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 where 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, which each give a different set of rules to build
32 a Perl that will work on Win32 platforms. Those two methods will
33 probably enable you to build a more Unix-compatible perl, but you
34 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 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.)
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:
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 run 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 using nmake) and change the values
153 of INST_DRV and INST_TOP. You can also enable various build
154 flags. These are explained in the makefiles.
156 You will have to make sure CCTYPE is set correctly, and CCHOME points
157 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 Please report any other failures as described under L<BUGS AND CAVEATS>.
221 Type "dmake install" (or "nmake install"). This will put the newly
222 built perl and the libraries under whatever C<INST_TOP> points to in the
223 Makefile. It will also install the pod documentation under
224 C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\lib\pod> and HTML versions of the same under
225 C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\lib\pod\html>. To use the Perl you just installed,
226 you will need to add two components to your PATH environment variable,
227 C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\bin>, and C<$INST_TOP\$VERSION\bin\$ARCHNAME>.
230 set PATH c:\perl\5.6.0\bin;c:\perl\5.6.0\bin\MSWin32-x86;%PATH%
232 If you opt to comment out INST_VER and INST_ARCH in the makefiles, the
233 installation structure is much simpler. In that case, it will be
234 sufficient to add a single entry to the path, for instance:
236 set PATH c:\perl\bin;%PATH%
242 =item Environment Variables
244 The installation paths that you set during the build get compiled
245 into perl, so you don't have to do anything additional to start
246 using that perl (except add its location to your PATH variable).
248 If you put extensions in unusual places, you can set PERL5LIB
249 to a list of paths separated by semicolons where you want perl
250 to look for libraries. Look for descriptions of other environment
251 variables you can set in L<perlrun>.
253 You can also control the shell that perl uses to run system() and
254 backtick commands via PERL5SHELL. See L<perlrun>.
256 Perl does not depend on the registry, but it can look up certain default
257 values if you choose to put them there. Perl attempts to read entries from
258 C<HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Perl> and C<HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Perl>.
259 Entries in the former override entries in the latter. One or more of the
260 following entries (of type REG_SZ or REG_EXPAND_SZ) may be set:
262 lib-$] version-specific standard library path to add to @INC
263 lib standard library path to add to @INC
264 sitelib-$] version-specific site library path to add to @INC
265 sitelib site library path to add to @INC
266 vendorlib-$] version-specific vendor library path to add to @INC
267 vendorlib vendor library path to add to @INC
268 PERL* fallback for all %ENV lookups that begin with "PERL"
270 Note the C<$]> in the above is not literal. Substitute whatever version
271 of perl you want to honor that entry, e.g. C<5.6.0>. Paths must be
272 separated with semicolons, as usual on win32.
276 By default, perl handles file globbing using the File::Glob extension,
277 which provides portable globbing.
279 If you want perl to use globbing that emulates the quirks of DOS
280 filename conventions, you might want to consider using File::DosGlob
281 to override the internal glob() implementation. See L<File::DosGlob> for
284 =item Using perl from the command line
286 If you are accustomed to using perl from various command-line
287 shells found in UNIX environments, you will be less than pleased
288 with what Windows offers by way of a command shell.
290 The crucial thing to understand about the Windows environment is that
291 the command line you type in is processed twice before Perl sees it.
292 First, your command shell (usually CMD.EXE on Windows NT, and
293 COMMAND.COM on Windows 9x) preprocesses the command line, to handle
294 redirection, environment variable expansion, and location of the
295 executable to run. Then, the perl executable splits the remaining
296 command line into individual arguments, using the C runtime library
297 upon which Perl was built.
299 It is particularly important to note that neither the shell nor the C
300 runtime do any wildcard expansions of command-line arguments (so
301 wildcards need not be quoted). Also, the quoting behaviours of the
302 shell and the C runtime are rudimentary at best (and may, if you are
303 using a non-standard shell, be inconsistent). The only (useful) quote
304 character is the double quote ("). It can be used to protect spaces in
305 arguments and other special characters. The Windows NT documentation
306 has almost no description of how the quoting rules are implemented, but
307 here are some general observations based on experiments: The C runtime
308 breaks arguments at spaces and passes them to programs in argc/argv.
