nsPerl is a binary distribution of dynamic Perl.  To install it:

    cd # to the directory in which you want to install it.
    gzip -dc nsPerl5.005_03-13-sun4-solaris.tar.gz | tar -xvof -
    cd nsPerl5.005_03
    ./install

But if the nsPerl5.005_03 directory will have a different name (not `pwd`)
from the viewpoint of other nsPerl users, you must define an alias for it
that all users can share (usually an automounter name), and use the fully
qualified name of that alias in the install command.  For example:

    /mount/share/nsPerl5.005_03/install

bin/nsperl is your new Perl interpreter.  For example:

    bin/nsperl -e 'print "Hello from $^X\n";'

bin/perl is the standard perl program, but it won't run usefully
unless certain environment variables are set correctly (as bin/nsperl
does; see lib/sun4-solaris/nsPerl/instruct).

To make it easy to run Perl from a command prompt, copy the file
bin/nsperl into one of the directories named in your
PATH environment variable.  Once that's done, the command `nsperl`
will run Perl.  If you prefer the command `perl`, rename the copy
from nsperl to perl.

bin contains various Perl scripts.  To make it easier to run them
from a command prompt, copy them into one of the directories named
in your PATH evironment variable.

lib/sun4-solaris/nsPerl contains software that reconfigures Perl
to work on your machine.  Its source code is in the subdirectory src
(which you can discard, without affecting other programs' behavior).

The rest of this package was built from standard Perl source code.
You can get a copy from http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/5.0/maint/
or http://www.perl.org

To make Perl occupy less disk space, you can remove its documentation;
that is lib/pod/html or lib/pod.  There's a copy of the documentation
at http://www.perl.com/CPAN/doc/ , although it's not the same version
as this copy of Perl.

If you want to automate the installation of nsPerl, the algorithm
supported in all versions is to execute ./install, with the current
working directory set to the only directory unpacked from the archive
file.  ./install creates a Perl interpreter program named nsperl,
which can be moved or copied elsewhere without loss of functionality.

- John Kristian <kristian@netscape.com>

