1 If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you
2 see. It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is
3 specially designed to be readable as is.
7 perlwin32 - Perl under Win32
11 These are instructions for building Perl under Windows (9x, NT and
16 Before you start, you should glance through the README file
17 found in the top-level directory to which the Perl distribution
18 was extracted. Make sure you read and understand the terms under
19 which this software is being distributed.
21 Also make sure you read L<BUGS AND CAVEATS> below for the
22 known limitations of this port.
24 The INSTALL file in the perl top-level has much information that is
25 only relevant to people building Perl on Unix-like systems. In
26 particular, you can safely ignore any information that talks about
29 You may also want to look at two other options for building
30 a perl that will work on Windows NT: the README.cygwin and
31 README.os2 files, each of which give a different set of rules to
32 build a Perl that will work on Win32 platforms. Those two methods
33 will probably enable you to build a more Unix-compatible perl, but
34 you will also need to download and use various other build-time and
35 run-time support software described in those files.
37 This set of instructions is meant to describe a so-called "native"
38 port of Perl to Win32 platforms. The resulting Perl requires no
39 additional software to run (other than what came with your operating
40 system). Currently, this port is capable of using one of the
43 Borland C++ version 5.02 or later
44 Microsoft Visual C++ version 4.2 or later
45 Mingw32 with GCC version 2.95.2 or better
47 The last of these is a high quality freeware compiler. Support
48 for it is still experimental. (Older versions of GCC are known
51 This port currently supports MakeMaker (the set of modules that
52 is used to build extensions to perl). Therefore, you should be
53 able to build and install most extensions found in the CPAN sites.
54 See L<Usage Hints> below for general hints about this.
62 You need a "make" program to build the sources. If you are using
63 Visual C++ under Windows NT or 2000, nmake will work. All other
66 dmake is a freely available make that has very nice macro features
69 A port of dmake for Windows is available from:
71 http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/GSAR/dmake-4.1pl1-win32.zip
73 (This is a fixed version of the original dmake sources obtained from
74 http://www.wticorp.com/dmake/. As of version 4.1PL1, the original
75 sources did not build as shipped and had various other problems.
76 A patch is included in the above fixed version.)
78 Fetch and install dmake somewhere on your path (follow the instructions
79 in the README.NOW file).
83 Use the default "cmd" shell that comes with NT. Some versions of the
84 popular 4DOS/NT shell have incompatibilities that may cause you trouble.
85 If the build fails under that shell, try building again with the cmd
88 The nmake Makefile also has known incompatibilities with the
89 "command.com" shell that comes with Windows 9x. You will need to
90 use dmake and makefile.mk to build under Windows 9x.
92 The surest way to build it is on Windows NT, using the cmd shell.
94 Make sure the path to the build directory does not contain spaces. The
95 build usually works in this circumstance, but some tests will fail.
99 If you are using the Borland compiler, you will need dmake.
100 (The make that Borland supplies is seriously crippled and will not
101 work for MakeMaker builds.)
103 See L</"Make"> above.
105 =item Microsoft Visual C++
107 The nmake that comes with Visual C++ will suffice for building.
108 You will need to run the VCVARS32.BAT file, usually found somewhere
109 like C:\MSDEV4.2\BIN. This will set your build environment.
111 You can also use dmake to build using Visual C++; provided, however,
112 you set OSRELEASE to "microsft" (or whatever the directory name
113 under which the Visual C dmake configuration lives) in your environment
114 and edit win32/config.vc to change "make=nmake" into "make=dmake". The
115 latter step is only essential if you want to use dmake as your default
116 make for building extensions using MakeMaker.
118 =item Mingw32 with GCC
120 GCC-2.95.2 binaries can be downloaded from:
122 ftp://ftp.xraylith.wisc.edu/pub/khan/gnu-win32/mingw32/
124 The GCC-2.95.2 bundle comes with Mingw32 libraries and headers.
126 Make sure you install the binaries that work with MSVCRT.DLL as indicated
127 in the README for the GCC bundle. You may need to set up a few environment
128 variables (usually ran from a batch file).