309 Doublequotes can be used to prevent arguments with spaces in them from
310 being split up. You can put a double quote in an argument by escaping
311 it with a backslash and enclosing the whole argument within double
312 quotes. The backslash and the pair of double quotes surrounding the
313 argument will be stripped by the C runtime.
315 The file redirection characters "<", ">", and "|" can be quoted by
316 double quotes (although there are suggestions that this may not always
317 be true). Single quotes are not treated as quotes by the shell or the C
318 runtime. The caret "^" has also been observed to behave as a quoting
319 character, but this appears to be a shell feature, and the caret is not
320 stripped from the command line, so Perl still sees it (and the C runtime
321 phase does not treat the caret as a quote character).
323 Here are some examples of usage of the "cmd" shell:
325 This prints two doublequotes:
327 perl -e "print '\"\"' "
331 perl -e "print \"\\\"\\\"\" "
333 This prints "bar" and writes "foo" to the file "blurch":
335 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" > blurch
337 This prints "foo" ("bar" disappears into nowhereland):
339 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> nul
341 This prints "bar" and writes "foo" into the file "blurch":
343 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 1> blurch
345 This pipes "foo" to the "less" pager and prints "bar" on the console:
347 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" | less
349 This pipes "foo\nbar\n" to the less pager:
351 perl -le "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2>&1 | less
353 This pipes "foo" to the pager and writes "bar" in the file "blurch":
355 perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> blurch | less
358 Discovering the usefulness of the "command.com" shell on Windows 9x
359 is left as an exercise to the reader :)
361 One particularly pernicious problem with the 4NT command shell for
362 Windows NT is that it (nearly) always treats a % character as indicating
363 that environment variable expansion is needed. Under this shell, it is
364 therefore important to always double any % characters which you want
365 Perl to see (for example, for hash variables), even when they are
368 =item Building Extensions
370 The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) offers a wealth
371 of extensions, some of which require a C compiler to build.
372 Look in http://www.cpan.org/ for more information on CPAN.
374 Note that not all of the extensions available from CPAN may work
375 in the Win32 environment; you should check the information at
376 http://testers.cpan.org/ before investing too much effort into
377 porting modules that don't readily build.
379 Most extensions (whether they require a C compiler or not) can
380 be built, tested and installed with the standard mantra:
387 where $MAKE is whatever 'make' program you have configured perl to
388 use. Use "perl -V:make" to find out what this is. Some extensions
389 may not provide a testsuite (so "$MAKE test" may not do anything, or
390 fail), but most serious ones do.
392 It is important that you use a supported 'make' program, and
393 ensure Config.pm knows about it. If you don't have nmake, you can
394 either get dmake from the location mentioned earlier, or get an
395 old version of nmake reportedly available from:
397 ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/nmake15.exe
399 Another option is to use the make written in Perl, available from
402 http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/NI-S/Make-0.03.tar.gz
404 You may also use dmake. See L</"Make"> above on how to get it.
406 Note that MakeMaker actually emits makefiles with different syntax
407 depending on what 'make' it thinks you are using. Therefore, it is
408 important that one of the following values appears in Config.pm:
410 make='nmake' # MakeMaker emits nmake syntax
411 make='dmake' # MakeMaker emits dmake syntax
412 any other value # MakeMaker emits generic make syntax
413 (e.g GNU make, or Perl make)
415 If the value doesn't match the 'make' program you want to use,
416 edit Config.pm to fix it.
418 If a module implements XSUBs, you will need one of the supported
419 C compilers. You must make sure you have set up the environment for
420 the compiler for command-line compilation.
422 If a module does not build for some reason, look carefully for
423 why it failed, and report problems to the module author. If
424 it looks like the extension building support is at fault, report
425 that with full details of how the build failed using the perlbug
428 =item Command-line Wildcard Expansion
430 The default command shells on DOS descendant operating systems (such
431 as they are) usually do not expand wildcard arguments supplied to
432 programs. They consider it the application's job to handle that.
