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.

This article was posted by Matty on 2006-07-29 09:07:00 -0400 -0400