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 NT (versions
12 3.51 or 4.0). Currently, this port is reported to build
13 under Windows95 using the 4DOS shell--the default shell that infests
14 Windows95 will not work (see below). Note this caveat is only about
15 B<building> perl. Once built, you should be able to B<use> it on
16 either Win32 platform (modulo the problems arising from the inferior
21 Before you start, you should glance through the README file
22 found in the top-level directory where the Perl distribution
23 was extracted. Make sure you read and understand the terms under
24 which this software is being distributed.
26 Also make sure you read L<BUGS AND CAVEATS> below for the
27 known limitations of this port.
29 The INSTALL file in the perl top-level has much information that is
30 only relevant to people building Perl on Unix-like systems. In
31 particular, you can safely ignore any information that talks about
34 You may also want to look at two other options for building
35 a perl that will work on Windows NT: the README.cygwin32 and
36 README.os2 files, which each give a different set of rules to build
37 a Perl that will work on Win32 platforms. Those two methods will
38 probably enable you to build a more Unix-compatible perl, but you
39 will also need to download and use various other build-time and
40 run-time support software described in those files.
42 This set of instructions is meant to describe a so-called "native"
43 port of Perl to Win32 platforms. The resulting Perl requires no
44 additional software to run (other than what came with your operating
45 system). Currently, this port is capable of using one of the
48 Borland C++ version 5.02 or later
49 Microsoft Visual C++ version 4.2 or later
50 Mingw32 with EGCS version 1.0.2
51 Mingw32 with GCC version 2.8.1
53 The last two of these are high quality freeware compilers. Support
54 for them is still experimental.
56 This port currently supports MakeMaker (the set of modules that
57 is used to build extensions to perl). Therefore, you should be
58 able to build and install most extensions found in the CPAN sites.
59 See L<Usage Hints> below for general hints about this.
67 Use the default "cmd" shell that comes with NT. Some versions of the
68 popular 4DOS/NT shell have incompatibilities that may cause you trouble.
69 If the build fails under that shell, try building again with the cmd
70 shell. The Makefile also has known incompatibilites with the "command.com"
71 shell that comes with Windows95, so building under Windows95 should
72 be considered "unsupported". However, there have been reports of successful
73 build attempts using 4DOS/NT version 3.00 under Windows95, using dmake, but
74 your mileage may vary.
76 The surest way to build it is on WindowsNT, using the cmd shell.
80 If you are using the Borland compiler, you will need dmake, a freely
81 available make that has very nice macro features and parallelability.
82 (The make that Borland supplies is seriously crippled, and will not
83 work for MakeMaker builds.)
85 A port of dmake for win32 platforms is available from:
87 http://www-personal.umich.edu/~gsar/dmake-4.1-win32.zip
89 Fetch and install dmake somewhere on your path (follow the instructions
90 in the README.NOW file).
92 =item Microsoft Visual C++
94 The NMAKE that comes with Visual C++ will suffice for building.
95 You will need to run the VCVARS32.BAT file usually found somewhere
96 like C:\MSDEV4.2\BIN. This will set your build environment.
98 You can also use dmake to build using Visual C++, provided:
99 you set OSRELEASE to "microsft" (or whatever the directory name
100 under which the Visual C dmake configuration lives) in your environment,
101 and edit win32/config.vc to change "make=nmake" into "make=dmake". The
102 latter step is only essential if you want to use dmake as your default
103 make for building extensions using MakeMaker.
105 =item Mingw32 with EGCS or GCC
107 ECGS-1.0.2 binaries can be downloaded from:
109 ftp://ftp.xraylith.wisc.edu/pub/khan/gnu-win32/mingw32/
111 GCC-2.8.1 binaries are available from:
113 http://agnes.dida.physik.uni-essen.de/~janjaap/mingw32/
115 You only need either one of those, not both. Both bundles come with
116 Mingw32 libraries and headers. While both of them work to build perl,
117 the EGCS binaries are currently favored by the maintainers, since they
118 come with more up-to-date Mingw32 libraries.
120 Make sure you install the binaries as indicated in the web sites
121 above. You will need to set up a few environment variables (usually
122 run from a batch file).
132 Make sure you are in the "win32" subdirectory under the perl toplevel.
133 This directory contains a "Makefile" that will work with
134 versions of NMAKE that come with Visual C++, and a dmake "makefile.mk"
135 that will work for all supported compilers. The defaults in the dmake
136 makefile are setup to build using the Borland compiler.