433 This is commonly achieved by linking the application (in our case,
434 perl) with startup code that the C runtime libraries usually provide.
435 However, doing that results in incompatible perl versions (since the
436 behavior of the argv expansion code differs depending on the
437 compiler, and it is even buggy on some compilers). Besides, it may
438 be a source of frustration if you use such a perl binary with an
439 alternate shell that *does* expand wildcards.
441 Instead, the following solution works rather well. The nice things
442 about it: 1) you can start using it right away 2) it is more powerful,
443 because it will do the right thing with a pattern like */*/*.c
444 3) you can decide whether you do/don't want to use it 4) you can
445 extend the method to add any customizations (or even entirely
446 different kinds of wildcard expansion).
448 C:\> copy con c:\perl\lib\Wild.pm
449 # Wild.pm - emulate shell @ARGV expansion on shells that don't
452 my @g = File::DosGlob::glob($_) if /[*?]/;
457 C:\> set PERL5OPT=-MWild
458 C:\> perl -le "for (@ARGV) { print }" */*/perl*.c
462 perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
463 perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
464 perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
465 perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
466 perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
467 perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
469 Note there are two distinct steps there: 1) You'll have to create
470 Wild.pm and put it in your perl lib directory. 2) You'll need to
471 set the PERL5OPT environment variable. If you want argv expansion
472 to be the default, just set PERL5OPT in your default startup
475 If you are using the Visual C compiler, you can get the C runtime's
476 command line wildcard expansion built into perl binary. The resulting
477 binary will always expand unquoted command lines, which may not be
478 what you want if you use a shell that does that for you. The expansion
479 done is also somewhat less powerful than the approach suggested above.
481 =item Win32 Specific Extensions
483 A number of extensions specific to the Win32 platform are available
484 from CPAN. You may find that many of these extensions are meant to
485 be used under the Activeware port of Perl, which used to be the only
486 native port for the Win32 platform. Since the Activeware port does not
487 have adequate support for Perl's extension building tools, these
488 extensions typically do not support those tools either, and therefore
489 cannot be built using the generic steps shown in the previous section.
491 To ensure smooth transitioning of existing code that uses the
492 ActiveState port, there is a bundle of Win32 extensions that contains
493 all of the ActiveState extensions and most other Win32 extensions from
494 CPAN in source form, along with many added bugfixes, and with MakeMaker
495 support. This bundle is available at:
497 http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/GSAR/libwin32-0.151.zip
499 See the README in that distribution for building and installation
500 instructions. Look for later versions that may be available at the
503 =item Running Perl Scripts
505 Perl scripts on UNIX use the "#!" (a.k.a "shebang") line to
506 indicate to the OS that it should execute the file using perl.
507 Win32 has no comparable means to indicate arbitrary files are
510 Instead, all available methods to execute plain text files on
511 Win32 rely on the file "extension". There are three methods
512 to use this to execute perl scripts:
518 There is a facility called "file extension associations" that will
519 work in Windows NT 4.0. This can be manipulated via the two
520 commands "assoc" and "ftype" that come standard with Windows NT
521 4.0. Type "ftype /?" for a complete example of how to set this
522 up for perl scripts (Say what? You thought Windows NT wasn't
527 Since file associations don't work everywhere, and there are
528 reportedly bugs with file associations where it does work, the
529 old method of wrapping the perl script to make it look like a
530 regular batch file to the OS, may be used. The install process
531 makes available the "pl2bat.bat" script which can be used to wrap
532 perl scripts into batch files. For example:
536 will create the file "FOO.BAT". Note "pl2bat" strips any
537 .pl suffix and adds a .bat suffix to the generated file.
