New Perl 5.8 install breaks Fink

After another hour of digging on the ‘Net for a resolution to this, I finally discovered that this is a known issue caused by Fink. Here’s the solution: http://archive.develooper.com/macosx@perl.org/msg02447.html

Just in case the page I linked to would disappear, here’s the text of that message:

perl 5.8.0 issue on Mac OS X w/ fink

    * To: fink-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
    * Subject: perl 5.8.0 issue on Mac OS X w/ fink
    * From: Adam Foxson <afoxson@pobox.com>
    * Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 05:18:03 -0400
    * Cc: perl5-porters@perl.org, macosx@perl.org
    * Delivered-to: mailing list macosx@perl.org
    * Delivered-to: moderator for macosx@perl.org
    * Mailing-list: contact macosx-help@perl.org; run by ezmlm
    * User-agent: Mutt/1.3.24i

SYNOPSIS:

The release notes for perl 5.8.0 indicate:

"Perl 5.8 is not binary compatible with any earlier Perl release,
XS MODULES WILL HAVE TO BE RECOMPILED!"

Mac OS X users that have fink installed may experience the
following error when executing certain perl operations (see 'EXAMPLE').

dyld: perl Undefined symbols:
_Perl_safefree
_Perl_safemalloc
_Perl_saferealloc
_Perl_sv_2pv
_perl_call_sv
_perl_eval_sv
_perl_get_sv

This error is separate from the similar dyld issue mentioned in the
"Mac OS X dyld undefined symbols" section of perldelta[1].

EXAMPLE:

The below is one example of how to reproduce the issue. There are many
other ways to reproduce it. I have experienced the same behavior when
attempting to "perl Makefile.PL" certain modules (such as CPANPLUS
below). CPAN.pm also exhibits the same behavior when attempting
certain operations after configuration.

root@localhost:/tmp$ perl -MCPANPLUS -e shell

CPANPLUS::Shell::Default -- CPAN exploration and modules installation (v0.02)
*** Please report bugs to <cpanplus-bugs@lists.sourceforge.net>.
*** Using CPANPLUS::Backend v0.035.  ReadLine support enabled.

CPAN Terminal> o
Checking if source files are up to date
dyld: perl Undefined symbols:
_Perl_safefree
_Perl_safemalloc
_Perl_saferealloc
_Perl_sv_2pv
_perl_call_sv
_perl_eval_sv
_perl_get_sv
root@localhost:/tmp$

CAUSE:

The error is caused by the following sequence of events:

  1 - a .bashrc (or other shell rc file) sources /sw/bin/init.[c]sh
  2 - init.[c]sh sets PERL5LIB to /sw/lib/perl5
  3 - /sw/lib/perl5 contains Storable (the only compiled perl module,
      included by default, to my knowledge), and possibly other XS
      modules. Since Storable is a compiled XS module that was compiled
      with a prior version of perl that is binary incompatible with
      perl 5.8.0 it will be necessary to recompile Storable
      (see 'RESOLUTION').

FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS:

Fink stable currently includes the following six XS modules. If any
of these were installed prior to installing 5.8.0 you will likely
experience the dyld issue.

  - DBD::Mysql
  - DBI
  - Digest::MD5
  - MacOSX::File
  - Storable
  - Term::ReadKey

You will also experience the dyld issue if any other XS modules are
contained within the /sw/lib/perl5 directory. That is, XS modules
from fink unstable or another source.

RESOLUTION:

The following three commands will correct the above issue by removing
the current Storable and replacing it with a recompiled version. These
commands must be executed as the superuser. After these commands are
executed the aforementioned issue will be resolved.

mv /sw/lib/perl5/darwin/Storable.pm /tmp
mv /sw/lib/perl5/darwin/auto/Storable /tmp
fink rebuild storable-pm

It IS first necessary to do the mv's, before the rebuild, since fink is
a perl script that explicitly adds /sw/lib/perl5 to @INC, and exhibits
the behavior mentioned above.

You will need to execute the above commands for every XS module that
is contained within /sw/lib/perl5.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] http://search.cpan.org/doc/JHI/perl-5.8.0/pod/perldelta.pod#Mac_OS_X_dyld_undefined_symbols

-- 
Adam J. Foxson (Fox)
CPAN Tester for Mac OS X
Comprehensive Perl Archive Network

Following the advice above solved the issue for me. I’m posting this info in the hope that this helps someone else! Wish this info had been posted here earlier….