=head1 SYNOPSIS
-These are instructions for building Perl under Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP
-on the Intel x86 and Itanium architectures.
+These are instructions for building Perl under Windows 2000 and later.
=head1 DESCRIPTION
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.cygwin 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.
+You may also want to look at one other option for building a perl that
+will work on Windows: the README.cygwin file, which give a different
+set of rules to build a perl for Windows. This method 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 that file.
This set of instructions is meant to describe a so-called "native"
-port of Perl to Win32 platforms. This includes both 32-bit and
+port of Perl to the Windows platform. This includes both 32-bit and
64-bit Windows operating systems. The resulting Perl requires no
additional software to run (other than what came with your operating
system). Currently, this port is capable of using one of the
following compilers on the Intel x86 architecture:
- Borland C++ version 5.02 or later
- Microsoft Visual C++ version 2.0 or later
- MinGW with gcc gcc version 2.95.2 or later
- Gcc by mingw.org gcc version 2.95.2 or later
+ Microsoft Visual C++ version 6.0 or later
+ Intel C++ Compiler (experimental)
+ Gcc by mingw.org gcc version 3.4.5 or later
Gcc by mingw-w64.sf.net gcc version 4.4.3 or later
Note that the last two of these are actually competing projects both
delivering complete gcc toolchain for MS Windows:
-- http://mingw.org - delivers gcc toolchain targeting 32-bit Windows
- platform.
- Use version 3.2.x or later for the best results with this compiler.
-- http://mingw-w64.sf.net - delivers gcc toolchain targeting both 64-bit
- Windows and 32-bit Windows platforms (despite the project name "mingw-w64"
- they are not only 64-bit oriented). They deliver the native gcc compilers
- + cross-compilers that are also supported by perl's makefile.
-
-The Borland C++ and Microsoft Visual C++ compilers are also now being given
-away free. The Borland compiler is available as "Borland C++ Compiler Free
-Command Line Tools" and is the same compiler that ships with the full
-"Borland C++ Builder" product. The Microsoft compiler is available as
-"Visual C++ Toolkit 2003" or "Visual C++ 2005/2008 Express Edition" (and also
-as part of the ".NET Framework SDK") and is the same compiler that ships with
-"Visual C++ .NET 2003 Professional" or "Visual C++ 2005/2008 Professional"
-respectively.
+
+=over 4
+
+=item L<http://mingw.org>
+
+Delivers gcc toolchain targeting 32-bit Windows platform.
+
+=item L<http://mingw-w64.sf.net>
+
+Delivers gcc toolchain targeting both 64-bit Windows and 32-bit Windows
+platforms (despite the project name "mingw-w64" they are not only 64-bit
+oriented). They deliver the native gcc compilers and cross-compilers
+that are also supported by perl's makefile.
+
+=back
+
+The Microsoft Visual C++ compilers are also now being given away free. They are
+available as "Visual C++ Toolkit 2003" or "Visual C++ 2005-2013 Express
+Edition" (and also as part of the ".NET Framework SDK") and are the same
+compilers that ship with "Visual C++ .NET 2003 Professional" or "Visual C++
+2005-2013 Professional" respectively.
This port can also be built on IA64/AMD64 using:
Microsoft Platform SDK Nov 2001 (64-bit compiler and tools)
MinGW64 compiler (gcc version 4.4.3 or later)
-The MS Platform SDK can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/.
-The MinGW64 compiler is available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw-w64.
+The Windows SDK can be downloaded from L<http://www.microsoft.com/>.
+The MinGW64 compiler is available at L<http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw-w64>.
The latter is actually a cross-compiler targeting Win64. There's also a trimmed
down compiler (no java, or gfortran) suitable for building perl available at:
-http://strawberryperl.com/package/kmx/64_gcctoolchain/mingw64-w64-20100123-kmx-v2.zip
+L<http://strawberryperl.com/package/kmx/64_gcctoolchain/>
NOTE: If you're using a 32-bit compiler to build perl on a 64-bit Windows
operating system, then you should set the WIN64 environment variable to "undef".
This port fully 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 for Perl on Win32> below for general hints about this.
+See L<Usage Hints for Perl on Windows> below for general hints about this.
-=head2 Setting Up Perl on Win32
+=head2 Setting Up Perl on Windows
=over 4
=item Make
You need a "make" program to build the sources. If you are using
-Visual C++ or the Platform SDK tools under Windows NT/2000/XP, nmake
-will work. All other builds need dmake.
