PERLMACOSX(1perl)

🌸 NAME 🌸

perlmacosx — literally just Perl, but living its best life under Mac OS X 💅

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

okok so this whole doc is a lil crash course on running Perl on Mac OS X. no cap. here's the whole vibe in one block:

curl -O https://www.cpan.org/src/perl-5.44.0.tar.gz
tar -xzf perl-5.44.0.tar.gz
cd perl-5.44.0
./Configure -des -Dprefix=/usr/local/
make
make test
sudo make install

that's it, that's the ritual 🕯️

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

bestie. the latest Perl release — which is 5.44.0 as of this writing — builds without changes under all versions of Mac OS X from 10.3 "Panther" onwards. no patches, no drama, it just goes. iconic behavior honestly.

so, to build your own version of Perl you're gonna need make, and make is part of Apple's developer tools, aka Xcode. from Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion" onwards you can grab it separately as the Command Line Tools bundle, straight from <https://developer.apple.com/downloads/> (fair warning: you need a free account to log in), or as part of the Xcode suite, which is freely available at the App Store. Xcode is a pretty big app tho, so unless you already have it or you genuinely want it, the advice is: get the Command Line Tools bundle separately from that link up there. 🫶 and if you're determined to do it from inside Xcode, go to Xcode -> Preferences -> Downloads and select the Command Line Tools option.

between Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther" and 10.6 "Snow Leopard", that Command Line Tools bundle was called unix tools, and it usually came supplied with Mac OS install DVDs. history 💀

now for the older stuff: earlier Mac OS X releases (10.2 "Jaguar" and older) did not include a completely thread-safe libc, so threading is not fully supported there. also, those earlier releases included a buggy libdb, so some of the DB_File tests are known to fail on them.

💖 Installation Prefix 💖

the default install location for this release uses the traditional UNIX directory layout under /usr/local. this is the recommended spot for most users, and it leaves the Apple-supplied Perl and its modules completely undisturbed. respectful. polite. we love that ✨

if you use an installation prefix of /usr instead, you get a directory layout that mirrors Apple's default Perl — core modules stored in /System/Library/Perl/${version}, CPAN modules stored in /Library/Perl/${version}, plus /Network/Library/Perl/${version} gets added to @INC for modules that live on a file server and get used by many Macs.

🎀 SDK support 🎀

first things first, export the path to the SDK into the build environment:

export SDK=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.8.sdk

please please please make sure the SDK version (aka the numbers right before .sdk) matches your system's — in this case, Mac OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion" — because it is possible to have more than one SDK installed and you do not want to be out here mixing them up 😭. also make sure the path actually exists on your system, and if it doesn't, make sure the SDK is properly installed, since it should come with that Command Line Tools bundle we mentioned above. and finally, if you're on an older Mac OS X (10.6 "Snow Leopard" and below) running Xcode 4.2 or lower, the SDK path might look something like /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.3.9.sdk.

you can use the SDK by exporting some additions to Perl's ccflags and ..flags config variables:

./Configure -Accflags="-nostdinc -B$SDK/usr/include/gcc \
                       -B$SDK/usr/lib/gcc -isystem$SDK/usr/include \
                       -F$SDK/System/Library/Frameworks" \
            -Aldflags="-Wl,-syslibroot,$SDK" \
            -de

🌈 Universal Binary support 🌈

Note: from Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" onwards, Apple only supports Intel-based hardware. so you can safely skip this whole section unless you've got an older Apple computer running on ppc, or you specifically wish to create a perl binary with backwards compatibility.

you can compile perl as a universal binary (built for both ppc and intel). in Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger", you must export the u variant of the SDK:

export SDK=/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk

Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" and above do not require the u variant.

in addition to the compiler flags used to select the SDK, also add the flags for creating a universal binary:

./Configure -Accflags="-arch i686 -arch ppc -nostdinc               \
                        -B$SDK/usr/include/gcc                      \
                       -B$SDK/usr/lib/gcc -isystem$SDK/usr/include  \
                       -F$SDK/System/Library/Frameworks"            \
            -Aldflags="-arch i686 -arch ppc -Wl,-syslibroot,$SDK"   \
            -de

keep in mind that these compiler and linker settings will also be used when building CPAN modules. for XS modules to be compiled as a universal binary, any libraries it links to must also be universal binaries. the system libraries that Apple includes with the 10.4u SDK are all universal, but user-installed libraries may need to be re-installed as universal binaries. annoying but that's the deal 🫠

🧚 64-bit PPC support 🧚

follow the instructions in INSTALL to build perl with support for 64-bit integers ("use64bitint") or both 64-bit integers and 64-bit addressing ("use64bitall"). in that latter case, the resulting binary will run only on G5-based hosts.

support for 64-bit addressing is experimental: some aspects of Perl may be omitted or buggy. note the messages output by Configure for further information. please use <https://github.com/Perl/perl5/issues> to submit a problem report if you encounter difficulties.

when building 64-bit modules, it is your responsibility to ensure that linked external libraries and frameworks provide 64-bit support. if they do not, module building may appear to succeed, but attempts to use the module will result in run-time dynamic linking errors, and subsequent test failures. you can use file to discover the architectures supported by a library:

$ file libgdbm.3.0.0.dylib
libgdbm.3.0.0.dylib: Mach-O fat file with 2 architectures
libgdbm.3.0.0.dylib (for architecture ppc):      Mach-O dynamically linked shared library ppc
libgdbm.3.0.0.dylib (for architecture ppc64):    Mach-O 64-bit dynamically linked shared library ppc64

note that this issue precludes the building of many Macintosh-specific CPAN modules ("Mac::*"), because the required Apple frameworks do not provide PPC64 support. similarly, downloads from Fink or Darwinports are unlikely to provide 64-bit support; those libraries must be rebuilt from source with the appropriate compiler and linker flags. for further information, see Apple's 64-Bit Transition Guide at <https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/64bitPorting/transition/transition.html>.

