You have presumably obtained the metaconfig from the repository e.g.
p4 sync //depot/metaconfig/...
or some other way to obtain this file.
Normally this directory and perl directory are next to each other
so ../perl will get you to perl and ../perl/../metaconfig will get you
back here.
(a) You need to have dist installed so that you have metalint and metaconfig
in your $PATH.
The dist version used for perl is dist-3.0at70b in this directory.
Unsurprisingly 'dist' uses (its) Configure to generate itself:
cd dist-3.0at70b
chmod +w -R . # We have derived files in perforce :-(
./Configure
make
make install
dist's 'Configure' is similar to perl's but perhaps not
quite as polished.
There are some perl specific "dist units" in the 'U' directory.
The U directory also contains some patches to 'dist' which
have already been applied to dist-3.0at70b directory.
We have not yet arranged for metaconfig to use perl's versions
of the 'units' by default so you need some housekeeping
in the perl directory...
(b) You need to be in a/the Perl directory, i.e. either
something from //depot/perl/... or one of its branches
(e.g. Nick I-S is usually in //depot/perlio/...)
and you need:
1) have a symlink to ../metaconfig/U called U
2) have a symlink to ../metaconfig/.package called .package
3) have a symlink to MANIFEST called MANIFEST.new
(c) Write the new unit as U/foo/bar.U (usually 'foo' is just 'perl',
but sometimes there's some more appropriate subdir of U)
(d) metalint to see nits: as opposed to lint, the gripings of
metalint are usually serious :-) and need fixing
Exceptions are lots of
Your private U/modified/voidflags.U overrides the public one.
due to the perl special units
and
"End.U": stale ?MAKE: dependency '$W'.
which is apparently normal ...
(e) p4 edit Configure config_h.SH
(f) metaconfig -m to regenerate Configure
(g) The messy not-yet-automated part is that the knowledge of the new symbol
needs to be propagated to non-Configure lands like Win32, Netware,
VMS, VOS, ... see previous Configure changes to see which are these
heathen lands
For Win32 the process is semi-automated - if you have a Win32
machine to run dmake on ...
(h) then there's the running of mksample to freshen the Porting/config*
and Porting/Glossary, but I can't remember where the 'mksample' came
from, could be part of 'dist'. You can skip this phase,
it's not essential, just good housekeeping.
(i) make veryclean;sh Configure -des -Dusedevel;make all test
(j) p4 add ../metaconfig/foo/bar.U when you are ready ...
