| 1 | If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you |
| 2 | see. It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is |
| 3 | specially designed to be readable as is. |
| 4 | |
| 5 | =head1 NAME |
| 6 | |
| 7 | perlwin32 - Perl under Win32 |
| 8 | |
| 9 | =head1 SYNOPSIS |
| 10 | |
| 11 | These are instructions for building Perl under Windows NT (versions |
| 12 | 3.51 or 4.0), using Visual C++ (versions 2.0 through 5.0). Currently, |
| 13 | this port may also build under Windows95, but you can expect problems |
| 14 | stemming from the unmentionable command shell that infests that |
| 15 | platform. Note this caveat is only about B<building> perl. Once |
| 16 | built, you should be able to B<use> it on either Win32 platform (modulo |
| 17 | the problems arising from the inferior command shell). |
| 18 | |
| 19 | =head1 DESCRIPTION |
| 20 | |
| 21 | Before you start, you should glance through the README file |
| 22 | found in the top-level directory where the Perl distribution |
| 23 | was extracted. Make sure you read and understand the terms under |
| 24 | which this software is being distributed. |
| 25 | |
| 26 | Also make sure you read the L<BUGS AND CAVEATS> section below for the |
| 27 | known limitations of this port. |
| 28 | |
| 29 | The INSTALL file in the perl top-level has much information that is |
| 30 | only relevant to people building Perl on Unix-like systems. In |
| 31 | particular, you can safely ignore any information that talks about |
| 32 | "Configure". |
| 33 | |
| 34 | You may also want to look at two other options for building |
| 35 | a perl that will work on Windows NT: the README.cygwin32 and |
| 36 | README.os2 files, which give a different set of rules to build a |
| 37 | Perl that will work on Win32 platforms. Those two methods will |
| 38 | probably enable you to build a more Unix-compatible perl, but you |
| 39 | will also need to download and use various other build-time and |
| 40 | run-time support software described in those files. |
| 41 | |
| 42 | This set of instructions is meant to describe a so-called "native" |
| 43 | port of Perl to Win32 platforms. The resulting Perl requires no |
| 44 | additional software to run (other than what came with your operating |
| 45 | system). Currently, this port is only capable of using Microsoft's |
| 46 | Visual C++ compiler. The ultimate goal is to support the other major |
| 47 | compilers that can generally be used to build Win32 applications. |
| 48 | |
| 49 | This port currently supports MakeMaker (the set of modules that |
| 50 | is used to build extensions to perl). Therefore, you should be |
| 51 | able to build and install most extensions found in the CPAN sites. |
| 52 | See L<Usage Hints> below for general hints about this. |
| 53 | |
| 54 | =head2 Setting Up |
| 55 | |
| 56 | =over 4 |
| 57 | |
| 58 | =item * |
| 59 | |
| 60 | Use the default "cmd" shell that comes with NT. In particular, do |
| 61 | *not* use the 4DOS/NT shell. The Makefile has commands that are not |
| 62 | compatible with that shell. The Makefile also has known |
| 63 | incompatibilites with the default shell that comes with Windows95, |
| 64 | so building under Windows95 should be considered "unsupported". |
| 65 | |
| 66 | =item * |
| 67 | |
| 68 | If you did not choose to always initialize the Visual C++ compilation |
| 69 | environment variables when you installed Visual C++ on your system, you |
| 70 | will need to run the VCVARS32.BAT file usually found somewhere like |
| 71 | C:\MSDEV4.2\BIN. This will set your build environment. |
| 72 | |
| 73 | =item * |
| 74 | |
| 75 | Depending on how you extracted the distribution, you have to make sure |
| 76 | some of the files are writable by you. The easiest way to make sure of |
| 77 | this is to execute: |
| 78 | |
| 79 | attrib -R *.* /S |