+Visual C++ or the Windows SDK tools, nmake will work. Builds using
+the gcc 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://search.cpan.org/dist/dmake/
+L<http://search.cpan.org/dist/dmake/>
Fetch and install dmake somewhere on your path.
-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
+Use the default "cmd" shell that comes with Windows. 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 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/2000/XP, using the cmd shell.
-
Make sure the path to the build directory does not contain spaces. The
build usually works in this circumstance, but some tests will fail.
-=item Borland C++
-
-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.)
-
-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
-like C:\MSDEV4.2\BIN or C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\Bin.
-This will set your build environment.
+The nmake that comes with Visual C++ will suffice for building. Visual C
+requires that certain things be set up in the console before Visual C will
+sucessfully run. To make a console box be able to run the C compiler, you will
+need to beforehand, run the C<vcvars32.bat> file to compile for x86-32 and for
+x86-64 C<vcvarsall.bat x64> or C<vcvarsamd64.bat>. On a typical install of a
+Microsoft C compiler product, these batch files will already be in your C<PATH>
+environment variable so you may just type them without an absolute path into
+your console. If you need to find the absolute path to the batch file, it is
+usually found somewhere like C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\Bin.
+With some newer Micrsoft C products (released after ~2004), the installer will
+put a shortcut in the start menu to launch a new console window with the
+console already set up for your target architecture (x86-32 or x86-64 or IA64).
+With the newer compilers, you may also use the older batch files if you choose
+so.
You can also use dmake to build using Visual C++; provided, however,
you set OSRELEASE to "microsft" (or whatever the directory name
latter step is only essential if you want to use dmake as your default
make for building extensions using MakeMaker.
-=item Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition
+=item Microsoft Visual C++ 2008-2013 Express Edition
-This free version of Visual C++ 2008 Professional contains the same compiler
-and linker that ship with the full version, and also contains everything
-necessary to build Perl, rather than requiring a separate download of the
-Platform SDK like previous versions did.
+These free versions of Visual C++ 2008-2013 Professional contain the same
+compilers and linkers that ship with the full versions, and also contain
+everything necessary to build Perl, rather than requiring a separate download
+of the Windows SDK like previous versions did.
-This package can be downloaded by searching for "Visual Studio 2008 Express
-Edition" in the Download Center at
-http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en. (Providing exact
+These packages can be downloaded by searching in the Download Center at
+L<http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en>. (Providing exact
links to these packages has proven a pointless task because the links keep on
changing so often.)
-Install Visual C++ 2008, then setup your environment using
+Install Visual C++ 2008-2013 Express, then setup your environment using, e.g.
- C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools\vsvars32.bat
+ C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\Tools\vsvars32.bat
(assuming the default installation location was chosen).
Perl should now build using the win32/Makefile. You will need to edit that
-file to set
-
- CCTYPE = MSVC90FREE
-
-first.
+file to set CCTYPE to one of MSVC90FREE-MSVC120FREE first.
=item Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition
and linker that ship with the full version, but doesn't contain everything
necessary to build Perl.
-You will also need to download the "Platform SDK" (the "Core SDK" and "MDAC
+You will also need to download the "Windows SDK" (the "Core SDK" and "MDAC
SDK" components are required) for more header files and libraries.
These packages can both be downloaded by searching in the Download Center at
-http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en. (Providing exact
+L<http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en>. (Providing exact
links to these packages has proven a pointless task because the links keep on
changing so often.)
-Try to obtain the latest version of the Platform SDK. Sometimes these packages
+Try to obtain the latest version of the Windows SDK. Sometimes these packages
contain a particular Windows OS version in their name, but actually work on
other OS versions too. For example, the "Windows Server 2003 R2 Platform SDK"
also runs on Windows XP SP2 and Windows 2000.
-According to the download pages these packages are only supported on Windows
-2000/XP/2003, so trying to use these tools on Windows 95/98/ME and even Windows
-NT probably won't work.
-
Install Visual C++ 2005 first, then the Platform SDK. Setup your environment
as follows (assuming default installation locations were chosen):
installed separately, but is included in the "Visual C++ Toolkit 2003" anyway.
These packages can all be downloaded by searching in the Download Center at
-http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en. (Providing exact
+L<http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en>. (Providing exact
links to these packages has proven a pointless task because the links keep on
changing so often.)