140 Edit the makefile.mk (or Makefile, if using nmake) and change the values
141 of INST_DRV and INST_TOP. You can also enable various build
144 Beginning with version 5.005, there is experimental support for building
145 a perl interpreter that supports the Perl Object abstraction (courtesy
146 ActiveState Tool Corp.) PERL_OBJECT uses C++, and the binaries are
147 therefore incompatible with the regular C build. However, the
148 PERL_OBJECT build does provide something called the C-API, for linking
149 it with extensions that won't compile under PERL_OBJECT. PERL_OBJECT
150 cannot be enabled when using GCC or EGCS, yet.
152 Beginning with version 5.005, there is experimental support for building
153 a perl interpreter that is capable of native threading. Binaries built
154 with thread support enabled are also incompatible with the vanilla C
157 At the present time, you cannot enable both threading and PERL_OBJECT.
158 You can get only one of them in a Perl interpreter.
160 If you have either the source or a library that contains des_fcrypt(),
161 enable the appropriate option in the makefile. des_fcrypt() is not
162 bundled with the distribution due to US Government restrictions
163 on the export of cryptographic software. Nevertheless, this routine
164 is part of the "libdes" library (written by Ed Young) which is widely
165 available worldwide, usually along with SSLeay (for example:
166 "ftp://fractal.mta.ca/pub/crypto/SSLeay/DES/"). Set CRYPT_SRC to the
167 name of the file that implements des_fcrypt(). Alternatively, if
168 you have built a library that contains des_fcrypt(), you can set
169 CRYPT_LIB to point to the library name.
171 Perl will also build without des_fcrypt(), but the crypt() builtin will
174 You will also have to make sure CCHOME points to wherever you installed
177 Other options are explained in the makefiles. Be sure to read the
178 instructions carefully.
182 Type "dmake" (or "nmake" if you are using that make).
184 This should build everything. Specifically, it will create perl.exe,
185 perl.dll (or perlcore.dll), and perlglob.exe at the perl toplevel, and
186 various other extension dll's under the lib\auto directory. If the build
187 fails for any reason, make sure you have done the previous steps correctly.
189 The build process may produce "harmless" compiler warnings (more or
190 less copiously, depending on how picky your compiler gets). The
191 maintainers are aware of these warnings, thankyouverymuch. :)
193 When building using Visual C++, a perl95.exe will also get built. This
194 executable is only needed on Windows95, and should be used instead of
195 perl.exe, and then only if you want sockets to work properly on Windows95.
196 This is necessitated by a bug in the Microsoft C Runtime that cannot be
197 worked around in the "normal" perl.exe. perl95.exe gets built with its
198 own private copy of the C Runtime that is not accessible to extensions
199 (which see the DLL version of the CRT). Be aware, therefore, that this
200 perl95.exe will have esoteric problems with extensions like perl/Tk that
201 themselves use the C Runtime heavily, or want to free() pointers
204 You can avoid the perl95.exe problems completely if you use Borland
205 C++ for building perl (perl95.exe is not needed and will not be built
212 Type "dmake test" (or "nmake test"). This will run most of the tests from
213 the testsuite (many tests will be skipped, and but no test should fail).
215 If some tests do fail, it may be because you are using a different command
216 shell than the native "cmd.exe".
218 If you used the Borland compiler, you may see a failure in op/taint.t
219 arising from the inability to find the Borland Runtime DLLs on the system
220 default path. You will need to copy the DLLs reported by the messages
221 from where Borland chose to install it, into the Windows system directory
222 (usually somewhere like C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32), and rerun the test.
224 The Visual C runtime apparently has a bug that causes posix.t to fail
225 one it test#2. This usually happens only if you extracted the files in
228 Please report any other failures as described under L<BUGS AND CAVEATS>.
232 Type "dmake install" (or "nmake install"). This will put the newly
233 built perl and the libraries under whatever C<INST_TOP> points to in the
234 Makefile. It will also install the pod documentation under
235 C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\lib\pod> and HTML versions of the same under
236 C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\lib\pod\html>. To use the Perl you just installed,
237 you will need to add two components to your PATH environment variable,
238 C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\bin>, and C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\bin\$ARCHNAME>.
