perllinux - Perl version 5 on Linux systems

- NAME
- DESCRIPTION
  - Deploying Perl on Linux
  - Experimental Support for Sun Studio Compilers for Linux OS
- AUTHOR

# NAME

perllinux - Perl version 5 on Linux systems

# DESCRIPTION

This document describes various features of Linux that will affect how Perl version 5 (hereafter just Perl) is compiled and/or runs.

## Deploying Perl on Linux

Normally one can install /usr/bin/perl on Linux using your distribution's package manager (e.g: `sudo apt-get install perl`, or `sudo dnf install perl`). Note that sometimes one needs to install some extra system packages in order to be able to use CPAN frontends, and that messing with the system's perl is not always recommended. One can use perlbrew to avoid such issues.

Otherwise, perl should build fine on Linux using the mainstream compilers GCC and clang, while following the usual instructions.

## Experimental Support for Sun Studio Compilers for Linux OS

Sun Microsystems has released a port of their Sun Studio compilers for Linux. As of May 2019, the last stable release took place on 2017, and one can buy support contracts for them.

There are some special instructions for building Perl with Sun Studio on Linux. Following the normal `Configure`, you have to run make as follows:

    LDLOADLIBS=-lc make

`LDLOADLIBS` is an environment variable used by the linker to link `/ext` modules to glibc. Currently, that environment variable is not getting populated by a combination of `Config` entries and `ExtUtil::MakeMaker`. While there may be a bug somewhere in Perl's configuration or `ExtUtil::MakeMaker` causing the problem, the most likely cause is an incomplete understanding of Sun Studio by this author. Further investigation is needed to get this working better.

# AUTHOR

Steve Peters <steve@fisharerojo.org>

Please report any errors, updates, or suggestions to https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues.

perllinux - Perl version 5 on Linux systems