CPAN/ports

Corrections? Additions? Suggestions? Please contact cpan@perl.org. Other questions? See the CPAN FAQ.

If you are on a UNIX, I strongly suggest that you compile Perl yourself from the source code distribution. This way you always get the latest Perl and you can configure Perl as you like and you avoid the security risks inherent in installing binary distributions. If you are on Windows or MacOS, and you do not think you have any special needs, you will probably be perfectly happy with a binary build. See also the disclaimer. If you have UNIX, or Windows, MS-DOS, VMS, Amiga, QNX, Plan9, MPE/iX, OS/390, BeOS, and a C compilation environment, you should be all set for compilation, the source code kit contains the compilation instructions. For Macintosh you need a little bit more. If your platform is something else, read on.

Some architectures also have available binary distributions for the most useful and popular Perl modules (such as Tk, MD5, GD). Some of the Perl binary distributions include such module distributions. For some architectures I also list sites that have other useful (but unrelated-to-Perl) software available. You can for example try finding C compilers (gcc/egcs is available on many platforms) or archival and compression tools (what to do about .tar.gz, for example).

AIX

Starting from AIX 4.3.3 Perl 5 ships standard with AIX. (Perl 5.005_03 with AIX 4.3.3.)

As of Perl 5.7.2 the AtheOS support is part of the standard Perl, but in case you want a binary package (also other software available)

BeOS

As of BeOS 5.0 or late March 2000, Perl 5.005_03 is available as a standard but optional component.

Starting from Perl 5.005 the BeOS support has been integrated to the Perl standard source code distribution. But if you insist on a potentially obsolete binary:

BSD

BSDI BSD/OS

Perl has always been a standard component of BSD/OS. As of BSD/OS 4.1 or December 1999, Perl 5.005_03 is included.

Compaq/Digital/Tandem

Cygwin

DEC OSF/1 / Digital UNIX / Tru64

Data General DG/UX

Since DG/UX R4.20MU04 ships with Perl 5. NIS on OS depends on a dgadm.pl library, one needs to be careful before overwriting /usr/bin/perl if upgrading.

Data General

Digital UNIX

Sequent DYNIX/ptx

As of DYNIX/ptx 4.5.0 or September 1999, Perl 5.005_03 is a standard component.

FreeBSD

Tandem/Compaq Guardian

HP-UX

Starting from mid-October 2001 Perl 5.6.1 is shipped as a standard part of HP-UX 11.00 installation.

IBM

SGI IRIX

Starting from IRIX 6.4 Perl 5 ships standard with IRIX. (Perl 5.004_04 with IRIX 6.5, but see below for fresher versions.)

Japanese

JPerl

JPerl is a port of the Perl 5 that can handle the Japanese legacy encodings Japanese EUC and Shift-JIS (aka MS-Kanji).

MacJPerl

Linux

Many people ask for "Perl for RedHat / SuSE / Debian / Slackware / LinuxPPC / OpenLinux / TurboLinux / RockLinux / Yellow Dog Linux / Mandrake / WhateverLinuxDistribution?" Well...

If your Linux distribution doesn't already contain a reasonably recent Perl release (as of April 2001, Perl 5.6.1 is just out, and 5.005_03 has been out since the end of March 1999), are you certain you have chosen a good distribution? A distribution that contains essential tools like Perl? A distribution that keeps its packages up-to-date?
For a long time I tried maintaining the links to the Perl distributions of at least the major Linux distributions but that turned out to be rather frustrating exercise because the vendors/organizations seem to be restructuring their sites constantly.
You have Linux, which means that you have a full compilation environment, which means you can use the source code.

Perl is known to be a standard component of the following distributions:

Debian: 5.005_03 since Debian 2.2, 5.004_04 since 2.1
RedHat: 5.005_03 since RedHat 6.0 or April 19, 1999
Slackware: 5.004_04 since Slackware 2.5 or June 1998
SuSE: 5.005_03 since SuSE 6.0

LynxOS

Starting from Perl 5.005 the LynxOS support has been integrated to the Perl standard source code distribution. But if you insist on a potentially obsolete binary:

Macintosh

Mac OS Classic (pre-X)

MacPerl support is included in perl, in releases later than 5.6.1. The current release of MacPerl is based on 5.6.1. Mac OS 8.1 or better is required, although the previous version (5.2.0r4) and the MPW tool may be used on Mac OS 7.5.5 or better. For older Mac OS versions, see MacPerl 4.1.8, all in the ports/mac/ directory.

The MacPerl application comes with a simple 32k text editor/IDE. The MPW Perl tool can use the MPW shell which has no 32k limit. BBEdit and BBEdit Lite are text editors with Perl modes (works both for Mac OS Classic and Mac OS X). Also the shareware Alpha editor has Perl mode.

MacJPerl

MacJPerl is (as of April 2002) based on older port of MacPerl (which was based on Perl 5.004), and the JPerl patches (which were based on Perl 5.005).

Mac OS X

Mac OS X ships with Perl 5.6 as a standard component (Perl 5.6.0 as of OS X 10.1.3).

Tenon MachTen

MinGW

MinGW is a collection of header files and import libraries that allow one to use GCC and produce native Windows32 programs.

