[ViewVC] Annotation of: cvs/App-Staticperl/README

NAME
    staticperl - perl, libc, 50 modules all in one 500kb file

SYNOPSIS
       staticperl help      # print the embedded documentation
       staticperl fetch     # fetch and unpack perl sources
       staticperl configure # fetch and then configure perl
       staticperl build     # configure and then build perl
       staticperl install   # build and then install perl
       staticperl clean     # clean most intermediate files (restart at configure)
       staticperl distclean # delete everything installed by this script
       staticperl cpan      # invoke CPAN shell
       staticperl instmod path...        # install unpacked modules
       staticperl instcpan modulename... # install modules from CPAN
       staticperl mkbundle <bundle-args...> # see documentation
       staticperl mkperl <bundle-args...>   # see documentation

    Typical Examples:

       staticperl install   # fetch, configure, build and install perl
       staticperl cpan      # run interactive cpan shell
       staticperl mkperl -M '"Config_heavy.pl"' # build a perl that supports -V
       staticperl mkperl -MAnyEvent::Impl::Perl -MAnyEvent::HTTPD -MURI -MURI::http
                            # build a perl with the above modules linked in

DESCRIPTION
    This script helps you creating single-file perl interpreters, or
    embedding a perl interpreter in your applications. Single-file means
    that it is fully self-contained - no separate shared objects, no
    autoload fragments, no .pm or .pl files are needed. And when linking
    statically, you can create (or embed) a single file that contains perl
    interpreter, libc, all the modules you need and all the libraries you
    need.

    With uClibc and upx on x86, you can create a single 500kb binary that
    contains perl and 50 modules such as AnyEvent, EV, IO::AIO, Coro and so
    on. Or any other choice of modules.

    The created files do not need write access to the file system (like PAR
    does). In fact, since this script is in many ways similar to
    PAR::Packer, here are the differences:

    *   The generated executables are much smaller than PAR created ones.

        Shared objects and the perl binary contain a lot of extra info,
        while the static nature of staticperl allows the linker to remove
        all functionality and meta-info not required by the final
        executable. Even extensions statically compiled into perl at build
        time will only be present in the final executable when needed.

        In addition, staticperl can strip perl sources much more effectively
        than PAR.

    *   The generated executables start much faster.

        There is no need to unpack files, or even to parse Zip archives
        (which is slow and memory-consuming business).

    *   The generated executables don't need a writable filesystem.

        staticperl loads all required files directly from memory. There is
        no need to unpack files into a temporary directory.

    *   More control over included files.

        PAR tries to be maintenance and hassle-free - it tries to include
        more files than necessary to make sure everything works out of the
        box. The extra files (such as the unicode database) can take
        substantial amounts of memory and file size.

        With staticperl, the burden is mostly with the developer - only
        direct compile-time dependencies and AutoLoader are handled
        automatically. This means the modules to include often need to be
        tweaked manually.

    *   PAR works out of the box, staticperl does not.

        Maintaining your own custom perl build can be a pain in the ass, and
        while staticperl tries to make this easy, it still requires a custom
        perl build and possibly fiddling with some modules. PAR is likely to
        produce results faster.

HOW DOES IT WORK?
    Simple: staticperl downloads, compile and installs a perl version of
    your choice in ~/.staticperl. You can add extra modules either by
    letting staticperl install them for you automatically, or by using CPAN
    and doing it interactively. This usually takes 5-10 minutes, depending
    on the speed of your computer and your internet connection.

    It is possible to do program development at this stage, too.

    Afterwards, you create a list of files and modules you want to include,
    and then either build a new perl binary (that acts just like a normal
    perl except everything is compiled in), or you create bundle files
    (basically C sources you can use to embed all files into your project).

    This step is very fast (a few seconds if PPI is not used for stripping,
    more seconds otherwise, as PPI is very slow), and can be tweaked and
    repeated as often as necessary.

THE STATICPERL SCRIPT
    This module installs a script called staticperl into your perl binary
    directory. The script is fully self-contained, and can be used without
    perl (for example, in an uClibc chroot environment). In fact, it can be
    extracted from the "App::Staticperl" distribution tarball as
    bin/staticperl, without any installation.

    staticperl interprets the first argument as a command to execute,
    optionally followed by any parameters.

    There are two command categories: the "phase 1" commands which deal with
    installing perl and perl modules, and the "phase 2" commands, which deal
    with creating binaries and bundle files.

  PHASE 1 COMMANDS: INSTALLING PERL
    The most important command is install, which does basically everything.
    The default is to download and install perl 5.12.2 and a few modules
    required by staticperl itself, but all this can (and should) be changed
    - see CONFIGURATION, below.

