Add a test for [perl #17753].
[p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git] / README.win32
CommitLineData
9baed986 1If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you
2see. It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is
3specially designed to be readable as is.
4
5=head1 NAME
6
7perlwin32 - Perl under Windows
8
9=head1 SYNOPSIS
10
11These are instructions for building Perl under Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP
12on the Intel x86 and Itanium architectures.
13
14=head1 DESCRIPTION
15
16Before you start, you should glance through the README file
17found in the top-level directory to which the Perl distribution
18was extracted. Make sure you read and understand the terms under
19which this software is being distributed.
20
21Also make sure you read L<BUGS AND CAVEATS> below for the
22known limitations of this port.
23
24The INSTALL file in the perl top-level has much information that is
25only relevant to people building Perl on Unix-like systems. In
26particular, you can safely ignore any information that talks about
27"Configure".
28
29You may also want to look at two other options for building
30a perl that will work on Windows NT: the README.cygwin and
31README.os2 files, each of which give a different set of rules to
32build a Perl that will work on Win32 platforms. Those two methods
33will probably enable you to build a more Unix-compatible perl, but
34you will also need to download and use various other build-time and
35run-time support software described in those files.
36
37This set of instructions is meant to describe a so-called "native"
38port of Perl to Win32 platforms. This includes both 32-bit and
3964-bit Windows operating systems. The resulting Perl requires no
40additional software to run (other than what came with your operating
41system). Currently, this port is capable of using one of the
42following compilers on the Intel x86 architecture:
43
44 Borland C++ version 5.02 or later
45 Microsoft Visual C++ version 4.2 or later
46 Mingw32 with GCC version 2.95.2 or better
47
48The last of these is a high quality freeware compiler. Support
49for it is still experimental. (Older versions of GCC are known
50not to work.)
51
52This port can also be built on the Intel IA64 using:
53
54 Microsoft Platform SDK Nov 2001 (64-bit compiler and tools)
55
56The MS Platform SDK can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/.
57
58This port fully supports MakeMaker (the set of modules that
59is used to build extensions to perl). Therefore, you should be
60able to build and install most extensions found in the CPAN sites.
61See L<Usage Hints for Perl on Win32> below for general hints about this.
62
63=head2 Setting Up Perl on Win32
64
65=over 4
66
67=item Make
68
69You need a "make" program to build the sources. If you are using
70Visual C++ or the Platform SDK tools under Windows NT/2000/XP, nmake
71will work. All other builds need dmake.
72
73dmake is a freely available make that has very nice macro features
74and parallelability.
75
76A port of dmake for Windows is available from:
77
78 http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/GSAR/dmake-4.1pl1-win32.zip
79
80(This is a fixed version of the original dmake sources obtained from
81http://www.wticorp.com/ As of version 4.1PL1, the original
82sources did not build as shipped and had various other problems.
83A patch is included in the above fixed version.)
84
85Fetch and install dmake somewhere on your path (follow the instructions
86in the README.NOW file).
87
88There exists a minor coexistence problem with dmake and Borland C++
89compilers. Namely, if a distribution has C files named with mixed
90case letters, they will be compiled into appropriate .obj-files named
91with all lowercase letters, and every time dmake is invoked
92to bring files up to date, it will try to recompile such files again.
93For example, Tk distribution has a lot of such files, resulting in
94needless recompiles every time dmake is invoked. To avoid this, you
95may use the script "sync_ext.pl" after a successful build. It is
96available in the win32 subdirectory of the Perl source distribution.
97
98=item Command Shell
99
100Use the default "cmd" shell that comes with NT. Some versions of the
101popular 4DOS/NT shell have incompatibilities that may cause you trouble.
102If the build fails under that shell, try building again with the cmd
103shell.
104
105The nmake Makefile also has known incompatibilities with the
106"command.com" shell that comes with Windows 9x. You will need to
107use dmake and makefile.mk to build under Windows 9x.
108
109The surest way to build it is on Windows NT/2000/XP, using the cmd shell.
110
111Make sure the path to the build directory does not contain spaces. The
112build usually works in this circumstance, but some tests will fail.
113
114=item Borland C++
115
116If you are using the Borland compiler, you will need dmake.
117(The make that Borland supplies is seriously crippled and will not
118work for MakeMaker builds.)
119
120See L</"Make"> above.
