[Bioperl-l] compilation of bioperl-ext with perl 5.004 (IRIX)

[Tim Bunce]

On Wed, Aug 21, 2002 at 11:23:56AM +0200, Andrea Schafferhans wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Has anyone else had any problems in installing the bioperl-ext module on 
> an SGI / with perl 5.004? Unfortunately, I'm very bad at C, so I don't 
> really understand what to do about the error message I'm getting. 
> Therefore, I'd be extremely grateful for help.
> What I get after doing "make" is:
>          cc -32 -mips2 -c -I./libs -D_BSD_TYPES -D_BSD_TIME -Olimit 
> 20000 -I/usr/local/include -DLANGUAGE_C -O2     -DVERSION=\"0.1\" 
> -DXS_VERSION=\"0.1\"  -I/software/pub_gen/lib/perl5/IP32-irix/5.004/CORE 
> -DPOSIX -DNOERROR Align.c
> cfe: Error: Align.c, line 56: 'PL_na' undefined; reoccurrences will not 
> be reported.
> 
> A quick search on google suggested that this may be a perl version issue 

Yeap. 5.004 is _very_ old.

> and that I might need to replace PL_na by something else. (Unfortunately 

Just remove the three letter 'PL_' prefix should fix this problem - but there
may still be a bunch of others further down the road...

> I don't have any control about the perl version on that machine.)

I'd suggest you fetch perl5.6.1 or perl5.8.0 and build and install it
into a private directory for your own use.

Tim.

p.s. You might also mention to your system administrators that perl5.004
has security bugs fixed in later versions. 5.005_03 would be the minimum
upgrade I'd recommend.