130 The version of gcc-2.95.2-msvcrt.exe released 7 November 1999 left out
131 a fix for certain command line quotes, so be sure to download and install
132 fixes/quote-fix-msvcrt.exe too.
134 You also need dmake. See L</"Make"> above on how to get it.
144 Make sure you are in the "win32" subdirectory under the perl toplevel.
145 This directory contains a "Makefile" that will work with
146 versions of nmake that come with Visual C++, and a dmake "makefile.mk"
147 that will work for all supported compilers. The defaults in the dmake
148 makefile are setup to build using the GCC compiler.
152 Edit the makefile.mk (or Makefile, if you're using nmake) and change
153 the values of INST_DRV and INST_TOP. You can also enable various
154 build flags. These are explained in the makefiles.
156 You will have to make sure that CCTYPE is set correctly and that
157 CCHOME points to wherever you installed your compiler.
159 The default value for CCHOME in the makefiles for Visual C++
160 may not be correct for some versions. Make sure the default exists
163 If you have either the source or a library that contains des_fcrypt(),
164 enable the appropriate option in the makefile. des_fcrypt() is not
165 bundled with the distribution due to US Government restrictions
166 on the export of cryptographic software. Nevertheless, this routine
167 is part of the "libdes" library (written by Eric Young) which is widely
168 available worldwide, usually along with SSLeay (for example,
169 "ftp://fractal.mta.ca/pub/crypto/SSLeay/DES/"). Set CRYPT_SRC to the
170 name of the file that implements des_fcrypt(). Alternatively, if
171 you have built a library that contains des_fcrypt(), you can set
172 CRYPT_LIB to point to the library name. The location above contains
173 many versions of the "libdes" library, all with slightly different
174 implementations of des_fcrypt(). Older versions have a single,
175 self-contained file (fcrypt.c) that implements crypt(), so they may be
176 easier to use. A patch against the fcrypt.c found in libdes-3.06 is
179 Perl will also build without des_fcrypt(), but the crypt() builtin will
182 Be sure to read the instructions near the top of the makefiles carefully.
186 Type "dmake" (or "nmake" if you are using that make).
188 This should build everything. Specifically, it will create perl.exe,
189 perl56.dll at the perl toplevel, and various other extension dll's
190 under the lib\auto directory. If the build fails for any reason, make
191 sure you have done the previous steps correctly.
197 Type "dmake test" (or "nmake test"). This will run most of the tests from
198 the testsuite (many tests will be skipped).
200 There should be no test failures when running under Windows NT 4.0 or
201 Windows 2000. Many tests I<will> fail under Windows 9x due to the inferior
204 Some test failures may occur if you use a command shell other than the
205 native "cmd.exe", or if you are building from a path that contains
206 spaces. So don't do that.
208 If you are running the tests from a emacs shell window, you may see
209 failures in op/stat.t. Run "dmake test-notty" in that case.
211 If you're using the Borland compiler, you may see a failure in op/taint.t
212 arising from the inability to find the Borland Runtime DLLs on the system
213 default path. You will need to copy the DLLs reported by the messages
214 from where Borland chose to install it, into the Windows system directory
215 (usually somewhere like C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32) and rerun the test.
217 If you're using Borland compiler versions 5.2 and below, you're risking
218 to face a problem with finding incorrect header files. Don't be surprised
219 when during compiling perl extension "Tk" you will fail because both perl
220 and tk contain a header file with same name - "patchlevel.h". The latest
221 Borland compilers are free of this misbehaviour, and they even invented
222 option -VI- for backward (bugward) compatibility as "Use old Borland
223 search algorithm to locate header files".
225 Please report any other failures as described under L<BUGS AND CAVEATS>.
229 Type "dmake install" (or "nmake install"). This will put the newly
230 built perl and the libraries under whatever C<INST_TOP> points to in the
231 Makefile. It will also install the pod documentation under
232 C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\lib\pod> and HTML versions of the same under
233 C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\lib\pod\html>. To use the Perl you just installed,
234 you will need to add two components to your PATH environment variable,
235 C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\bin> and C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\bin\$ARCHNAME>.
