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