22

✏️ Editing: perlqnx.pod

If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you see.
It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is specially
designed to be readable as is.

=head1 NAME

perlqnx - Perl version 5 on QNX

=head1 DESCRIPTION

As of perl5.7.2 all tests pass under:

QNX 4.24G
  Watcom 10.6 with Beta/970211.wcc.update.tar.F
  socket3r.lib Nov21 1996.

As of perl5.8.1 there is at least one test still failing.

Some tests may complain under known circumstances.

See below and hints/qnx.sh for more information.

Under QNX 6.2.0 there are still a few tests which fail.
See below and hints/qnx.sh for more information.

=head2 Required Software for Compiling Perl on QNX4

As with many unix ports, this one depends on a few "standard"
unix utilities which are not necessarily standard for QNX4.

=over 4

=item /bin/sh

This is used heavily by Configure and then by
perl itself. QNX4's version is fine, but Configure
will choke on the 16-bit version, so if you are
running QNX 4.22, link /bin/sh to /bin32/ksh

=item ar

This is the standard unix library builder.
We use wlib. With Watcom 10.6, when wlib is
linked as "ar", it behaves like ar and all is
fine. Under 9.5, a cover is required. One is
included in ../qnx

=item nm

This is used (optionally) by configure to list
the contents of libraries. I will generate
a cover function on the fly in the UU directory.

=item cpp

Configure and perl need a way to invoke a C
preprocessor. I have created a simple cover
for cc which does the right thing. Without this,
Configure will create its own wrapper which works,
but it doesn't handle some of the command line arguments
that perl will throw at it.

=item make

You really need GNU make to compile this. GNU make
ships by default with QNX 4.23, but you can get it
from quics for earlier versions.

=back

=head2 Outstanding Issues with Perl on QNX4

There is no support for dynamically linked libraries in QNX4.

If you wish to compile with the Socket extension, you need
to have the TCP/IP toolkit, and you need to make sure that
-lsocket locates the correct copy of socket3r.lib. Beware
that the Watcom compiler ships with a stub version of
socket3r.lib which has very little functionality. Also
beware the order in which wlink searches directories for
libraries. You may have /usr/lib/socket3r.lib pointing to
the correct library, but wlink may pick up
/usr/watcom/10.6/usr/lib/socket3r.lib instead. Make sure
they both point to the correct library, that is,
/usr/tcptk/current/usr/lib/socket3r.lib.

The following tests may report errors under QNX4:

dist/Cwd/Cwd.t will complain if `pwd` and cwd don't give
the same results. cwd calls `fullpath -t`, so if you
cd `fullpath -t` before running the test, it will
pass.

lib/File/Find/taint.t will complain if '.' is in your
PATH. The PATH test is triggered because cwd calls
`fullpath -t`.

ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_sock.t: Subtests 14 and 22 are skipped due to
the fact that the functionality to read back the non-blocking
status of a socket is not implemented in QNX's TCP/IP. This has
been reported to QNX and it may work with later versions of
TCP/IP.

t/io/tell.t: Subtest 27 is failing. We are still investigating.

=head2 QNX auxiliary files

The files in the "qnx" directory are:

=over 4

=item qnx/ar

A script that emulates the standard unix archive (aka library)
utility.  Under Watcom 10.6, ar is linked to wlib and provides the
expected interface. With Watcom 9.5, a cover function is
required. This one is fairly crude but has proved adequate for
compiling perl.

=item qnx/cpp

A script that provides C preprocessing functionality.  Configure can
generate a similar cover, but it doesn't handle all the command-line
options that perl throws at it. This might be reasonably placed in
/usr/local/bin.

=back

=head2 Outstanding issues with perl under QNX6

The following tests are still failing for Perl 5.8.1 under QNX 6.2.0:

op/sprintf.........................FAILED at test 91
  lib/Benchmark......................FAILED at test 26

This is due to a bug in the C library's printf routine.
printf("'%e'", 0. ) produces '0.000000e+0', but ANSI requires
'0.000000e+00'. QNX has acknowledged the bug.

=head2 Cross-compilation

Perl supports cross-compiling to QNX NTO through the
Native Development Kit (NDK) for the Blackberry 10.  This means that you
can cross-compile for both ARM and x86 versions of the platform.

=head3 Setting up a cross-compilation environment

You can download the NDK from
L<http://developer.blackberry.com/native/downloads/>.

See
L<http://developer.blackberry.com/native/documentation/cascades/getting_started/setting_up.html>
for instructions to set up your device prior to attempting anything else.

Once you've installed the NDK and set up your device, all that's
left to do is setting up the device and the cross-compilation
environment.  Blackberry provides a script, C<bbndk-env.sh> (occasionally
named something like C<bbndk-env_10_1_0_4828.sh>) which can be used
to do this.  However, there's a bit of a snag that we have to work through:
The script modifies PATH so that 'gcc' or 'ar' point to their
cross-compilation equivalents, which screws over the build process.

So instead you'll want to do something like this:

$ orig_path=$PATH
    $ source $location_of_bbndk/bbndk-env*.sh
    $ export PATH="$orig_path:$PATH"

Besides putting the cross-compiler and the rest of the toolchain in your
PATH, this will also provide the QNX_TARGET variable, which
we will pass to Configure through -Dsysroot.

=head3 Preparing the target system

It's quite possible that the target system doesn't have a readily
available /tmp, so it's generall safer to do something like this:

$ ssh $TARGETUSER@$TARGETHOST 'rm -rf perl; mkdir perl; mkdir perl/tmp'
 $ export TARGETDIR=`ssh $TARGETUSER@$TARGETHOST pwd`/perl
 $ export TARGETENV="export TMPDIR=$TARGETDIR/tmp; "

Later on, we'll pass this to Configure through -Dtargetenv

=head3 Calling Configure

If you are targetting an ARM device -- which currently includes the vast 
majority of phones and tablets -- you'll want to pass
-Dcc=arm-unknown-nto-qnx8.0.0eabi-gcc to Configure.  Alternatively, if you 
are targetting an x86 device, or using the simulator provided with the NDK,
you should specify -Dcc=ntox86-gcc instead.

A sample Configure invocation looks something like this:

./Configure -des -Dusecrosscompile \
        -Dsysroot=$QNX_TARGET          \
        -Dtargetdir=$TARGETDIR         \
        -Dtargetenv="$TARGETENV"       \
        -Dcc=ntox86-gcc                \
        -Dtarghost=... # Usual cross-compilation options

=head1 AUTHOR

Norton T. Allen (allen@huarp.harvard.edu)

MR SKB