the depth is 4.
If Perl finds that the found executable is of PM type when the current
session is not, it will start the new process in a separate session of
necessary type. Call via "OS2::Process" to disable this magic.
WARNING. Due to the described logic, you need to explicitly specify
.com extension if needed. Moreover, if the executable perl5.6.1 is
requested, Perl will not look for perl5.6.1.exe. [This may change in
the future.]
"extproc" on the first line
If the first chars of a Perl script are "extproc ", this line is treated
as "#!"-line, thus all the switches on this line are processed (twice if
script was started via cmd.exe). See "DESCRIPTION" in perlrun.
Additional modules:
OS2::Process, OS2::DLL, OS2::REXX, OS2::PrfDB, OS2::ExtAttr. These
modules provide access to additional numeric argument for "system" and
to the information about the running process, to DLLs having functions
with REXX signature and to the REXX runtime, to OS/2 databases in the
.INI format, and to Extended Attributes.
Two additional extensions by Andreas Kaiser, "OS2::UPM", and "OS2::FTP",
are included into "ILYAZ" directory, mirrored on CPAN. Other
OS/2-related extensions are available too.
Prebuilt methods:
"File::Copy::syscopy"
used by "File::Copy::copy", see File::Copy.
"DynaLoader::mod2fname"
used by "DynaLoader" for DLL name mangling.
Cwd::current_drive()
Self explanatory.
Cwd::sys_chdir(name)
leaves drive as it is.
Cwd::change_drive(name)
changes the "current" drive.
Cwd::sys_is_absolute(name)
means has drive letter and is_rooted.
Cwd::sys_is_rooted(name)
means has leading "[/\\]" (maybe after a drive-letter:).
Cwd::sys_is_relative(name)
means changes with current dir.
Cwd::sys_cwd(name)
Interface to cwd from EMX. Used by "Cwd::cwd".
"Cwd::sys_abspath(name, dir)"
Really really odious function to implement. Returns absolute name of
file which would have "name" if CWD were "dir". "Dir" defaults to
the current dir.
Cwd::extLibpath([type])
Get current value of extended library search path. If "type" is
present and positive, works with "END_LIBPATH", if negative, works
with "LIBPATHSTRICT", otherwise with "BEGIN_LIBPATH".
"Cwd::extLibpath_set( path [, type ] )"
Set current value of extended library search path. If "type" is
present and positive, works with <END_LIBPATH>, if negative, works
with "LIBPATHSTRICT", otherwise with "BEGIN_LIBPATH".
"OS2::Error(do_harderror,do_exception)"
Returns "undef" if it was not called yet, otherwise bit 1 is set
if on the previous call do_harderror was enabled, bit 2 is set if on
previous call do_exception was enabled.
This function enables/disables error popups associated with hardware
errors (Disk not ready etc.) and software exceptions.
I know of no way to find out the state of popups before the first
call to this function.
OS2::Errors2Drive(drive)
Returns "undef" if it was not called yet, otherwise return false if
errors were not requested to be written to a hard drive, or the
drive letter if this was requested.
This function may redirect error popups associated with hardware
errors (Disk not ready etc.) and software exceptions to the file
POPUPLOG.OS2 at the root directory of the specified drive.
Overrides OS2::Error() specified by individual programs. Given
argument undef will disable redirection.
Has global effect, persists after the application exits.
I know of no way to find out the state of redirection of popups to
the disk before the first call to this function.
OS2::SysInfo()
Returns a hash with system information. The keys of the hash are
MAX_PATH_LENGTH, MAX_TEXT_SESSIONS, MAX_PM_SESSIONS,
MAX_VDM_SESSIONS, BOOT_DRIVE, DYN_PRI_VARIATION,
MAX_WAIT, MIN_SLICE, MAX_SLICE, PAGE_SIZE,
VERSION_MAJOR, VERSION_MINOR, VERSION_REVISION,
MS_COUNT, TIME_LOW, TIME_HIGH, TOTPHYSMEM, TOTRESMEM,
TOTAVAILMEM, MAXPRMEM, MAXSHMEM, TIMER_INTERVAL,
MAX_COMP_LENGTH, FOREGROUND_FS_SESSION,
FOREGROUND_PROCESS
OS2::BootDrive()
Returns a letter without colon.
OS2::MorphPM(serve), OS2::UnMorphPM(serve)
Transforms the current application into a PM application and back.