121
122=item Microsoft Visual C++
123
124The nmake that comes with Visual C++ will suffice for building.
125You will need to run the VCVARS32.BAT file, usually found somewhere
126like C:\MSDEV4.2\BIN. This will set your build environment.
127
128You can also use dmake to build using Visual C++; provided, however,
129you set OSRELEASE to "microsft" (or whatever the directory name
130under which the Visual C dmake configuration lives) in your environment
131and edit win32/config.vc to change "make=nmake" into "make=dmake". The
132latter step is only essential if you want to use dmake as your default
133make for building extensions using MakeMaker.
134
135=item Microsoft Platform SDK 64-bit Compiler
136
137The nmake that comes with the Platform SDK will suffice for building
138Perl. Make sure you are building within one of the "Build Environment"
139shells available after you install the Platform SDK from the Start Menu.
140
7c5b6093 141=item MinGW32 with gcc
9baed986 142
7c5b6093 143The latest release of MinGW (at the time of writing) is 2.0.0, which comes
144with gcc-3.2, and can be downloaded here:
9baed986 145
7c5b6093 146 http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw
147
148Perl compiles with earlier releases of gcc (2.95 and up) that can be
149downloaded from the same place. If you use gcc-3.2, comment out the
150line:
151
152 USE_GCC_V3_2 *= define
153
154in win32\makefile.mk
9baed986 155
156You also need dmake. See L</"Make"> above on how to get it.
157
7c5b6093 158=item MinGW release 1
159
160The MinGW-1.1 bundle comes with gcc-2.95.3.
9baed986 161
162Make sure you install the binaries that work with MSVCRT.DLL as indicated
163in the README for the GCC bundle. You may need to set up a few environment
164variables (usually ran from a batch file).
165
166There are a couple of problems with the version of gcc-2.95.2-msvcrt.exe
167released 7 November 1999:
168
169=over
170
171=item *
172
173It left out a fix for certain command line quotes. To fix this, be sure
174to download and install the file fixes/quote-fix-msvcrt.exe from the above
175ftp location.
176
177=item *
178
179The definition of the fpos_t type in stdio.h may be wrong. If your
180stdio.h has this problem, you will see an exception when running the
181test t/lib/io_xs.t. To fix this, change the typedef for fpos_t from
182"long" to "long long" in the file i386-mingw32msvc/include/stdio.h,
183and rebuild.
184
185=back
186
187A potentially simpler to install (but probably soon-to-be-outdated) bundle
188of the above package with the mentioned fixes already applied is available
189here:
190
191 http://downloads.ActiveState.com/pub/staff/gsar/gcc-2.95.2-msvcrt.zip
192 ftp://ftp.ActiveState.com/pub/staff/gsar/gcc-2.95.2-msvcrt.zip
193
194=back
195
196=head2 Building
197
198=over 4
199
200=item *
201
202Make sure you are in the "win32" subdirectory under the perl toplevel.
203This directory contains a "Makefile" that will work with
204versions of nmake that come with Visual C++ or the Platform SDK, and
205a dmake "makefile.mk" that will work for all supported compilers. The
206defaults in the dmake makefile are setup to build using Microsoft Visual
207C++ 6.0 or newer.
208
209=item *
210
211Edit the makefile.mk (or Makefile, if you're using nmake) and change
212the values of INST_DRV and INST_TOP. You can also enable various
213build flags. These are explained in the makefiles.
214
215You will have to make sure that CCTYPE is set correctly and that
216CCHOME points to wherever you installed your compiler.
217
218The default value for CCHOME in the makefiles for Visual C++
219may not be correct for some versions. Make sure the default exists
220and is valid.
221
222If you have either the source or a library that contains des_fcrypt(),
223enable the appropriate option in the makefile. des_fcrypt() is not
224bundled with the distribution due to US Government restrictions
225on the export of cryptographic software. Nevertheless, this routine
226is part of the "libdes" library (written by Eric Young) which is widely
227available worldwide, usually along with SSLeay ( for example,
228ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/crypt/mirrors/dsi/libdes/ ). Set CRYPT_SRC to the
229name of the file that implements des_fcrypt(). Alternatively, if
230you have built a library that contains des_fcrypt(), you can set
231CRYPT_LIB to point to the library name. The location above contains
232many versions of the "libdes" library, all with slightly different
233implementations of des_fcrypt(). Older versions have a single,
234self-contained file (fcrypt.c) that implements crypt(), so they may be
235easier to use. A patch against the fcrypt.c found in libdes-3.06 is
236in des_fcrypt.patch.