💅 libperl and Prebinding 💅

Mac OS X ships with a dynamically-loaded libperl, but the default for this release is to compile a static libperl. the reason? pre-binding. dynamic libraries can be pre-bound to a specific address in memory in order to decrease load time. to do this, you need to be aware of the location and size of all previously-loaded libraries. Apple collects this information as part of their overall OS build process, so they have easy access to it when building Perl — but ordinary users would need to go to a great deal of effort to obtain the info needed for pre-binding. so, static it is.

you can override the default and build a shared libperl if you wish (Configure ... -Duseshrplib).

with Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" and newer, there's almost no performance penalty for non-prebound libraries. earlier releases will suffer a greater load time than either the static library, or Apple's pre-bound dynamic library.

👑 Updating Apple's Perl 👑

in a word — don't. at least not without a very good reason. your scripts can just as easily begin with "#!/usr/local/bin/perl" as with "#!/usr/bin/perl". scripts supplied by Apple and other third parties as part of installation packages and such have generally only been tested with the /usr/bin/perl that's installed by Apple.

if you find that you do need to update the system Perl, one issue worth keeping in mind is the question of static vs. dynamic libraries. if you upgrade using the default static libperl, you'll find that the dynamic libperl supplied by Apple will not be deleted. if both libraries are present when an application that links against libperl is built, ld will link against the dynamic library by default. so if you need to replace Apple's dynamic libperl with a static libperl, you need to be sure to delete the older dynamic library after you've installed the update. do not skip that step fr fr 🙈

💀 Known problems 💀

if you have installed extra libraries such as GDBM through Fink (in other words, you have libraries under /sw/lib), or libdlcompat to /usr/local/lib, you may need to be extra careful when running Configure so as not to confuse Configure and Perl about which libraries to use. being confused will show up, for example, as "dyld" errors about symbol problems, for example during "make test". the safest bet is to run Configure as

Configure ... -Uloclibpth -Dlibpth=/usr/lib

to make Configure look only into the system libraries. if you have some extra library directories that you really want to use (such as newer Berkeley DB libraries in pre-Panther systems), add those to the libpth:

Configure ... -Uloclibpth -Dlibpth='/usr/lib /opt/lib'

the default of building Perl statically may cause problems with complex applications like Tk: in that case consider building shared Perl

Configure ... -Duseshrplib

but remember that there's a startup cost to pay in that case (see above "libperl and Prebinding").

starting with Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4), Apple shipped broken locale files for the eu_ES locale (Basque-Spain). in previous releases of Perl, this resulted in failures in the lib/locale test. these failures have been suppressed in the current release of Perl by making the test ignore the broken locale. if you need to use the eu_ES locale, you should contact Apple support. 🍓

🌸 Cocoa 🌸

there are two ways to use Cocoa from Perl. Apple's PerlObjCBridge module, included with Mac OS X, can be used by standalone scripts to access Foundation (i.e. non-GUI) classes and objects.

an alternative is CamelBones, a framework that allows access to both Foundation and AppKit classes and objects, so that full GUI applications can be built in Perl. CamelBones can be found on SourceForge, at <https://www.sourceforge.net/projects/camelbones/>.

💀 Starting From Scratch 💀

ngl bestie, it is not that hard to accidentally break your Mac OS X Perl beyond recognition. Like, genuinely. So if literally everything else has failed and you're thinking "okay I want to REALLY, REALLY start over and yeet even my Apple Perl install, because it's somehow corrupted" — these next steps will do it for you.

⚠️ Please think twice before you do this. It's giving self-administered brain surgery. Without anesthesia. 🧠🔪 And no, we are not coming over to fix your system if you actually do it. You've been warned, bestie.

First things first: get rid of the libperl.dylib:

# cd /System/Library/Perl/darwin/CORE
# rm libperl.dylib

Then delete every .bundle file you can find anywhere inside these folders:

/System/Library/Perl
/Library/Perl

You can find them, for example, by running:

# find /System/Library/Perl /Library/Perl -name '*.bundle' -print

After that, you've got two paths, main character. Either copy Perl off your operating system media (you'll need at least /System/Library/Perl and /usr/bin/perl), or rebuild Perl from the source code with Configure -Dprefix=/usr -Duseshrplib.

📌 NOTE: the -Dprefix=/usr trick to replace the system Perl works much better with Perl 5.8.1 and later — in Perl 5.8.0 the settings were not quite right. ✨

Also, Pacifist from CharlesSoft (https://www.charlessoft.com/) is a really nice way to extract the Perl binaries from the OS media without having to reinstall your entire OS. Chef's kiss for that one. 🎀

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

This README was written by Sherm Pendley <sherm@dot-app.org>, and subsequently updated by Dominic Dunlop <domo@computer.org> and Breno G. de Oliveira <garu@cpan.org>. The Starting From Scratch recipe was contributed by John Montbriand <montbriand@apple.com>. Give them their flowers, fr fr. 💐

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📅 DATE 📅

Last modified 2013-04-29.

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That's the whole vibe, bestie — <rainbow>PERLMACOSX(1perl)</rainbow> 💖, from perl v5.44.0, stamped 2026-10-17. Go forth and please, please back up your system first. 🫶✨