If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you see. It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is specially designed to be readable as is. =head1 NAME perlwin32 - Perl under Win32 =head1 SYNOPSIS These are instructions for building Perl under Windows NT (versions 3.51 or 4.0), using Visual C++ (versions 2.0 through 5.0). Currently, this port may also build under Windows95, but you can expect problems stemming from the unmentionable command shell that infests that platform. Note this caveat is only about B perl. Once built, you should be able to B it on either Win32 platform (modulo the problems arising from the inferior command shell). =head1 DESCRIPTION Before you start, you should glance through the README file found in the top-level directory where the Perl distribution was extracted. Make sure you read and understand the terms under which this software is being distributed. Also make sure you read the L section below for the known limitations of this port. The INSTALL file in the perl top-level has much information that is only relevant to people building Perl on Unix-like systems. In particular, you can safely ignore any information that talks about "Configure". You may also want to look at two other options for building a perl that will work on Windows NT: the README.cygwin32 and README.os2 files, which give a different set of rules to build a Perl that will work on Win32 platforms. Those two methods will probably enable you to build a more Unix-compatible perl, but you will also need to download and use various other build-time and run-time support software described in those files. This set of instructions is meant to describe a so-called "native" port of Perl to Win32 platforms. The resulting Perl requires no additional software to run (other than what came with your operating system). Currently, this port is only capable of using Microsoft's Visual C++ compiler. The ultimate goal is to support the other major compilers that can generally be used to build Win32 applications. This port currently supports MakeMaker (the set of modules that is used to build extensions to perl). Therefore, you should be able to build and install most extensions found in the CPAN sites. See L below for general hints about this. =head2 Setting Up =over 4 =item * Use the default "cmd" shell that comes with NT. In particular, do *not* use the 4DOS/NT shell. The Makefile has commands that are not compatible with that shell. The Makefile also has known incompatibilites with the default shell that comes with Windows95, so building under Windows95 should be considered "unsupported". =item * If you did not choose to always initialize the Visual C++ compilation environment variables when you installed Visual C++ on your system, you will need to run the VCVARS32.BAT file usually found somewhere like C:\MSDEV4.2\BIN. This will set your build environment. =item * Depending on how you extracted the distribution, you have to make sure some of the files are writable by you. The easiest way to make sure of this is to execute: attrib -R *.* /S from the perl toplevel directory. You don't I to do this if you used the right tools to extract the files in the standard distribution, but it doesn't hurt to do so. =back =head2 Building =over 4 =item * Make sure you are in the "win32" subdirectory under the perl toplevel. This directory contains a "Makefile" that will work with versions of NMAKE that come with Visual C++ ver. 2.0 and above. =item * Edit the Makefile and change the values of INST_DRV and INST_TOP if you want perl to be installed in a location other than "C:\PERL". If you want to build a perl capable of running on the Windows95 platform, you will have to uncomment the line that sets "RUNTIME=-MT". (The default settings use the Microsoft-recommended -MD option for compiling, which uses the DLL version of the C RunTime Library. There currently exists a bug in the Microsoft CRTL that causes failure of the socket calls only on the Windows95 platform. This bug cannot be worked around if the DLL version of the CRTL is used, which is why you need to enable the -MT flag.) Perl compiled with -MT can be used on both Windows NT and Windows95. If you are using Visual C++ ver. 2.0, uncomment the line that sets "CCTYPE=MSVC20". =item * Type "nmake". This should build everything. Specifically, it will create perl.exe, perl.dll, and perlglob.exe at the perl toplevel, and various other extension dll's under the lib\auto directory. If the build fails for any reason, make sure you have done the previous steps correctly. =back =head2 Testing Type "nmake test". This will run most of the tests from the testsuite (many tests will be skipped, and but no test should fail). If some tests do fail, it may be because you are using a different command shell than the native "cmd.exe". Please report any failures as described under L. =head2 Installation Type "nmake install". This will put the newly built perl and the libraries under "C:\perl" (actually whatever you set C to in the Makefile). It will also install the pod documentation under C<$INST_TOP\lib\pod> and HTML versions of the same under C<$INST_TOP\lib\pod\html>. To use the Perl you just installed, set your PATH environment variable to "C:\perl\bin" (or C<$INST_TOP\bin>, if you changed the default as above). =head2 Usage Hints =over 4 =item Environment Variables The installation paths that you set during the build get compiled into perl, so you don't have to do anything additional to start using that perl (except add its location to your PATH variable). If you put extensions in unusual places, you can set PERL5LIB to a list of paths separated by semicolons where you want perl to look for libraries. Look for descriptions of other environment variables you can set in the perlrun podpage. Sometime in the future, some of the configuration information for perl will be moved into the Windows registry. =item Using perl from the command line If you are accustomed to using perl from various command-line shells found in UNIX environments, you will be less than pleased with what Windows NT offers by way of a command shell. The crucial thing to understand about the "cmd" shell (which is the default on Windows NT) is that it does not do any wildcard expansions of command-line arguments (so wildcards need not be quoted). It also provides only rudimentary quoting. The only (useful) quote character is the double quote ("). It can be used to protect spaces in arguments and other special characters. The Windows NT documentation has almost no description of how the quoting rules are implemented, but here are some general observations based on experiments: The shell breaks arguments at spaces and passes them to programs in argc/argv. Doublequotes can be used to prevent arguments with spaces in them from being split up. You can put a double quote in an argument by escaping it with a backslash and enclosing the whole argument within double quotes. The backslash and the pair of double quotes surrounding the argument will be stripped by the shell. The file redirection characters "<", ">", and "|" cannot be quoted by double quotes (there are probably more such). Single quotes will protect those three file redirection characters, but the single quotes don't get stripped by the shell (just to make this type of quoting completely useless). The caret "^" has also been observed to behave as a quoting character (and doesn't get stripped by the shell also). Here are some examples of usage of the "cmd" shell: This prints two doublequotes: perl -e "print '\"\"' " This does the same: perl -e "print \"\\\"\\\"\" " This prints "bar" and writes "foo" to the file "blurch": perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" > blurch This prints "foo" ("bar" disappears into nowhereland): perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> nul This prints "bar" and writes "foo" into the file "blurch": perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 1> blurch This prints "foo" and writes "bar" to the file "blurch": perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> blurch This pipes "foo" to the "less" pager and prints "bar" on the console: perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" | less This pipes "foo\nbar\n" to the less pager: perl -le "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" |& less This does the same thing as the above: perl -le "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2>&1 | less This pipes "foo" to the pager and writes "bar" in the file "blurch": perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> blurch | less Discovering the usage of the "command.com" shell on Windows95 is left as an exercise to the reader :) =item Building Extensions The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) offers a wealth of extensions, some of which require a C compiler to build. Look in http://www.perl.com/ for more information on CPAN. Most extensions (whether they require a C compiler or not) can be built, tested and installed with the standard mantra: perl Makefile.PL nmake nmake test nmake install Note the NMAKE that comes with Visual C++ is required. Some extensions may not provide a testsuite (so "nmake test" may not do anything, or fail), but most serious ones do. If a module implements XSUBs, you will need a C compiler (Visual C++ versions 2.0 and above are currently supported). You must make sure you have set up the environment for the compiler for command-line compilation. If a module does not build for some reason, carefully look at why it failed, and report problems to the module author. If it looks like the extension building support is at fault, report that with full details of how the build failed using the perlbug utility. =item Win32 Specific Extensions A number of extensions specific to the Win32 platform are available from CPAN. You may find that many of these extensions are meant to be used under the Activeware port of Perl, which used to be the only native port for the Win32 platform. Since the Activeware port does not have adequate support for Perl's extension building tools, these extensions typically do not support those tools either, and therefore cannot be built using the generic steps shown in the previous section. To ensure smooth transitioning of existing code that uses the Activeware port, there is a bundle of Win32 extensions that contains all of the Activeware extensions and most other Win32 extensions from CPAN in source form, along with many added bugfixes, and with MakeMaker support. This bundle is available at: http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/id/GSAR/libwin32-0.06.tar.gz See the README in that distribution for building and installation instructions. Look for later versions that may be available at the same location. It is expected that authors of Win32 specific extensions will begin distributing their work in MakeMaker compatible form subsequent to the 5.004 release of perl, at which point the need for a dedicated bundle such as the above should diminish. =item Miscellaneous Things A full set of HTML documentation is installed, so you should be able to use it if you have a web browser installed on your system. C is also a useful tool for browsing information contained in the documentation, especially in conjunction with a pager like C (recent versions of which have Win32 support). You may have to set the PAGER environment variable to use a specific pager. "perldoc -f foo" will print information about the perl operator "foo". If you find bugs in perl, you can run C to create a bug report (you may have to send it manually if C cannot find a mailer on your system). =back =head1 BUGS AND CAVEATS This port has not been tested as extensively as we'd like, and therefore should be considered beta quality software. You should expect changes in virtually all of these areas: build process, installation structure, supported utilities/modules, and supported perl functionality. In particular, functionality specific to the Win32 environment may ultimately be supported as either core modules or extensions. This means that you should be prepared to recompile extensions when binary incompatibilites arise due to changes in the internal structure of the code. If you have had prior exposure to Perl on Unix platforms, you will notice this port exhibits behavior different from what is documented. Most of the differences fall under one of these categories. We do not consider any of them to be serious limitations (especially when compared to the limited nature of some of the Win32 OSes themselves :) =over 8 =item * C and C functions may not behave as documented. They may return values that bear no resemblance to those reported on Unix platforms, and some fields (like the the one for inode) may be completely bogus. =item * The following functions are currently unavailable: C, C, C, C, C, C, C, C, C, C, C, C, C, C. This list is possibly very incomplete. =item * Various C related calls are supported, but they may not behave as on Unix platforms. =item * The four-argument C call is only supported on sockets. =item * C<$?> ends up with the exitstatus of the subprocess (this is different from Unix, where the exitstatus is actually given by "$? >> 8"). Failure to spawn() the subprocess is indicated by setting $? to "255<<8". This is subject to change. =item * Building modules available on CPAN is mostly supported, but this hasn't been tested much yet. Expect strange problems, and be prepared to deal with the consequences. =item * C, C and process-related functions may not behave as described in the documentation, and some of the returned values or effects may be bogus. =item * Signal handling may not behave as on Unix platforms. =item * File globbing may not behave as on Unix platforms. In particular, globbing does not understand wildcards in the pathname component, but only in the filename component. In other words, something like "print <*/*.pl>" will not print all the perl scripts in all the subdirectories one level under the current one (like it does on UNIX platforms). =back Please send detailed descriptions of any problems and solutions that you may find to >, along with the output produced by C. =head1 AUTHORS =over 4 =item Gary Ng > =item Gurusamy Sarathy > =item Nick Ing-Simmons > =back =head1 SEE ALSO L =head1 HISTORY This port was originally contributed by Gary Ng around 5.003_24, and borrowed from the Hip Communications port that was available at the time. Nick Ing-Simmons and Gurusamy Sarathy have made numerous and sundry hacks since then. Last updated: 15 May 1997 =cut