237
238An easier alternative may be to get the pre-patched and ready-to-use
239fcrypt.c that can be found here:
240
241 http://downloads.ActiveState.com/pub/staff/gsar/fcrypt.c
242 ftp://ftp.ActiveState.com/pub/staff/gsar/fcrypt.c
243
244Perl will also build without des_fcrypt(), but the crypt() builtin will
245fail at run time.
246
247Be sure to read the instructions near the top of the makefiles carefully.
248
249=item *
250
251Type "dmake" (or "nmake" if you are using that make).
252
253This should build everything. Specifically, it will create perl.exe,
78a7c709 254perl59.dll at the perl toplevel, and various other extension dll's
9baed986 255under the lib\auto directory. If the build fails for any reason, make
256sure you have done the previous steps correctly.
257
258=back
259
260=head2 Testing Perl on Win32
261
262Type "dmake test" (or "nmake test"). This will run most of the tests from
263the testsuite (many tests will be skipped).
264
265There should be no test failures when running under Windows NT/2000/XP.
266Many tests I<will> fail under Windows 9x due to the inferior command shell.
267
268Some test failures may occur if you use a command shell other than the
269native "cmd.exe", or if you are building from a path that contains
270spaces. So don't do that.
271
272If you are running the tests from a emacs shell window, you may see
273failures in op/stat.t. Run "dmake test-notty" in that case.
274
275If you're using the Borland compiler, you may see a failure in op/taint.t
276arising from the inability to find the Borland Runtime DLLs on the system
277default path. You will need to copy the DLLs reported by the messages
278from where Borland chose to install it, into the Windows system directory
279(usually somewhere like C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32) and rerun the test.
280
281If you're using Borland compiler versions 5.2 and below, you may run into
282problems finding the correct header files when building extensions. For
283example, building the "Tk" extension may fail because both perl and Tk
284contain a header file called "patchlevel.h". The latest Borland compiler
285(v5.5) is free of this misbehaviour, and it even supports an
286option -VI- for backward (bugward) compatibility for using the old Borland
287search algorithm to locate header files.
288
a6a21311 289If you run the tests on a FAT partition, you may see some failures for
290C<link()> related tests (I<op/write.t>, I<op/stat.t> ...). Testing on
291NTFS avoids these errors.
292
293Furthermore, you should make sure that during C<make test> you do not
294have any GNU tool packages in your path: some toolkits like Unixutils
295include some tools (C<type> for instance) which override the Windows
296ones and makes tests fail. Remove them from your path while testing to
297avoid these errors.
298
9baed986 299Please report any other failures as described under L<BUGS AND CAVEATS>.
300
301=head2 Installation of Perl on Win32
302
303Type "dmake install" (or "nmake install"). This will put the newly
304built perl and the libraries under whatever C<INST_TOP> points to in the
305Makefile. It will also install the pod documentation under
306C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\lib\pod> and HTML versions of the same under
307C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\lib\pod\html>. To use the Perl you just installed,
308you will need to add two components to your PATH environment variable,
309C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\bin> and C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\bin\$ARCHNAME>.
310For example:
311
312 set PATH c:\perl\5.6.0\bin;c:\perl\5.6.0\bin\MSWin32-x86;%PATH%
313
314If you opt to comment out INST_VER and INST_ARCH in the makefiles, the
315installation structure is much simpler. In that case, it will be
316sufficient to add a single entry to the path, for instance:
317
318 set PATH c:\perl\bin;%PATH%
319
320=head2 Usage Hints for Perl on Win32
321
322=over 4
323
324=item Environment Variables
325
326The installation paths that you set during the build get compiled
327into perl, so you don't have to do anything additional to start
328using that perl (except add its location to your PATH variable).
329
330If you put extensions in unusual places, you can set PERL5LIB
331to a list of paths separated by semicolons where you want perl
332to look for libraries. Look for descriptions of other environment
333variables you can set in L<perlrun>.
334
335You can also control the shell that perl uses to run system() and
336backtick commands via PERL5SHELL. See L<perlrun>.
