Blog O’ Matty

Building Perl modules for Solaris

This week I needed to install a few Perl modules on a Solaris 10 host. I didn’t want to download and install a fourth perl interpreter (Solaris 10 comes with 5.6.1, 5.8.3 and 5.8.4 for some reason), since Solaris 10 comes with a relatively recent version of Perl (5.8.4). To build the module in question (DBD::mysql), I downloaded the module from CPAN, verified that the MD5 checksum was correct, and used the following steps to compile the module:

$ perl Makefile.PL

$ make

$ make install

The ‘make Makefile.PL’ completed succesfully, but the make failed with the following errors:

$ make

cp lib/DBD/mysql.pm blib/lib/DBD/mysql.pm
cp lib/DBD/mysql/GetInfo.pm blib/lib/DBD/mysql/GetInfo.pm
cp lib/Mysql.pm blib/lib/Mysql.pm
cp lib/DBD/mysql/INSTALL.pod blib/lib/DBD/mysql/INSTALL.pod
cp lib/Mysql/Statement.pm blib/lib/Mysql/Statement.pm
cp lib/Bundle/DBD/mysql.pm blib/lib/Bundle/DBD/mysql.pm
cc -c  -I/usr/perl5/site_perl/5.8.4/i86pc-solaris-64int/auto/DBI -I/home/apps/mysql/mysql/include/mysql -DDBD_MYSQL_INSERT_ID_I
S_GOOD -g  -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -D_TS_ERRNO -xO3 -xspace -xildoff    -DVERSION=\"3.0006\"  -DXS_VERSION=\
"3.0006\" -KPIC "-I/usr/perl5/5.8.4/lib/i86pc-solaris-64int/CORE"   dbdimp.c
cc: unrecognized option `-KPIC'
cc: language ildoff not recognized
cc: dbdimp.c: linker input file unused because linking not done
/usr/bin/perl -p -e "s/~DRIVER~/mysql/g" /usr/perl5/site_perl/5.8.4/i86pc-solaris-64int/auto/DBI/Driver.xst > mysql.xsi
/usr/bin/perl /usr/perl5/5.8.4/lib/ExtUtils/xsubpp  -typemap /usr/perl5/5.8.4/lib/ExtUtils/typemap  mysql.xs > mysql.xsc && mv
mysql.xsc mysql.c
Warning: duplicate function definition 'do' detected in mysql.xs, line 224
Warning: duplicate function definition 'rows' detected in mysql.xs, line 567
cc -c  -I/usr/perl5/site_perl/5.8.4/i86pc-solaris-64int/auto/DBI -I/home/apps/mysql/mysql/include/mysql -DDBD_MYSQL_INSERT_ID_I
S_GOOD -g  -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -D_TS_ERRNO -xO3 -xspace -xildoff    -DVERSION=\"3.0006\"  -DXS_VERSION=\
"3.0006\" -KPIC "-I/usr/perl5/5.8.4/lib/i86pc-solaris-64int/CORE"   mysql.c
cc: unrecognized option `-KPIC'
cc: language ildoff not recognized
cc: mysql.c: linker input file unused because linking not done
Running Mkbootstrap for DBD::mysql ()
chmod 644 mysql.bs
rm -f blib/arch/auto/DBD/mysql/mysql.so
LD_RUN_PATH="/home/apps/mysql/mysql/lib/mysql:/lib:/usr/lib" /usr/bin/perl myld cc  -G dbdimp.o  mysql.o  -o blib/arch/auto/DBD
/mysql/mysql.so   -L/home/apps/mysql/mysql/lib/mysql -lmysqlclient -lz -lposix4 -lcrypt -lgen -lsocket -lnsl -lm
cc: dbdimp.o: No such file or directory
cc: mysql.o: No such file or directory
*** Error code 1
make: Fatal error: Command failed for target `blib/arch/auto/DBD/mysql/mysql.so'

Since I was building the module with gcc, the compiler and linker got a bit confused when they were passed Sun studio compiler flags (i.e., -KPIC in this example). There are two fixes for this problem. If you want to build a single module with gcc, you can edit the Makefile that was produced by ‘perl Makefile.PL’, and remove the “-KPIC” and “-xO3 -xspace -xildoff” values from the following variables:

$ egrep ‘(KPIC|O3)’ Makefile
CCCDLFLAGS = -KPIC
OPTIMIZE = -xO3 -xspace -xildoff

If you want to use gcc to build all Perl modules on a system, you can permanently* remove the Sun Studio compiler references by adjusting the “cccdlflags” and “optimize” variables in /usr/perl5/5.8.4/lib/sun4-solaris-64int/Config.pm:

$ egrep ‘(KPIC|O3)’ Config.pm
cccdlflags=’-KPIC’
optimize=’-xO3 -xspace -xildoff’

Since I don’t want to support two compiler packages, I decided to use option #2 since gcc comes on the Solaris installation CDs.

* If you edit Config.pm, you should be aware that Solaris Perl patches will overwrite this file.