| 80 | |
| 81 | from the perl toplevel directory. You don't I<have> to do this if you |
| 82 | used the right tools to extract the files in the standard distribution, |
| 83 | but it doesn't hurt to do so. |
| 84 | |
| 85 | =back |
| 86 | |
| 87 | =head2 Building |
| 88 | |
| 89 | =over 4 |
| 90 | |
| 91 | =item * |
| 92 | |
| 93 | Make sure you are in the "win32" subdirectory under the perl toplevel. |
| 94 | This directory contains a "Makefile" that will work with |
| 95 | versions of NMAKE that come with Visual C++ ver. 2.0 and above. |
| 96 | |
| 97 | =item * |
| 98 | |
| 99 | Edit the Makefile and change the values of INST_DRV and INST_TOP |
| 100 | if you want perl to be installed in a location other than "C:\PERL". |
| 101 | |
| 102 | If you want to build a perl capable of running on the Windows95 |
| 103 | platform, you will have to uncomment the line that sets "RUNTIME=-MT". |
| 104 | (The default settings use the Microsoft-recommended -MD option for |
| 105 | compiling, which uses the DLL version of the C RunTime Library. There |
| 106 | currently exists a bug in the Microsoft CRTL that causes failure of |
| 107 | the socket calls only on the Windows95 platform. This bug cannot be |
| 108 | worked around if the DLL version of the CRTL is used, which is why you |
| 109 | need to enable the -MT flag.) Perl compiled with -MT can be used on |
| 110 | both Windows NT and Windows95. |
| 111 | |
| 112 | If you are using Visual C++ ver. 2.0, uncomment the line that |
| 113 | sets "CCTYPE=MSVC20". |
| 114 | |
| 115 | =item * |
| 116 | |
| 117 | Type "nmake". |
| 118 | |
| 119 | This should build everything. Specifically, it will create perl.exe, |
| 120 | perl.dll, and perlglob.exe at the perl toplevel, and various other |
| 121 | extension dll's under the lib\auto directory. If the build fails for |
| 122 | any reason, make sure you have done the previous steps correctly. |
| 123 | |
| 124 | =back |
| 125 | |
| 126 | =head2 Testing |
| 127 | |
| 128 | Type "nmake test". This will run most of the tests from the |
| 129 | testsuite (many tests will be skipped, and but no test should fail). |
| 130 | |
| 131 | If some tests do fail, it may be because you are using a different command |
| 132 | shell than the native "cmd.exe". |
| 133 | |
| 134 | Please report any failures as described under L<BUGS AND CAVEATS>. |
| 135 | |
| 136 | =head2 Installation |
| 137 | |
| 138 | Type "nmake install". This will put the newly built perl and the |
| 139 | libraries under "C:\perl" (actually whatever you set C<INST_TOP> to |
| 140 | in the Makefile). It will also install the pod documentation under |
| 141 | C<$INST_TOP\lib\pod> and HTML versions of the same under |
| 142 | C<$INST_TOP\lib\pod\html>. To use the Perl you just installed, set your |
| 143 | PATH environment variable to "C:\perl\bin" (or C<$INST_TOP\bin>, if you |
| 144 | changed the default as above). |
| 145 | |
| 146 | =head2 Usage Hints |
| 147 | |
| 148 | =over 4 |
| 149 | |
| 150 | =item Environment Variables |
| 151 | |
| 152 | The installation paths that you set during the build get compiled |
| 153 | into perl, so you don't have to do anything additional to start |
| 154 | using that perl (except add its location to your PATH variable). |
| 155 | |
| 156 | If you put extensions in unusual places, you can set PERL5LIB |
| 157 | to a list of paths separated by semicolons where you want perl |
| 158 | to look for libraries. Look for descriptions of other environment |
| 159 | variables you can set in the perlrun podpage. |
| 160 | |
| 161 | Sometime in the future, some of the configuration information |
| 162 | for perl will be moved into the Windows registry. |
| 163 | |
| 164 | =item Using perl from the command line |
| 165 | |
| 166 | If you are accustomed to using perl from various command-line |