-Try to obtain the latest version of the Platform SDK. Sometimes these packages
+Try to obtain the latest version of the Windows SDK. Sometimes these packages
contain a particular Windows OS version in their name, but actually work on
other OS versions too. For example, the "Windows Server 2003 R2 Platform SDK"
also runs on Windows XP SP2 and Windows 2000.
-According to the download pages these packages are only supported on Windows
-2000/XP/2003, so trying to use these tools on Windows 95/98/ME and even Windows
-NT probably won't work.
-
Install the Toolkit first, then the Platform SDK, then the .NET Framework SDK.
Setup your environment as follows (assuming default installation locations
were chosen):
=item MinGW release 3 with gcc
-The latest release of MinGW at the time of writing is 3.1.0, which contains
-gcc-3.2.3. It can be downloaded here:
+Perl can be compiled with gcc from MinGW release 3 and later (using gcc 3.4.5
+and later). It can be downloaded here:
- http://www.mingw.org/
-
-Perl also compiles with earlier releases of gcc (2.95.2 and up). See below
-for notes about using earlier versions of MinGW/gcc.
-
-And perl also compiles with gcc-4.3.0 and up, and perhaps even some of the
-earlier 4.x.x versions.
+L<http://www.mingw.org/>
You also need dmake. See L</"Make"> above on how to get it.
-=item MinGW release 1 with gcc
-
-The MinGW-1.1 bundle contains gcc-2.95.3.
-
-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).
+=item Intel C++ Compiler
-There are a couple of problems with the version of gcc-2.95.2-msvcrt.exe
-released 7 November 1999:
+Experimental support for using Intel C++ Compiler has been added. Edit
+win32/Makefile and pick the correct CCTYPE for the Visual C that Intel C was
+installed into. Also uncomment __ICC to enable Intel C on Visual C support.
+To set up the build enviroment, from the Start Menu run
+IA-32 Visual Studio 20__ mode or Intel 64 Visual Studio 20__ mode as
+appropriate. Then run nmake as usually in that prompt box.
-=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
+Only Intel C++ Compiler v12.1 has been tested. Other versions probably will
+work.
=back
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++ or the Platform SDK, and
+versions of nmake that come with Visual C++ or the Windows SDK, and
a dmake "makefile.mk" that will work for all supported compilers. The
defaults in the dmake makefile are setup to build using MinGW/gcc.
than the one being tested.
You will have to make sure that CCTYPE is set correctly and that
-CCHOME points to wherever you installed your compiler. If building with
-gcc-4.x.x, you'll also need to uncomment the assignment to GCC_4XX and
-uncomment the assignment to the appropriate GCCHELPERDLL in the makefile.mk.
+CCHOME points to wherever you installed your compiler.
If building with the cross-compiler provided by
mingw-w64.sourceforge.net you'll need to uncomment the line that sets
Makefile if you're using VC++ 6.0 without the latest service pack and
the linker reports an internal error.
-If you are using VC++ 4.2 or earlier then you'll have to change the /EHsc
-option in the CXX_FLAG macro to the equivalent /GX option.
-
-If you have either the source or a library that contains des_fcrypt(),
-enable the appropriate option in the makefile. A ready-to-use version
-of fcrypt.c, based on the version originally written by Eric Young at
-ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/crypt/mirrors/dsi/libdes/, is bundled with the
-distribution and CRYPT_SRC is set to use it.
-Alternatively, if you have built a library that contains des_fcrypt(),
-you can set CRYPT_LIB to point to the library name.
-Perl will also build without des_fcrypt(), but the crypt() builtin will
-fail at run time.
-
If you want build some core extensions statically into perl's dll, specify
them in the STATIC_EXT macro.
+NOTE: The USE_64_BIT_INT build option is not supported with the 32-bit
+Visual C++ 6.0 compiler.
+
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,
-perl512.dll at the perl toplevel, and various other extension dll's
+perl521.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.
+If you are advanced enough with building C code, here is a suggestion to speed
+up building perl, and the later C<make test>. Try to keep your PATH enviromental
+variable with the least number of folders possible (remember to keep your C
+compiler's folders there). C<C:\WINDOWS\system32> or C<C:\WINNT\system32>
+depending on your OS version should be first folder in PATH, since "cmd.exe"
+is the most commonly launched program during the build and later testing.
