PERLTIDY INSTALLATION NOTES

Get a distribution file

• Source Files in .tar.gz and .zip format

  This document tells how to install perltidy from the basic source distribution files in .tar.gz or .zip format. These files are identical except for the line endings. The .tar.gz has Unix style line endings, and the .zip file has Windows style line endings. The standard perl MakeMaker method should work for these in most cases.

• Source files in RPM and .deb format

  The web site also has links to RPM and Debian .deb Linux packages, which may be convenient for some users.

Quick Test Drive

If you want to do a quick test of perltidy without doing any installation, get a .tar.gz or a .zip source file and see the section below "Method 2: Installation as a single binary script".

Uninstall older versions

In certain circumstances, it is best to remove an older version of perltidy before installing the latest version. These are:

• Uninstall a Version older than 20020225

  You can use perltidy -v to determine the version number. The first version of perltidy to use Makefile.PL for installation was 20020225, so if your previous installation is older than this, it is best to remove it, because the installation path may now be different. There were up to 3 files these older installations: the script perltidy and possibly two man pages, perltidy.1 and perl2web.1. If you saved your Makefile, you can probably use make uninstall. Otherwise, you can use a locate or find command to find and remove these files.

• Uninstall older versions when changing installation method

  If you switch from one installation method to another, the paths to the components of perltidy may change, so it is probably best to remove the older version before installing the new version. If your older installation method had an uninstall option (such as with RPM's and debian packages), use it. Otherwise, you can locate and remove the older files by hand. There are two key files: Tidy.pm and perltidy. In addition, there may be one or two man pages, something like Perl::Tidy.3pm and perltidy.1p. You can use a locate and/or find command to find and remove these files. After installation, you can verify that the new version of perltidy is working with the perltidy -v command.

Two Installation Methods - Overview

These are generic instructions. Some system-specific notes and hints are given in later sections.

Two separate installation methods are possible.

• Method 1: Standard Installation Method

  The standard method based on MakeMaker should work in a normal perl environment. This is the recommended installation procedure for systems which support it.

        perl Makefile.PL
        make
        make test
        make install
  

  The make command is probably nmake under a Windows system. You may need to become root (or administrator) before doing the make install step.

• Method 2: Installation as a single binary script

  If you just want to take perltidy for a quick test drive without installing it, or are having trouble installing modules, you can bundle it all in one independent executable script. This might also be helpful on a system for which the Makefile.PL method does not work, or if you are temporarily a guest on some system, or if you want to try hacking a special version of perltidy without messing up your regular version.

  You just need to uncompress the source distribution, cd down into it, and enter the command:

        perl pm2pl
  

  which will combine the pieces of perltidy into a single script named perltidy in the current directory. This script should be fully functional. Try it out on a handy perl script, for example

    perl perltidy Makefile.PL
  

  This should create Makefile.PL.tdy.

• After Installation

  After installation by either method, verify that the installation worked and that the correct new version is being by entering:

    perltidy -v
  

  If the version number disagrees with the version number embedded in the distribution file name, search for and remove the old version. For example, under a Unix system, the command which perltidy might show where it is. Also, see the above notes on uninstalling older versions.

  On a Unix system running the bash shell, if you had a previous installation of perltidy, you may have to use

    hash -r
  

  to get the shell to find the new one.

  After perltidy is installed, you can find where it will look for configuration files and environment variables on your system with the command:

    perltidy -dpro
  

• How to Uninstall

  Unfortunately, the standard Perl installation method does not seem able to do an uninstall.

  But try this:

    make uninstall
  

  On some systems, it will give you a list of files to remove by hand. If not, you need to find the script perltidy and its module file Tidy.pm, which will be in a subdirectory named Perl in the site library.

  If you installed perltidy with the alternative method, you should just reverse the steps that you used.

Unix Installation Notes

• Alternative method - Unix

  If the alternative method is used, test the script produced by the pm2pl perl script:

    perl ./perltidy somefile.pl
  

  where somefile.pl is any convenient test file, such as Makefile.PL itself. Then,

  1. If the script is not executable, use

    chmod +x perltidy
  

  2. Verify that the initial line in perltidy works for your system by entering:

    ./perltidy -h
  

  which should produce the usage text and then exit. This should usually work, but if it does not, you will need to change the first line in perltidy to reflect the location of perl on your system. On a Unix system, you might find the path to perl with the command 'which perl'.

  3. A sample Makefile for this installation method is Makefile.npm. Edit it to have the correct paths.

  You will need to become root unless you change the paths to point to somewhere in your home directory. Then issue the command

    make -f Makefile.npm install
  

  This installs perltidy and the man page perltidy.1.

  5. Test the installation using

    perltidy -h
  

  You should see the usage screen. Then, if you installed the man pages, try

    man perltidy
  

  which should bring up the manual page.

  If you ever want to remove perltidy, you can remove perltidy and its man pages by hand or use

    make uninstall
  

Windows Installation Notes

On a Windows 9x/Me system you should CLOSE ANY OPEN APPLICATIONS to avoid losing unsaved data in case of trouble.

• Standard Method - Windows

  After you unzip the distribution file, the procedure is probably this:

        perl Makefile.PL
        nmake
        nmake test
        nmake install
  

  You may need to download a copy of unzip to unzip the .zip distribution file; you can get this at http://www.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/UnZip.html

  If you have ActiveState Perl, the installation method is outlined at http://aspn.activestate.com//ASPN/Reference/Products/ActivePerl/faq/Windows/ActivePerl-Winfaq9.html#How_can_I_use_modules_from_CPAN_

  You may need to download a copy of Microsoft's nmake program from ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/nmake15.exe

  If you are not familiar with installing modules, or have trouble doing so, and want to start testing perltidy quickly, you may want to use the alternative method instead (next section).