The argument true means that a real message loop is going to be
served. OS2::MorphPM() returns the PM message queue handle as an
integer.
See "Centralized management of resources" for additional details.
OS2::Serve_Messages(force)
Fake on-demand retrieval of outstanding PM messages. If "force" is
false, will not dispatch messages if a real message loop is known to
be present. Returns number of messages retrieved.
Dies with "QUITing..." if WM_QUIT message is obtained.
"OS2::Process_Messages(force [, cnt])"
Retrieval of PM messages until window creation/destruction. If
"force" is false, will not dispatch messages if a real message loop
is known to be present.
Returns change in number of windows. If "cnt" is given, it is
incremented by the number of messages retrieved.
Dies with "QUITing..." if WM_QUIT message is obtained.
"OS2::_control87(new,mask)"
the same as _control87(3) of EMX. Takes integers as arguments,
returns the previous coprocessor control word as an integer. Only
bits in "new" which are present in "mask" are changed in the control
word.
OS2::get_control87()
gets the coprocessor control word as an integer.
"OS2::set_control87_em(new=MCW_EM,mask=MCW_EM)"
The variant of OS2::_control87() with default values good for
handling exception mask: if no "mask", uses exception mask part of
"new" only. If no "new", disables all the floating point
exceptions.
See "Misfeatures" for details.
"OS2::DLLname([how [, \&xsub]])"
Gives the information about the Perl DLL or the DLL containing the C
function bound to by &xsub. The meaning of "how" is: default (2):
full name; 0: handle; 1: module name.
(Note that some of these may be moved to different libraries -
eventually).
Prebuilt variables:
$OS2::emx_rev
numeric value is the same as _emx_rev of EMX, a string value the
same as _emx_vprt (similar to "0.9c").
$OS2::emx_env
same as _emx_env of EMX, a number similar to 0x8001.
$OS2::os_ver
a number "OS_MAJOR + 0.001 * OS_MINOR".
$OS2::is_aout
true if the Perl library was compiled in AOUT format.
$OS2::can_fork
true if the current executable is an AOUT EMX executable, so Perl
can fork. Do not use this, use the portable check for
$Config::Config{dfork}.
$OS2::nsyserror
This variable (default is 1) controls whether to enforce the
contents of $^E to start with "SYS0003"-like id. If set to 0, then
the string value of $^E is what is available from the OS/2 message
file. (Some messages in this file have an "SYS0003"-like id
prepended, some not.)
Misfeatures
• Since flock(3) is present in EMX, but is not functional, it is
emulated by perl. To disable the emulations, set environment
variable "USE_PERL_FLOCK=0".
• Here is the list of things which may be "broken" on EMX (from EMX
docs):
• The functions recvmsg(3), sendmsg(3), and socketpair(3) are not
implemented.
• sock_init(3) is not required and not implemented.
• flock(3) is not yet implemented (dummy function). (Perl has a
workaround.)
• kill(3): Special treatment of PID=0, PID=1 and PID=-1 is not
implemented.
• waitpid(3):
WUNTRACED
Not implemented.
waitpid() is not implemented for negative values of PID.
Note that "kill -9" does not work with the current version of EMX.
• See "Text-mode filehandles".
• Unix-domain sockets on OS/2 live in a pseudo-file-system
"/sockets/...". To avoid a failure to create a socket with a name
of a different form, "/socket/" is prepended to the socket name
(unless it starts with this already).
This may lead to problems later in case the socket is accessed via
the "usual" file-system calls using the "initial" name.
• Apparently, IBM used a compiler (for some period of time around
'95?) which changes FP mask right and left. This is not that bad
for IBM's programs, but the same compiler was used for DLLs which
are used with general-purpose applications. When these DLLs are
used, the state of floating-point flags in the application is not
predictable.
What is much worse, some DLLs change the floating point flags when
in _DLLInitTerm() (e.g., TCP32IP). This means that even if you do
not call any function in the DLL, just the act of loading this DLL
will reset your flags. What is worse, the same compiler was used to
compile some HOOK DLLs. Given that HOOK dlls are executed in the
context of all the applications in the system, this means a complete
unpredictability of floating point flags on systems using such HOOK
DLLs. E.g., GAMESRVR.DLL of DIVE origin changes the floating point
flags on each write to the TTY of a VIO (windowed text-mode)
applications.
