=head1 SYNOPSIS
-These are instructions for building Perl under Windows NT (versions
-3.51 or 4.0). Currently, this port is reported to build under
-Windows95 using the 4DOS shell--the default shell that infests
-Windows95 may not work fully (but see below). Note that this caveat
-is only about B<building> perl. Once built, you should be able to
-B<use> it on either Win32 platform (modulo the problems arising from
-the inferior command shell).
+These are instructions for building Perl under Windows (9x, NT and
+2000).
=head1 DESCRIPTION
Before you start, you should glance through the README file
-found in the top-level directory where the Perl distribution
+found in the top-level directory to which the Perl distribution
was extracted. Make sure you read and understand the terms under
which this software is being distributed.
You may also want to look at two other options for building
a perl that will work on Windows NT: the README.cygwin and
-README.os2 files, which each 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
+README.os2 files, each of 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"
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<Usage Hints> below for general hints about this.
+See L<Usage Hints for Perl on Win32> below for general hints about this.
-=head2 Setting Up
+=head2 Setting Up Perl on Win32
=over 4
+=item Make
+
+You need a "make" program to build the sources. If you are using
+Visual C++ under Windows NT or 2000, nmake will work. All other
+builds need dmake.
+
+dmake is a freely available make that has very nice macro features
+and parallelability.
+
+A port of dmake for Windows is available from:
+
+ http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/GSAR/dmake-4.1pl1-win32.zip
+
+(This is a fixed version of the original dmake sources obtained from
+http://www.wticorp.com/. As of version 4.1PL1, the original
+sources did not build as shipped and had various other problems.
+A patch is included in the above fixed version.)
+
+Fetch and install dmake somewhere on your path (follow the instructions
+in the README.NOW file).
+
+There exists a minor coexistence problem with dmake and Borland C++
+compilers. Namely, if a distribution has C files named with mixed
+case letters, they will be compiled into appropriate .obj-files named
+with all lowercase letters, and every time dmake is invoked
+to bring files up to date, it will try to recompile such files again.
+For example, Tk distribution has a lot of such files, resulting in
+needless recompiles every time dmake is invoked. To avoid this, you
+may use the script "sync_ext.pl" after a successful build. It is
+available in the win32 subdirectory of the Perl source distribution.
+
=item Command Shell
Use the default "cmd" shell that comes with NT. Some versions of the
popular 4DOS/NT shell have incompatibilities that may cause you trouble.
If the build fails under that shell, try building again with the cmd
-shell. The nmake Makefile also has known incompatibilites with the
-"command.com" shell that comes with Windows95.
+shell.
-However, there have been reports of successful build attempts using
-4DOS/NT version 6.01 under Windows95, using dmake, but your mileage
-may vary. There is also some basic support for building using dmake
-under command.com. Nevertheless, if building under command.com
-doesn't work, try 4DOS/NT.
+The nmake Makefile also has known incompatibilities with the
+"command.com" shell that comes with Windows 9x. You will need to
+use dmake and makefile.mk to build under Windows 9x.
The surest way to build it is on Windows NT, using the cmd shell.
=item Borland C++
-If you are using the Borland compiler, you will need dmake, a freely
-available make that has very nice macro features and parallelability.
-(The make that Borland supplies is seriously crippled, and will not
+If you are using the Borland compiler, you will need dmake.
+(The make that Borland supplies is seriously crippled and will not
work for MakeMaker builds.)
-A port of dmake for win32 platforms is available from:
-
- ftp://ftp.linux.activestate.com/pub/staff/gsar/dmake-4.1-win32.zip
-
-(This is a fixed version of original dmake sources obtained from
-http://www.wticorp.com/dmake/. As of version 4.1PL1, the original
-sources did not build as shipped, and had various other problems.
-A patch is included in the above fixed version.)
-
-Fetch and install dmake somewhere on your path (follow the instructions
-in the README.NOW file).
+See L</"Make"> above.
=item Microsoft Visual C++
The nmake that comes with Visual C++ will suffice for building.
-You will need to run the VCVARS32.BAT file usually found somewhere
+You will need to run the VCVARS32.BAT file, usually found somewhere
like C:\MSDEV4.2\BIN. This will set your build environment.