    The command

       staticperl install

    Is normally all you need: It installs the perl interpreter in
    ~/.staticperl/perl. It downloads, configures, builds and installs the
    perl interpreter if required.

    Most of the following commands simply run one or more steps of this
    sequence.

    To force recompilation or reinstallation, you need to run staticperl
    distclean first.

    staticperl fetch
        Runs only the download and unpack phase, unless this has already
        happened.

    staticperl configure
        Configures the unpacked perl sources, potentially after downloading
        them first.

    staticperl build
        Builds the configured perl sources, potentially after automatically
        configuring them.

    staticperl install
        Wipes the perl installation directory (usually ~/.staticperl/perl)
        and installs the perl distribution, potentially after building it
        first.

    staticperl cpan [args...]
        Starts an interactive CPAN shell that you can use to install further
        modules. Installs the perl first if necessary, but apart from that,
        no magic is involved: you could just as well run it manually via
        ~/.staticperl/perl/bin/cpan.

        Any additional arguments are simply passed to the cpan command.

    staticperl instcpan module...
        Tries to install all the modules given and their dependencies, using
        CPAN.

        Example:

           staticperl instcpan EV AnyEvent::HTTPD Coro

    staticperl instsrc directory...
        In the unlikely case that you have unpacked perl modules around and
        want to install from these instead of from CPAN, you can do this
        using this command by specifying all the directories with modules in
        them that you want to have built.

    staticperl clean
        Runs make distclean in the perl source directory (and potentially
        cleans up other intermediate files). This can be used to clean up
        intermediate files without removing the installed perl interpreter.

    staticperl distclean
        This wipes your complete ~/.staticperl directory. Be careful with
        this, it nukes your perl download, perl sources, perl distribution
        and any installed modules. It is useful if you wish to start over
        "from scratch" or when you want to uninstall staticperl.

  PHASE 2 COMMANDS: BUILDING PERL BUNDLES
    Building (linking) a new perl binary is handled by a separate script. To
    make it easy to use staticperl from a chroot, the script is embedded
    into staticperl, which will write it out and call for you with any
    arguments you pass:

       staticperl mkbundle mkbundle-args...

    In the oh so unlikely case of something not working here, you can run
    the script manually as well (by default it is written to
    ~/.staticperl/mkbundle).

    mkbundle is a more conventional command and expect the argument syntax
    commonly used on UNIX clones. For example, this command builds a new
    perl binary and includes Config.pm (for perl -V), AnyEvent::HTTPD, URI
    and a custom httpd script (from eg/httpd in this distribution):

       # first make sure we have perl and the required modules
       staticperl instcpan AnyEvent::HTTPD

       # now build the perl
       staticperl mkperl -M'"Config_heavy.pl"' -MAnyEvent::Impl::Perl \
                         -MAnyEvent::HTTPD -MURI::http \
                         --add 'eg/httpd httpd.pm'

       # finally, invoke it
       ./perl -Mhttpd

    As you can see, things are not quite as trivial: the Config module has a
    hidden dependency which is not even a perl module (Config_heavy.pl),
    AnyEvent needs at least one event loop backend that we have to specify
    manually (here AnyEvent::Impl::Perl), and the URI module (required by
    AnyEvent::HTTPD) implements various URI schemes as extra modules - since
    AnyEvent::HTTPD only needs "http" URIs, we only need to include that
    module. I found out about these dependencies by carefully watching any
    error messages about missing modules...

   OPTION PROCESSING
    All options can be given as arguments on the command line (typically
    using long (e.g. "--verbose") or short option (e.g. "-v") style). Since
    specifying a lot of modules can make the command line very cumbersome,
    you can put all long options into a "bundle specification file" (with or
    without "--" prefix) and specify this bundle file instead.

    For example, the command given earlier could also look like this:

       staticperl mkperl httpd.bundle

    And all options could be in httpd.bundle:

       use "Config_heavy.pl"
       use AnyEvent::Impl::Perl
       use AnyEvent::HTTPD
       use URI::http
       add eg/httpd httpd.pm

    All options that specify modules or files to be added are processed in
    the order given on the command line (that affects the "--use" and
    "--eval" options at the moment).

   MKBUNDLE OPTIONS
    --verbose | -v
        Increases the verbosity level by one (the default is 1).

    --quiet | -q
        Decreases the verbosity level by one.

    --strip none|pod|ppi
        Specify the stripping method applied to reduce the file of the perl
        sources included.

