Generate "libperl.a" In Addition To "libperl.so"

[wbraswell]

Howdy @zakame & Perl Docker Team!

If I put this in a new Dockerfile:

FROM perl:stable-slim-bookworm
RUN find / -name libperl.*

Then it will give this output:

RUN find / -name libperl.*
/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.42.0/x86_64-linux-gnu/CORE/libperl.so
DONE 1.8s

However, the (incompatible) operating system package provides two files:

/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libperl.a
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libperl.so

https://packages.ubuntu.com/plucky/amd64/libperl-dev/filelist

Believe it or not, some of us actually use the libperl.a file. :-)

However, it is incorrect to try and load apt-get install libperl-dev, because that would be mixing two different Perl builds together and can cause all kinds of crazy ABI incompatibilities etc.

So, can we please simply configure the Docker Perl build process to generate the libperl.a file along with the already-existing libperl.so file?

Thanks in advance!

[zakame]

Hi @wbraswell, thanks for the report!

Could I confirm if we need to rebuild Perl statically for this? I recall buildinglibperl.a requires us to pass -Uusedl which would mean an additional build pass separate from the standard ./Configure -des that we do...

[wbraswell]

Howdy @zakame, I greatly appreciate your reply and assistance! :-)

I will admit that I am not an expert at compiling the Perl interpreter, since most of my work has been on the Perl compiler. Prior to using your Docker images, I always installed Perl via the Debian (or Ubuntu) package management systems via apt-get install perl libperl-dev.

If we look at the Ubuntu source package for both perl and libperl-dev, we can see there are a number of "Download" links at the bottom of the page that may contain more information regarding their build scripts or build process:
https://packages.ubuntu.com/source/plucky/perl

At the bottom of the same page, there is a link for "Debian Package Source Repository (Browsable)", which leads to a nice git repo which may be easier for you to click through and find the desired configuration info:
https://salsa.debian.org/perl-team/interpreter/perl

Please let me know if any of these files or links gets us closer to an answer?

Thank you sir!

[waterkip]

From my understanding we need -Dstaticlibperl to the common options in the config.yml to do this.