238 set PATH c:\perl\5.6.0\bin;c:\perl\5.6.0\bin\MSWin32-x86;%PATH%
240 If you opt to comment out INST_VER and INST_ARCH in the makefiles, the
241 installation structure is much simpler. In that case, it will be
242 sufficient to add a single entry to the path, for instance:
244 set PATH c:\perl\bin;%PATH%
250 =item Environment Variables
252 The installation paths that you set during the build get compiled
253 into perl, so you don't have to do anything additional to start
254 using that perl (except add its location to your PATH variable).
256 If you put extensions in unusual places, you can set PERL5LIB
257 to a list of paths separated by semicolons where you want perl
258 to look for libraries. Look for descriptions of other environment
259 variables you can set in L<perlrun>.
261 You can also control the shell that perl uses to run system() and
262 backtick commands via PERL5SHELL. See L<perlrun>.
264 Perl does not depend on the registry, but it can look up certain default
265 values if you choose to put them there. Perl attempts to read entries from
266 C<HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Perl> and C<HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Perl>.
267 Entries in the former override entries in the latter. One or more of the
268 following entries (of type REG_SZ or REG_EXPAND_SZ) may be set:
270 lib-$] version-specific standard library path to add to @INC
271 lib standard library path to add to @INC
272 sitelib-$] version-specific site library path to add to @INC
273 sitelib site library path to add to @INC
274 vendorlib-$] version-specific vendor library path to add to @INC
275 vendorlib vendor library path to add to @INC
276 PERL* fallback for all %ENV lookups that begin with "PERL"
278 Note the C<$]> in the above is not literal. Substitute whatever version
279 of perl you want to honor that entry, e.g. C<5.6.0>. Paths must be
280 separated with semicolons, as usual on win32.
284 By default, perl handles file globbing using the File::Glob extension,
285 which provides portable globbing.
287 If you want perl to use globbing that emulates the quirks of DOS
288 filename conventions, you might want to consider using File::DosGlob
289 to override the internal glob() implementation. See L<File::DosGlob> for
292 =item Using perl from the command line
294 If you are accustomed to using perl from various command-line
295 shells found in UNIX environments, you will be less than pleased
296 with what Windows offers by way of a command shell.
298 The crucial thing to understand about the Windows environment is that
299 the command line you type in is processed twice before Perl sees it.
300 First, your command shell (usually CMD.EXE on Windows NT, and
301 COMMAND.COM on Windows 9x) preprocesses the command line, to handle
302 redirection, environment variable expansion, and location of the
303 executable to run. Then, the perl executable splits the remaining
304 command line into individual arguments, using the C runtime library
305 upon which Perl was built.
307 It is particularly important to note that neither the shell nor the C
308 runtime do any wildcard expansions of command-line arguments (so
309 wildcards need not be quoted). Also, the quoting behaviours of the
310 shell and the C runtime are rudimentary at best (and may, if you are
311 using a non-standard shell, be inconsistent). The only (useful) quote
312 character is the double quote ("). It can be used to protect spaces
313 and other special characters in arguments.
315 The Windows NT documentation has almost no description of how the
316 quoting rules are implemented, but here are some general observations
317 based on experiments: The C runtime breaks arguments at spaces and
318 passes them to programs in argc/argv. Double quotes can be used to
319 prevent arguments with spaces in them from being split up. You can
320 put a double quote in an argument by escaping it with a backslash and
321 enclosing the whole argument within double quotes. The backslash and
322 the pair of double quotes surrounding the argument will be stripped by
325 The file redirection characters "<", ">", and "|" can be quoted by
326 double quotes (although there are suggestions that this may not always
327 be true). Single quotes are not treated as quotes by the shell or
328 the C runtime, they don't get stripped by the shell (just to make
329 this type of quoting completely useless). The caret "^" has also
330 been observed to behave as a quoting character, but this appears
331 to be a shell feature, and the caret is not stripped from the command
332 line, so Perl still sees it (and the C runtime phase does not treat
333 the caret as a quote character).