-You can also use dmake to build using Visual C++, provided:
+You can also use dmake to build using Visual C++; provided, however,
you set OSRELEASE to "microsft" (or whatever the directory name
-under which the Visual C dmake configuration lives) in your environment,
+under which the Visual C dmake configuration lives) in your environment
and edit win32/config.vc to change "make=nmake" into "make=dmake". The
latter step is only essential if you want to use dmake as your default
make for building extensions using MakeMaker.
ftp://ftp.xraylith.wisc.edu/pub/khan/gnu-win32/mingw32/
+You also need dmake. See L</"Make"> above on how to get it.
+
The GCC-2.95.2 bundle comes with Mingw32 libraries and headers.
-Make sure you install the binaries as indicated in the README for
-the GCC bundle. You may need to set up a few environment variables
-(usually run from a batch file).
+Make sure you install the binaries that work with MSVCRT.DLL as indicated
+in the README for the GCC bundle. You may need to set up a few environment
+variables (usually ran from a batch file).
+
+There are a couple of problems with the version of gcc-2.95.2-msvcrt.exe
+released 7 November 1999:
-You also need dmake. See L</"Borland C++"> above on how to get it.
+=over
+
+=item *
+
+It left out a fix for certain command line quotes. To fix this, be sure
+to download and install the file fixes/quote-fix-msvcrt.exe from the above
+ftp location.
+
+=item *
+
+The definition of the fpos_t type in stdio.h may be wrong. If your
+stdio.h has this problem, you will see an exception when running the
+test t/lib/io_xs.t. To fix this, change the typedef for fpos_t from
+"long" to "long long" in the file i386-mingw32msvc/include/stdio.h,
+and rebuild.
+
+=back
+
+A potentially simpler to install (but probably soon-to-be-outdated) bundle
+of the above package with the mentioned fixes already applied is available
+here:
+
+ http://downloads.ActiveState.com/pub/staff/gsar/gcc-2.95.2-msvcrt.zip
+ ftp://ftp.ActiveState.com/pub/staff/gsar/gcc-2.95.2-msvcrt.zip
=back
This directory contains a "Makefile" that will work with
versions of nmake that come with Visual C++, and a dmake "makefile.mk"
that will work for all supported compilers. The defaults in the dmake
-makefile are setup to build using the Borland compiler.
+makefile are setup to build using the GCC compiler.
=item *
-Edit the makefile.mk (or Makefile, if using nmake) and change the values
-of INST_DRV and INST_TOP. You can also enable various build
-flags.
-
-Beginning with version 5.005, there is experimental support for building
-a perl interpreter that supports the Perl Object abstraction (courtesy
-ActiveState Tool Corp.) PERL_OBJECT uses C++, and the binaries are
-therefore incompatible with the regular C build. However, the
-PERL_OBJECT build does provide something called the C-API, for linking
-it with extensions that won't compile under PERL_OBJECT. Using the C_API
-is typically requested through:
-
- perl Makefile.PL CAPI=TRUE
+Edit the makefile.mk (or Makefile, if you're using nmake) and change
+the values of INST_DRV and INST_TOP. You can also enable various
+build flags. These are explained in the makefiles.
-PERL_OBJECT requires VC++ 5.0 (Service Pack 3 recommended) or later. It
-is not yet supported under GCC. WARNING: Binaries built with
-PERL_OBJECT enabled are B<not> compatible with binaries built without.
-Perl installs PERL_OBJECT binaries under a distinct architecture name,
-so they B<can> coexist, though.
+You will have to make sure that CCTYPE is set correctly and that
+CCHOME points to wherever you installed your compiler.
-Beginning with version 5.005, there is experimental support for building
-a perl interpreter that is capable of native threading. Binaries built
-with thread support enabled are also incompatible with the vanilla C
-build. WARNING: Binaries built with threads enabled are B<not> compatible
-with binaries built without. Perl installs threads enabled binaries under
-a distinct architecture name, so they B<can> coexist, though.
-
-At the present time, you cannot enable both threading and PERL_OBJECT.
-You can get only one of them in a Perl interpreter.