Some other (not completely debugged) situations when FP flags change
include some video drivers (?), and some operations related to
creation of the windows. People who code OpenGL may have more
experience on this.
Perl is generally used in the situation when all the floating-point
exceptions are ignored, as is the default under EMX. If they are
not ignored, some benign Perl programs would get a "SIGFPE" and
would die a horrible death.
To circumvent this, Perl uses two hacks. They help against one type
of damage only: FP flags changed when loading a DLL.
One of the hacks is to disable floating point exceptions on Perl
startup (as is the default with EMX). This helps only with compile-
time-linked DLLs changing the flags before main() had a chance to be
called.
The other hack is to restore FP flags after a call to dlopen().
This helps against similar damage done by DLLs _DLLInitTerm() at
runtime. Currently no way to switch these hacks off is provided.
Modifications
Perl modifies some standard C library calls in the following ways:
"popen" "my_popen" uses sh.exe if shell is required, cf.
""PERL_SH_DIR"".
"tmpnam" is created using "TMP" or "TEMP" environment variable, via
"tempnam".
"tmpfile"
If the current directory is not writable, file is created using
modified "tmpnam", so there may be a race condition.
"ctermid"
a dummy implementation.
"stat" "os2_stat" special-cases /dev/tty and /dev/con.
"mkdir", "rmdir"
these EMX functions do not work if the path contains a trailing
"/". Perl contains a workaround for this.
"flock" Since flock(3) is present in EMX, but is not functional, it is
emulated by perl. To disable the emulations, set environment
variable "USE_PERL_FLOCK=0".
Identifying DLLs
All the DLLs built with the current versions of Perl have ID strings
identifying the name of the extension, its version, and the version of
Perl required for this DLL. Run "bldlevel DLL-name" to find this info.
Centralized management of resources
Since to call certain OS/2 API one needs to have a correctly initialized
"Win" subsystem, OS/2-specific extensions may require getting "HAB"s and
"HMQ"s. If an extension would do it on its own, another extension could
fail to initialize.
Perl provides a centralized management of these resources:
"HAB"
To get the HAB, the extension should call "hab = perl_hab_GET()" in
C. After this call is performed, "hab" may be accessed as
"Perl_hab". There is no need to release the HAB after it is used.
If by some reasons perl.h cannot be included, use
extern int Perl_hab_GET(void);
instead.
"HMQ"
There are two cases:
• the extension needs an "HMQ" only because some API will not work
otherwise. Use "serve = 0" below.
• the extension needs an "HMQ" since it wants to engage in a PM
event loop. Use "serve = 1" below.
To get an "HMQ", the extension should call "hmq =
perl_hmq_GET(serve)" in C. After this call is performed, "hmq" may
be accessed as "Perl_hmq".
To signal to Perl that HMQ is not needed any more, call
perl_hmq_UNSET(serve). Perl process will automatically
morph/unmorph itself into/from a PM process if HMQ is
needed/not-needed. Perl will automatically enable/disable "WM_QUIT"
message during shutdown if the message queue is served/not-served.
NOTE. If during a shutdown there is a message queue which did not
disable WM_QUIT, and which did not process the received WM_QUIT
message, the shutdown will be automatically cancelled. Do not call
perl_hmq_GET(1) unless you are going to process messages on an
orderly basis.
Treating errors reported by OS/2 API
There are two principal conventions (it is useful to call them
"Dos*" and "Win*" - though this part of the function signature is
not always determined by the name of the API) of reporting the error
conditions of OS/2 API. Most of "Dos*" APIs report the error code
as the result of the call (so 0 means success, and there are many
types of errors). Most of "Win*" API report success/fail via the
result being "TRUE"/"FALSE"; to find the reason for the failure one
should call WinGetLastError() API.
Some "Win*" entry points also overload a "meaningful" return value
with the error indicator; having a 0 return value indicates an
error. Yet some other "Win*" entry points overload things even
more, and 0 return value may mean a successful call returning a
valid value 0, as well as an error condition; in the case of a 0
return value one should call WinGetLastError() API to distinguish a
successful call from a failing one.
By convention, all the calls to OS/2 API should indicate their
failures by resetting $^E. All the Perl-accessible functions which
call OS/2 API may be broken into two classes: some die()s when an
API error is encountered, the other report the error via a false
return value (of course, this does not concern Perl-accessible
functions which expect a failure of the OS/2 API call, having some
workarounds coded).