241 set PATH c:\perl\5.005\bin;c:\perl\5.005\bin\MSWin32-x6;%PATH%
248 =item Environment Variables
250 The installation paths that you set during the build get compiled
251 into perl, so you don't have to do anything additional to start
252 using that perl (except add its location to your PATH variable).
254 If you put extensions in unusual places, you can set PERL5LIB
255 to a list of paths separated by semicolons where you want perl
256 to look for libraries. Look for descriptions of other environment
257 variables you can set in L<perlrun>.
259 You can also control the shell that perl uses to run system() and
260 backtick commands via PERL5SHELL. See L<perlrun>.
262 Currently, Perl does not depend on the registry, but can look up
263 values if you choose to put them there. [XXX add registry locations
264 that perl looks at here.]
268 By default, perl spawns an external program to do file globbing.
269 The install process installs both a perlglob.exe and a perlglob.bat
270 that perl can use for this purpose. Note that with the default
271 installation, perlglob.exe will be found by the system before
274 perlglob.exe relies on the argv expansion done by the C Runtime of
275 the particular compiler you used, and therefore behaves very
276 differently depending on the Runtime used to build it. To preserve
277 compatiblity, perlglob.bat (a perl script that can be used portably)
278 is installed. Besides being portable, perlglob.bat also offers
279 enhanced globbing functionality.
281 If you want perl to use perlglob.bat instead of perlglob.exe, just
282 delete perlglob.exe from the install location (or move it somewhere
283 perl cannot find). Using File::DosGlob.pm (which implements the core
284 functionality of perlglob.bat) to override the internal CORE::glob()
285 works about 10 times faster than spawing perlglob.exe, and you should
286 take this approach when writing new modules. See File::DosGlob for
289 =item Using perl from the command line
291 If you are accustomed to using perl from various command-line
292 shells found in UNIX environments, you will be less than pleased
293 with what Windows NT offers by way of a command shell.
295 The crucial thing to understand about the "cmd" shell (which is
296 the default on Windows NT) is that it does not do any wildcard
297 expansions of command-line arguments (so wildcards need not be
298 quoted). It also provides only rudimentary quoting. The only
299 (useful) quote character is the double quote ("). It can be used to
300 protect spaces in arguments and other special characters. The
301 Windows NT documentation has almost no description of how the
302 quoting rules are implemented, but here are some general observations
303 based on experiments: The shell breaks arguments at spaces and
304 passes them to programs in argc/argv. Doublequotes can be used
305 to prevent arguments with spaces in them from being split up.
306 You can put a double quote in an argument by escaping it with
307 a backslash and enclosing the whole argument within double quotes.
308 The backslash and the pair of double quotes surrounding the
309 argument will be stripped by the shell.
311 The file redirection characters "<", ">", and "|" cannot be quoted
312 by double quotes (there are probably more such). Single quotes
313 will protect those three file redirection characters, but the
314 single quotes don't get stripped by the shell (just to make this
315 type of quoting completely useless). The caret "^" has also
316 been observed to behave as a quoting character (and doesn't get
317 stripped by the shell also).
319 Here are some examples of usage of the "cmd" shell:
321 This prints two doublequotes:
323 perl -e "print '\"\"' "
327 perl -e "print \"\\\"\\\"\" "
329 This prints "bar" and writes "foo" to the file "blurch":
331 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" > blurch
333 This prints "foo" ("bar" disappears into nowhereland):
335 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> nul
337 This prints "bar" and writes "foo" into the file "blurch":
339 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 1> blurch
341 This pipes "foo" to the "less" pager and prints "bar" on the console:
343 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" | less
345 This pipes "foo\nbar\n" to the less pager:
347 perl -le "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2>&1 | less
349 This pipes "foo" to the pager and writes "bar" in the file "blurch":
351 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> blurch | less
354 Discovering the usefulness of the "command.com" shell on Windows95
355 is left as an exercise to the reader :)
357 =item Building Extensions
359 The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) offers a wealth
360 of extensions, some of which require a C compiler to build.
361 Look in http://www.perl.com/ for more information on CPAN.
363 Most extensions (whether they require a C compiler or not) can
364 be built, tested and installed with the standard mantra:
371 where $MAKE stands for NMAKE or DMAKE. Some extensions may not
372 provide a testsuite (so "$MAKE test" may not do anything, or fail),
373 but most serious ones do.
375 If a module implements XSUBs, you will need one of the supported
376 C compilers. You must make sure you have set up the environment for
377 the compiler for command-line compilation.