+The default value for CCHOME in the makefiles for Visual C++
+may not be correct for some versions. Make sure the default exists
+and is valid.
If you have either the source or a library that contains des_fcrypt(),
enable the appropriate option in the makefile. des_fcrypt() is not
bundled with the distribution due to US Government restrictions
on the export of cryptographic software. Nevertheless, this routine
-is part of the "libdes" library (written by Ed Young) which is widely
-available worldwide, usually along with SSLeay (for example:
-"ftp://fractal.mta.ca/pub/crypto/SSLeay/DES/"). Set CRYPT_SRC to the
+is part of the "libdes" library (written by Eric Young) which is widely
+available worldwide, usually along with SSLeay (for example,
+"ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/crypt/mirrors/dsi/libdes/"). Set CRYPT_SRC to the
name of the file that implements des_fcrypt(). Alternatively, if
you have built a library that contains des_fcrypt(), you can set
CRYPT_LIB to point to the library name. The location above contains
easier to use. A patch against the fcrypt.c found in libdes-3.06 is
in des_fcrypt.patch.
-Perl will also build without des_fcrypt(), but the crypt() builtin will
-fail at run time.
+An easier alternative may be to get the pre-patched and ready-to-use
+fcrypt.c that can be found here:
-You will also have to make sure CCHOME points to wherever you installed
-your compiler.
+ http://downloads.ActiveState.com/pub/staff/gsar/fcrypt.c
+ ftp://ftp.ActiveState.com/pub/staff/gsar/fcrypt.c
-The default value for CCHOME in the makefiles for Visual C++
-may not be correct for some versions. Make sure the default exists
-and is valid.
+Perl will also build without des_fcrypt(), but the crypt() builtin will
+fail at run time.
-Other options are explained in the makefiles. Be sure to read the
-instructions carefully.
+Be sure to read the instructions near the top of the makefiles carefully.
=item *
Type "dmake" (or "nmake" if you are using that make).
This should build everything. Specifically, it will create perl.exe,
-perl.dll (or perl56.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.
-
-The build process may produce "harmless" compiler warnings (more or
-less copiously, depending on how picky your compiler gets). The
-maintainers are aware of these warnings, thankyouverymuch. :)
+perl56.dll 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
+=head2 Testing Perl on Win32
Type "dmake test" (or "nmake test"). This will run most of the tests from
-the testsuite (many tests will be skipped, and but no test should fail).
+the testsuite (many tests will be skipped).
+
+There should be no test failures when running under Windows NT 4.0 or
+Windows 2000. Many tests I<will> fail under Windows 9x due to the inferior
+command shell.
-If some tests do fail, it may be because you are using a different command
-shell than the native "cmd.exe", or because you are building from a path
-that contains spaces. So don't do that.
+Some test failures may occur if you use a command shell other than the
+native "cmd.exe", or if you are building from a path that contains
+spaces. So don't do that.
If you are running the tests from a emacs shell window, you may see
failures in op/stat.t. Run "dmake test-notty" in that case.
arising from the inability to find the Borland Runtime DLLs on the system
default path. You will need to copy the DLLs reported by the messages
from where Borland chose to install it, into the Windows system directory
-(usually somewhere like C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32), and rerun the test.
+(usually somewhere like C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32) and rerun the test.
+
+If you're using Borland compiler versions 5.2 and below, you may run into
+problems finding the correct header files when building extensions. For
+example, building the "Tk" extension may fail because both perl and Tk
+contain a header file called "patchlevel.h". The latest Borland compiler
+(v5.5) is free of this misbehaviour, and it even supports an
+option -VI- for backward (bugward) compatibility for using the old Borland
+search algorithm to locate header files.
Please report any other failures as described under L<BUGS AND CAVEATS>.
-=head2 Installation
+=head2 Installation of Perl on Win32
Type "dmake install" (or "nmake install"). This will put the newly
built perl and the libraries under whatever C<INST_TOP> points to in the
C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\lib\pod> and HTML versions of the same under
C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\lib\pod\html>. To use the Perl you just installed,
you will need to add two components to your PATH environment variable,
-C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\bin>, and C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\bin\$ARCHNAME>.