335 Here are some examples of usage of the "cmd" shell:
337 This prints two doublequotes:
339 perl -e "print '\"\"' "
343 perl -e "print \"\\\"\\\"\" "
345 This prints "bar" and writes "foo" to the file "blurch":
347 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" > blurch
349 This prints "foo" ("bar" disappears into nowhereland):
351 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> nul
353 This prints "bar" and writes "foo" into the file "blurch":
355 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 1> blurch
357 This pipes "foo" to the "less" pager and prints "bar" on the console:
359 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" | less
361 This pipes "foo\nbar\n" to the less pager:
363 perl -le "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2>&1 | less
365 This pipes "foo" to the pager and writes "bar" in the file "blurch":
367 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> blurch | less
370 Discovering the usefulness of the "command.com" shell on Windows 9x
371 is left as an exercise to the reader :)
373 One particularly pernicious problem with the 4NT command shell for
374 Windows NT is that it (nearly) always treats a % character as indicating
375 that environment variable expansion is needed. Under this shell, it is
376 therefore important to always double any % characters which you want
377 Perl to see (for example, for hash variables), even when they are
380 =item Building Extensions
382 The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) offers a wealth
383 of extensions, some of which require a C compiler to build.
384 Look in http://www.cpan.org/ for more information on CPAN.
386 Note that not all of the extensions available from CPAN may work
387 in the Win32 environment; you should check the information at
388 http://testers.cpan.org/ before investing too much effort into
389 porting modules that don't readily build.
391 Most extensions (whether they require a C compiler or not) can
392 be built, tested and installed with the standard mantra:
399 where $MAKE is whatever 'make' program you have configured perl to
400 use. Use "perl -V:make" to find out what this is. Some extensions
401 may not provide a testsuite (so "$MAKE test" may not do anything or
402 fail), but most serious ones do.
404 It is important that you use a supported 'make' program, and
405 ensure Config.pm knows about it. If you don't have nmake, you can
406 either get dmake from the location mentioned earlier or get an
407 old version of nmake reportedly available from:
409 ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/nmake15.exe
411 Another option is to use the make written in Perl, available from
414 http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/NI-S/Make-0.03.tar.gz
416 You may also use dmake. See L</"Make"> above on how to get it.
418 Note that MakeMaker actually emits makefiles with different syntax
419 depending on what 'make' it thinks you are using. Therefore, it is
420 important that one of the following values appears in Config.pm:
422 make='nmake' # MakeMaker emits nmake syntax
423 make='dmake' # MakeMaker emits dmake syntax
424 any other value # MakeMaker emits generic make syntax
425 (e.g GNU make, or Perl make)
427 If the value doesn't match the 'make' program you want to use,
428 edit Config.pm to fix it.
430 If a module implements XSUBs, you will need one of the supported
431 C compilers. You must make sure you have set up the environment for
432 the compiler for command-line compilation.
434 If a module does not build for some reason, look carefully for
435 why it failed, and report problems to the module author. If
436 it looks like the extension building support is at fault, report
437 that with full details of how the build failed using the perlbug
440 =item Command-line Wildcard Expansion
442 The default command shells on DOS descendant operating systems (such
443 as they are) usually do not expand wildcard arguments supplied to
444 programs. They consider it the application's job to handle that.
445 This is commonly achieved by linking the application (in our case,
446 perl) with startup code that the C runtime libraries usually provide.
447 However, doing that results in incompatible perl versions (since the
448 behavior of the argv expansion code differs depending on the
449 compiler, and it is even buggy on some compilers). Besides, it may
450 be a source of frustration if you use such a perl binary with an
451 alternate shell that *does* expand wildcards.