379 If a module does not build for some reason, look carefully for
380 why it failed, and report problems to the module author. If
381 it looks like the extension building support is at fault, report
382 that with full details of how the build failed using the perlbug
385 =item Win32 Specific Extensions
387 A number of extensions specific to the Win32 platform are available
388 from CPAN. You may find that many of these extensions are meant to
389 be used under the Activeware port of Perl, which used to be the only
390 native port for the Win32 platform. Since the Activeware port does not
391 have adequate support for Perl's extension building tools, these
392 extensions typically do not support those tools either, and therefore
393 cannot be built using the generic steps shown in the previous section.
395 To ensure smooth transitioning of existing code that uses the
396 ActiveState port, there is a bundle of Win32 extensions that contains
397 all of the ActiveState extensions and most other Win32 extensions from
398 CPAN in source form, along with many added bugfixes, and with MakeMaker
399 support. This bundle is available at:
401 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/id/GSAR/libwin32-0.12.zip
403 See the README in that distribution for building and installation
404 instructions. Look for later versions that may be available at the
407 =item Running Perl Scripts
409 Perl scripts on UNIX use the "#!" (a.k.a "shebang") line to
410 indicate to the OS that it should execute the file using perl.
411 Win32 has no comparable means to indicate arbitrary files are
414 Instead, all available methods to execute plain text files on
415 Win32 rely on the file "extension". There are three methods
416 to use this to execute perl scripts:
422 There is a facility called "file extension associations" that will
423 work in Windows NT 4.0. This can be manipulated via the two
424 commands "assoc" and "ftype" that come standard with Windows NT
425 4.0. Type "ftype /?" for a complete example of how to set this
426 up for perl scripts (Say what? You thought Windows NT wasn't
431 Since file associations don't work everywhere, and there are
432 reportedly bugs with file associations where it does work, the
433 old method of wrapping the perl script to make it look like a
434 regular batch file to the OS, may be used. The install process
435 makes available the "pl2bat.bat" script which can be used to wrap
436 perl scripts into batch files. For example:
440 will create the file "FOO.BAT". Note "pl2bat" strips any
441 .pl suffix and adds a .bat suffix to the generated file.
443 If you use the 4DOS/NT or similar command shell, note that
444 "pl2bat" uses the "%*" variable in the generated batch file to
445 refer to all the command line arguments, so you may need to make
446 sure that construct works in batch files. As of this writing,
447 4DOS/NT users will need a "ParameterChar = *" statement in their
448 4NT.INI file, or will need to execute "setdos /p*" in the 4DOS/NT
449 startup file to enable this to work.
453 Using "pl2bat" has a few problems: the file name gets changed,
454 so scripts that rely on C<$0> to find what they must do may not
455 run properly; running "pl2bat" replicates the contents of the
456 original script, and so this process can be maintenance intensive
457 if the originals get updated often. A different approach that
458 avoids both problems is possible.
460 A script called "runperl.bat" is available that can be copied
461 to any filename (along with the .bat suffix). For example,
462 if you call it "foo.bat", it will run the file "foo" when it is
463 executed. Since you can run batch files on Win32 platforms simply
464 by typing the name (without the extension), this effectively
465 runs the file "foo", when you type either "foo" or "foo.bat".
466 With this method, "foo.bat" can even be in a different location
467 than the file "foo", as long as "foo" is available somewhere on
468 the PATH. If your scripts are on a filesystem that allows symbolic
469 links, you can even avoid copying "runperl.bat".
471 Here's a diversion: copy "runperl.bat" to "runperl", and type
472 "runperl". Explain the observed behavior, or lack thereof. :)
473 Hint: .gnidnats llits er'uoy fi ,"lrepnur" eteled :tniH
477 =item Miscellaneous Things
479 A full set of HTML documentation is installed, so you should be
480 able to use it if you have a web browser installed on your
483 C<perldoc> is also a useful tool for browsing information contained
484 in the documentation, especially in conjunction with a pager
485 like C<less> (recent versions of which have Win32 support). You may
486 have to set the PAGER environment variable to use a specific pager.
487 "perldoc -f foo" will print information about the perl operator
490 If you find bugs in perl, you can run C<perlbug> to create a
491 bug report (you may have to send it manually if C<perlbug> cannot
492 find a mailer on your system).
