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 6.01 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. The location above contains
175 many versions of the "libdes" library, all with slightly different
176 implementations of des_fcrypt(). Older versions have a single,
177 self-contained file (fcrypt.c) that implements crypt(), so they may be
178 easier to use. A patch against the fcrypt.c found in libdes-3.06 is
181 Perl will also build without des_fcrypt(), but the crypt() builtin will
184 You will also have to make sure CCHOME points to wherever you installed
187 Other options are explained in the makefiles. Be sure to read the
188 instructions carefully.
192 Type "dmake" (or "nmake" if you are using that make).
194 This should build everything. Specifically, it will create perl.exe,
195 perl.dll (or perlcore.dll), and perlglob.exe at the perl toplevel, and
196 various other extension dll's under the lib\auto directory. If the build
197 fails for any reason, make sure you have done the previous steps correctly.
199 The build process may produce "harmless" compiler warnings (more or
200 less copiously, depending on how picky your compiler gets). The
201 maintainers are aware of these warnings, thankyouverymuch. :)
203 When building using Visual C++, a perl95.exe will also get built. This
204 executable is only needed on Windows95, and should be used instead of
205 perl.exe, and then only if you want sockets to work properly on Windows95.
206 This is necessitated by a bug in the Microsoft C Runtime that cannot be
207 worked around in the "normal" perl.exe. perl95.exe gets built with its
208 own private copy of the C Runtime that is not accessible to extensions
209 (which see the DLL version of the CRT). Be aware, therefore, that this
210 perl95.exe will have esoteric problems with extensions like perl/Tk that
211 themselves use the C Runtime heavily, or want to free() pointers
214 You can avoid the perl95.exe problems completely if you use Borland
215 C++ for building perl (perl95.exe is not needed and will not be built
222 Type "dmake test" (or "nmake test"). This will run most of the tests from
223 the testsuite (many tests will be skipped, and but no test should fail).
225 If some tests do fail, it may be because you are using a different command
226 shell than the native "cmd.exe".
228 If you used the Borland compiler, you may see a failure in op/taint.t
229 arising from the inability to find the Borland Runtime DLLs on the system
230 default path. You will need to copy the DLLs reported by the messages
231 from where Borland chose to install it, into the Windows system directory
232 (usually somewhere like C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32), and rerun the test.
234 The Visual C runtime apparently has a bug that causes posix.t to fail
235 one it test#2. This usually happens only if you extracted the files in
238 Please report any other failures as described under L<BUGS AND CAVEATS>.
242 Type "dmake install" (or "nmake install"). This will put the newly
243 built perl and the libraries under whatever C<INST_TOP> points to in the
244 Makefile. It will also install the pod documentation under
245 C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\lib\pod> and HTML versions of the same under
246 C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\lib\pod\html>. To use the Perl you just installed,
247 you will need to add two components to your PATH environment variable,
248 C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\bin>, and C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\bin\$ARCHNAME>.
251 set PATH c:\perl\5.005\bin;c:\perl\5.005\bin\MSWin32-x6;%PATH%
258 =item Environment Variables
260 The installation paths that you set during the build get compiled
261 into perl, so you don't have to do anything additional to start
262 using that perl (except add its location to your PATH variable).
264 If you put extensions in unusual places, you can set PERL5LIB
265 to a list of paths separated by semicolons where you want perl
266 to look for libraries. Look for descriptions of other environment
267 variables you can set in L<perlrun>.
269 You can also control the shell that perl uses to run system() and
270 backtick commands via PERL5SHELL. See L<perlrun>.
272 Currently, Perl does not depend on the registry, but can look up
273 values if you choose to put them there. [XXX add registry locations
274 that perl looks at here.]
278 By default, perl spawns an external program to do file globbing.
279 The install process installs both a perlglob.exe and a perlglob.bat
280 that perl can use for this purpose. Note that with the default
281 installation, perlglob.exe will be found by the system before
284 perlglob.exe relies on the argv expansion done by the C Runtime of
285 the particular compiler you used, and therefore behaves very
286 differently depending on the Runtime used to build it. To preserve
287 compatiblity, perlglob.bat (a perl script that can be used portably)
288 is installed. Besides being portable, perlglob.bat also offers
289 enhanced globbing functionality.