        The default is "pod", which uses the Pod::Strip module to remove all
        pod documentation, which is very fast and reduces file size a lot.

        The "ppi" method uses PPI to parse and condense the perl sources.
        This saves a lot more than just Pod::Strip, and is generally safer,
        but is also a lot slower, so is best used for production builds.
        Note that this method doesn't optimise for raw file size, but for
        best compression (that means that the uncompressed file size is a
        bit larger, but the files compress better, e.g. with upx).

        Last not least, in the unlikely case where "pod" is too slow, or
        some module gets mistreated, you can specify "none" to not mangle
        included perl sources in any way.

    --perl
        After writing out the bundle files, try to link a new perl
        interpreter. It will be called perl and will be left in the current
        working directory. The bundle files will be removed.

        This switch is automatically used when staticperl is invoked with
        the "mkperl" command (instead of "mkbundle"):

           # build a new ./perl with only common::sense in it - very small :)
           staticperl mkperl -Mcommon::sense

    --use module | -Mmodule
        Include the named module and all direct dependencies. This is done
        by "require"'ing the module in a subprocess and tracing which other
        modules and files it actually loads. If the module uses AutoLoader,
        then all splitfiles will be included as well.

        Example: include AnyEvent and AnyEvent::Impl::Perl.

           staticperl mkbundle --use AnyEvent --use AnyEvent::Impl::Perl

        Sometimes you want to load old-style "perl libraries" (.pl files),
        or maybe other weirdly named files. To do that, you need to quote
        the name in single or double quotes. When given on the command line,
        you probably need to quote once more to avoid your shell
        interpreting it. Common cases that need this are Config_heavy.pl and
        utf8_heavy.pl.

        Example: include the required files for perl -V to work in all its
        glory (Config.pm is included automatically by this).

           # bourne shell
           staticperl mkbundle --use '"Config_heavy.pl"'

           # bundle specification file
           use "Config_heavy.pl"

        The "-Mmodule" syntax is included as an alias that might be easier
        to remember than "use". Or maybe it confuses people. Time will tell.
        Or maybe not. Argh.

    --eval "perl code" | -e "perl code"
        Sometimes it is easier (or necessary) to specify dependencies using
        perl code, or maybe one of the modules you use need a special use
        statement. In that case, you can use "eval" to execute some perl
        snippet or set some variables or whatever you need. All files
        "require"'d or "use"'d in the script are included in the final
        bundle.

        Keep in mind that mkbundle will only "require" the modules named by
        the "--use" option, so do not expect the symbols from modules you
        "--use"'d earlier on the command line to be available.

        Example: force AnyEvent to detect a backend and therefore include it
        in the final bundle.

           staticperl mkbundle --eval 'use AnyEvent; AnyEvent::detect'

           # or like this
           staticperl mkbundle -MAnyEvent --eval 'use AnyEvent; AnyEvent::detect'

        Example: use a separate "bootstrap" script that "use"'s lots of
        modules and include this in the final bundle, to be executed
        automatically.

           staticperl mkbundle --eval 'do "bootstrap"' --boot bootstrap

    --boot filename
        Include the given file in the bundle and arrange for it to be
        executed (using a "require") before anything else when the new perl
        is initialised. This can be used to modify @INC or anything else
        before the perl interpreter executes scripts given on the command
        line (or via "-e"). This works even in an embedded interpreter.

    --add "file" | --add "file alias"
        Adds the given (perl) file into the bundle (and optionally call it
        "alias"). This is useful to include any custom files into the
        bundle.

        Example: embed the file httpd as httpd.pm when creating the bundle.

           staticperl mkperl --add "httpd httpd.pm"

        It is also a great way to add any custom modules:

           # specification file
           add file1 myfiles/file1
           add file2 myfiles/file2
           add file3 myfiles/file3

    --static
        When "--perl" is also given, link statically instead of dynamically.
        The default is to link the new perl interpreter fully dynamic (that
        means all perl modules are linked statically, but all external
        libraries are still referenced dynamically).

        Keep in mind that Solaris doesn't support static linking at all, and
        systems based on GNU libc don't really support it in a usable
        fashion either. Try uClibc if you want to create fully statically
        linked executables, or try the "--staticlibs" option to link only
        some libraries statically.

    any other argument
        Any other argument is interpreted as a bundle specification file,
        which supports most long options (without extra quoting), one option
        per line.

  STATCPERL CONFIGURATION AND HOOKS
    During (each) startup, staticperl tries to source the following shell
    files in order:

       /etc/staticperlrc
       ~/.staticperlrc
       $STATICPERL/rc

    They can be used to override shell variables, or define functions to be
    called at specific phases.