453 Instead, the following solution works rather well. The nice things
454 about it are 1) you can start using it right away; 2) it is more
455 powerful, because it will do the right thing with a pattern like
456 */*/*.c; 3) you can decide whether you do/don't want to use it; and
457 4) you can extend the method to add any customizations (or even
458 entirely different kinds of wildcard expansion).
460 C:\> copy con c:\perl\lib\Wild.pm
461 # Wild.pm - emulate shell @ARGV expansion on shells that don't
464 my @g = File::DosGlob::glob($_) if /[*?]/;
469 C:\> set PERL5OPT=-MWild
470 C:\> perl -le "for (@ARGV) { print }" */*/perl*.c
474 perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
475 perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
476 perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
477 perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
478 perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
479 perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
481 Note there are two distinct steps there: 1) You'll have to create
482 Wild.pm and put it in your perl lib directory. 2) You'll need to
483 set the PERL5OPT environment variable. If you want argv expansion
484 to be the default, just set PERL5OPT in your default startup
487 If you are using the Visual C compiler, you can get the C runtime's
488 command line wildcard expansion built into perl binary. The resulting
489 binary will always expand unquoted command lines, which may not be
490 what you want if you use a shell that does that for you. The expansion
491 done is also somewhat less powerful than the approach suggested above.
493 =item Win32 Specific Extensions
495 A number of extensions specific to the Win32 platform are available
496 from CPAN. You may find that many of these extensions are meant to
497 be used under the Activeware port of Perl, which used to be the only
498 native port for the Win32 platform. Since the Activeware port does not
499 have adequate support for Perl's extension building tools, these
500 extensions typically do not support those tools either and, therefore,
501 cannot be built using the generic steps shown in the previous section.
503 To ensure smooth transitioning of existing code that uses the
504 ActiveState port, there is a bundle of Win32 extensions that contains
505 all of the ActiveState extensions and most other Win32 extensions from
506 CPAN in source form, along with many added bugfixes, and with MakeMaker
507 support. This bundle is available at:
509 http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/GSAR/libwin32-0.151.zip
511 See the README in that distribution for building and installation
512 instructions. Look for later versions that may be available at the
515 =item Running Perl Scripts
517 Perl scripts on UNIX use the "#!" (a.k.a "shebang") line to
518 indicate to the OS that it should execute the file using perl.
519 Win32 has no comparable means to indicate arbitrary files are
522 Instead, all available methods to execute plain text files on
523 Win32 rely on the file "extension". There are three methods
524 to use this to execute perl scripts:
530 There is a facility called "file extension associations" that will
531 work in Windows NT 4.0. This can be manipulated via the two
532 commands "assoc" and "ftype" that come standard with Windows NT
533 4.0. Type "ftype /?" for a complete example of how to set this
534 up for perl scripts (Say what? You thought Windows NT wasn't
539 Since file associations don't work everywhere, and there are
540 reportedly bugs with file associations where it does work, the
541 old method of wrapping the perl script to make it look like a
542 regular batch file to the OS, may be used. The install process
543 makes available the "pl2bat.bat" script which can be used to wrap
544 perl scripts into batch files. For example:
548 will create the file "FOO.BAT". Note "pl2bat" strips any
549 .pl suffix and adds a .bat suffix to the generated file.
551 If you use the 4DOS/NT or similar command shell, note that
552 "pl2bat" uses the "%*" variable in the generated batch file to
553 refer to all the command line arguments, so you may need to make
554 sure that construct works in batch files. As of this writing,
555 4DOS/NT users will need a "ParameterChar = *" statement in their
556 4NT.INI file or will need to execute "setdos /p*" in the 4DOS/NT
557 startup file to enable this to work.
561 Using "pl2bat" has a few problems: the file name gets changed,
562 so scripts that rely on C<$0> to find what they must do may not
563 run properly; running "pl2bat" replicates the contents of the
564 original script, and so this process can be maintenance intensive
565 if the originals get updated often. A different approach that
566 avoids both problems is possible.
