vSphere SDK for Perl Source Code Installation on Linux

Some developers prefer a customized installation from source code. This section discusses the source code installation requirements and the installation process on Linux.

Requirements

Before you install the vSphere SDK for Perl, make sure that the following software is installed on your system.

■	Perl 5.8 or Perl 5.10

■	Required packages. The vSphere SDK does not work if you do not have this software installed.

■	OpenSSL – The vSphere SDK for Perl requires SSL because most connections between the system on which you run the command and the target vSphere system are encrypted with SSL.The OpenSSL library (libssl-dev package) is not included in most default Linux distribution.

■	LibXML2 – Used for XML parsing. The libxml2 package is not included in the default Linux distribution.

■	e2fsprogs – A set of utilities for maintaining the ext2, ext3 and ext4 file systems. Required by the UUID Perl module.

Some additional packages are required on Ubuntu. See Installing Prerequisite Software for Ubuntu Desktop 9.04.

■	Recommended Perl modules. Versions of these modules are installed on most Linux distributions. Even if you are using an earlier or later version, the vSphere SDK for Perl most likely performs properly.

■	Crypt-SSLeay-0.55 (0.55-0.9.7 or 0.55-0.9.8)

■	IO-Compress-Base-2.005

■	Compress-Zlib-2.005

■	IO-Compress-Zlib-2.005

■	Compress-Raw-Zlib-2.017

■	Archive-Zip-1.26

■	Data-Dumper-2.121

■	XML-LibXML-1.63

■	libwww-perl-5.805

■	XML-LibXML-Common-0.13

■	XML-NamespaceSupport-1.09

■	XML-SAX-0.16

■	Data-Dump-1.15

■

URI-1.37

■

UUID-0.03

■	SOAP-Lite-0.710.08

■	HTML-Parser-3.60

■	version-0.78

Note You can obtain and install any missing modules using CPAN. See the cpan.org Web site. You can also use the CPAN module included with your Perl installation.

Installing the vSphere SDK for Perl from Source Code on Linux

The vSphere SDK for Perl source code package contains a single platform-independent compressed file, available from the SDK download page. For download instructions, see Download the vSphere SDK for Perl Binary.

To build the vSphere SDK for Perl

1	Download the vSphere SDK for Perl source bundle from the vSphere SDK for Perl download page.

2	Open a Linux shell session and change to the directory to which you downloaded the package, for example:

cd /tmp

3	Unzip the package and extract the files, for example:

gunzip <filename>.tar.gz

tar xf <filename>.tar

4	Connect to the directory containing the extracted files and review the README file for information about licensing, additional requirements, and late-breaking information:

5	Run the Makefile.PL for the vSphere SDK for Perl:

perl Makefile.PL

If a recommended module is already installed on your system, but the version is not the version with which the SDK for Perl is tested, a warning message like the following appears:

Warning: prerequisite Data::Dumper 2.121 not found. We have 2.12.

Finish installing all prerequisites before you proceed. See Requirements.

6	Build the vSphere SDK for Perl files.

make

7	Test that the build succeeded.

make test