Obviously, in the situation of the last type of the signature of an
OS/2 API, it is must more convenient for the users if the failure is
indicated by die()ing: one does not need to check $^E to know that
something went wrong. If, however, this solution is not desirable
by some reason, the code in question should reset $^E to 0 before
making this OS/2 API call, so that the caller of this Perl-
accessible function has a chance to distinguish a
success-but-0-return value from a failure. (One may return undef as
an alternative way of reporting an error.)
The macros to simplify this type of error propagation are
CheckOSError(expr)
Returns true on error, sets $^E. Expects expr() be a call of
"Dos*"-style API.
CheckWinError(expr)
Returns true on error, sets $^E. Expects expr() be a call of
"Win*"-style API.
SaveWinError(expr)
Returns "expr", sets $^E from WinGetLastError() if "expr" is
false.
"SaveCroakWinError(expr,die,name1,name2)"
Returns "expr", sets $^E from WinGetLastError() if "expr" is
false, and die()s if "die" and $^E are true. The message to die
is the concatenated strings "name1" and "name2", separated by ":
" from the contents of $^E.
"WinError_2_Perl_rc"
Sets "Perl_rc" to the return value of WinGetLastError().
"FillWinError"
Sets "Perl_rc" to the return value of WinGetLastError(), and
sets $^E to the corresponding value.
FillOSError(rc)
Sets "Perl_rc" to "rc", and sets $^E to the corresponding value.
Loading DLLs and ordinals in DLLs
Some DLLs are only present in some versions of OS/2, or in some
configurations of OS/2. Some exported entry points are present only
in DLLs shipped with some versions of OS/2. If these DLLs and entry
points were linked directly for a Perl executable/DLL or from a Perl
extensions, this binary would work only with the specified
versions/setups. Even if these entry points were not needed, the
load of the executable (or DLL) would fail.
For example, many newer useful APIs are not present in OS/2 v2; many
PM-related APIs require DLLs not available on floppy-boot setup.
To make these calls fail only when the calls are executed, one
should call these API via a dynamic linking API. There is a
subsystem in Perl to simplify such type of calls. A large number of
entry points available for such linking is provided (see
"entries_ordinals" - and also "PMWIN_entries" - in os2ish.h). These
ordinals can be accessed via the APIs:
CallORD(), DeclFuncByORD(), DeclVoidFuncByORD(),
DeclOSFuncByORD(), DeclWinFuncByORD(), AssignFuncPByORD(),
DeclWinFuncByORD_CACHE(), DeclWinFuncByORD_CACHE_survive(),
DeclWinFuncByORD_CACHE_resetError_survive(),
DeclWinFunc_CACHE(), DeclWinFunc_CACHE_resetError(),
DeclWinFunc_CACHE_survive(), DeclWinFunc_CACHE_resetError_survive()
See the header files and the C code in the supplied OS/2-related
modules for the details on usage of these functions.
Some of these functions also combine dynaloading semantic with the
error-propagation semantic discussed above.
Perl flavors
Because of idiosyncrasies of OS/2 one cannot have all the eggs in the
same basket (though EMX environment tries hard to overcome this
limitations, so the situation may somehow improve). There are 4
executables for Perl provided by the distribution:
perl.exe
The main workhorse. This is a chimera executable: it is compiled as an
"a.out"-style executable, but is linked with "omf"-style dynamic library
perl.dll, and with dynamic CRT DLL. This executable is a VIO
application.
It can load perl dynamic extensions, and it can fork().
Note. Keep in mind that fork() is needed to open a pipe to yourself.
perl_.exe
This is a statically linked "a.out"-style executable. It cannot load
dynamic Perl extensions. The executable supplied in binary distributions
has a lot of extensions prebuilt, thus the above restriction is
important only if you use custom-built extensions. This executable is a
VIO application.
This is the only executable with does not require OS/2. The friends
locked into "M$" world would appreciate the fact that this executable
runs under DOS, Win0.3*, Win0.95 and WinNT with an appropriate extender.
See "Other OSes".
perl__.exe
This is the same executable as perl___.exe, but it is a PM application.
