perlwin32 - Perl under Win32
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 will not work (see below). Note this caveat is only about building perl. Once built, you should be able to use it on either Win32 platform (modulo the problems arising from the inferior command shell).
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 BUGS AND CAVEATS 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 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 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 capable of using one of the following compilers:
Borland C++ version 5.02 or later
Microsoft Visual C++ version 4.2 or later
Mingw32 with EGCS version 1.0.2
Mingw32 with GCC version 2.8.1
The last two of these are high quality freeware compilers. Support for them is still experimental.
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 Usage Hints below for general hints about this.
The surest way to build it is on WindowsNT, using the cmd shell.
A port of dmake for win32 platforms is available from:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~gsar/dmake-4.1-win32.zip
Fetch and install dmake somewhere on your path (follow the instructions in the README.NOW file).
You can also use dmake to build using Visual C++, provided: you set OSRELEASE to ``microsft'' (or whatever the directory name 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/
GCC-2.8.1 binaries are available from:
http://agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de/~janjaap/mingw32/
You only need either one of those, not both. Both bundles come with Mingw32 libraries and headers. While both of them work to build perl, the EGCS binaries are currently favored by the maintainers, since they come with more up-to-date Mingw32 libraries.
Make sure you install the binaries as indicated in the web sites above. You will need to set up a few environment variables (usually run from a batch file).
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++, 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.
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. PERL_OBJECT is not yet supported under GCC or EGCS. WARNING: Binaries built with PERL_OBJECT enabled are not compatible with binaries built without. Perl installs PERL_OBJECT binaries under a distinct architecture name, so they can coexist, though.
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 not compatible with binaries built without. Perl installs threads enabled binaries under a distinct architecture name, so they 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.
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 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 many versions of the ``libdes'' library, all with slightly different implementations of
des_fcrypt(). Older versions have a single, self-contained file (fcrypt.c) that implements
crypt(), so they may be 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.
You will also have to make sure CCHOME points to wherever you installed your compiler.
Other options are explained in the makefiles. Be sure to read the instructions carefully.
This should build everything. Specifically, it will create perl.exe, perl.dll (or perlcore.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. :)
When building using Visual
C++, a perl95.exe will also get built. This executable is only needed on Windows95, and should be used instead of perl.exe, and then only if you want sockets to work properly on Windows95. This is necessitated by a bug in the Microsoft
C Runtime that cannot be worked around in the ``normal'' perl.exe. perl95.exe gets built with its own private copy of the
C Runtime that is not accessible to extensions (which see the
DLL version of the
CRT). Be aware, therefore, that this perl95.exe will have esoteric problems with extensions like perl/Tk that themselves use the
C Runtime heavily, or want to
free() pointers
malloc()-ed by perl.
You can avoid the perl95.exe problems completely if you use Borland C++ for building perl (perl95.exe is not needed and will not be built in that case).
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).
If some tests do fail, it may be because you are using a different command shell than the native ``cmd.exe''.
If you used 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.
The Visual C runtime apparently has a bug that causes posix.t to fail one it test#2. This usually happens only if you extracted the files in text mode.
Please report any other failures as described under BUGS AND CAVEATS.
Type ``dmake install'' (or ``nmake install''). This will put the newly
built perl and the libraries under whatever INST_TOP points to in the Makefile. It will also install the pod documentation under
$INST_TOP\$VERSION\lib\pod and
HTML versions of the same under
$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,
$INST_TOP\$VERSION\bin, and $INST_TOP\$VERSION\bin\$ARCHNAME. For example:
set PATH c:\perl\5.005\bin;c:\perl\5.005\bin\MSWin32-x6;%PATH%
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 manpage.
You can also control the shell that perl uses to run
system() and backtick commands via
PERL5SHELL. See
the perlrun manpage.
Currently, Perl does not depend on the registry, but can look up values if you choose to put them there. [XXX add registry locations that perl looks at here.]
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 details.