496 =head1 BUGS AND CAVEATS
498 An effort has been made to ensure that the DLLs produced by the two
499 supported compilers are compatible with each other (despite the
500 best efforts of the compiler vendors). Extension binaries produced
501 by one compiler should also coexist with a perl binary built by
502 a different compiler. In order to accomplish this, PERL.DLL provides
503 a layer of runtime code that uses the C Runtime that perl was compiled
504 with. Extensions which include "perl.h" will transparently access
505 the functions in this layer, thereby ensuring that both perl and
506 extensions use the same runtime functions.
508 If you have had prior exposure to Perl on Unix platforms, you will notice
509 this port exhibits behavior different from what is documented. Most of the
510 differences fall under one of these categories. We do not consider
511 any of them to be serious limitations (especially when compared to the
512 limited nature of some of the Win32 OSes themselves :)
518 C<stat()> and C<lstat()> functions may not behave as documented. They
519 may return values that bear no resemblance to those reported on Unix
520 platforms, and some fields (like the the one for inode) may be completely
525 The following functions are currently unavailable: C<fork()>,
526 C<dump()>, C<chown()>, C<link()>, C<symlink()>, C<chroot()>,
527 C<setpgrp()> and related security functions, C<setpriority()>,
528 C<getpriority()>, C<syscall()>, C<fcntl()>, C<getpw*()>,
529 C<msg*()>, C<shm*()>, C<sem*()>, C<alarm()>, C<socketpair()>,
530 C<*netent()>, C<*protoent()>, C<*servent()>, C<*hostent()>,
532 This list is possibly incomplete.
536 Various C<socket()> related calls are supported, but they may not
537 behave as on Unix platforms.
541 The four-argument C<select()> call is only supported on sockets.
545 The C<ioctl()> call is only supported on sockets (where it provides the
546 functionality of ioctlsocket() in the Winsock API).
550 Failure to spawn() a subprocess is indicated by setting $? to "255 << 8".
551 C<$?> is set in a way compatible with Unix (i.e. the exitstatus of the
552 subprocess is obtained by "$? >> 8", as described in the documentation).
556 You can expect problems building modules available on CPAN if you
557 build perl itself with -DUSE_THREADS. These problems should be resolved
558 as we get closer to 5.005.
562 C<utime()>, C<times()> and process-related functions may not
563 behave as described in the documentation, and some of the
564 returned values or effects may be bogus.
568 Signal handling may not behave as on Unix platforms (where it
569 doesn't exactly "behave", either :). For instance, calling C<die()>
570 or C<exit()> from signal handlers will cause an exception, since most
571 implementations of C<signal()> on Win32 are severely crippled.
572 Thus, signals may work only for simple things like setting a flag
573 variable in the handler. Using signals under this port should
574 currently be considered unsupported.
578 C<kill()> is implemented, but doesn't have the semantics of
579 C<raise()>, i.e. it doesn't send a signal to the identified process
580 like it does on Unix platforms. Instead it immediately calls
581 C<TerminateProcess(process,signal)>. Thus the signal argument is
582 used to set the exit-status of the terminated process. This behavior
583 may change in future.
587 File globbing may not behave as on Unix platforms. In particular,
588 if you don't use perlglob.bat for globbing, it will understand
589 wildcards only in the filename component (and not in the pathname).
590 In other words, something like "print <*/*.pl>" will not print all the
591 perl scripts in all the subdirectories one level under the current one
592 (like it does on UNIX platforms). perlglob.exe is also dependent on
593 the particular implementation of wildcard expansion in the vendor
594 libraries used to build it (which varies wildly at the present time).
595 Using perlglob.bat (or File::DosGlob) avoids these limitations, but
596 still only provides DOS semantics (read "warts") for globbing.
600 Please send detailed descriptions of any problems and solutions that
601 you may find to <F<perlbug@perl.com>>, along with the output produced
608 Gary Ng E<lt>71564.1743@CompuServe.COME<gt>
610 Gurusamy Sarathy E<lt>gsar@umich.eduE<gt>
612 Nick Ing-Simmons E<lt>nick@ni-s.u-net.comE<gt>
616 This document is maintained by Gurusamy Sarathy.
624 This port was originally contributed by Gary Ng around 5.003_24,
625 and borrowed from the Hip Communications port that was available
628 Nick Ing-Simmons and Gurusamy Sarathy have made numerous and
629 sundry hacks since then.
631 Borland support was added in 5.004_01 (Gurusamy Sarathy).
633 Last updated: 12 July 1998