Minix

MPE/iX

First of all, go to the Perl/iX home page. Starting from Perl 5.005 the MPE/iX support has been integrated to the Perl standard source code distribution. But if you insist on a potentially obsolete binary:

MiNT

MS-DOS

Starting from Perl 5.005 the MS-DOS support has been integrated to the Perl standard source code distribution. But if you insist on a binary:

NetBSD

Novell NetWare

Perl 5.6.1 is available in the Novell Developer Kit. In addition to the Perl binaries the download contains documentation and installation instructions.

Once you subscribe to the NDK (the first subscription level is free), you can download many other NDK components in addition to Perl 5.6.1 for NetWare. The older Perl 5.003_07 is still available in the NDK for backward compatibility reasons. 5.003_07 is an obsolete (October 1996) and unsupported version of Perl.

You can also download the standard 5.6.1 source code kit and apply the source code patch that turns the standard kit into the NetWare source code kit. This patch has been integrated into the standard Perl source code distribution and will be part of Perl 5.8.0 and later releases.

NextStep

OpenBSD

Perl has always been a standard component of formal OpenBSD releases. As of OpenBSD 2.5, Perl 5.005_03 is being shipped. OpenBSD 2.7 will ship Perl 5.6.

Tandem/Compaq NonStop/NonStop-UX

Starting from Perl 5.8.0 (as of mid-October 2001 still under development) the NonStop-UX support will be integrated to the Perl standard source code distribution.

(On the other hand, Perl has been known to compile just fine on Plan 9, so you might just try the source code distribution.)

PowerMAX

Starting from Perl 5.005 the PowerMAX support has been integrated to the Perl standard source code distribution. But if you insist on a binary:

Since SINIX 5.43 or 1997 Perl 5.003 has shipped as a standard component. That is really old, you will either want to compile from the sources or use the following:

Acorn RISCOS

Please note that this is the Acorn RISCOS, not the MIPS RISC-OS (for the latter, just use the source code distribution).

Starting from Solaris 8 Perl 5 ships standard with Solaris. (Perl 5.005_03 with Solaris 8.)

Stratus

Tandem/Compaq

Tru64

Starting from Tru64 V5.0 Perl 5 ships standard with Tru64 as /usr/bin/perl, but the runtime support (modules and documentation) are in a separate optional subset. (As of Tru64 V5.0 5.004_04, but 5.005_03 is on the supplementary freeware CD-ROM.)

UNIX

Traditionally UNIX was synonomous with C and a C compiler. You should be able to take any platform that calls itself UNIX and compile Perl on it without problems from the source code. (If this fails, your vendor is likely to be cheating you by not supplying you with a fully functional ANSI-capable compiler. They call this an "unbundled" compiler and "progress", too, by giving the customer "more options", in other words, making you pay more.) Therefore, nowadays, for various reasons, people do ask for binary distributions.

U/WIN

VMS

Since September 1995 VMS 6.2 Perl has been on the Freeware CD (part of the standard installation). As of Freeware 5.0 the Perl release is 5.005_03. There are also builds by vmsperl folks (non-Compaq) builds available at

Stratus VOS

Starting from Perl 5.005_03 the VOS support has been integrated to the Perl standard source code distribution. But if you insist on a binary:

VxWorks

WinCE

Win31

Win95 / Win98 / WinME / WinNT / Win2000/W2K / WinXP (Win32)

Starting from Perl 5.005 the Win32 support has been integrated to the Perl standard source code distribution. But if you insist on a binary:

These two are very obsolete and no more maintained or updated. Use only if you know that you need these.

(Especially) if you are accustomed to Windows you might be interested in various IDEs for Perl, in alphabetical order:

or shell environments (the first three are full UNIX tool environments, tcsh and zsh are just the shell).

MinGW is a collection of header files and import libraries that allow one to use GCC and produce native Windows32 programs.

IBM z/OS (OS/390)

Starting from Perl 5.005_02 the OS/390 (also known as OS/390, also known as Open Edition, also known as MVS) support has been integrated to the Perl standard source code distribution.

NOTE! As of August 2001, the Perl 5.6.1 (or newer) source will build and test at better than 90% and install on z/OS (OS/390). (The previous version, 5.6.0, didn't work on EBCDIC platforms.)

Disclaimer

The inclusion or exclusion of any site, application, or product does not represent any special endorsement or discrimination, nor is any attempt at comprehensiveness made, just an educated guess at which ones could possibly be useful.

Installing software is always a security risk, installing binary distributions doubly so.

None of the CPAN maintainers, Perl developers or contributors, or any entities publishing this list in any media, will be liable for any damage caused by the transfer, storage, installation, or use of these distributions. It's your risk alone.

IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR DISTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE TO ANY PARTY FOR DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, ITS DOCUMENTATION, OR ANY DERIVATIVES THEREOF, EVEN IF THE AUTHORS HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

THE AUTHORS AND DISTRIBUTORS SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ANY WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ON AN ``AS IS'' BASIS, AND THE AUTHORS AND DISTRIBUTORS HAVE NO OBLIGATION TO PROVIDE MAINTENANCE, SUPPORT, UPDATES, ENHANCEMENTS, OR MODIFICATIONS.

Corrections? Additions? Suggestions? Please contact cpan@perl.org. Other questions? See the CPAN FAQ.