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 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'" 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 usefulness of the ``command.com'' shell on Windows95 is left as an exercise to the reader :)
Most extensions (whether they require a C compiler or not) can be built, tested and installed with the standard mantra:
perl Makefile.PL
$MAKE
$MAKE test
$MAKE install
where $MAKE stands for
NMAKE or
DMAKE. Some extensions may not provide a testsuite (so
``$MAKE test'' may not do anything, or fail), but most serious ones do.
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.
If a module does not build for some reason, look carefully for 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.
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).
C:\> copy con c:\perl\lib\Wild.pm
# Wild.pm - emulate shell @ARGV expansion on shells that don't
use File::DosGlob;
@ARGV = map {
my @g = File::DosGlob::glob($_) if /[*?]/;
@g ? @g : $_;
} @ARGV;
1;
^Z
C:\> set PERL5OPT=-MWild
C:\> perl -le "for (@ARGV) { print }" */*/perl*.c
p4view/perl/perl.c
p4view/perl/perlio.c
p4view/perl/perly.c
perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
Note there are two distinct steps there: 1) You'll have to create Wild.pm and put it in your perl lib directory. 2) You'll need to set the PERL5OPT environment variable. If you want argv expansion to be the default, just set PERL5OPT in your default startup environment.
If you are using the Visual C compiler, you can get the C runtime's command line wildcard expansion built into perl binary. The resulting binary will always expand unquoted command lines, which may not be 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.
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 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/libwin32-0.12.zip
See the README in that distribution for building and installation instructions. Look for later versions that may be available at the same location.
Instead, all available methods to execute plain text files on Win32 rely on the file ``extension''. There are three methods to use this to execute perl scripts:
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? :).
pl2bat foo.pl
will create the file ``FOO.BAT''. Note ``pl2bat'' strips any .pl suffix and adds a .bat suffix to the generated file.
If you use the 4DOS/NT or similar command shell, note that ``pl2bat'' uses the ``%*'' variable in the generated batch file to 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 startup file to enable this to work.
$0 to find what they must do may not run properly; running ``pl2bat'' replicates the contents of the original script, and so this process can be maintenance intensive if the originals get updated often.
A different approach that avoids both problems is possible.
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 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 than the file ``foo'', as long as ``foo'' is available somewhere on the PATH. If your scripts are on a filesystem that allows symbolic links, you can even avoid copying ``runperl.bat''.
Here's a diversion: copy ``runperl.bat'' to ``runperl'', and type ``runperl''. Explain the observed behavior, or lack thereof. :) Hint: .gnidnats llits er'uoy fi ,``lrepnur'' eteled :tniH
perldoc is also a useful tool for browsing information contained in the
documentation, especially in conjunction with a pager like less (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 perlbug to create a bug report (you may have to send it manually if perlbug cannot find a mailer on your system).
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 :)
stat() and 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.
getpw*(),
msg*(), shm*(), sem*(), alarm(), socketpair(),
*netent(), *protoent(), *servent(), *hostent(),
getnetby*(). This list is possibly incomplete.
ioctlsocket() in the Winsock
API).
spawn() a subprocess is
indicated by setting $? to ``255 << 8``.
$? is set in a way compatible with Unix (i.e. the exitstatus of the subprocess
is obtained by ''$? >> 8``, as described in the documentation).
signal() on Win32 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.
raise(), i.e. it doesn't send a signal to the identified process like it does on
Unix platforms. Instead it immediately calls
TerminateProcess(process,signal). Thus the signal argument is used to set the exit-status of the terminated
process. This behavior may change in future.
Please send detailed descriptions of any problems and solutions that you
may find to <perlbug@perl.com>, along with the output produced by perl -V.
Gary Ng <71564.1743@CompuServe.COM>
Gurusamy Sarathy <gsar@umich.edu>
Nick Ing-Simmons <nick@ni-s.u-net.com>
This document is maintained by Gurusamy Sarathy.
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.
Borland support was added in 5.004_01 (Gurusamy Sarathy).
Last updated: 12 July 1998
If rather than formatting bugs, you encounter substantive content errors in these documents, such as mistakes in the explanations or code, please use the perlbug utility included with the Perl distribution.