| 167 | shells found in UNIX environments, you will be less than pleased |
| 168 | with what Windows NT offers by way of a command shell. |
| 169 | |
| 170 | The crucial thing to understand about the "cmd" shell (which is |
| 171 | the default on Windows NT) is that it does not do any wildcard |
| 172 | expansions of command-line arguments (so wildcards need not be |
| 173 | quoted). It also provides only rudimentary quoting. The only |
| 174 | (useful) quote character is the double quote ("). It can be used to |
| 175 | protect spaces in arguments and other special characters. The |
| 176 | Windows NT documentation has almost no description of how the |
| 177 | quoting rules are implemented, but here are some general observations |
| 178 | based on experiments: The shell breaks arguments at spaces and |
| 179 | passes them to programs in argc/argv. Doublequotes can be used |
| 180 | to prevent arguments with spaces in them from being split up. |
| 181 | You can put a double quote in an argument by escaping it with |
| 182 | a backslash and enclosing the whole argument within double quotes. |
| 183 | The backslash and the pair of double quotes surrounding the |
| 184 | argument will be stripped by the shell. |
| 185 | |
| 186 | The file redirection characters "<", ">", and "|" cannot be quoted |
| 187 | by double quotes (there are probably more such). Single quotes |
| 188 | will protect those three file redirection characters, but the |
| 189 | single quotes don't get stripped by the shell (just to make this |
| 190 | type of quoting completely useless). The caret "^" has also |
| 191 | been observed to behave as a quoting character (and doesn't get |
| 192 | stripped by the shell also). |
| 193 | |
| 194 | Here are some examples of usage of the "cmd" shell: |
| 195 | |
| 196 | This prints two doublequotes: |
| 197 | |
| 198 | perl -e "print '\"\"' " |
| 199 | |
| 200 | This does the same: |
| 201 | |
| 202 | perl -e "print \"\\\"\\\"\" " |
| 203 | |
| 204 | This prints "bar" and writes "foo" to the file "blurch": |
| 205 | |
| 206 | perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" > blurch |
| 207 | |
| 208 | This prints "foo" ("bar" disappears into nowhereland): |
| 209 | |
| 210 | perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> nul |
| 211 | |
| 212 | This prints "bar" and writes "foo" into the file "blurch": |
| 213 | |
| 214 | perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 1> blurch |
| 215 | |
| 216 | This prints "foo" and writes "bar" to the file "blurch": |
| 217 | |
| 218 | perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> blurch |
| 219 | |
| 220 | This pipes "foo" to the "less" pager and prints "bar" on the console: |
| 221 | |
| 222 | perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" | less |
| 223 | |
| 224 | This pipes "foo\nbar\n" to the less pager: |
| 225 | |
| 226 | perl -le "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" |& less |
| 227 | |
| 228 | This does the same thing as the above: |
| 229 | |
| 230 | perl -le "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2>&1 | less |
| 231 | |
| 232 | This pipes "foo" to the pager and writes "bar" in the file "blurch": |
| 233 | |
| 234 | perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> blurch | less |
| 235 | |
| 236 | |
| 237 | Discovering the usage of the "command.com" shell on Windows95 |
| 238 | is left as an exercise to the reader :) |
| 239 | |
| 240 | =item Building Extensions |
| 241 | |
| 242 | The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) offers a wealth |
| 243 | of extensions, some of which require a C compiler to build. |
| 244 | Look in http://www.perl.com/ for more information on CPAN. |
| 245 | |
| 246 | Most extensions (whether they require a C compiler or not) can |
| 247 | be built, tested and installed with the standard mantra: |