+
=back
-=head2 Testing Perl on Win32
+=head2 Testing Perl on Windows
Type "dmake test" (or "nmake test"). This will run most of the tests from
the testsuite (many tests will be skipped).
-There should be no test failures when running under Windows NT/2000/XP.
-Many tests I<will> fail under Windows 9x due to the inferior command shell.
+There should be no test failures.
+
+If you build with Visual C++ 2013 then three tests currently may fail with
+Daylight Saving Time related problems: F<t/io/fs.t>,
+F<cpan/HTTP-Tiny/t/110_mirror.t> and F<lib/File.Copy.t>. The failures are
+caused by bugs in the CRT in VC++ 2013 which will be fixed in future releases
+of VC++, as explained by Microsoft here:
+L<https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/811534/utime-sometimes-fails-to-set-the-correct-file-times-in-visual-c-2013>. In the meantime,
+if you need fixed C<stat> and C<utime> functions then have a look at the
+CPAN distribution Win32::UTCFileTime.
+
+If you build with certain versions (e.g. 4.8.1) of gcc from www.mingw.org then
+F<ext/POSIX/t/time.t> may fail test 17 due to a known bug in those gcc builds:
+see L<http://sourceforge.net/p/mingw/bugs/2152/>.
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
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.
-If you're using the Borland compiler, you may see a failure in op/taint.t
-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.
-
-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.
-
-If you run the tests on a FAT partition, you may see some failures for
-C<link()> related tests (I<op/write.t>, I<op/stat.t> ...). Testing on
-NTFS avoids these errors.
-
Furthermore, you should make sure that during C<make test> you do not
have any GNU tool packages in your path: some toolkits like Unixutils
include some tools (C<type> for instance) which override the Windows
Please report any other failures as described under L<BUGS AND CAVEATS>.
-=head2 Installation of Perl on Win32
+=head2 Installation of Perl on Windows
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
set PATH=c:\perl\5.6.0\bin;c:\perl\5.6.0\bin\MSWin32-x86;%PATH%
-=head2 Usage Hints for Perl on Win32
+=head2 Usage Hints for Perl on Windows
=over 4
Note the C<$]> in the above is not literal. Substitute whatever version
of perl you want to honor that entry, e.g. C<5.6.0>. Paths must be
-separated with semicolons, as usual on win32.
+separated with semicolons, as usual on Windows.
=item File Globbing
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.
+First, your command shell (usually CMD.EXE) 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
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 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 Windows documentation describes the shell parsing rules here:
+L<http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/cmd.mspx?mfr=true>
+and the C runtime parsing rules here:
+L<http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/17w5ykft%28v=VS.100%29.aspx>.
+
+Here are some further observations 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 "E<lt>", "E<gt>", and "|" can be quoted by
double quotes (although there are suggestions that this may not always
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
+Windows 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
The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) offers a wealth
of extensions, some of which require a C compiler to build.
-Look in http://www.cpan.org/ for more information on CPAN.
+Look in L<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
+in the Windows environment; you should check the information at
+L<http://www.cpantesters.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
either get dmake from the location mentioned earlier or get an
old version of nmake reportedly available from:
- http://download.microsoft.com/download/vc15/Patch/1.52/W95/EN-US/nmake15.exe
+L<http://download.microsoft.com/download/vc15/Patch/1.52/W95/EN-US/nmake15.exe>
Another option is to use the make written in Perl, available from
CPAN.
- http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Make/
+L<http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Make/>
You may also use dmake. See L</"Make"> above on how to get it.
If a module implements XSUBs, you will need one of the supported
C compilers. You must make sure you have set up the environment for
-the compiler for command-line compilation.
+the compiler for command-line compilation before running C<perl Makefile.PL>
+or any invocation of make.
If a module does not build for some reason, look carefully for
why it failed, and report problems to the module author. If
what you want if you use a shell that does that for you. The expansion
done is also somewhat less powerful than the approach suggested above.
-=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
-ActiveState port, there is a bundle of Win32 extensions that contains
-all of the ActiveState extensions and several other Win32 extensions from
-CPAN in source form, along with many added bugfixes, and with MakeMaker
-support. The latest version of this bundle is available at:
-
- http://search.cpan.org/dist/libwin32/
-
-See the README in that distribution for building and installation
-instructions.