+C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\bin> and C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\bin\$ARCHNAME>.
For example:
- set PATH c:\perl\5.005\bin;c:\perl\5.005\bin\MSWin32-x86;%PATH%
+ set PATH c:\perl\5.6.0\bin;c:\perl\5.6.0\bin\MSWin32-x86;%PATH%
+
+If you opt to comment out INST_VER and INST_ARCH in the makefiles, the
+installation structure is much simpler. In that case, it will be
+sufficient to add a single entry to the path, for instance:
+ set PATH c:\perl\bin;%PATH%
-=head2 Usage Hints
+=head2 Usage Hints for Perl on Win32
=over 4
Entries in the former override entries in the latter. One or more of the
following entries (of type REG_SZ or REG_EXPAND_SZ) may be set:
- lib-$] version-specific path to add to @INC
- lib path to add to @INC
- sitelib-$] version-specific path to add to @INC
- sitelib path to add to @INC
+ lib-$] version-specific standard library path to add to @INC
+ lib standard library path to add to @INC
+ sitelib-$] version-specific site library path to add to @INC
+ sitelib site library path to add to @INC
+ vendorlib-$] version-specific vendor library path to add to @INC
+ vendorlib vendor library path to add to @INC
PERL* fallback for all %ENV lookups that begin with "PERL"
Note the C<$]> in the above is not literal. Substitute whatever version
-of perl you want to honor that entry, e.g. C<5.00502>. Paths must be
+of perl you want to honor that entry, e.g. C<5.6.0>. Paths must be
separated with semicolons, as usual on win32.
=item File Globbing
-By default, perl spawns an external program to do file globbing.
-The install process installs both a perlglob.exe and a perlglob.bat
-that perl can use for this purpose. Note that with the default
-installation, perlglob.exe will be found by the system before
-perlglob.bat.
-
-perlglob.exe relies on the argv expansion done by the C Runtime of
-the particular compiler you used, and therefore behaves very
-differently depending on the Runtime used to build it. To preserve
-compatiblity, perlglob.bat (a perl script that can be used portably)
-is installed. Besides being portable, perlglob.bat also offers
-enhanced globbing functionality.
-
-If you want perl to use perlglob.bat instead of perlglob.exe, just
-delete perlglob.exe from the install location (or move it somewhere
-perl cannot find). Using File::DosGlob.pm (which implements the core
-functionality of perlglob.bat) to override the internal CORE::glob()
-works about 10 times faster than spawing perlglob.exe, and you should
-take this approach when writing new modules. See File::DosGlob for
+By default, perl handles file globbing using the File::Glob extension,
+which provides portable globbing.
+
+If you want perl to use globbing that emulates the quirks of DOS
+filename conventions, you might want to consider using File::DosGlob
+to override the internal glob() implementation. See L<File::DosGlob> for
details.
=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
+with what Windows offers by way of a command shell.
+
+The crucial thing to understand about the Windows environment is that
+the command line you type in is processed twice before Perl sees it.
+First, your command shell (usually CMD.EXE on Windows NT, and
+COMMAND.COM on Windows 9x) preprocesses the command line, to handle
+redirection, environment variable expansion, and location of the
+executable to run. Then, the perl executable splits the remaining
+command line into individual arguments, using the C runtime library
+upon which Perl was built.
+
+It is particularly important to note that neither the shell nor the C
+runtime do any wildcard expansions of command-line arguments (so
+wildcards need not be quoted). Also, the quoting behaviours of the
+shell and the C runtime are rudimentary at best (and may, if you are
+using a non-standard shell, be inconsistent). The only (useful) quote
+character is the double quote ("). It can be used to protect spaces
+and other special characters in arguments.
+
+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).
+based on experiments: The C runtime breaks arguments at spaces and
+passes them to programs in argc/argv. Double quotes 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 C runtime.
+
+The file redirection characters "<", ">", and "|" can be quoted by
+double quotes (although there are suggestions that this may not always
+be true). Single quotes are not treated as quotes by the shell or
+the C runtime, they 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, but this appears
+to be a shell feature, and the caret is not stripped from the command
+line, so Perl still sees it (and the C runtime phase does not treat
+the caret as a quote character).