    Note that the last file is erased during staticperl distclean, so
    generally should not be used.

   CONFIGURATION VARIABLES
   Variables you *should* override
    "EMAIL"
        The e-mail address of the person who built this binary. Has no good
        default, so should be specified by you.

   Variables you might *want* to override
    "PERLVER"
        The perl version to install - default is currently 5.12.2, but 5.8.9
        is also a good choice (5.8.9 is much smaller than 5.12.2, while
        5.10.1 is about as big as 5.12.2).

    "CPAN"
        The URL of the CPAN mirror to use (e.g.
        <http://mirror.netcologne.de/cpan/>).

    "EXTRA_MODULES"
        Additional modules installed during staticperl install. Here you can
        set which modules you want have to installed from CPAN.

        Example: I really really need EV, AnyEvent, Coro and IO::AIO.

           EXTRA_MODULES="EV AnyEvent Coro IO::AIO"

        Note that you can also use a "postinstall" hook to achieve this, and
        more.

    "PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT", "EV_EXTRA_DEFS", ...
        Usually set to 1 to make modules "less inquisitive" during their
        installation, you can set any environment variable you want - some
        modules (such as Coro or EV) use environment variables for further
        tweaking.

    "STATICPERL"
        The directory where staticperl stores all its files (default:
        ~/.staticperl).

    "PREFIX"
        The prefix where perl gets installed (default: $STATICPERL/perl),
        i.e. where the bin and lib subdirectories will end up.

    "PERL_CPPFLAGS", "PERL_OPTIMIZE", "PERL_LDFLAGS", "PERL_LIBS"
        These flags are passed to perl's Configure script, and are generally
        optimised for small size (at the cost of performance). Since they
        also contain subtle workarounds around various build issues,
        changing these usually requires understanding their default values -
        best look at the top of the staticperl script for more info on
        these.

   Variables you probably *do not want* to override
    "MKBUNDLE"
        Where staticperl writes the "mkbundle" command to (default:
        $STATICPERL/mkbundle).

    "STATICPERL_MODULES"
        Additional modules needed by "mkbundle" - should therefore not be
        changed unless you know what you are doing.

   OVERRIDABLE HOOKS
    In addition to environment variables, it is possible to provide some
    shell functions that are called at specific times. To provide your own
    commands, just define the corresponding function.

    Example: install extra modules from CPAN and from some directories at
    staticperl install time.

       postinstall() {
          rm -rf lib/threads* # weg mit Schaden
          instcpan IO::AIO EV
          instsrc ~/src/AnyEvent
          instsrc ~/src/XML-Sablotron-1.0100001
          instcpan Anyevent::AIO AnyEvent::HTTPD
       }

    postconfigure
        Called after configuring, but before building perl. Current working
        directory is the perl source directory.

        Could be used to tailor/patch config.sh (followed by ./Configure -S)
        or do any other modifications.

    postbuild
        Called after building, but before installing perl. Current working
        directory is the perl source directory.

        I have no clue what this could be used for - tell me.

    postinstall
        Called after perl and any extra modules have been installed in
        $PREFIX, but before setting the "installation O.K." flag.

        The current working directory is $PREFIX, but maybe you should not
        rely on that.

        This hook is most useful to customise the installation, by deleting
        files, or installing extra modules using the "instcpan" or "instsrc"
        functions.

        The script must return with a zero exit status, or the installation
        will fail.

AUTHOR
     Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
     http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/staticperl.html