568 A script called "runperl.bat" is available that can be copied
569 to any filename (along with the .bat suffix). For example,
570 if you call it "foo.bat", it will run the file "foo" when it is
571 executed. Since you can run batch files on Win32 platforms simply
572 by typing the name (without the extension), this effectively
573 runs the file "foo", when you type either "foo" or "foo.bat".
574 With this method, "foo.bat" can even be in a different location
575 than the file "foo", as long as "foo" is available somewhere on
576 the PATH. If your scripts are on a filesystem that allows symbolic
577 links, you can even avoid copying "runperl.bat".
579 Here's a diversion: copy "runperl.bat" to "runperl", and type
580 "runperl". Explain the observed behavior, or lack thereof. :)
581 Hint: .gnidnats llits er'uoy fi ,"lrepnur" eteled :tniH
585 =item Miscellaneous Things
587 A full set of HTML documentation is installed, so you should be
588 able to use it if you have a web browser installed on your
591 C<perldoc> is also a useful tool for browsing information contained
592 in the documentation, especially in conjunction with a pager
593 like C<less> (recent versions of which have Win32 support). You may
594 have to set the PAGER environment variable to use a specific pager.
595 "perldoc -f foo" will print information about the perl operator
598 If you find bugs in perl, you can run C<perlbug> to create a
599 bug report (you may have to send it manually if C<perlbug> cannot
600 find a mailer on your system).
604 =head1 BUGS AND CAVEATS
606 Norton AntiVirus interferes with the build process, particularly if
607 set to "AutoProtect, All Files, when Opened". Unlike large applications
608 the perl build process opens and modifies a lot of files. Having the
609 the AntiVirus scan each and every one slows build the process significantly.
610 Worse, with PERLIO=stdio the build process fails with peculiar messages
611 as the virus checker interacts badly with miniperl.exe writing configure
612 files (it seems to either catch file part written and treat it as suspicious,
613 or virus checker may have it "locked" in a way which inhibits miniperl
614 updating it). The build does complete with
618 but that may be just luck. Other AntiVirus software may have similar issues.
620 Some of the built-in functions do not act exactly as documented in
621 L<perlfunc>, and a few are not implemented at all. To avoid
622 surprises, particularly if you have had prior exposure to Perl
623 in other operating environments or if you intend to write code
624 that will be portable to other environments. See L<perlport>
625 for a reasonably definitive list of these differences.
627 Not all extensions available from CPAN may build or work properly
628 in the Win32 environment. See L</"Building Extensions">.
630 Most C<socket()> related calls are supported, but they may not
631 behave as on Unix platforms. See L<perlport> for the full list.
633 Signal handling may not behave as on Unix platforms (where it
634 doesn't exactly "behave", either :). For instance, calling C<die()>
635 or C<exit()> from signal handlers will cause an exception, since most
636 implementations of C<signal()> on Win32 are severely crippled.
637 Thus, signals may work only for simple things like setting a flag
638 variable in the handler. Using signals under this port should
639 currently be considered unsupported.
641 Please send detailed descriptions of any problems and solutions that
642 you may find to <F<perlbug@perl.com>>, along with the output produced
649 =item Gary Ng E<lt>71564.1743@CompuServe.COME<gt>
651 =item Gurusamy Sarathy E<lt>gsar@activestate.comE<gt>
653 =item Nick Ing-Simmons E<lt>nick@ing-simmons.netE<gt>
657 This document is maintained by Gurusamy Sarathy.
665 This port was originally contributed by Gary Ng around 5.003_24,
666 and borrowed from the Hip Communications port that was available
667 at the time. Various people have made numerous and sundry hacks
670 Borland support was added in 5.004_01 (Gurusamy Sarathy).
672 GCC/mingw32 support was added in 5.005 (Nick Ing-Simmons).
674 Support for PERL_OBJECT was added in 5.005 (ActiveState Tool Corp).
676 Support for fork() emulation was added in 5.6 (ActiveState Tool Corp).
678 Win9x support was added in 5.6 (Benjamin Stuhl).
680 Last updated: 22 November 2000