337
338Perl does not depend on the registry, but it can look up certain default
339values if you choose to put them there. Perl attempts to read entries from
340C<HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Perl> and C<HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Perl>.
341Entries in the former override entries in the latter. One or more of the
342following entries (of type REG_SZ or REG_EXPAND_SZ) may be set:
343
344 lib-$] version-specific standard library path to add to @INC
345 lib standard library path to add to @INC
346 sitelib-$] version-specific site library path to add to @INC
347 sitelib site library path to add to @INC
348 vendorlib-$] version-specific vendor library path to add to @INC
349 vendorlib vendor library path to add to @INC
350 PERL* fallback for all %ENV lookups that begin with "PERL"
351
352Note the C<$]> in the above is not literal. Substitute whatever version
353of perl you want to honor that entry, e.g. C<5.6.0>. Paths must be
354separated with semicolons, as usual on win32.
355
356=item File Globbing
357
358By default, perl handles file globbing using the File::Glob extension,
359which provides portable globbing.
360
361If you want perl to use globbing that emulates the quirks of DOS
362filename conventions, you might want to consider using File::DosGlob
363to override the internal glob() implementation. See L<File::DosGlob> for
364details.
365
366=item Using perl from the command line
367
368If you are accustomed to using perl from various command-line
369shells found in UNIX environments, you will be less than pleased
370with what Windows offers by way of a command shell.
371
372The crucial thing to understand about the Windows environment is that
373the command line you type in is processed twice before Perl sees it.
374First, your command shell (usually CMD.EXE on Windows NT, and
375COMMAND.COM on Windows 9x) preprocesses the command line, to handle
376redirection, environment variable expansion, and location of the
377executable to run. Then, the perl executable splits the remaining
378command line into individual arguments, using the C runtime library
379upon which Perl was built.
380
381It is particularly important to note that neither the shell nor the C
382runtime do any wildcard expansions of command-line arguments (so
383wildcards need not be quoted). Also, the quoting behaviours of the
384shell and the C runtime are rudimentary at best (and may, if you are
385using a non-standard shell, be inconsistent). The only (useful) quote
386character is the double quote ("). It can be used to protect spaces
387and other special characters in arguments.
388
389The Windows NT documentation has almost no description of how the
390quoting rules are implemented, but here are some general observations
391based on experiments: The C runtime breaks arguments at spaces and
392passes them to programs in argc/argv. Double quotes can be used to
393prevent arguments with spaces in them from being split up. You can
394put a double quote in an argument by escaping it with a backslash and
395enclosing the whole argument within double quotes. The backslash and
396the pair of double quotes surrounding the argument will be stripped by
397the C runtime.
398
399The file redirection characters "<", ">", and "|" can be quoted by
400double quotes (although there are suggestions that this may not always
401be true). Single quotes are not treated as quotes by the shell or
402the C runtime, they don't get stripped by the shell (just to make
403this type of quoting completely useless). The caret "^" has also
404been observed to behave as a quoting character, but this appears
405to be a shell feature, and the caret is not stripped from the command
406line, so Perl still sees it (and the C runtime phase does not treat
407the caret as a quote character).
408
409Here are some examples of usage of the "cmd" shell:
410
411This prints two doublequotes:
412
413 perl -e "print '\"\"' "
414
415This does the same:
416
417 perl -e "print \"\\\"\\\"\" "
418
419This prints "bar" and writes "foo" to the file "blurch":
420
421 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" > blurch
422
423This prints "foo" ("bar" disappears into nowhereland):
424
425 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> nul
426
427This prints "bar" and writes "foo" into the file "blurch":
428
429 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 1> blurch
430
431This pipes "foo" to the "less" pager and prints "bar" on the console:
432
433 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" | less
434
435This pipes "foo\nbar\n" to the less pager:
436
437 perl -le "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2>&1 | less
438
439This pipes "foo" to the pager and writes "bar" in the file "blurch":
440
441 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> blurch | less
442
443
444Discovering the usefulness of the "command.com" shell on Windows 9x
445is left as an exercise to the reader :)
446
447One particularly pernicious problem with the 4NT command shell for
448Windows NT is that it (nearly) always treats a % character as indicating
449that environment variable expansion is needed. Under this shell, it is
450therefore important to always double any % characters which you want
451Perl to see (for example, for hash variables), even when they are
452quoted.