Note. Usually (unless explicitly redirected during the startup) STDIN,
STDERR, and STDOUT of a PM application are redirected to nul. However,
it is possible to see them if you start "perl__.exe" from a PM program
which emulates a console window, like Shell mode of Emacs or EPM. Thus
it is possible to use Perl debugger (see perldebug) to debug your PM
application (but beware of the message loop lockups - this will not work
if you have a message queue to serve, unless you hook the serving into
the getc() function of the debugger).
Another way to see the output of a PM program is to run it as
pm_prog args 2>&1 | cat -
with a shell different from cmd.exe, so that it does not create a link
between a VIO session and the session of "pm_porg". (Such a link closes
the VIO window.) E.g., this works with sh.exe - or with Perl!
open P, 'pm_prog args 2>&1 |' or die;
print while <P>;
The flavor perl__.exe is required if you want to start your program
without a VIO window present, but not "detach"ed (run "help detach" for
more info). Very useful for extensions which use PM, like "Perl/Tk" or
"OpenGL".
Note also that the differences between PM and VIO executables are only
in the default behaviour. One can start any executable in any kind of
session by using the arguments "/fs", "/pm" or "/win" switches of the
command "start" (of CMD.EXE or a similar shell). Alternatively, one can
use the numeric first argument of the "system" Perl function (see
OS2::Process).
perl___.exe
This is an "omf"-style executable which is dynamically linked to
perl.dll and CRT DLL. I know no advantages of this executable over
"perl.exe", but it cannot fork() at all. Well, one advantage is that the
build process is not so convoluted as with "perl.exe".
It is a VIO application.
Why strange names?
Since Perl processes the "#!"-line (cf. "DESCRIPTION" in perlrun,
"Command Switches" in perlrun, "No Perl script found in input" in
perldiag), it should know when a program is a Perl. There is some naming
convention which allows Perl to distinguish correct lines from wrong
ones. The above names are almost the only names allowed by this
convention which do not contain digits (which have absolutely different
semantics).
Why dynamic linking?
Well, having several executables dynamically linked to the same huge
library has its advantages, but this would not substantiate the
additional work to make it compile. The reason is the complicated-to-
developers but very quick and convenient-to-users "hard" dynamic linking
used by OS/2.
There are two distinctive features of the dyna-linking model of OS/2:
first, all the references to external functions are resolved at the
compile time; second, there is no runtime fixup of the DLLs after they
are loaded into memory. The first feature is an enormous advantage over
other models: it avoids conflicts when several DLLs used by an
application export entries with the same name. In such cases "other"
models of dyna-linking just choose between these two entry points using
some random criterion - with predictable disasters as results. But it
is the second feature which requires the build of perl.dll.
The address tables of DLLs are patched only once, when they are loaded.
The addresses of the entry points into DLLs are guaranteed to be the
same for all the programs which use the same DLL. This removes the
runtime fixup - once DLL is loaded, its code is read-only.
While this allows some (significant?) performance advantages, this makes
life much harder for developers, since the above scheme makes it
impossible for a DLL to be "linked" to a symbol in the .EXE file.
Indeed, this would need a DLL to have different relocations tables for
the (different) executables which use this DLL.
However, a dynamically loaded Perl extension is forced to use some
symbols from the perl executable, e.g., to know how to find the
arguments to the functions: the arguments live on the perl internal
evaluation stack. The solution is to put the main code of the
interpreter into a DLL, and make the .EXE file which just loads this DLL
into memory and supplies command-arguments. The extension DLL cannot
link to symbols in .EXE, but it has no problem linking to symbols in the
.DLL.
This greatly increases the load time for the application (as well as
complexity of the compilation). Since interpreter is in a DLL, the C RTL
is basically forced to reside in a DLL as well (otherwise extensions
would not be able to use CRT). There are some advantages if you use
different flavors of perl, such as running perl.exe and perl__.exe
simultaneously: they share the memory of perl.dll.
NOTE. There is one additional effect which makes DLLs more wasteful:
DLLs are loaded in the shared memory region, which is a scarse resource
given the 512M barrier of the "standard" OS/2 virtual memory. The code
of .EXE files is also shared by all the processes which use the
particular .EXE, but they are "shared in the private address space of
the process"; this is possible because the address at which different
sections of the .EXE file are loaded is decided at compile-time, thus
all the processes have these sections loaded at same addresses, and no
fixup of internal links inside the .EXE is needed.