Revision:	1.4
Committed:	Mon Dec 6 21:19:04 2010 UTC (15 years, 9 months ago) by root
Branch:	MAIN
Changes since 1.3:	+22 -22 lines
Log Message:	* empty log message *
#	User	Rev	Content
1	root	1.1	NAME
2			staticperl - perl, libc, 50 modules all in one 500kb file
3
4			SYNOPSIS
5			staticperl help # print the embedded documentation
6			staticperl fetch # fetch and unpack perl sources
7			staticperl configure # fetch and then configure perl
8			staticperl build # configure and then build perl
9			staticperl install # build and then install perl
10			staticperl clean # clean most intermediate files (restart at configure)
11			staticperl distclean # delete everything installed by this script
12			staticperl cpan # invoke CPAN shell
13			staticperl instmod path... # install unpacked modules
14			staticperl instcpan modulename... # install modules from CPAN
15			staticperl mkbundle <bundle-args...> # see documentation
16			staticperl mkperl <bundle-args...> # see documentation
17
18			Typical Examples:
19
20			staticperl install # fetch, configure, build and install perl
21			staticperl cpan # run interactive cpan shell
22			staticperl mkperl -M '"Config_heavy.pl"' # build a perl that supports -V
23			staticperl mkperl -MAnyEvent::Impl::Perl -MAnyEvent::HTTPD -MURI -MURI::http
24			# build a perl with the above modules linked in
25
26			DESCRIPTION
27	root	1.2	This script helps you creating single-file perl interpreters, or
28			embedding a perl interpreter in your applications. Single-file means
29			that it is fully self-contained - no separate shared objects, no
30			autoload fragments, no .pm or .pl files are needed. And when linking
31			statically, you can create (or embed) a single file that contains perl
32			interpreter, libc, all the modules you need and all the libraries you
33			need.
34
35			With uClibc and upx on x86, you can create a single 500kb binary that
36			contains perl and 50 modules such as AnyEvent, EV, IO::AIO, Coro and so
37			on. Or any other choice of modules.
38
39			The created files do not need write access to the file system (like PAR
40			does). In fact, since this script is in many ways similar to
41			PAR::Packer, here are the differences:
42
43			* The generated executables are much smaller than PAR created ones.
44
45			Shared objects and the perl binary contain a lot of extra info,
46			while the static nature of staticperl allows the linker to remove
47			all functionality and meta-info not required by the final
48			executable. Even extensions statically compiled into perl at build
49			time will only be present in the final executable when needed.
50
51			In addition, staticperl can strip perl sources much more effectively
52			than PAR.
53
54			* The generated executables start much faster.
55
56			There is no need to unpack files, or even to parse Zip archives
57			(which is slow and memory-consuming business).
58
59			* The generated executables don't need a writable filesystem.
60
61			staticperl loads all required files directly from memory. There is
62			no need to unpack files into a temporary directory.
63
64			* More control over included files.
65
66			PAR tries to be maintenance and hassle-free - it tries to include
67			more files than necessary to make sure everything works out of the
68			box. The extra files (such as the unicode database) can take
69			substantial amounts of memory and file size.
70
71			With staticperl, the burden is mostly with the developer - only
72			direct compile-time dependencies and AutoLoader are handled
73			automatically. This means the modules to include often need to be
74			tweaked manually.
75
76			* PAR works out of the box, staticperl does not.
77
78			Maintaining your own custom perl build can be a pain in the ass, and
79			while staticperl tries to make this easy, it still requires a custom
80			perl build and possibly fiddling with some modules. PAR is likely to
81			produce results faster.
82
83			HOW DOES IT WORK?
84			Simple: staticperl downloads, compile and installs a perl version of
85			your choice in ~/.staticperl. You can add extra modules either by
86			letting staticperl install them for you automatically, or by using CPAN
87			and doing it interactively. This usually takes 5-10 minutes, depending
88			on the speed of your computer and your internet connection.
89
90			It is possible to do program development at this stage, too.
91
92			Afterwards, you create a list of files and modules you want to include,
93			and then either build a new perl binary (that acts just like a normal
94			perl except everything is compiled in), or you create bundle files
95			(basically C sources you can use to embed all files into your project).
96
97			This step is very fast (a few seconds if PPI is not used for stripping,
98			more seconds otherwise, as PPI is very slow), and can be tweaked and
99			repeated as often as necessary.
100
101			THE STATICPERL SCRIPT
102			This module installs a script called staticperl into your perl binary
103			directory. The script is fully self-contained, and can be used without
104			perl (for example, in an uClibc chroot environment). In fact, it can be
105			extracted from the "App::Staticperl" distribution tarball as
106			bin/staticperl, without any installation.
107
