PERLIRIX(1perl)

📦
version 5.44.0 · 2 versions
, in arch rolling

💖 PERLIRIX 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the Irix edition of the Perl manual 💅 this is perlirix, straight out of the Perl Programmers Reference Guide, and it's literally just a whole doc about how Irix being Irix affects the way Perl version 5 (from here on out: just "Perl" 💖) gets compiled and runs. sit down, hydrate, let's go 🦋

✨ NAME ✨

perlirix — Perl version 5 on Irix systems 🎀

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

This whole doc is about the various Irix-y features that mess with how Perl version 5 (again, just Perl from here on, bestie) is compiled and/or runs. no cap.

🧚 Building 32-bit Perl in Irix

Use

sh Configure -Dcc='cc -n32'

to compile Perl 32-bit. And like — don't even bother with -n32 unless you've got 7.1 or later compilers, okay? run cc -version to check. 👑

(also just so you know: building with cc -n32 is the default. so it's already giving main character energy.)

🦋 Building 64-bit Perl in Irix

Use

sh Configure -Dcc='cc -64' -Duse64bitint

This one requires a 64-bit MIPS CPU (R8000, R10000, ...) so like, check before you commit fr fr.

You can also do

sh Configure -Dcc='cc -64' -Duse64bitall

but lowkey that makes no difference compared with the -Duse64bitint, and it's all because of the "cc -64". 💀

You can also do

sh Configure -Dcc='cc -n32' -Duse64bitint

to use long longs for the 64-bit integer type — cute little workaround for when you don't have a 64-bit CPU 🫶.

And if you're on gcc? honestly just

sh Configure -Dcc=gcc -Duse64bitint

should be enough — Configure should automatically probe for the correct 64-bit settings. it just knows. iykyk ✨

💜 About Compiler Versions of Irix

Some Irix cc versions — like, for example, 7.3.1.1m (try cc -version to see what you've got) — have been known to have issues (coredumps 😭) when compiling perl.c.

If you've used -OPT:fast_io=ON and this happens, try removing it. If that fails, or you didn't use that in the first place, then try adjusting other optimization options (-LNO, -INLINE, -O3 to -O2, et cetera). The compiler bug has been reported to SGI. (shoutout to Allen Smith <easmith@beatrice.rutgers.edu> 💖)

🔥 Linker Problems in Irix

If you get complaints about so_locations, then go search in the file hints/irix_6.sh for "lddflags" and do the suggested adjustments. (David Billinghurst <David.Billinghurst@riotinto.com.au> 🫶)

🌈 Malloc in Irix

Do NOT try to use Perl's malloc. this will lead you into very mysterious errors (especially with -Duse64bitall). not the fun kind of mysterious. the bad kind. 💀

🎀 Building with threads in Irix

Run Configure with -Duseithreads which will configure Perl with the Perl 5.8.0 "interpreter threads" — see threads for the tea ☕.

For Irix 6.2 with perl threads, you have to have the following patches installed:

1404 Irix 6.2 Posix 1003.1b man pages
1645 Irix 6.2 & 6.3 POSIX header file updates
2000 Irix 6.2 Posix 1003.1b support modules
2254 Pthread library fixes
2401 6.2 all platform kernel rollup
IMPORTANT: Without patch 2401, a kernel bug in Irix 6.2 will cause your machine to panic and crash when running threaded perl. like, actually crash. Irix 6.3 and later are okay though 🌸
Thanks to Hannu Napari <Hannu.Napari@hut.fi> for the IRIX pthreads patches information. 🙏

⭐ Irix 5.3

While running Configure and when building, you're likely to get quite a few of these warnings:

ld:
The shared object /usr/lib/libm.so did not resolve any symbols.
      You may want to remove it from your link line.

Ignore them 💅 in IRIX 5.3 there is no way to quieten ld about this. it simply does not care.

During compilation you will see this warning from toke.c:

uopt: Warning: Perl_yylex: this procedure not optimized because it
      exceeds size threshold; to optimize this procedure, use -Olimit
      option with value >= 4252.

Ignore the warning. 🫶

In IRIX 5.3 and with Perl 5.8.1 (heads up: Perl 5.8.0 didn't compile in IRIX 5.3) the following failures are known:

 Failed Test                  Stat Wstat Total Fail  Failed|Failing List
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
 ../ext/List/Util/t/shuffle.t    0   139    ??   ??       %  ??
 ../lib/Math/Trig.t            255 65280    29   12  41.38%  24-29
 ../lib/sort.t                   0   138   119   72  60.50%  48-119
 56 tests and 474 subtests skipped.
 Failed 3/811 test scripts, 99.63% okay. 78/75813 subtests failed,
    99.90% okay.

They are suspected to be compiler errors (at least the shuffle.t failure is known from some IRIX 6 setups) and math library errors (the Trig.t failure), but since IRIX 5 is long since end-of-lifed, further fixes for the IRIX are unlikely. 😭 If you can get gcc for 5.3, you could try that too — since gcc in IRIX 6 is a known workaround for at least the shuffle.t and sort.t failures. 🍓

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Jarkko Hietaniemi <jhi@iki.fi>

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

k that's the whole page bestie, you ate it up 🎀 this was perlirix from perl v5.44.0, dated 2026-10-17 — mwah, slay, periodt 💅✨🦋

📦 where this page comes from