291 If you want perl to use perlglob.bat instead of perlglob.exe, just
292 delete perlglob.exe from the install location (or move it somewhere
293 perl cannot find). Using File::DosGlob.pm (which implements the core
294 functionality of perlglob.bat) to override the internal CORE::glob()
295 works about 10 times faster than spawing perlglob.exe, and you should
296 take this approach when writing new modules. See File::DosGlob for
299 =item Using perl from the command line
301 If you are accustomed to using perl from various command-line
302 shells found in UNIX environments, you will be less than pleased
303 with what Windows NT offers by way of a command shell.
305 The crucial thing to understand about the "cmd" shell (which is
306 the default on Windows NT) is that it does not do any wildcard
307 expansions of command-line arguments (so wildcards need not be
308 quoted). It also provides only rudimentary quoting. The only
309 (useful) quote character is the double quote ("). It can be used to
310 protect spaces in arguments and other special characters. The
311 Windows NT documentation has almost no description of how the
312 quoting rules are implemented, but here are some general observations
313 based on experiments: The shell breaks arguments at spaces and
314 passes them to programs in argc/argv. Doublequotes can be used
315 to prevent arguments with spaces in them from being split up.
316 You can put a double quote in an argument by escaping it with
317 a backslash and enclosing the whole argument within double quotes.
318 The backslash and the pair of double quotes surrounding the
319 argument will be stripped by the shell.
321 The file redirection characters "<", ">", and "|" cannot be quoted
322 by double quotes (there are probably more such). Single quotes
323 will protect those three file redirection characters, but the
324 single quotes don't get stripped by the shell (just to make this
325 type of quoting completely useless). The caret "^" has also
326 been observed to behave as a quoting character (and doesn't get
327 stripped by the shell also).
329 Here are some examples of usage of the "cmd" shell:
331 This prints two doublequotes:
333 perl -e "print '\"\"' "
337 perl -e "print \"\\\"\\\"\" "
339 This prints "bar" and writes "foo" to the file "blurch":
341 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" > blurch
343 This prints "foo" ("bar" disappears into nowhereland):
345 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> nul
347 This prints "bar" and writes "foo" into the file "blurch":
349 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 1> blurch
351 This pipes "foo" to the "less" pager and prints "bar" on the console:
353 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" | less
355 This pipes "foo\nbar\n" to the less pager:
357 perl -le "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2>&1 | less
359 This pipes "foo" to the pager and writes "bar" in the file "blurch":
361 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> blurch | less
364 Discovering the usefulness of the "command.com" shell on Windows95
365 is left as an exercise to the reader :)
367 =item Building Extensions
369 The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) offers a wealth
370 of extensions, some of which require a C compiler to build.
371 Look in http://www.perl.com/ for more information on CPAN.
373 Most extensions (whether they require a C compiler or not) can
374 be built, tested and installed with the standard mantra:
381 where $MAKE stands for NMAKE or DMAKE. Some extensions may not
382 provide a testsuite (so "$MAKE test" may not do anything, or fail),
383 but most serious ones do.
385 If a module implements XSUBs, you will need one of the supported
386 C compilers. You must make sure you have set up the environment for
387 the compiler for command-line compilation.
389 If a module does not build for some reason, look carefully for
390 why it failed, and report problems to the module author. If
391 it looks like the extension building support is at fault, report
392 that with full details of how the build failed using the perlbug
395 =item Command-line Wildcard Expansion
397 The default command shells on DOS descendant operating systems (such
398 as they are) usually do not expand wildcard arguments supplied to
399 programs. They consider it the application's job to handle that.
400 This is commonly achieved by linking the application (in our case,
401 perl) with startup code that the C runtime libraries usually provide.
402 However, doing that results in incompatible perl versions (since the
403 behavior of the argv expansion code differs depending on the
404 compiler, and it is even buggy on some compilers). Besides, it may
405 be a source of frustration if you use such a perl binary with an
406 alternate shell that *does* expand wildcards.
408 Instead, the following solution works rather well. The nice things
409 about it: 1) you can start using it right away 2) it is more powerful,
410 because it will do the right thing with a pattern like */*/*.c
411 3) you can decide whether you do/don't want to use it 4) you can
412 extend the method to add any customizations (or even entirely
413 different kinds of wildcard expansion).
415 C:\> copy con c:\perl\lib\Wild.pm
416 # Wild.pm - emulate shell @ARGV expansion on shells that don't
419 my @g = File::DosGlob::glob($_) if /[*?]/;
424 C:\> set PERL5OPT=-MWild
425 C:\> perl -le "for (@ARGV) { print }" */*/perl*.c
429 perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
430 perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
431 perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
432 perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
433 perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
434 perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
436 Note there are two distinct steps there: 1) You'll have to create
437 Wild.pm and put it in your perl lib directory. 2) You'll need to
438 set the PERL5OPT environment variable. If you want argv expansion
439 to be the default, just set PERL5OPT in your default startup
442 If you are using the Visual C compiler, you can get the C runtime's
443 command line wildcard expansion built into perl binary. The resulting
444 binary will always expand unquoted command lines, which may not be
445 what you want if you use a shell that does that for you. The expansion
446 done is also somewhat less powerful than the approach suggested above.