Here are some examples of usage of the "cmd" shell:
perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> blurch | less
-Discovering the usefulness of the "command.com" shell on Windows95
+Discovering the usefulness of the "command.com" shell on Windows 9x
is left as an exercise to the reader :)
+One particularly pernicious problem with the 4NT command shell for
+Windows NT is that it (nearly) always treats a % character as indicating
+that environment variable expansion is needed. Under this shell, it is
+therefore important to always double any % characters which you want
+Perl to see (for example, for hash variables), even when they are
+quoted.
+
=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.
+Look in http://www.cpan.org/ for more information on CPAN.
+
+Note that not all of the extensions available from CPAN may work
+in the Win32 environment; you should check the information at
+http://testers.cpan.org/ before investing too much effort into
+porting modules that don't readily build.
Most extensions (whether they require a C compiler or not) can
be built, tested and installed with the standard mantra:
where $MAKE is whatever 'make' program you have configured perl to
use. Use "perl -V:make" to find out what this is. Some extensions
-may not provide a testsuite (so "$MAKE test" may not do anything, or
+may not provide a testsuite (so "$MAKE test" may not do anything or
fail), but most serious ones do.
It is important that you use a supported 'make' program, and
ensure Config.pm knows about it. If you don't have nmake, you can
-either get dmake from the location mentioned earlier, or get an
+either get dmake from the location mentioned earlier or get an
old version of nmake reportedly available from:
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/nmake15.exe
Another option is to use the make written in Perl, available from
-CPAN:
+CPAN.
- http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/id/NI-S/Make-0.03.tar.gz
+ http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Make/
+
+You may also use dmake. See L</"Make"> above on how to get it.
Note that MakeMaker actually emits makefiles with different syntax
depending on what 'make' it thinks you are using. Therefore, it is
alternate shell that *does* expand wildcards.
Instead, the following solution works rather well. The nice things
-about it: 1) you can start using it right away 2) it is more powerful,
-because it will do the right thing with a pattern like */*/*.c
-3) you can decide whether you do/don't want to use it 4) you can
-extend the method to add any customizations (or even entirely
-different kinds of wildcard expansion).
+about it are 1) you can start using it right away; 2) it is more
+powerful, because it will do the right thing with a pattern like
+*/*/*.c; 3) you can decide whether you do/don't want to use it; and
+4) you can extend the method to add any customizations (or even
+entirely different kinds of wildcard expansion).
C:\> copy con c:\perl\lib\Wild.pm
# Wild.pm - emulate shell @ARGV expansion on shells that don't
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
+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
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/libwin32-0.14.zip
+ http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/GSAR/libwin32-0.151.zip
See the README in that distribution for building and installation
instructions. Look for later versions that may be available at the
refer to all the command line arguments, so you may need to make
sure that construct works in batch files. As of this writing,
4DOS/NT users will need a "ParameterChar = *" statement in their
-4NT.INI file, or will need to execute "setdos /p*" in the 4DOS/NT
+4NT.INI file or will need to execute "setdos /p*" in the 4DOS/NT
startup file to enable this to work.
=item 3
=head1 BUGS AND CAVEATS
-An effort has been made to ensure that the DLLs produced by the two
-supported compilers are compatible with each other (despite the
-best efforts of the compiler vendors). Extension binaries produced
-by one compiler should also coexist with a perl binary built by
-a different compiler. In order to accomplish this, PERL.DLL provides
-a layer of runtime code that uses the C Runtime that perl was compiled
-with. Extensions which include "perl.h" will transparently access
-the functions in this layer, thereby ensuring that both perl and
-extensions use the same runtime functions.
-
-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<stat()> and C<lstat()> 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<fork()>,
-C<dump()>, C<chown()>, C<link()>, C<symlink()>, C<chroot()>,
-C<setpgrp()> and related security functions, C<setpriority()>,
-C<getpriority()>, C<syscall()>, C<fcntl()>, C<getpw*()>,
-C<msg*()>, C<shm*()>, C<sem*()>, C<alarm()>, C<socketpair()>,
-C<*netent()>, C<*protoent()>, C<*servent()>, C<*hostent()>,
-C<getnetby*()>.