108			staticperl interprets the first argument as a command to execute,
109			optionally followed by any parameters.
110
111			There are two command categories: the "phase 1" commands which deal with
112			installing perl and perl modules, and the "phase 2" commands, which deal
113			with creating binaries and bundle files.
114
115			PHASE 1 COMMANDS: INSTALLING PERL
116			The most important command is install, which does basically everything.
117			The default is to download and install perl 5.12.2 and a few modules
118			required by staticperl itself, but all this can (and should) be changed
119			- see CONFIGURATION, below.
120
121			The command
122
123			staticperl install
124
125			Is normally all you need: It installs the perl interpreter in
126			~/.staticperl/perl. It downloads, configures, builds and installs the
127			perl interpreter if required.
128
129			Most of the following commands simply run one or more steps of this
130			sequence.
131
132			To force recompilation or reinstallation, you need to run staticperl
133			distclean first.
134
135			staticperl fetch
136			Runs only the download and unpack phase, unless this has already
137			happened.
138
139			staticperl configure
140			Configures the unpacked perl sources, potentially after downloading
141			them first.
142
143			staticperl build
144			Builds the configured perl sources, potentially after automatically
145			configuring them.
146
147			staticperl install
148			Wipes the perl installation directory (usually ~/.staticperl/perl)
149			and installs the perl distribution, potentially after building it
150			first.
151
152			staticperl cpan [args...]
153			Starts an interactive CPAN shell that you can use to install further
154			modules. Installs the perl first if necessary, but apart from that,
155			no magic is involved: you could just as well run it manually via
156			~/.staticperl/perl/bin/cpan.
157
158			Any additional arguments are simply passed to the cpan command.
159
160			staticperl instcpan module...
161			Tries to install all the modules given and their dependencies, using
162			CPAN.
163
164			Example:
165
166			staticperl instcpan EV AnyEvent::HTTPD Coro
167
168			staticperl instsrc directory...
169			In the unlikely case that you have unpacked perl modules around and
170			want to install from these instead of from CPAN, you can do this
171			using this command by specifying all the directories with modules in
172			them that you want to have built.
173
174			staticperl clean
175			Runs make distclean in the perl source directory (and potentially
176			cleans up other intermediate files). This can be used to clean up
177			intermediate files without removing the installed perl interpreter.
178
179			staticperl distclean
180			This wipes your complete ~/.staticperl directory. Be careful with
181			this, it nukes your perl download, perl sources, perl distribution
182			and any installed modules. It is useful if you wish to start over
183			"from scratch" or when you want to uninstall staticperl.
184
185			PHASE 2 COMMANDS: BUILDING PERL BUNDLES
186			Building (linking) a new perl binary is handled by a separate script. To
187			make it easy to use staticperl from a chroot, the script is embedded
188			into staticperl, which will write it out and call for you with any
189			arguments you pass:
190
191			staticperl mkbundle mkbundle-args...
192
193			In the oh so unlikely case of something not working here, you can run
194			the script manually as well (by default it is written to
195			~/.staticperl/mkbundle).
196
197			mkbundle is a more conventional command and expect the argument syntax
198			commonly used on UNIX clones. For example, this command builds a new
199			perl binary and includes Config.pm (for perl -V), AnyEvent::HTTPD, URI
200			and a custom httpd script (from eg/httpd in this distribution):
201
202			# first make sure we have perl and the required modules
203			staticperl instcpan AnyEvent::HTTPD
204
205			# now build the perl
206			staticperl mkperl -M'"Config_heavy.pl"' -MAnyEvent::Impl::Perl \
207			-MAnyEvent::HTTPD -MURI::http \
208			--add 'eg/httpd httpd.pm'
209
210			# finally, invoke it
211			./perl -Mhttpd
212
213			As you can see, things are not quite as trivial: the Config module has a
214			hidden dependency which is not even a perl module (Config_heavy.pl),
215			AnyEvent needs at least one event loop backend that we have to specify
216			manually (here AnyEvent::Impl::Perl), and the URI module (required by
217			AnyEvent::HTTPD) implements various URI schemes as extra modules - since
218			AnyEvent::HTTPD only needs "http" URIs, we only need to include that
219			module. I found out about these dependencies by carefully watching any
220			error messages about missing modules...
221
222			OPTION PROCESSING
223			All options can be given as arguments on the command line (typically
224			using long (e.g. "--verbose") or short option (e.g. "-v") style). Since
225			specifying a lot of modules can make the command line very cumbersome,
226			you can put all long options into a "bundle specification file" (with or
227			without "--" prefix) and specify this bundle file instead.
228
229			For example, the command given earlier could also look like this:
230
231			staticperl mkperl httpd.bundle
232