• Alternative Method - Windows

  From the main installation directory, just enter

    perl pm2pl 
  

  Placing the resulting file perltidy and the example batch file perltidy.bat, located in the examples directory, in your path should work. (You can determine your path by issuing the msdos command PATH). However, the batch file probably will not support file redirection. So, for example, to pipe the long help message through 'more', you might have to invoke perltidy with perl directly, like this:

    perl \somepath\perltidy -h | more
  

  The batch file will not work properly with wildcard filenames, but you may use wildcard filenames if you place them in quotes. For example

    perltidy '*.pl'
  

VMS Installation Notes

• Links to VMS Utilities and Documentation

  To install perltidy you will need the following utilities Perl, of course, source with VMS goodies available from http://www.sidhe.org/vmsperl or binary available from the Compaq OpenVMS freeware CD. To unpack the source either gunzip and vmstar available from the Compaq OpenVMS freeware CD or zip available from http://www.info-zip.org/

  To build perltidy you can use either MMS, Compaq's VMS equivalent of make, or MMK, an MMS clone available from http://www.madgoat.com.

  Information on running perl under VMS can be found at: http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/~pvhp/perl/VMS.html

• Unpack the source:

    $ unzip -a perl-tidy-yyyymmdd.zip  ! or
  
    $ unzip /text=auto perl-tidy-yyyymmdd.zip ! or
  
    $ gunzip perl-tidy-yyyymmdd.tgz
    $ vmstar perl-tidy-yyyymmdd.tar
  

• Build and install perltidy under VMS:

    $ set default [.perl-tidy-yyymmdd]
    $ perl perltidy.pl
    $ mmk
    $ mmk test
    $ mmk install
  

• Using Perltidy under VMS

  Create a symbol. This should be put in a logon script, eg sylogin.com

    $ perltidy == "perl perl_root:[utils]perltidy."
  

  Default parameters can be placed in a perltidyrc file. Perltidy looks for one in the following places and uses the first found if the logical PERLTIDY is a file and the file exists then that is used if the logical PERLTIDY is a directory then look for a .perltidyrc file in the directory look for a .perltidyrc file in the user's home directory

  To see where the search is done and which .perltidyrc is used type

    $ perltidy -dpro
  

  A system PERLTIDY logical can be defined pointing to a file with a minimal configuration, and users can defined their own logical to use a personal .perltidyrc file.

    $ define /system perltidy perl_root:[utils]perltidy.rc
  

• The -x Parameter

  If you have one of the magic incantations at the start of perl scripts, so that they can be invoked as a .com file, then you will need to use the -x parameter which causes perltidy to skip all lines until it finds a hash bang line eg #!perl -w. Since it is such a common option this is probably a good thing to put in a .perltidyrc file.

• VMS File Extensions

  VMS file extensions will use an underscore character instead of a dot, when necessary, to create a valid filename. So

      perltidy myfile.pl
  

  will generate the output file myfile.pl_tdy instead of myfile.pl.tdy, and so on.

Troubleshooting / Other Operating Systems

If there seems to be a problem locating a configuration file, you can see what is going on in the config file search with:

perltidy -dpro

If you want to customize where perltidy looks for configuration files, look at the routine 'find_config_file' in module 'Tidy.pm'. You should be able to at least use the '-pro=filename' method under most systems.

Remember to place quotes (either single or double) around input parameters which contain spaces, such as file names. For example:

perltidy "file name with spaces"

Without the quotes, perltidy would look for four files: file, name, with, and spaces.

If you develop a system-dependent patch that might be of general interest, please let us know.

CONFIGURATION FILE

You do not need a configuration file, but you may eventually want to create one to save typing; the tutorial and man page discuss this.

SYSTEM TEMPORARY FILES

Perltidy needs to create a system temporary file when it invokes Pod::Html to format pod text under the -html option. For Unix systems, this will normally be a file in /tmp, and for other systems, it will be a file in the current working directory named perltidy.TMP. This file will be removed when the run finishes.

DOCUMENTATION

Documentation is contained in .pod format, either in the docs directory or appended to the scripts.

These documents can also be found at http://perltidy.sourceforge.net

Reading the brief tutorial should help you use perltidy effectively.
The tutorial can be read interactively with perldoc, for example

cd docs
perldoc tutorial.pod

or else an html version can be made with pod2html:

pod2html tutorial.pod >tutorial.html

If you use the Makefile.PL installation method on a Unix system, the perltidy and Perl::Tidy man pages should automatically be installed. Otherwise, you can extract the man pages with the pod2xxxx utilities, as follows:

cd bin
pod2text perltidy >perltidy.txt
pod2html perltidy >perltidy.html

cd lib/Perl
pod2text Tidy.pm >Tidy.txt
pod2html Tidy.pm >Tidy.html

After installation, the installation directory of files may be deleted.

Perltidy is still being developed, so please check sourceforge occasionally for updates if you find that it is useful. New releases are announced on freshmeat.net.

CREDITS

Thanks to the many programmers who have documented problems, made suggestions and sent patches.

FEEDBACK / BUG REPORTS

If you see ways to improve these notes, please let us know.

A list of current bugs and issues can be found at the CPAN site https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=Perl-Tidy

To report a new bug or problem, use the link on this page .