-
=item Notes on 64-bit Windows
Windows .NET Server supports the LLP64 data model on the Intel Itanium
Perl scripts on UNIX use the "#!" (a.k.a "shebang") line to
indicate to the OS that it should execute the file using perl.
-Win32 has no comparable means to indicate arbitrary files are
+Windows has no comparable means to indicate arbitrary files are
executables.
Instead, all available methods to execute plain text files on
-Win32 rely on the file "extension". There are three methods
+Windows rely on the file "extension". There are three methods
to use this to execute perl scripts:
=over 8
=item 1
-There is a facility called "file extension associations" that will
-work in Windows NT 4.0. This can be manipulated via the two
-commands "assoc" and "ftype" that come standard with Windows NT
-4.0. Type "ftype /?" for a complete example of how to set this
-up for perl scripts (Say what? You thought Windows NT wasn't
-perl-ready? :).
+There is a facility called "file extension associations". This can be
+manipulated via the two commands "assoc" and "ftype" that come
+standard with Windows. Type "ftype /?" for a complete example of how
+to set this up for perl scripts (Say what? You thought Windows
+wasn't perl-ready? :).
=item 2
A script called "runperl.bat" is available that can be copied
to any filename (along with the .bat suffix). For example,
if you call it "foo.bat", it will run the file "foo" when it is
-executed. Since you can run batch files on Win32 platforms simply
+executed. Since you can run batch files on Windows platforms simply
by typing the name (without the extension), this effectively
runs the file "foo", when you type either "foo" or "foo.bat".
With this method, "foo.bat" can even be in a different location
C<perldoc> is also a useful tool for browsing information contained
in the documentation, especially in conjunction with a pager
-like C<less> (recent versions of which have Win32 support). You may
+like C<less> (recent versions of which have Windows 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".
window will go away. This isn't the case. If you want to start a copy
of C<perl> without opening a command-line window, use the C<wperl>
executable built during the installation process. Usage is exactly
-the same as normal C<perl> on Win32, except that options like C<-h>
+the same as normal C<perl> on Windows, except that options like C<-h>
don't work (since they need a command-line window to print to).
If you find bugs in perl, you can run C<perlbug> to create a
but that may be just luck. Other AntiVirus software may have similar issues.
+A git GUI shell extension for Windows such as TortoiseGit will cause the build
+and later C<make test> to run much slower since every file is checked for its
+git status as soon as it is created and/or modified. TortoiseGit doesn't cause
+any test failures or build problems unlike the antivirus software described
+above, but it does cause similar slowness. It is suggested to use Task Manager
+to look for background processes which use high CPU amounts during the building
+process.
+
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
for a reasonably definitive list of these differences.
Not all extensions available from CPAN may build or work properly
-in the Win32 environment. See L</"Building Extensions">.
+in the Windows environment. See L</"Building Extensions">.
Most C<socket()> related calls are supported, but they may not
behave as on Unix platforms. See L<perlport> for the full list.
-Perl requires Winsock2 to be installed on the system. If you're
-running Win95, you can download Winsock upgrade from here:
-
-http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/downloads/contents/WUAdminTools/S_WUNetworkingTools/W95Sockets2/Default.asp
-
-Later OS versions already include Winsock2 support.
Signal handling may not behave as on Unix platforms (where it
doesn't exactly "behave", either :). For instance, calling C<die()>
or C<exit()> from signal handlers will cause an exception, since most
-implementations of C<signal()> on Win32 are severely crippled.
+implementations of C<signal()> on Windows are severely crippled.
Thus, signals may work only for simple things like setting a flag
variable in the handler. Using signals under this port should
currently be considered unsupported.
=item Jan Dubois E<lt>jand@activestate.comE<gt>
-=item Steve Hay E<lt>steve.hay@uk.radan.comE<gt>
+=item Steve Hay E<lt>steve.m.hay@googlemail.comE<gt>
=back
at the time. Various people have made numerous and sundry hacks
since then.
-Borland support was added in 5.004_01 (Gurusamy Sarathy).
-
GCC/mingw32 support was added in 5.005 (Nick Ing-Simmons).
Support for PERL_OBJECT was added in 5.005 (ActiveState Tool Corp).
Support for 64-bit Windows added in 5.8 (ActiveState Corp).
-Last updated: 29 August 2007
+Last updated: 07 October 2014
=cut
https://perl5.git.perl.org / perl5.git / blobdiff