-This list is possibly incomplete.
-
-=item *
-
-Various C<socket()> related calls are supported, but they may not
-behave as on Unix platforms.
+Norton AntiVirus interferes with the build process, particularly if
+set to "AutoProtect, All Files, when Opened". Unlike large applications
+the perl build process opens and modifies a lot of files. Having the
+the AntiVirus scan each and every one slows build the process significantly.
+Worse, with PERLIO=stdio the build process fails with peculiar messages
+as the virus checker interacts badly with miniperl.exe writing configure
+files (it seems to either catch file part written and treat it as suspicious,
+or virus checker may have it "locked" in a way which inhibits miniperl
+updating it). The build does complete with
-=item *
-
-The four-argument C<select()> call is only supported on sockets.
-
-=item *
-
-The C<ioctl()> call is only supported on sockets (where it provides the
-functionality of ioctlsocket() in the Winsock API).
-
-=item *
-
-Failure to spawn() a subprocess is indicated by setting $? to "255 << 8".
-C<$?> is set in a way compatible with Unix (i.e. the exitstatus of the
-subprocess is obtained by "$? >> 8", as described in the documentation).
-
-=item *
+ set PERLIO=perlio
-You can expect problems building modules available on CPAN if you
-build perl itself with -DUSE_THREADS. These problems should be resolved
-as we get closer to 5.005.
+but that may be just luck. Other AntiVirus software may have similar issues.
-=item *
+Some of the built-in functions do not act exactly as documented in
+L<perlfunc>, and a few are not implemented at all. To avoid
+surprises, particularly if you have had prior exposure to Perl
+in other operating environments or if you intend to write code
+that will be portable to other environments. See L<perlport>
+for a reasonably definitive list of these differences.
-C<utime()>, C<times()> and process-related functions may not
-behave as described in the documentation, and some of the
-returned values or effects may be bogus.
+Not all extensions available from CPAN may build or work properly
+in the Win32 environment. See L</"Building Extensions">.
-=item *
+Most C<socket()> related calls are supported, but they may not
+behave as on Unix platforms. See L<perlport> for the full list.
Signal handling may not behave as on Unix platforms (where it
doesn't exactly "behave", either :). For instance, calling C<die()>
variable in the handler. Using signals under this port should
currently be considered unsupported.
-=item *
-
-C<kill()> is implemented, but doesn't have the semantics of
-C<raise()>, i.e. it doesn't send a signal to the identified process
-like it does on Unix platforms. Instead it immediately calls
-C<TerminateProcess(process,signal)>. Thus the signal argument is
-used to set the exit-status of the terminated process. In particular,
-C<kill(0,$pid)> will kill the process identified by C<$pid> (unlike
-on Unix). This behavior may change in future.
-
-=item *
-
-File globbing may not behave as on Unix platforms. In particular,
-if you don't use perlglob.bat for globbing, it will understand
-wildcards only in the filename component (and not in the pathname).
-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). perlglob.exe is also dependent on
-the particular implementation of wildcard expansion in the vendor
-libraries used to build it (which varies wildly at the present time).
-Using perlglob.bat (or File::DosGlob) avoids these limitations, but
-still only provides DOS semantics (read "warts") for globbing.
-
-=back
-
Please send detailed descriptions of any problems and solutions that
you may find to <F<perlbug@perl.com>>, along with the output produced
by C<perl -V>.
=over 4
-Gary Ng E<lt>71564.1743@CompuServe.COME<gt>
+=item Gary Ng E<lt>71564.1743@CompuServe.COME<gt>
-Gurusamy Sarathy E<lt>gsar@activestate.comE<gt>
+=item Gurusamy Sarathy E<lt>gsar@activestate.comE<gt>
-Nick Ing-Simmons E<lt>nick@ni-s.u-net.comE<gt>
+=item Nick Ing-Simmons E<lt>nick@ing-simmons.netE<gt>
=back
Win9x support was added in 5.6 (Benjamin Stuhl).
-Last updated: 28 December 1999
+Last updated: 1 April 2001
=cut
https://perl5.git.perl.org / perl5.git / blobdiff