453
454=item Building Extensions
455
456The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) offers a wealth
457of extensions, some of which require a C compiler to build.
458Look in http://www.cpan.org/ for more information on CPAN.
459
460Note that not all of the extensions available from CPAN may work
461in the Win32 environment; you should check the information at
462http://testers.cpan.org/ before investing too much effort into
463porting modules that don't readily build.
464
465Most extensions (whether they require a C compiler or not) can
466be built, tested and installed with the standard mantra:
467
468 perl Makefile.PL
469 $MAKE
470 $MAKE test
471 $MAKE install
472
473where $MAKE is whatever 'make' program you have configured perl to
474use. Use "perl -V:make" to find out what this is. Some extensions
475may not provide a testsuite (so "$MAKE test" may not do anything or
476fail), but most serious ones do.
477
478It is important that you use a supported 'make' program, and
479ensure Config.pm knows about it. If you don't have nmake, you can
480either get dmake from the location mentioned earlier or get an
481old version of nmake reportedly available from:
482
483 ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/nmake15.exe
484
485Another option is to use the make written in Perl, available from
486CPAN.
487
488 http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Make/
489
490You may also use dmake. See L</"Make"> above on how to get it.
491
492Note that MakeMaker actually emits makefiles with different syntax
493depending on what 'make' it thinks you are using. Therefore, it is
494important that one of the following values appears in Config.pm:
495
496 make='nmake' # MakeMaker emits nmake syntax
497 make='dmake' # MakeMaker emits dmake syntax
498 any other value # MakeMaker emits generic make syntax
499 (e.g GNU make, or Perl make)
500
501If the value doesn't match the 'make' program you want to use,
502edit Config.pm to fix it.
503
504If a module implements XSUBs, you will need one of the supported
505C compilers. You must make sure you have set up the environment for
506the compiler for command-line compilation.
507
508If a module does not build for some reason, look carefully for
509why it failed, and report problems to the module author. If
510it looks like the extension building support is at fault, report
511that with full details of how the build failed using the perlbug
512utility.
513
514=item Command-line Wildcard Expansion
515
516The default command shells on DOS descendant operating systems (such
517as they are) usually do not expand wildcard arguments supplied to
518programs. They consider it the application's job to handle that.
519This is commonly achieved by linking the application (in our case,
520perl) with startup code that the C runtime libraries usually provide.
521However, doing that results in incompatible perl versions (since the
522behavior of the argv expansion code differs depending on the
523compiler, and it is even buggy on some compilers). Besides, it may
524be a source of frustration if you use such a perl binary with an
525alternate shell that *does* expand wildcards.
526
527Instead, the following solution works rather well. The nice things
528about it are 1) you can start using it right away; 2) it is more
529powerful, because it will do the right thing with a pattern like
530*/*/*.c; 3) you can decide whether you do/don't want to use it; and
5314) you can extend the method to add any customizations (or even
532entirely different kinds of wildcard expansion).
533
534 C:\> copy con c:\perl\lib\Wild.pm
535 # Wild.pm - emulate shell @ARGV expansion on shells that don't
536 use File::DosGlob;
537 @ARGV = map {
538 my @g = File::DosGlob::glob($_) if /[*?]/;
539 @g ? @g : $_;
540 } @ARGV;
541 1;
542 ^Z
543 C:\> set PERL5OPT=-MWild
544 C:\> perl -le "for (@ARGV) { print }" */*/perl*.c
545 p4view/perl/perl.c
546 p4view/perl/perlio.c
547 p4view/perl/perly.c
548 perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
549 perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
550 perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
551 perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
552 perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
553 perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
554
555Note there are two distinct steps there: 1) You'll have to create
556Wild.pm and put it in your perl lib directory. 2) You'll need to
557set the PERL5OPT environment variable. If you want argv expansion
558to be the default, just set PERL5OPT in your default startup
559environment.
560
561If you are using the Visual C compiler, you can get the C runtime's
562command line wildcard expansion built into perl binary. The resulting
563binary will always expand unquoted command lines, which may not be
564what you want if you use a shell that does that for you. The expansion
565done is also somewhat less powerful than the approach suggested above.
566
567=item Win32 Specific Extensions
568
569A number of extensions specific to the Win32 platform are available
570from CPAN. You may find that many of these extensions are meant to
571be used under the Activeware port of Perl, which used to be the only
572native port for the Win32 platform. Since the Activeware port does not
573have adequate support for Perl's extension building tools, these
574extensions typically do not support those tools either and, therefore,
575cannot be built using the generic steps shown in the previous section.