| 248 | |
| 249 | perl Makefile.PL |
| 250 | nmake |
| 251 | nmake test |
| 252 | nmake install |
| 253 | |
| 254 | Note the NMAKE that comes with Visual C++ is required. Some |
| 255 | extensions may not provide a testsuite (so "nmake test" |
| 256 | may not do anything, or fail), but most serious ones do. |
| 257 | |
| 258 | If a module implements XSUBs, you will need a C compiler (Visual C++ |
| 259 | versions 2.0 and above are currently supported). You must make sure |
| 260 | you have set up the environment for the compiler for command-line |
| 261 | compilation. |
| 262 | |
| 263 | If a module does not build for some reason, carefully look at |
| 264 | why it failed, and report problems to the module author. If |
| 265 | it looks like the extension building support is at fault, report |
| 266 | that with full details of how the build failed using the perlbug |
| 267 | utility. |
| 268 | |
| 269 | =item Win32 Specific Extensions |
| 270 | |
| 271 | A number of extensions specific to the Win32 platform are available |
| 272 | from CPAN. You may find that many of these extensions are meant to |
| 273 | be used under the Activeware port of Perl, which used to be the only |
| 274 | native port for the Win32 platform. Since the Activeware port does not |
| 275 | have adequate support for Perl's extension building tools, these |
| 276 | extensions typically do not support those tools either, and therefore |
| 277 | cannot be built using the generic steps shown in the previous section. |
| 278 | |
| 279 | To ensure smooth transitioning of existing code that uses the |
| 280 | Activeware port, there is a bundle of Win32 extensions that contains |
| 281 | all of the Activeware extensions and most other Win32 extensions from |
| 282 | CPAN in source form, along with many added bugfixes, and with MakeMaker |
| 283 | support. This bundle is available at: |
| 284 | |
| 285 | http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/id/GSAR/libwin32-0.06.tar.gz |
| 286 | |
| 287 | See the README in that distribution for building and installation |
| 288 | instructions. Look for later versions that may be available at the |
| 289 | same location. |
| 290 | |
| 291 | It is expected that authors of Win32 specific extensions will begin |
| 292 | distributing their work in MakeMaker compatible form subsequent to |
| 293 | the 5.004 release of perl, at which point the need for a dedicated |
| 294 | bundle such as the above should diminish. |
| 295 | |
| 296 | =item Miscellaneous Things |
| 297 | |
| 298 | A full set of HTML documentation is installed, so you should be |
| 299 | able to use it if you have a web browser installed on your |
| 300 | system. |
| 301 | |
| 302 | C<perldoc> is also a useful tool for browsing information contained |
| 303 | in the documentation, especially in conjunction with a pager |
| 304 | like C<less> (recent versions of which have Win32 support). You may |
| 305 | have to set the PAGER environment variable to use a specific pager. |
| 306 | "perldoc -f foo" will print information about the perl operator |
| 307 | "foo". |
| 308 | |
| 309 | If you find bugs in perl, you can run C<perlbug> to create a |
| 310 | bug report (you may have to send it manually if C<perlbug> cannot |
| 311 | find a mailer on your system). |
| 312 | |
| 313 | =back |
| 314 | |
| 315 | =head1 BUGS AND CAVEATS |
| 316 | |
| 317 | This port has not been tested as extensively as we'd like, and |
| 318 | therefore should be considered beta quality software. You should |
| 319 | expect changes in virtually all of these areas: build process, |
| 320 | installation structure, supported utilities/modules, and supported |
| 321 | perl functionality. In particular, functionality specific to the |
| 322 | Win32 environment may ultimately be supported as either core modules |