Since DLLs may be loaded at run time, to have the same mechanism for
DLLs one needs to have the address range of any of the loaded DLLs in
the system to be available in all the processes which did not load a
particular DLL yet. This is why the DLLs are mapped to the shared
memory region.
Why chimera build?
Current EMX environment does not allow DLLs compiled using Unixish
"a.out" format to export symbols for data (or at least some types of
data). This forces "omf"-style compile of perl.dll.
Current EMX environment does not allow .EXE files compiled in "omf"
format to fork(). fork() is needed for exactly three Perl operations:
• explicit fork() in the script,
• "open FH, "|-""
• "open FH, "-|"", in other words, opening pipes to itself.
While these operations are not questions of life and death, they are
needed for a lot of useful scripts. This forces "a.out"-style compile of
perl.exe.
ENVIRONMENT
Here we list environment variables with are either OS/2- and DOS- and
Win*-specific, or are more important under OS/2 than under other OSes.
"PERLLIB_PREFIX"
Specific for EMX port. Should have the form
path1;path2
or
path1 path2
If the beginning of some prebuilt path matches path1, it is substituted
with path2.
Should be used if the perl library is moved from the default location in
preference to "PERL(5)LIB", since this would not leave wrong entries in
@INC. For example, if the compiled version of perl looks for @INC in
f:/perllib/lib, and you want to install the library in h:/opt/gnu, do
set PERLLIB_PREFIX=f:/perllib/lib;h:/opt/gnu
This will cause Perl with the prebuilt @INC of
f:/perllib/lib/5.00553/os2
f:/perllib/lib/5.00553
f:/perllib/lib/site_perl/5.00553/os2
f:/perllib/lib/site_perl/5.00553
.
to use the following @INC:
h:/opt/gnu/5.00553/os2
h:/opt/gnu/5.00553
h:/opt/gnu/site_perl/5.00553/os2
h:/opt/gnu/site_perl/5.00553
.
"PERL_BADLANG"
If 0, perl ignores setlocale() failing. May be useful with some strange
locales.
"PERL_BADFREE"
If 0, perl would not warn of in case of unwarranted free(). With older
perls this might be useful in conjunction with the module DB_File, which
was buggy when dynamically linked and OMF-built.
Should not be set with newer Perls, since this may hide some real
problems.
"PERL_SH_DIR"
Specific for EMX port. Gives the directory part of the location for
sh.exe.
"USE_PERL_FLOCK"
Specific for EMX port. Since flock(3) is present in EMX, but is not
functional, it is emulated by perl. To disable the emulations, set
environment variable "USE_PERL_FLOCK=0".
"TMP" or "TEMP"
Specific for EMX port. Used as storage place for temporary files.
Evolution
Here we list major changes which could make you by surprise.
Text-mode filehandles
Starting from version 5.8, Perl uses a builtin translation layer for
text-mode files. This replaces the efficient well-tested EMX layer by
some code which should be best characterized as a "quick hack".
In addition to possible bugs and an inability to follow changes to the
translation policy with off/on switches of TERMIO translation, this
introduces a serious incompatible change: before sysread() on text-mode
filehandles would go through the translation layer, now it would not.
Priorities
"setpriority" and "getpriority" are not compatible with earlier ports by
Andreas Kaiser. See "setpriority, getpriority".
DLL name mangling: pre 5.6.2
With the release 5.003_01 the dynamically loadable libraries should be
rebuilt when a different version of Perl is compiled. In particular,
DLLs (including perl.dll) are now created with the names which contain a
checksum, thus allowing workaround for OS/2 scheme of caching DLLs.
It may be possible to code a simple workaround which would
• find the old DLLs looking through the old @INC;
• mangle the names according to the scheme of new perl and copy the
DLLs to these names;
• edit the internal "LX" tables of DLL to reflect the change of the
name (probably not needed for Perl extension DLLs, since the
internally coded names are not used for "specific" DLLs, they used
only for "global" DLLs).
• edit the internal "IMPORT" tables and change the name of the "old"
perl????.dll to the "new" perl????.dll.
DLL name mangling: 5.6.2 and beyond
In fact mangling of extension DLLs was done due to misunderstanding of
the OS/2 dynaloading model. OS/2 (effectively) maintains two different
tables of loaded DLL:
Global DLLs
those loaded by the base name from "LIBPATH"; including those
associated at link time;
specific DLLs
loaded by the full name.