233			And all options could be in httpd.bundle:
234
235			use "Config_heavy.pl"
236			use AnyEvent::Impl::Perl
237			use AnyEvent::HTTPD
238			use URI::http
239			add eg/httpd httpd.pm
240
241			All options that specify modules or files to be added are processed in
242			the order given on the command line (that affects the "--use" and
243			"--eval" options at the moment).
244
245			MKBUNDLE OPTIONS
246			--verbose \| -v
247			Increases the verbosity level by one (the default is 1).
248
249			--quiet \| -q
250			Decreases the verbosity level by one.
251
252			--strip none\|pod\|ppi
253			Specify the stripping method applied to reduce the file of the perl
254			sources included.
255
256			The default is "pod", which uses the Pod::Strip module to remove all
257			pod documentation, which is very fast and reduces file size a lot.
258
259			The "ppi" method uses PPI to parse and condense the perl sources.
260			This saves a lot more than just Pod::Strip, and is generally safer,
261			but is also a lot slower, so is best used for production builds.
262			Note that this method doesn't optimise for raw file size, but for
263			best compression (that means that the uncompressed file size is a
264			bit larger, but the files compress better, e.g. with upx).
265
266			Last not least, in the unlikely case where "pod" is too slow, or
267			some module gets mistreated, you can specify "none" to not mangle
268			included perl sources in any way.
269
270			--perl
271			After writing out the bundle files, try to link a new perl
272			interpreter. It will be called perl and will be left in the current
273			working directory. The bundle files will be removed.
274
275			This switch is automatically used when staticperl is invoked with
276			the "mkperl" command (instead of "mkbundle"):
277
278			# build a new ./perl with only common::sense in it - very small :)
279			staticperl mkperl -Mcommon::sense
280
281			--use module \| -Mmodule
282			Include the named module and all direct dependencies. This is done
283			by "require"'ing the module in a subprocess and tracing which other
284			modules and files it actually loads. If the module uses AutoLoader,
285			then all splitfiles will be included as well.
286
287			Example: include AnyEvent and AnyEvent::Impl::Perl.
288
289			staticperl mkbundle --use AnyEvent --use AnyEvent::Impl::Perl
290
291			Sometimes you want to load old-style "perl libraries" (.pl files),
292			or maybe other weirdly named files. To do that, you need to quote
293			the name in single or double quotes. When given on the command line,
294			you probably need to quote once more to avoid your shell
295			interpreting it. Common cases that need this are Config_heavy.pl and
296			utf8_heavy.pl.
297
298			Example: include the required files for perl -V to work in all its
299			glory (Config.pm is included automatically by this).
300
301			# bourne shell
302			staticperl mkbundle --use '"Config_heavy.pl"'
303
304			# bundle specification file
305			use "Config_heavy.pl"
306
307			The "-Mmodule" syntax is included as an alias that might be easier
308			to remember than "use". Or maybe it confuses people. Time will tell.
309			Or maybe not. Argh.
310
311			--eval "perl code" \| -e "perl code"
312			Sometimes it is easier (or necessary) to specify dependencies using
313			perl code, or maybe one of the modules you use need a special use
314			statement. In that case, you can use "eval" to execute some perl
315			snippet or set some variables or whatever you need. All files
316			"require"'d or "use"'d in the script are included in the final
317			bundle.
318
319			Keep in mind that mkbundle will only "require" the modules named by
320			the "--use" option, so do not expect the symbols from modules you
321			"--use"'d earlier on the command line to be available.
322
323			Example: force AnyEvent to detect a backend and therefore include it
324			in the final bundle.
325
326			staticperl mkbundle --eval 'use AnyEvent; AnyEvent::detect'
327
328			# or like this
329			staticperl mkbundle -MAnyEvent --eval 'use AnyEvent; AnyEvent::detect'
330
331			Example: use a separate "bootstrap" script that "use"'s lots of
332			modules and include this in the final bundle, to be executed
333			automatically.
334
335			staticperl mkbundle --eval 'do "bootstrap"' --boot bootstrap
336
337			--boot filename
338			Include the given file in the bundle and arrange for it to be
339			executed (using a "require") before anything else when the new perl
340			is initialised. This can be used to modify @INC or anything else
341			before the perl interpreter executes scripts given on the command
342			line (or via "-e"). This works even in an embedded interpreter.
343
344			--add "file" \| --add "file alias"
345			Adds the given (perl) file into the bundle (and optionally call it
346			"alias"). This is useful to include any custom files into the
347			bundle.
348
349			Example: embed the file httpd as httpd.pm when creating the bundle.
350
351			staticperl mkperl --add "httpd httpd.pm"
352
353			It is also a great way to add any custom modules:
354
355			# specification file
356			add file1 myfiles/file1
357			add file2 myfiles/file2
358			add file3 myfiles/file3
359
360			--static
361			When "--perl" is also given, link statically instead of dynamically.
