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 is not yet supported under GCC or EGCS. WARNING: Binaries built with
151 PERL_OBJECT enabled are B<not> compatible with binaries built without.
152 Perl installs PERL_OBJECT binaries under a distinct architecture name,
153 so they B<can> coexist, though.
155 Beginning with version 5.005, there is experimental support for building
156 a perl interpreter that is capable of native threading. Binaries built
157 with thread support enabled are also incompatible with the vanilla C
158 build. WARNING: Binaries built with threads enabled are B<not> compatible
159 with binaries built without. Perl installs threads enabled binaries under
160 a distinct architecture name, so they B<can> coexist, though.
162 At the present time, you cannot enable both threading and PERL_OBJECT.
163 You can get only one of them in a Perl interpreter.
165 If you have either the source or a library that contains des_fcrypt(),
166 enable the appropriate option in the makefile. des_fcrypt() is not
167 bundled with the distribution due to US Government restrictions
168 on the export of cryptographic software. Nevertheless, this routine
169 is part of the "libdes" library (written by Ed Young) which is widely
170 available worldwide, usually along with SSLeay (for example:
171 "ftp://fractal.mta.ca/pub/crypto/SSLeay/DES/"). Set CRYPT_SRC to the
172 name of the file that implements des_fcrypt(). Alternatively, if
173 you have built a library that contains des_fcrypt(), you can set
174 CRYPT_LIB to point to the library name.
176 Perl will also build without des_fcrypt(), but the crypt() builtin will
179 You will also have to make sure CCHOME points to wherever you installed
182 Other options are explained in the makefiles. Be sure to read the
183 instructions carefully.
187 Type "dmake" (or "nmake" if you are using that make).
189 This should build everything. Specifically, it will create perl.exe,
190 perl.dll (or perlcore.dll), and perlglob.exe at the perl toplevel, and
191 various other extension dll's under the lib\auto directory. If the build
192 fails for any reason, make sure you have done the previous steps correctly.
194 The build process may produce "harmless" compiler warnings (more or
195 less copiously, depending on how picky your compiler gets). The
196 maintainers are aware of these warnings, thankyouverymuch. :)
198 When building using Visual C++, a perl95.exe will also get built. This
199 executable is only needed on Windows95, and should be used instead of
200 perl.exe, and then only if you want sockets to work properly on Windows95.
201 This is necessitated by a bug in the Microsoft C Runtime that cannot be
202 worked around in the "normal" perl.exe. perl95.exe gets built with its
203 own private copy of the C Runtime that is not accessible to extensions
204 (which see the DLL version of the CRT). Be aware, therefore, that this
205 perl95.exe will have esoteric problems with extensions like perl/Tk that
206 themselves use the C Runtime heavily, or want to free() pointers
209 You can avoid the perl95.exe problems completely if you use Borland
210 C++ for building perl (perl95.exe is not needed and will not be built
217 Type "dmake test" (or "nmake test"). This will run most of the tests from
218 the testsuite (many tests will be skipped, and but no test should fail).
220 If some tests do fail, it may be because you are using a different command
221 shell than the native "cmd.exe".
223 If you used the Borland compiler, you may see a failure in op/taint.t
224 arising from the inability to find the Borland Runtime DLLs on the system
225 default path. You will need to copy the DLLs reported by the messages
226 from where Borland chose to install it, into the Windows system directory
227 (usually somewhere like C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32), and rerun the test.
229 The Visual C runtime apparently has a bug that causes posix.t to fail
230 one it test#2. This usually happens only if you extracted the files in
233 Please report any other failures as described under L<BUGS AND CAVEATS>.
237 Type "dmake install" (or "nmake install"). This will put the newly
238 built perl and the libraries under whatever C<INST_TOP> points to in the
239 Makefile. It will also install the pod documentation under
240 C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\lib\pod> and HTML versions of the same under
241 C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\lib\pod\html>. To use the Perl you just installed,
242 you will need to add two components to your PATH environment variable,
243 C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\bin>, and C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\bin\$ARCHNAME>.
246 set PATH c:\perl\5.005\bin;c:\perl\5.005\bin\MSWin32-x6;%PATH%
253 =item Environment Variables
255 The installation paths that you set during the build get compiled
256 into perl, so you don't have to do anything additional to start
257 using that perl (except add its location to your PATH variable).
259 If you put extensions in unusual places, you can set PERL5LIB
260 to a list of paths separated by semicolons where you want perl
261 to look for libraries. Look for descriptions of other environment
262 variables you can set in L<perlrun>.
264 You can also control the shell that perl uses to run system() and
265 backtick commands via PERL5SHELL. See L<perlrun>.
267 Currently, Perl does not depend on the registry, but can look up
268 values if you choose to put them there. [XXX add registry locations
269 that perl looks at here.]
