barrd has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello fellow Monks,

Whilst I realise this request for help is not a "pure" Perl question per se I hope I do not encourage the wrath of my peers. I have tried Super Search and not surprisingly received no usable answers.

I am running a server using Debian (2.4.20-1-686 Sarge) with Perl 5.8.0, whilst trying to install another bit of needed software for a project the 'configure' installation script aborts when it checks to see if Perl is "thread-enabled": 

wcms:/home/barrd/interchange-4.9.8# ./configure
[..] (working fine, then...)
Interchange will not work with a thread-enabled perl.
[..] (more errors various but non related)

[download]
Whilst being able to code Perl I have no inkling at all of how to manipulate what's "under the hood" and believe I need to recompile Perl with "threading" off. I have checked both Google and the software in question's websites to no avail (as well as many others). It appears to be something "you either know how to do", or "don't". Unfortuantley I fall squarely in the latter. ;)

A quick look at perl -V produced: 

Summary of my perl5 (revision 5.0 version 8 subversion 0) configuratio
+n:
  Platform:
    osname=linux, osvers=2.4.19, archname=i386-linux-thread-multi
    uname='linux cyberhq 2.4.19 #1 smp sun aug 4 11:30:45 pdt 2002 i68
+6 unknown unknown gnulinux '
    config_args='-Dusethreads...
[..]
Characteristics of this binary (from libperl): 
  Compile-time options: MULTIPLICITY USE_ITHREADS USE_LARGE_FILES PERL
+_IMPLICIT_CONTEXT
[..]

[download]

All well and good, but how (and where) do I turn threading off? Any help/pointers would be very much appreciated at this point.

barrd

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Recompiling a non 'thread-enabled' version of Perl (5.8.0)
by The Mad Hatter (Priest) on Jun 21, 2003 at 14:14 UTC
    Don't fear, compiling isn't hard. You'll have to download the source for the Perl interpretor, and during the configure step, make sure to disable thread support (it'll ask you). To recompile Perl, you must have a standard C compiler and the C libraries installed.

    Once you have the source, read the README and INSTALL files along with any platform specific information. The documents included with the source are very helpful and informative. You should be able to use them to successfully compile Perl. (If not, come back here and ask.)

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Re: Recompiling a non 'thread-enabled' version of Perl (5.8.0)
by PodMaster (Abbot) on Jun 21, 2003 at 14:18 UTC
    That sounds kind of suspicious(I can barely imagine threaded perl trully being a problem for that product), but anyway, go to http://CPAN.org, download perl, read INSTALL.

    MJD says "you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo!"
    I run a Win32 PPM repository for perl 5.6.x and 5.8.x -- I take requests (README).
    ** The third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.

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Re: Recompiling a non 'thread-enabled' version of Perl (5.8.0)
by barrd (Canon) on Jun 21, 2003 at 14:31 UTC
    Hi and thanks The Mad Hatter & PodMaster,

    I didn't think a recompile would be all that difficult, I just got my knickers in a twist and 'lost the plot' for a while there. Thank you very much both for your prompt replies. Using your advice I'm going off to get the source code and install from tarballs rather than .deb packages... hopefully that'll do the trick, and again thanks for the words of encouragement - most appreciated.

    barrd - the somewhat more relieved

    Oh, and PodMaster I 'believe' the threading issue is more to do with the RedHat distro and some "locking" issues - I couldn't make head nor tail of it, but yes, it does seem a tad suspicious.

[reply]

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