576
577To ensure smooth transitioning of existing code that uses the
578ActiveState port, there is a bundle of Win32 extensions that contains
579all of the ActiveState extensions and most other Win32 extensions from
580CPAN in source form, along with many added bugfixes, and with MakeMaker
581support. This bundle is available at:
582
583 http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/GSAR/libwin32-0.18.zip
584
585See the README in that distribution for building and installation
586instructions. Look for later versions that may be available at the
587same location.
588
589=item Notes on 64-bit Windows
590
591Windows .NET Server supports the LLP64 data model on the Intel Itanium
592architecture.
593
594The LLP64 data model is different from the LP64 data model that is the
595norm on 64-bit Unix platforms. In the former, C<int> and C<long> are
596both 32-bit data types, while pointers are 64 bits wide. In addition,
597there is a separate 64-bit wide integral type, C<__int64>. In contrast,
598the LP64 data model that is pervasive on Unix platforms provides C<int>
599as the 32-bit type, while both the C<long> type and pointers are of
60064-bit precision. Note that both models provide for 64-bits of
601addressability.
602
60364-bit Windows running on Itanium is capable of running 32-bit x86
604binaries transparently. This means that you could use a 32-bit build
605of Perl on a 64-bit system. Given this, why would one want to build
606a 64-bit build of Perl? Here are some reasons why you would bother:
607
608=item *
609
610A 64-bit native application will run much more efficiently on
611Itanium hardware.
612
613=item *
614
615There is no 2GB limit on process size.
616
617=item *
618
619Perl automatically provides large file support when built under
62064-bit Windows.
621
622=item *
623
624Embedding Perl inside a 64-bit application.
625
626=back
627
628=head2 Running Perl Scripts
629
630Perl scripts on UNIX use the "#!" (a.k.a "shebang") line to
631indicate to the OS that it should execute the file using perl.
632Win32 has no comparable means to indicate arbitrary files are
633executables.
634
635Instead, all available methods to execute plain text files on
636Win32 rely on the file "extension". There are three methods
637to use this to execute perl scripts:
638
639=over 8
640
641=item 1
642
643There is a facility called "file extension associations" that will
644work in Windows NT 4.0. This can be manipulated via the two
645commands "assoc" and "ftype" that come standard with Windows NT
6464.0. Type "ftype /?" for a complete example of how to set this
647up for perl scripts (Say what? You thought Windows NT wasn't
648perl-ready? :).
649
650=item 2
651
652Since file associations don't work everywhere, and there are
653reportedly bugs with file associations where it does work, the
654old method of wrapping the perl script to make it look like a
655regular batch file to the OS, may be used. The install process
656makes available the "pl2bat.bat" script which can be used to wrap
657perl scripts into batch files. For example:
658
659 pl2bat foo.pl
660
661will create the file "FOO.BAT". Note "pl2bat" strips any
662.pl suffix and adds a .bat suffix to the generated file.
663
664If you use the 4DOS/NT or similar command shell, note that
665"pl2bat" uses the "%*" variable in the generated batch file to
666refer to all the command line arguments, so you may need to make
667sure that construct works in batch files. As of this writing,
6684DOS/NT users will need a "ParameterChar = *" statement in their
6694NT.INI file or will need to execute "setdos /p*" in the 4DOS/NT
670startup file to enable this to work.
671
672=item 3
673
674Using "pl2bat" has a few problems: the file name gets changed,
675so scripts that rely on C<$0> to find what they must do may not
676run properly; running "pl2bat" replicates the contents of the
677original script, and so this process can be maintenance intensive
678if the originals get updated often. A different approach that
679avoids both problems is possible.
680
681A script called "runperl.bat" is available that can be copied
682to any filename (along with the .bat suffix). For example,
683if you call it "foo.bat", it will run the file "foo" when it is
684executed. Since you can run batch files on Win32 platforms simply
685by typing the name (without the extension), this effectively
686runs the file "foo", when you type either "foo" or "foo.bat".
687With this method, "foo.bat" can even be in a different location
688than the file "foo", as long as "foo" is available somewhere on
689the PATH. If your scripts are on a filesystem that allows symbolic
690links, you can even avoid copying "runperl.bat".