273 By default, perl spawns an external program to do file globbing.
274 The install process installs both a perlglob.exe and a perlglob.bat
275 that perl can use for this purpose. Note that with the default
276 installation, perlglob.exe will be found by the system before
279 perlglob.exe relies on the argv expansion done by the C Runtime of
280 the particular compiler you used, and therefore behaves very
281 differently depending on the Runtime used to build it. To preserve
282 compatiblity, perlglob.bat (a perl script that can be used portably)
283 is installed. Besides being portable, perlglob.bat also offers
284 enhanced globbing functionality.
286 If you want perl to use perlglob.bat instead of perlglob.exe, just
287 delete perlglob.exe from the install location (or move it somewhere
288 perl cannot find). Using File::DosGlob.pm (which implements the core
289 functionality of perlglob.bat) to override the internal CORE::glob()
290 works about 10 times faster than spawing perlglob.exe, and you should
291 take this approach when writing new modules. See File::DosGlob for
294 =item Using perl from the command line
296 If you are accustomed to using perl from various command-line
297 shells found in UNIX environments, you will be less than pleased
298 with what Windows NT offers by way of a command shell.
300 The crucial thing to understand about the "cmd" shell (which is
301 the default on Windows NT) is that it does not do any wildcard
302 expansions of command-line arguments (so wildcards need not be
303 quoted). It also provides only rudimentary quoting. The only
304 (useful) quote character is the double quote ("). It can be used to
305 protect spaces in arguments and other special characters. The
306 Windows NT documentation has almost no description of how the
307 quoting rules are implemented, but here are some general observations
308 based on experiments: The shell breaks arguments at spaces and
309 passes them to programs in argc/argv. Doublequotes can be used
310 to prevent arguments with spaces in them from being split up.
311 You can put a double quote in an argument by escaping it with
312 a backslash and enclosing the whole argument within double quotes.
313 The backslash and the pair of double quotes surrounding the
314 argument will be stripped by the shell.
316 The file redirection characters "<", ">", and "|" cannot be quoted
317 by double quotes (there are probably more such). Single quotes
318 will protect those three file redirection characters, but the
319 single quotes don't get stripped by the shell (just to make this
320 type of quoting completely useless). The caret "^" has also
321 been observed to behave as a quoting character (and doesn't get
322 stripped by the shell also).
324 Here are some examples of usage of the "cmd" shell:
326 This prints two doublequotes:
328 perl -e "print '\"\"' "
332 perl -e "print \"\\\"\\\"\" "
334 This prints "bar" and writes "foo" to the file "blurch":
336 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" > blurch
338 This prints "foo" ("bar" disappears into nowhereland):
340 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> nul
342 This prints "bar" and writes "foo" into the file "blurch":
344 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 1> blurch
346 This pipes "foo" to the "less" pager and prints "bar" on the console:
348 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" | less
350 This pipes "foo\nbar\n" to the less pager:
352 perl -le "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2>&1 | less
354 This pipes "foo" to the pager and writes "bar" in the file "blurch":
356 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> blurch | less
359 Discovering the usefulness of the "command.com" shell on Windows95
360 is left as an exercise to the reader :)
362 =item Building Extensions
364 The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) offers a wealth
365 of extensions, some of which require a C compiler to build.
366 Look in http://www.perl.com/ for more information on CPAN.
368 Most extensions (whether they require a C compiler or not) can
369 be built, tested and installed with the standard mantra:
376 where $MAKE stands for NMAKE or DMAKE. Some extensions may not
377 provide a testsuite (so "$MAKE test" may not do anything, or fail),
378 but most serious ones do.
380 If a module implements XSUBs, you will need one of the supported
381 C compilers. You must make sure you have set up the environment for
382 the compiler for command-line compilation.
384 If a module does not build for some reason, look carefully for
385 why it failed, and report problems to the module author. If
386 it looks like the extension building support is at fault, report
387 that with full details of how the build failed using the perlbug
390 =item Command-line Wildcard Expansion
392 The default command shells on DOS descendant operating systems (such
393 as they are) usually do not expand wildcard arguments supplied to
394 programs. They consider it the application's job to handle that.
395 This is commonly achieved by linking the application (in our case,
396 perl) with startup code that the C runtime libraries usually provide.
397 However, doing that results in incompatible perl versions (since the
398 behavior of the argv expansion code differs depending on the
399 compiler, and it is even buggy on some compilers). Besides, it may
400 be a source of frustration if you use such a perl binary with an
401 alternate shell that *does* expand wildcards.
403 Instead, the following solution works rather well. The nice things
404 about it: 1) you can start using it right away 2) it is more powerful,
405 because it will do the right thing with a pattern like */*/*.c
406 3) you can decide whether you do/don't want to use it 4) you can
407 extend the method to add any customizations (or even entirely
408 different kinds of wildcard expansion).
