At the moment of writing, AIX supports two different native C compilers, for which you have to pay: xlC and vac. If you decide to use either of these two (which is quite a lot easier than using gcc), be sure to upgrade to the latest available patch level. Currently:
xlC.C 3.1.4.10 or 3.6.6.0 or 4.0.2.2 or 5.0.2.9 or 6.0.0.3
vac.C 4.4.0.3 or 5.0.2.6 or 6.0.0.1
note that xlC has the OS version in the name as of version 4.0.2.0, so you will find xlC.C for AIX-5.0 as package
xlC.aix50.rte 5.0.2.0 or 6.0.0.3
subversions are not the same ``latest'' on all OS versions. For example, the latest xlC-5 on aix41 is 5.0.2.9, while on aix43, it is 5.0.2.7.
Perl can be compiled with either IBM's ANSI C compiler or with gcc. The former is recommended, as not only can it compile Perl with no difficulty, but also can take advantage of features listed later that require the use of IBM compiler-specific command-line flags.
The IBM's compiler patch levels 5.0.0.0 and 5.0.1.0 have compiler optimization bugs that affect compiling perl.c and regcomp.c, respectively. If Perl's configuration detects those compiler patch levels, optimization is turned off for the said source code files. Upgrading to at least 5.0.2.0 is recommended.
If you decide to use gcc, make sure your installation is recent and complete, and be sure to read the Perl INSTALL file for more gcc-specific details. Please report any hoops you had to jump through to the development team.
# oslevel
4.3.0.0
# lslpp -l | grep 'bos.rte '
bos.rte 4.3.3.75 COMMITTED Base Operating System Runtime
bos.rte 4.3.2.0 COMMITTED Base Operating System Runtime
#
The same might happen to AIX 5.1 or other OS levels. As a side note, perl cannot be built without bos.adt.syscalls and bos.adt.libm installed
# lslpp -l | egrep "syscalls|libm"
bos.adt.libm 5.1.0.25 COMMITTED Base Application Development
bos.adt.syscalls 5.1.0.36 COMMITTED System Calls Application
#
Note that starting from Perl 5.7.2 (and consequently 5.8.0) and AIX 4.3 or newer Perl uses the AIX native dynamic loading interface in the so called runtime linking mode instead of the emulated interface that was used in Perl releases 5.6.1 and earlier or, for AIX releases 4.2 and earlier. This change does break backward compatibility with compiled modules from earlier perl releases. The change was made to make Perl more compliant with other applications like Apache/mod_perl which are using the AIX native interface. This change also enables the use of C++ code with static constructors and destructors in perl extensions, which was not possible using the emulated interface.
If you've chosen to use vac 4, be sure to run 4.4.0.3. Older versions will turn up nasty later on. For vac 5 be sure to run at least 5.0.1.0, but vac 5.0.2.6 or up is highly recommended. Note that since IBM has removed vac 5.0.2.1 through 5.0.2.5 from the software depot, these versions should be considered obsolete.
Here's a brief lead of how to upgrade the compiler to the latest level. Of course this is subject to changes. You can only upgrade versions from ftp-available updates if the first three digit groups are the same (in where you can skip intermediate unlike the patches in the developer snapshots of perl), or to one version up where the ``base'' is available. In other words, the AIX compiler patches are cumulative.
vac.C.4.4.0.1 => vac.C.4.4.0.3 is OK (vac.C.4.4.0.2 not needed) xlC.C.3.1.3.3 => xlC.C.3.1.4.10 is NOT OK (xlC.C.3.1.4.0 is not available) # ftp ftp.software.ibm.com Connected to service.boulder.ibm.com. : welcome message ... Name (ftp.software.ibm.com:merijn): anonymous 331 Guest login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password. Password: ... accepted login stuff ftp> cd /aix/fixes/v4/ ftp> dir other other.ll output to local-file: other.ll? y 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls. 226 Transfer complete. ftp> dir xlc xlc.ll output to local-file: xlc.ll? y 200 PORT command successful. 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls. 226 Transfer complete. ftp> bye ... goodbye messages # ls -l *.ll -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn system 1169432 Nov 2 17:29 other.ll -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn system 29170 Nov 2 17:29 xlc.ll
On AIX 4.2 using xlC, we continue:
# lslpp -l | fgrep 'xlC.C ' xlC.C 3.1.4.9 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler xlC.C 3.1.4.0 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler # grep 'xlC.C.3.1.4.*.bff' xlc.ll -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6286336 Jul 22 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.1.bff -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6173696 Aug 24 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.10.bff -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6319104 Aug 14 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.2.bff -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6316032 Oct 21 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.3.bff -rw-r--r-- 1 45776101 1 6315008 Dec 20 1996 xlC.C.3.1.4.4.bff -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6178816 Mar 28 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.5.bff -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6188032 May 22 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.6.bff -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6191104 Sep 5 1997 xlC.C.3.1.4.7.bff -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6185984 Jan 13 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.8.bff -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 6169600 May 27 1998 xlC.C.3.1.4.9.bff # wget ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/fixes/v4/xlc/xlC.C.3.1.4.10.bff #
On AIX 4.3 using vac, we continue:
# lslpp -l | grep 'vac.C ' vac.C 5.0.2.2 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler vac.C 5.0.2.0 COMMITTED C for AIX Compiler # grep 'vac.C.5.0.2.*.bff' other.ll -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 13592576 Apr 16 2001 vac.C.5.0.2.0.bff -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 14133248 Apr 9 2002 vac.C.5.0.2.3.bff -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 14173184 May 20 2002 vac.C.5.0.2.4.bff -rw-rw-r-- 1 45776101 1 14192640 Nov 22 2002 vac.C.5.0.2.6.bff # wget ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/fixes/v4/other/vac.C.5.0.2.6.bff #
Likewise on all other OS levels. Then execute the following command, and fill in its choices
# smit install_update -> Install and Update from LATEST Available Software * INPUT device / directory for software [ vac.C.5.0.2.6.bff ] [ OK ] [ OK ]
Follow the messages ... and you're done.
If you like a more web-like approach, a good start point can be http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/download/downloadaz.jsp and click ``C for AIX'', and follow the instructions.
cc -o miniperl ... miniperlmain.o opmini.o perl.o ... -lm -lc ...
causes error like this
ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .aintl ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .copysignl ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .syscall ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .eaccess ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .setresuid ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .setresgid ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .setproctitle ld: 0711-345 Use the -bloadmap or -bnoquiet option to obtain more information.
you could retry with
make realclean rm config.sh ./Configure -Dusenm ...
which makes Configure to use the "nm" tool when scanning for library symbols, which usually is not done in AIX.
Related to this, you probably should not use the "-r" option of Configure in AIX, because that affects of how the "nm" tool is used.
http://www.ibm.com/servers/aix/products/aixos/linux/
You may get a warning when doing a threaded build:
"pp_sys.c", line 4640.39: 1506-280 (W) Function argument assignment between types "unsigned char*" and "const void*" is not allowed.
The exact line number may vary, but if the warning (W) comes from a line line this
hent = PerlSock_gethostbyaddr(addr, (Netdb_hlen_t) addrlen, addrtype);
in the ``pp_ghostent'' function, you may ignore it safely. The warning is caused by the reentrant variant of gethostbyaddr() having a slightly different prototype than its non-reentrant variant, but the difference is not really significant here.