Re: building a dynamically linked Perl 5.6.1 on HPUX 11.0

[H. Merijn Brand]

"Michael Schuh" <address@hidden> wrote in
news:address@hidden: 

> Greetings all,
> 
> I recently (like, 40 minutes ago) installed Perl 5.6.1 on an HPUX 11.0
> system.  As my goal is to interact with an Oracle database, I followed
> Lincoln Baxter's README.hpux (THANK YOU!) and tried to build a
> dynamically linked version of Perl.  However, in earlier attempts
> (stretching back over the last week or so) it died in the linking stage,
> admonishing me that a file was created without position independent code
> and advising me that I should recompile using the "+z" flag.  As I was
> using gcc (which has no +z flag) this was very confusing until I noticed
> that the file to which the message was referring was libgdbm, which I
> had built just last week, and realized that I was using HPUX's ld ('cuz
> the GNU binutils ld won't work on HPUX) and this ld doesn't know about
> gcc. 

perl-5.8.0 has been released yesterday/today, and now has full gcc support
README.hpux should also be quite up to date.

this perl release has extensibly been tested on HP-UX 11.00 with gcc in 
both 32bit and 64bit mode and should build clean out of the box

FWIW, I'm currently uploading an Oracle prepared version of perl-5.8.0
      built with gcc-3.1.1 for HP ITRC members, and it should be
      available shortly from https://www.beepz.com/personal/merijn
      (wait till 14:00 please)

> Well, it was simple enough to fix: go back to the libgdm build and add
> -fPIC to the complier options.  After that, Perl built and loaded just
> like the documentation says it should. 
> 
> My "bug"?  It would have helped me, I think, if the three sets of
> documentation were more blatant about building everything PIC.  The
> configure/build process for libgdbm does not have an obvious method to
> specify PIC, and neither the Perl documentation nor Lincoln Baxter's
> README.hpux remind the user that all files in a dynamic build need to be
> PIC.  Yes, it's "well known" (and, if I had been asked, would have said
> as much...), but a mild reminder might have helped me. 
> 
> Also, in the Makefile for libgdbm:
> 
> 30c30
>< CFLAGS = -O -fPIC
> ---
>> CFLAGS = -O  
> 
> although this is specific to gcc.
> 
> As is often the case in the software biz, just a few characters can make
> all the difference. 
> 
> Thank you, and thank you very much for various contributions.

-- 
H.Merijn Brand    Amsterdam Perl Mongers (http://www.amsterdam.pm.org/)
using perl-5.6.1, 5.8.0 & 633 on HP-UX 10.20 & 11.00, AIX 4.2, AIX 4.3,
     WinNT 4, Win2K pro & WinCE 2.11 often with Tk800.024 &/| DBD-Unify
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/authors/id/H/HM/HMBRAND/