410 C:\> copy con c:\perl\lib\Wild.pm
411 # Wild.pm - emulate shell @ARGV expansion on shells that don't
414 my @g = File::DosGlob::glob($_) if /[*?]/;
419 C:\> set PERL5OPT=-MWild
420 C:\> perl -le "for (@ARGV) { print }" */*/perl*.c
424 perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
425 perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
426 perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
427 perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
428 perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
429 perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
431 Note there are two distinct steps there: 1) You'll have to create
432 Wild.pm and put it in your perl lib directory. 2) You'll need to
433 set the PERL5OPT environment variable. If you want argv expansion
434 to be the default, just set PERL5OPT in your default startup
437 If you are using the Visual C compiler, you can get the C runtime's
438 command line wildcard expansion built into perl binary. The resulting
439 binary will always expand unquoted command lines, which may not be
440 what you want if you use a shell that does that for you. The expansion
441 done is also somewhat less powerful than the approach suggested above.
443 =item Win32 Specific Extensions
445 A number of extensions specific to the Win32 platform are available
446 from CPAN. You may find that many of these extensions are meant to
447 be used under the Activeware port of Perl, which used to be the only
448 native port for the Win32 platform. Since the Activeware port does not
449 have adequate support for Perl's extension building tools, these
450 extensions typically do not support those tools either, and therefore
451 cannot be built using the generic steps shown in the previous section.
453 To ensure smooth transitioning of existing code that uses the
454 ActiveState port, there is a bundle of Win32 extensions that contains
455 all of the ActiveState extensions and most other Win32 extensions from
456 CPAN in source form, along with many added bugfixes, and with MakeMaker
457 support. This bundle is available at:
459 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/id/GSAR/libwin32-0.12.zip
461 See the README in that distribution for building and installation
462 instructions. Look for later versions that may be available at the
465 =item Running Perl Scripts
467 Perl scripts on UNIX use the "#!" (a.k.a "shebang") line to
468 indicate to the OS that it should execute the file using perl.
469 Win32 has no comparable means to indicate arbitrary files are
472 Instead, all available methods to execute plain text files on
473 Win32 rely on the file "extension". There are three methods
474 to use this to execute perl scripts:
480 There is a facility called "file extension associations" that will
481 work in Windows NT 4.0. This can be manipulated via the two
482 commands "assoc" and "ftype" that come standard with Windows NT
483 4.0. Type "ftype /?" for a complete example of how to set this
484 up for perl scripts (Say what? You thought Windows NT wasn't
489 Since file associations don't work everywhere, and there are
490 reportedly bugs with file associations where it does work, the
491 old method of wrapping the perl script to make it look like a
492 regular batch file to the OS, may be used. The install process
493 makes available the "pl2bat.bat" script which can be used to wrap
494 perl scripts into batch files. For example:
498 will create the file "FOO.BAT". Note "pl2bat" strips any
499 .pl suffix and adds a .bat suffix to the generated file.
501 If you use the 4DOS/NT or similar command shell, note that
502 "pl2bat" uses the "%*" variable in the generated batch file to
503 refer to all the command line arguments, so you may need to make
504 sure that construct works in batch files. As of this writing,
505 4DOS/NT users will need a "ParameterChar = *" statement in their
506 4NT.INI file, or will need to execute "setdos /p*" in the 4DOS/NT
507 startup file to enable this to work.
511 Using "pl2bat" has a few problems: the file name gets changed,
512 so scripts that rely on C<$0> to find what they must do may not
513 run properly; running "pl2bat" replicates the contents of the
514 original script, and so this process can be maintenance intensive
515 if the originals get updated often. A different approach that
516 avoids both problems is possible.
518 A script called "runperl.bat" is available that can be copied
519 to any filename (along with the .bat suffix). For example,
520 if you call it "foo.bat", it will run the file "foo" when it is
521 executed. Since you can run batch files on Win32 platforms simply
522 by typing the name (without the extension), this effectively
523 runs the file "foo", when you type either "foo" or "foo.bat".
524 With this method, "foo.bat" can even be in a different location
525 than the file "foo", as long as "foo" is available somewhere on
526 the PATH. If your scripts are on a filesystem that allows symbolic
527 links, you can even avoid copying "runperl.bat".
529 Here's a diversion: copy "runperl.bat" to "runperl", and type
530 "runperl". Explain the observed behavior, or lack thereof. :)
531 Hint: .gnidnats llits er'uoy fi ,"lrepnur" eteled :tniH
535 =item Miscellaneous Things
537 A full set of HTML documentation is installed, so you should be
538 able to use it if you have a web browser installed on your
541 C<perldoc> is also a useful tool for browsing information contained
542 in the documentation, especially in conjunction with a pager
543 like C<less> (recent versions of which have Win32 support). You may
544 have to set the PAGER environment variable to use a specific pager.