362			The default is to link the new perl interpreter fully dynamic (that
363			means all perl modules are linked statically, but all external
364			libraries are still referenced dynamically).
365
366			Keep in mind that Solaris doesn't support static linking at all, and
367			systems based on GNU libc don't really support it in a usable
368			fashion either. Try uClibc if you want to create fully statically
369			linked executables, or try the "--staticlibs" option to link only
370			some libraries statically.
371
372			any other argument
373			Any other argument is interpreted as a bundle specification file,
374			which supports most long options (without extra quoting), one option
375			per line.
376
377			STATCPERL CONFIGURATION AND HOOKS
378			During (each) startup, staticperl tries to source the following shell
379			files in order:
380
381			/etc/staticperlrc
382			~/.staticperlrc
383			$STATICPERL/rc
384
385			They can be used to override shell variables, or define functions to be
386			called at specific phases.
387
388			Note that the last file is erased during staticperl distclean, so
389			generally should not be used.
390
391			CONFIGURATION VARIABLES
392			Variables you should override
393			"EMAIL"
394			The e-mail address of the person who built this binary. Has no good
395			default, so should be specified by you.
396
397	root	1.3	Variables you might want to override
398	root	1.2	"PERLVER"
399			The perl version to install - default is currently 5.12.2, but 5.8.9
400			is also a good choice (5.8.9 is much smaller than 5.12.2, while
401			5.10.1 is about as big as 5.12.2).
402
403			"CPAN"
404			The URL of the CPAN mirror to use (e.g.
405			<http://mirror.netcologne.de/cpan/>).
406
407	root	1.4	"EXTRA_MODULES"
408			Additional modules installed during staticperl install. Here you can
409			set which modules you want have to installed from CPAN.
410
411			Example: I really really need EV, AnyEvent, Coro and IO::AIO.
412	root	1.2
413	root	1.4	EXTRA_MODULES="EV AnyEvent Coro IO::AIO"
414	root	1.2
415	root	1.4	Note that you can also use a "postinstall" hook to achieve this, and
416			more.
417	root	1.2
418	root	1.4	"PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT", "EV_EXTRA_DEFS", ...
419	root	1.2	Usually set to 1 to make modules "less inquisitive" during their
420			installation, you can set any environment variable you want - some
421			modules (such as Coro or EV) use environment variables for further
422			tweaking.
423
424	root	1.4	"STATICPERL"
425			The directory where staticperl stores all its files (default:
426			~/.staticperl).
427	root	1.2
428	root	1.4	"PREFIX"
429			The prefix where perl gets installed (default: $STATICPERL/perl),
430			i.e. where the bin and lib subdirectories will end up.
431	root	1.2
432	root	1.4	"PERL_CPPFLAGS", "PERL_OPTIMIZE", "PERL_LDFLAGS", "PERL_LIBS"
433			These flags are passed to perl's Configure script, and are generally
434			optimised for small size (at the cost of performance). Since they
435			also contain subtle workarounds around various build issues,
436			changing these usually requires understanding their default values -
437			best look at the top of the staticperl script for more info on
438			these.
439	root	1.2
440	root	1.3	Variables you probably do not want to override
441	root	1.2	"MKBUNDLE"
442			Where staticperl writes the "mkbundle" command to (default:
443			$STATICPERL/mkbundle).
444
445			"STATICPERL_MODULES"
446			Additional modules needed by "mkbundle" - should therefore not be
447			changed unless you know what you are doing.
448
449			OVERRIDABLE HOOKS
450			In addition to environment variables, it is possible to provide some
451			shell functions that are called at specific times. To provide your own
452			commands, just define the corresponding function.
453
454			Example: install extra modules from CPAN and from some directories at
455			staticperl install time.
456
457			postinstall() {
458	root	1.3	rm -rf lib/threads* # weg mit Schaden
459	root	1.2	instcpan IO::AIO EV
460			instsrc ~/src/AnyEvent
461			instsrc ~/src/XML-Sablotron-1.0100001
462	root	1.3	instcpan Anyevent::AIO AnyEvent::HTTPD
463	root	1.2	}
464
465			postconfigure
466			Called after configuring, but before building perl. Current working
467			directory is the perl source directory.
468
469			Could be used to tailor/patch config.sh (followed by ./Configure -S)
470			or do any other modifications.
471
472			postbuild
473			Called after building, but before installing perl. Current working
474			directory is the perl source directory.
475
476			I have no clue what this could be used for - tell me.
477
478			postinstall
479			Called after perl and any extra modules have been installed in
480			$PREFIX, but before setting the "installation O.K." flag.
481
482			The current working directory is $PREFIX, but maybe you should not
483			rely on that.
484
485			This hook is most useful to customise the installation, by deleting
486			files, or installing extra modules using the "instcpan" or "instsrc"
487			functions.
488
489			The script must return with a zero exit status, or the installation
490			will fail.
491
492	root	1.1	AUTHOR
493			Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
494			http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/staticperl.html
495