| 323 | or extensions. This means that you should be prepared to recompile |
| 324 | extensions when binary incompatibilites arise due to changes in the |
| 325 | internal structure of the code. |
| 326 | |
| 327 | If you have had prior exposure to Perl on Unix platforms, you will notice |
| 328 | this port exhibits behavior different from what is documented. Most of the |
| 329 | differences fall under one of these categories. We do not consider |
| 330 | any of them to be serious limitations (especially when compared to the |
| 331 | limited nature of some of the Win32 OSes themselves :) |
| 332 | |
| 333 | =over 8 |
| 334 | |
| 335 | =item * |
| 336 | |
| 337 | C<stat()> and C<lstat()> functions may not behave as documented. They |
| 338 | may return values that bear no resemblance to those reported on Unix |
| 339 | platforms, and some fields (like the the one for inode) may be completely |
| 340 | bogus. |
| 341 | |
| 342 | =item * |
| 343 | |
| 344 | The following functions are currently unavailable: C<fork()>, C<exec()>, |
| 345 | C<dump()>, C<chown()>, C<link()>, C<symlink()>, C<chroot()>, |
| 346 | C<setpgrp()>, C<getpgrp()>, C<setpriority()>, C<getpriority()>, |
| 347 | C<syscall()>, C<fcntl()>, C<flock()>. This list is possibly very |
| 348 | incomplete. |
| 349 | |
| 350 | =item * |
| 351 | |
| 352 | Various C<socket()> related calls are supported, but they may not |
| 353 | behave as on Unix platforms. |
| 354 | |
| 355 | =item * |
| 356 | |
| 357 | The four-argument C<select()> call is only supported on sockets. |
| 358 | |
| 359 | =item * |
| 360 | |
| 361 | C<$?> ends up with the exitstatus of the subprocess (this is different |
| 362 | from Unix, where the exitstatus is actually given by "$? >> 8"). |
| 363 | Failure to spawn() the subprocess is indicated by setting $? to |
| 364 | "255<<8". This is subject to change. |
| 365 | |
| 366 | =item * |
| 367 | |
| 368 | Building modules available on CPAN is mostly supported, but this |
| 369 | hasn't been tested much yet. Expect strange problems, and be |
| 370 | prepared to deal with the consequences. |
| 371 | |
| 372 | =item * |
| 373 | |
| 374 | C<utime()>, C<times()> and process-related functions may not |
| 375 | behave as described in the documentation, and some of the |
| 376 | returned values or effects may be bogus. |
| 377 | |
| 378 | =item * |
| 379 | |
| 380 | Signal handling may not behave as on Unix platforms. |
| 381 | |
| 382 | =item * |
| 383 | |
| 384 | File globbing may not behave as on Unix platforms. In particular, |
| 385 | globbing does not understand wildcards in the pathname component, |
| 386 | but only in the filename component. In other words, something like |
| 387 | "print <*/*.pl>" will not print all the perl scripts in all the |
| 388 | subdirectories one level under the current one (like it does on |
| 389 | UNIX platforms). |
| 390 | |
| 391 | =back |
| 392 | |
| 393 | Please send detailed descriptions of any problems and solutions that |
| 394 | you may find to <F<perlbug@perl.com>>, along with the output produced |
| 395 | by C<perl -V>. |
| 396 | |
| 397 | =head1 AUTHORS |
| 398 | |
| 399 | =over 4 |
| 400 | |
| 401 | =item Gary Ng <F<71564.1743@CompuServe.COM>> |
| 402 | |
| 403 | =item Gurusamy Sarathy <F<gsar@umich.edu>> |
| 404 | |
| 405 | =item Nick Ing-Simmons <F<nick@ni-s.u-net.com>> |
| 406 | |
| 407 | =back |
| 408 | |
| 409 | =head1 SEE ALSO |
| 410 | |
| 411 | L<perl> |
| 412 | |
| 413 | =head1 HISTORY |
| 414 | |
| 415 | This port was originally contributed by Gary Ng around 5.003_24, |
| 416 | and borrowed from the Hip Communications port that was available |
| 417 | at the time. |
| 418 | |
| 419 | Nick Ing-Simmons and Gurusamy Sarathy have made numerous and |
| 420 | sundry hacks since then. |
| 421 | |
| 422 | Last updated: 15 May 1997 |
| 423 | |
| 424 | =cut |