545 "perldoc -f foo" will print information about the perl operator
548 If you find bugs in perl, you can run C<perlbug> to create a
549 bug report (you may have to send it manually if C<perlbug> cannot
550 find a mailer on your system).
554 =head1 BUGS AND CAVEATS
556 An effort has been made to ensure that the DLLs produced by the two
557 supported compilers are compatible with each other (despite the
558 best efforts of the compiler vendors). Extension binaries produced
559 by one compiler should also coexist with a perl binary built by
560 a different compiler. In order to accomplish this, PERL.DLL provides
561 a layer of runtime code that uses the C Runtime that perl was compiled
562 with. Extensions which include "perl.h" will transparently access
563 the functions in this layer, thereby ensuring that both perl and
564 extensions use the same runtime functions.
566 If you have had prior exposure to Perl on Unix platforms, you will notice
567 this port exhibits behavior different from what is documented. Most of the
568 differences fall under one of these categories. We do not consider
569 any of them to be serious limitations (especially when compared to the
570 limited nature of some of the Win32 OSes themselves :)
576 C<stat()> and C<lstat()> functions may not behave as documented. They
577 may return values that bear no resemblance to those reported on Unix
578 platforms, and some fields (like the the one for inode) may be completely
583 The following functions are currently unavailable: C<fork()>,
584 C<dump()>, C<chown()>, C<link()>, C<symlink()>, C<chroot()>,
585 C<setpgrp()> and related security functions, C<setpriority()>,
586 C<getpriority()>, C<syscall()>, C<fcntl()>, C<getpw*()>,
587 C<msg*()>, C<shm*()>, C<sem*()>, C<alarm()>, C<socketpair()>,
588 C<*netent()>, C<*protoent()>, C<*servent()>, C<*hostent()>,
590 This list is possibly incomplete.
594 Various C<socket()> related calls are supported, but they may not
595 behave as on Unix platforms.
599 The four-argument C<select()> call is only supported on sockets.
603 The C<ioctl()> call is only supported on sockets (where it provides the
604 functionality of ioctlsocket() in the Winsock API).
608 Failure to spawn() a subprocess is indicated by setting $? to "255 << 8".
609 C<$?> is set in a way compatible with Unix (i.e. the exitstatus of the
610 subprocess is obtained by "$? >> 8", as described in the documentation).
614 You can expect problems building modules available on CPAN if you
615 build perl itself with -DUSE_THREADS. These problems should be resolved
616 as we get closer to 5.005.
620 C<utime()>, C<times()> and process-related functions may not
621 behave as described in the documentation, and some of the
622 returned values or effects may be bogus.
626 Signal handling may not behave as on Unix platforms (where it
627 doesn't exactly "behave", either :). For instance, calling C<die()>
628 or C<exit()> from signal handlers will cause an exception, since most
629 implementations of C<signal()> on Win32 are severely crippled.
630 Thus, signals may work only for simple things like setting a flag
631 variable in the handler. Using signals under this port should
632 currently be considered unsupported.
636 C<kill()> is implemented, but doesn't have the semantics of
637 C<raise()>, i.e. it doesn't send a signal to the identified process
638 like it does on Unix platforms. Instead it immediately calls
639 C<TerminateProcess(process,signal)>. Thus the signal argument is
640 used to set the exit-status of the terminated process. This behavior
641 may change in future.
645 File globbing may not behave as on Unix platforms. In particular,
646 if you don't use perlglob.bat for globbing, it will understand
647 wildcards only in the filename component (and not in the pathname).
648 In other words, something like "print <*/*.pl>" will not print all the
649 perl scripts in all the subdirectories one level under the current one
650 (like it does on UNIX platforms). perlglob.exe is also dependent on
651 the particular implementation of wildcard expansion in the vendor
652 libraries used to build it (which varies wildly at the present time).
653 Using perlglob.bat (or File::DosGlob) avoids these limitations, but
654 still only provides DOS semantics (read "warts") for globbing.
658 Please send detailed descriptions of any problems and solutions that
659 you may find to <F<perlbug@perl.com>>, along with the output produced
666 Gary Ng E<lt>71564.1743@CompuServe.COME<gt>
668 Gurusamy Sarathy E<lt>gsar@umich.eduE<gt>
670 Nick Ing-Simmons E<lt>nick@ni-s.u-net.comE<gt>
674 This document is maintained by Gurusamy Sarathy.
682 This port was originally contributed by Gary Ng around 5.003_24,
683 and borrowed from the Hip Communications port that was available
686 Nick Ing-Simmons and Gurusamy Sarathy have made numerous and
687 sundry hacks since then.
689 Borland support was added in 5.004_01 (Gurusamy Sarathy).
691 Last updated: 12 July 1998