When resolving a request for a global DLL, the table of already-loaded
specific DLLs is (effectively) ignored; moreover, specific DLLs are
always loaded from the prescribed path.
There is/was a minor twist which makes this scheme fragile: what to do
with DLLs loaded from
"BEGINLIBPATH" and "ENDLIBPATH"
(which depend on the process)
. from "LIBPATH"
which effectively depends on the process (although "LIBPATH" is the
same for all the processes).
Unless "LIBPATHSTRICT" is set to "T" (and the kernel is after
2000/09/01), such DLLs are considered to be global. When loading a
global DLL it is first looked in the table of already-loaded global
DLLs. Because of this the fact that one executable loaded a DLL from
"BEGINLIBPATH" and "ENDLIBPATH", or . from "LIBPATH" may affect which
DLL is loaded when another executable requests a DLL with the same name.
This is the reason for version-specific mangling of the DLL name for
perl DLL.
Since the Perl extension DLLs are always loaded with the full path,
there is no need to mangle their names in a version-specific ways: their
directory already reflects the corresponding version of perl, and @INC
takes into account binary compatibility with older version. Starting
from 5.6.2 the name mangling scheme is fixed to be the same as for Perl
5.005_53 (same as in a popular binary release). Thus new Perls will be
able to resolve the names of old extension DLLs if @INC allows finding
their directories.
However, this still does not guarantee that these DLL may be loaded.
The reason is the mangling of the name of the Perl DLL. And since the
extension DLLs link with the Perl DLL, extension DLLs for older versions
would load an older Perl DLL, and would most probably segfault (since
the data in this DLL is not properly initialized).
There is a partial workaround (which can be made complete with newer
OS/2 kernels): create a forwarder DLL with the same name as the DLL of
the older version of Perl, which forwards the entry points to the newer
Perl's DLL. Make this DLL accessible on (say) the "BEGINLIBPATH" of the
new Perl executable. When the new executable accesses old Perl's
extension DLLs, they would request the old Perl's DLL by name, get the
forwarder instead, so effectively will link with the currently running
(new) Perl DLL.
This may break in two ways:
• Old perl executable is started when a new executable is running has
loaded an extension compiled for the old executable (ouph!). In
this case the old executable will get a forwarder DLL instead of the
old perl DLL, so would link with the new perl DLL. While not
directly fatal, it will behave the same as new executable. This
beats the whole purpose of explicitly starting an old executable.
• A new executable loads an extension compiled for the old executable
when an old perl executable is running. In this case the extension
will not pick up the forwarder - with fatal results.
With support for "LIBPATHSTRICT" this may be circumvented - unless one
of DLLs is started from . from "LIBPATH" (I do not know whether
"LIBPATHSTRICT" affects this case).
REMARK. Unless newer kernels allow . in "BEGINLIBPATH" (older do not),
this mess cannot be completely cleaned. (It turns out that as of the
beginning of 2002, . is not allowed, but .\. is - and it has the same
effect.)
REMARK. "LIBPATHSTRICT", "BEGINLIBPATH" and "ENDLIBPATH" are not
environment variables, although cmd.exe emulates them on "SET ..."
lines. From Perl they may be accessed by Cwd::extLibpath and
Cwd::extLibpath_set.
DLL forwarder generation
Assume that the old DLL is named perlE0AC.dll (as is one for 5.005_53),
and the new version is 5.6.1. Create a file perl5shim.def-leader with
LIBRARY 'perlE0AC' INITINSTANCE TERMINSTANCE
DESCRIPTION '@#perl5-porters@perl.org:5.006001#@ Perl module for 5.00553 -> Perl 5.6.1 forwarder'
CODE LOADONCALL
DATA LOADONCALL NONSHARED MULTIPLE
EXPORTS
modifying the versions/names as needed. Run
perl -wnle "next if 0../EXPORTS/; print qq( \"$1\")
if /\"(\w+)\"/" perl5.def >lst
in the Perl build directory (to make the DLL smaller replace perl5.def
with the definition file for the older version of Perl if present).
cat perl5shim.def-leader lst >perl5shim.def
gcc -Zomf -Zdll -o perlE0AC.dll perl5shim.def -s -llibperl
(ignore multiple "warning L4085").