691
692Here's a diversion: copy "runperl.bat" to "runperl", and type
693"runperl". Explain the observed behavior, or lack thereof. :)
694Hint: .gnidnats llits er'uoy fi ,"lrepnur" eteled :tniH
695
696=item Miscellaneous Things
697
698A full set of HTML documentation is installed, so you should be
699able to use it if you have a web browser installed on your
700system.
701
702C<perldoc> is also a useful tool for browsing information contained
703in the documentation, especially in conjunction with a pager
704like C<less> (recent versions of which have Win32 support). You may
705have to set the PAGER environment variable to use a specific pager.
706"perldoc -f foo" will print information about the perl operator
707"foo".
708
13ee867e 709One common mistake when using this port with a GUI library like C<Tk>
710is assuming that Perl's normal behavior of opening a command-line
711window will go away. This isn't the case. If you want to start a copy
712of C<perl> without opening a command-line window, use the C<wperl>
713executable built during the installation process. Usage is exactly
714the same as normal C<perl> on Win32, except that options like C<-h>
715don't work (since they need a command-line window to print to).
716
9baed986 717If you find bugs in perl, you can run C<perlbug> to create a
718bug report (you may have to send it manually if C<perlbug> cannot
719find a mailer on your system).
720
721=back
722
723=head1 BUGS AND CAVEATS
724
725Norton AntiVirus interferes with the build process, particularly if
726set to "AutoProtect, All Files, when Opened". Unlike large applications
727the perl build process opens and modifies a lot of files. Having the
728the AntiVirus scan each and every one slows build the process significantly.
729Worse, with PERLIO=stdio the build process fails with peculiar messages
730as the virus checker interacts badly with miniperl.exe writing configure
731files (it seems to either catch file part written and treat it as suspicious,
732or virus checker may have it "locked" in a way which inhibits miniperl
733updating it). The build does complete with
734
735 set PERLIO=perlio
736
737but that may be just luck. Other AntiVirus software may have similar issues.
738
739Some of the built-in functions do not act exactly as documented in
740L<perlfunc>, and a few are not implemented at all. To avoid
741surprises, particularly if you have had prior exposure to Perl
742in other operating environments or if you intend to write code
743that will be portable to other environments. See L<perlport>
744for a reasonably definitive list of these differences.
745
746Not all extensions available from CPAN may build or work properly
747in the Win32 environment. See L</"Building Extensions">.
748
749Most C<socket()> related calls are supported, but they may not
750behave as on Unix platforms. See L<perlport> for the full list.
751
752Signal handling may not behave as on Unix platforms (where it
753doesn't exactly "behave", either :). For instance, calling C<die()>
754or C<exit()> from signal handlers will cause an exception, since most
755implementations of C<signal()> on Win32 are severely crippled.
756Thus, signals may work only for simple things like setting a flag
757variable in the handler. Using signals under this port should
758currently be considered unsupported.
759
760Please send detailed descriptions of any problems and solutions that
761you may find to <F<perlbug@perl.com>>, along with the output produced
762by C<perl -V>.
763
764=head1 AUTHORS
765
766=over 4
767
768=item Gary Ng E<lt>71564.1743@CompuServe.COME<gt>
769
770=item Gurusamy Sarathy E<lt>gsar@activestate.comE<gt>
771
772=item Nick Ing-Simmons E<lt>nick@ing-simmons.netE<gt>
773
774=back
775
776This document is maintained by Gurusamy Sarathy.
777
778=head1 SEE ALSO
779
780L<perl>
781
782=head1 HISTORY
783
784This port was originally contributed by Gary Ng around 5.003_24,
785and borrowed from the Hip Communications port that was available
786at the time. Various people have made numerous and sundry hacks
787since then.
788
789Borland support was added in 5.004_01 (Gurusamy Sarathy).
790
791GCC/mingw32 support was added in 5.005 (Nick Ing-Simmons).
792
793Support for PERL_OBJECT was added in 5.005 (ActiveState Tool Corp).
794
795Support for fork() emulation was added in 5.6 (ActiveState Tool Corp).
796
797Win9x support was added in 5.6 (Benjamin Stuhl).
798
799Support for 64-bit Windows added in 5.8 (ActiveState Corp).
800
801Last updated: 20 April 2002
802
803=cut