448 =item Win32 Specific Extensions
450 A number of extensions specific to the Win32 platform are available
451 from CPAN. You may find that many of these extensions are meant to
452 be used under the Activeware port of Perl, which used to be the only
453 native port for the Win32 platform. Since the Activeware port does not
454 have adequate support for Perl's extension building tools, these
455 extensions typically do not support those tools either, and therefore
456 cannot be built using the generic steps shown in the previous section.
458 To ensure smooth transitioning of existing code that uses the
459 ActiveState port, there is a bundle of Win32 extensions that contains
460 all of the ActiveState extensions and most other Win32 extensions from
461 CPAN in source form, along with many added bugfixes, and with MakeMaker
462 support. This bundle is available at:
464 http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/id/GSAR/libwin32-0.12.zip
466 See the README in that distribution for building and installation
467 instructions. Look for later versions that may be available at the
470 =item Running Perl Scripts
472 Perl scripts on UNIX use the "#!" (a.k.a "shebang") line to
473 indicate to the OS that it should execute the file using perl.
474 Win32 has no comparable means to indicate arbitrary files are
477 Instead, all available methods to execute plain text files on
478 Win32 rely on the file "extension". There are three methods
479 to use this to execute perl scripts:
485 There is a facility called "file extension associations" that will
486 work in Windows NT 4.0. This can be manipulated via the two
487 commands "assoc" and "ftype" that come standard with Windows NT
488 4.0. Type "ftype /?" for a complete example of how to set this
489 up for perl scripts (Say what? You thought Windows NT wasn't
494 Since file associations don't work everywhere, and there are
495 reportedly bugs with file associations where it does work, the
496 old method of wrapping the perl script to make it look like a
497 regular batch file to the OS, may be used. The install process
498 makes available the "pl2bat.bat" script which can be used to wrap
499 perl scripts into batch files. For example:
503 will create the file "FOO.BAT". Note "pl2bat" strips any
504 .pl suffix and adds a .bat suffix to the generated file.
506 If you use the 4DOS/NT or similar command shell, note that
507 "pl2bat" uses the "%*" variable in the generated batch file to
508 refer to all the command line arguments, so you may need to make
509 sure that construct works in batch files. As of this writing,
510 4DOS/NT users will need a "ParameterChar = *" statement in their
511 4NT.INI file, or will need to execute "setdos /p*" in the 4DOS/NT
512 startup file to enable this to work.
516 Using "pl2bat" has a few problems: the file name gets changed,
517 so scripts that rely on C<$0> to find what they must do may not
518 run properly; running "pl2bat" replicates the contents of the
519 original script, and so this process can be maintenance intensive
520 if the originals get updated often. A different approach that
521 avoids both problems is possible.
523 A script called "runperl.bat" is available that can be copied
524 to any filename (along with the .bat suffix). For example,
525 if you call it "foo.bat", it will run the file "foo" when it is
526 executed. Since you can run batch files on Win32 platforms simply
527 by typing the name (without the extension), this effectively
528 runs the file "foo", when you type either "foo" or "foo.bat".
529 With this method, "foo.bat" can even be in a different location
530 than the file "foo", as long as "foo" is available somewhere on
531 the PATH. If your scripts are on a filesystem that allows symbolic
532 links, you can even avoid copying "runperl.bat".
534 Here's a diversion: copy "runperl.bat" to "runperl", and type
535 "runperl". Explain the observed behavior, or lack thereof. :)
536 Hint: .gnidnats llits er'uoy fi ,"lrepnur" eteled :tniH
540 =item Miscellaneous Things
542 A full set of HTML documentation is installed, so you should be
543 able to use it if you have a web browser installed on your
546 C<perldoc> is also a useful tool for browsing information contained
547 in the documentation, especially in conjunction with a pager
548 like C<less> (recent versions of which have Win32 support). You may
549 have to set the PAGER environment variable to use a specific pager.
550 "perldoc -f foo" will print information about the perl operator
553 If you find bugs in perl, you can run C<perlbug> to create a
554 bug report (you may have to send it manually if C<perlbug> cannot
555 find a mailer on your system).