Threading
As of release 5.003_01 perl is linked to multithreaded C RTL DLL. If
perl itself is not compiled multithread-enabled, so will not be perl's
malloc(). However, extensions may use multiple thread on their own risk.
This was needed to compile "Perl/Tk" for XFree86-OS/2 out-of-the-box,
and link with DLLs for other useful libraries, which typically are
compiled with "-Zmt -Zcrtdll".
Calls to external programs
Due to a popular demand the perl external program calling has been
changed wrt Andreas Kaiser's port. If perl needs to call an external
program via shell, the f:/bin/sh.exe will be called, or whatever is the
override, see ""PERL_SH_DIR"".
Thus means that you need to get some copy of a sh.exe as well (I use one
from pdksh). The path F:/bin above is set up automatically during the
build to a correct value on the builder machine, but is overridable at
runtime,
Reasons: a consensus on "perl5-porters" was that perl should use one
non-overridable shell per platform. The obvious choices for OS/2 are
cmd.exe and sh.exe. Having perl build itself would be impossible with
cmd.exe as a shell, thus I picked up "sh.exe". This assures almost 100%
compatibility with the scripts coming from *nix. As an added benefit
this works as well under DOS if you use DOS-enabled port of pdksh (see
"Prerequisites").
Disadvantages: currently sh.exe of pdksh calls external programs via
fork()/exec(), and there is no functioning exec() on OS/2. exec() is
emulated by EMX by an asynchronous call while the caller waits for child
completion (to pretend that the "pid" did not change). This means that 1
extra copy of sh.exe is made active via fork()/exec(), which may lead to
some resources taken from the system (even if we do not count extra work
needed for fork()ing).
Note that this a lesser issue now when we do not spawn sh.exe unless
needed (metachars found).
One can always start cmd.exe explicitly via
system 'cmd', '/c', 'mycmd', 'arg1', 'arg2', ...
If you need to use cmd.exe, and do not want to hand-edit thousands of
your scripts, the long-term solution proposed on p5-p is to have a
directive
use OS2::Cmd;
which will override system(), exec(), ``, and "open(,'...|')". With
current perl you may override only system(), readpipe() - the explicit
version of ``, and maybe exec(). The code will substitute the one-
argument call to system() by "CORE::system('cmd.exe', '/c', shift)".
If you have some working code for "OS2::Cmd", please send it to me, I
will include it into distribution. I have no need for such a module, so
cannot test it.
For the details of the current situation with calling external programs,
see "Starting OS/2 (and DOS) programs under Perl". Set us mention a
couple of features:
• External scripts may be called by their basename. Perl will try the
same extensions as when processing -S command-line switch.
• External scripts starting with "#!" or "extproc " will be executed
directly, without calling the shell, by calling the program
specified on the rest of the first line.
Memory allocation
Perl uses its own malloc() under OS/2 - interpreters are usually malloc-
bound for speed, but perl is not, since its malloc is lightning-fast.
Perl-memory-usage-tuned benchmarks show that Perl's malloc is 5 times
quicker than EMX one. I do not have convincing data about memory
footprint, but a (pretty random) benchmark showed that Perl's one is 5%
better.
Combination of perl's malloc() and rigid DLL name resolution creates a
special problem with library functions which expect their return value
to be free()d by system's free(). To facilitate extensions which need to
call such functions, system memory-allocation functions are still
available with the prefix "emx_" added. (Currently only DLL perl has
this, it should propagate to perl_.exe shortly.)
Threads
One can build perl with thread support enabled by providing "-D
usethreads" option to Configure. Currently OS/2 support of threads is
very preliminary.
Most notable problems:
"COND_WAIT"
may have a race condition (but probably does not due to edge-
triggered nature of OS/2 Event semaphores). (Needs a
reimplementation (in terms of chaining waiting threads, with the
linked list stored in per-thread structure?)?)
os2.c
has a couple of static variables used in OS/2-specific functions.
(Need to be moved to per-thread structure, or serialized?)
Note that these problems should not discourage experimenting, since they
have a low probability of affecting small programs.
BUGS
This description is not updated often (since 5.6.1?), see ./os2/Changes
for more info.
AUTHOR
Ilya Zakharevich, cpan@ilyaz.org
SEE ALSO
perl(1).
perl v5.40.1 2026-08-30 PERLOS2(1)
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