559 =head1 BUGS AND CAVEATS
561 An effort has been made to ensure that the DLLs produced by the two
562 supported compilers are compatible with each other (despite the
563 best efforts of the compiler vendors). Extension binaries produced
564 by one compiler should also coexist with a perl binary built by
565 a different compiler. In order to accomplish this, PERL.DLL provides
566 a layer of runtime code that uses the C Runtime that perl was compiled
567 with. Extensions which include "perl.h" will transparently access
568 the functions in this layer, thereby ensuring that both perl and
569 extensions use the same runtime functions.
571 If you have had prior exposure to Perl on Unix platforms, you will notice
572 this port exhibits behavior different from what is documented. Most of the
573 differences fall under one of these categories. We do not consider
574 any of them to be serious limitations (especially when compared to the
575 limited nature of some of the Win32 OSes themselves :)
581 C<stat()> and C<lstat()> functions may not behave as documented. They
582 may return values that bear no resemblance to those reported on Unix
583 platforms, and some fields (like the the one for inode) may be completely
588 The following functions are currently unavailable: C<fork()>,
589 C<dump()>, C<chown()>, C<link()>, C<symlink()>, C<chroot()>,
590 C<setpgrp()> and related security functions, C<setpriority()>,
591 C<getpriority()>, C<syscall()>, C<fcntl()>, C<getpw*()>,
592 C<msg*()>, C<shm*()>, C<sem*()>, C<alarm()>, C<socketpair()>,
593 C<*netent()>, C<*protoent()>, C<*servent()>, C<*hostent()>,
595 This list is possibly incomplete.
599 Various C<socket()> related calls are supported, but they may not
600 behave as on Unix platforms.
604 The four-argument C<select()> call is only supported on sockets.
608 The C<ioctl()> call is only supported on sockets (where it provides the
609 functionality of ioctlsocket() in the Winsock API).
613 Failure to spawn() a subprocess is indicated by setting $? to "255 << 8".
614 C<$?> is set in a way compatible with Unix (i.e. the exitstatus of the
615 subprocess is obtained by "$? >> 8", as described in the documentation).
619 You can expect problems building modules available on CPAN if you
620 build perl itself with -DUSE_THREADS. These problems should be resolved
621 as we get closer to 5.005.
625 C<utime()>, C<times()> and process-related functions may not
626 behave as described in the documentation, and some of the
627 returned values or effects may be bogus.
631 Signal handling may not behave as on Unix platforms (where it
632 doesn't exactly "behave", either :). For instance, calling C<die()>
633 or C<exit()> from signal handlers will cause an exception, since most
634 implementations of C<signal()> on Win32 are severely crippled.
635 Thus, signals may work only for simple things like setting a flag
636 variable in the handler. Using signals under this port should
637 currently be considered unsupported.
641 C<kill()> is implemented, but doesn't have the semantics of
642 C<raise()>, i.e. it doesn't send a signal to the identified process
643 like it does on Unix platforms. Instead it immediately calls
644 C<TerminateProcess(process,signal)>. Thus the signal argument is
645 used to set the exit-status of the terminated process. This behavior
646 may change in future.
650 File globbing may not behave as on Unix platforms. In particular,
651 if you don't use perlglob.bat for globbing, it will understand
652 wildcards only in the filename component (and not in the pathname).
653 In other words, something like "print <*/*.pl>" will not print all the
654 perl scripts in all the subdirectories one level under the current one
655 (like it does on UNIX platforms). perlglob.exe is also dependent on
656 the particular implementation of wildcard expansion in the vendor
657 libraries used to build it (which varies wildly at the present time).
658 Using perlglob.bat (or File::DosGlob) avoids these limitations, but
659 still only provides DOS semantics (read "warts") for globbing.
663 Please send detailed descriptions of any problems and solutions that
664 you may find to <F<perlbug@perl.com>>, along with the output produced
671 Gary Ng E<lt>71564.1743@CompuServe.COME<gt>
673 Gurusamy Sarathy E<lt>gsar@umich.eduE<gt>
675 Nick Ing-Simmons E<lt>nick@ni-s.u-net.comE<gt>
679 This document is maintained by Gurusamy Sarathy.
687 This port was originally contributed by Gary Ng around 5.003_24,
688 and borrowed from the Hip Communications port that was available
691 Nick Ing-Simmons and Gurusamy Sarathy have made numerous and
692 sundry hacks since then.
694 Borland support was added in 5.004_01 (Gurusamy Sarathy).
696 Last updated: 12 July 1998