539 If you use the 4DOS/NT or similar command shell, note that
540 "pl2bat" uses the "%*" variable in the generated batch file to
541 refer to all the command line arguments, so you may need to make
542 sure that construct works in batch files. As of this writing,
543 4DOS/NT users will need a "ParameterChar = *" statement in their
544 4NT.INI file, or will need to execute "setdos /p*" in the 4DOS/NT
545 startup file to enable this to work.
549 Using "pl2bat" has a few problems: the file name gets changed,
550 so scripts that rely on C<$0> to find what they must do may not
551 run properly; running "pl2bat" replicates the contents of the
552 original script, and so this process can be maintenance intensive
553 if the originals get updated often. A different approach that
554 avoids both problems is possible.
556 A script called "runperl.bat" is available that can be copied
557 to any filename (along with the .bat suffix). For example,
558 if you call it "foo.bat", it will run the file "foo" when it is
559 executed. Since you can run batch files on Win32 platforms simply
560 by typing the name (without the extension), this effectively
561 runs the file "foo", when you type either "foo" or "foo.bat".
562 With this method, "foo.bat" can even be in a different location
563 than the file "foo", as long as "foo" is available somewhere on
564 the PATH. If your scripts are on a filesystem that allows symbolic
565 links, you can even avoid copying "runperl.bat".
567 Here's a diversion: copy "runperl.bat" to "runperl", and type
568 "runperl". Explain the observed behavior, or lack thereof. :)
569 Hint: .gnidnats llits er'uoy fi ,"lrepnur" eteled :tniH
573 =item Miscellaneous Things
575 A full set of HTML documentation is installed, so you should be
576 able to use it if you have a web browser installed on your
579 C<perldoc> is also a useful tool for browsing information contained
580 in the documentation, especially in conjunction with a pager
581 like C<less> (recent versions of which have Win32 support). You may
582 have to set the PAGER environment variable to use a specific pager.
583 "perldoc -f foo" will print information about the perl operator
586 If you find bugs in perl, you can run C<perlbug> to create a
587 bug report (you may have to send it manually if C<perlbug> cannot
588 find a mailer on your system).
592 =head1 BUGS AND CAVEATS
594 Some of the built-in functions do not act exactly as documented in
595 L<perlfunc>, and a few are not implemented at all. To avoid
596 surprises, particularly if you have had prior exposure to Perl
597 in other operating environments or if you intend to write code
598 that will be portable to other environments, see L<perlport>
599 for a reasonably definitive list of these differences.
601 Not all extensions available from CPAN may build or work properly
602 in the Win32 environment. See L</"Building Extensions">.
604 Most C<socket()> related calls are supported, but they may not
605 behave as on Unix platforms. See L<perlport> for the full list.
607 Signal handling may not behave as on Unix platforms (where it
608 doesn't exactly "behave", either :). For instance, calling C<die()>
609 or C<exit()> from signal handlers will cause an exception, since most
610 implementations of C<signal()> on Win32 are severely crippled.
611 Thus, signals may work only for simple things like setting a flag
612 variable in the handler. Using signals under this port should
613 currently be considered unsupported.
615 Please send detailed descriptions of any problems and solutions that
616 you may find to <F<perlbug@perl.com>>, along with the output produced
623 =item Gary Ng E<lt>71564.1743@CompuServe.COME<gt>
625 =item Gurusamy Sarathy E<lt>gsar@activestate.comE<gt>
627 =item Nick Ing-Simmons E<lt>nick@ni-s.u-net.comE<gt>
631 This document is maintained by Gurusamy Sarathy.
639 This port was originally contributed by Gary Ng around 5.003_24,
640 and borrowed from the Hip Communications port that was available
641 at the time. Various people have made numerous and sundry hacks
644 Borland support was added in 5.004_01 (Gurusamy Sarathy).
646 GCC/mingw32 support was added in 5.005 (Nick Ing-Simmons).
648 Support for PERL_OBJECT was added in 5.005 (ActiveState Tool Corp).
650 Support for fork() emulation was added in 5.6 (ActiveState Tool Corp).
652 Win9x support was added in 5.6 (Benjamin Stuhl).
654 Last updated: 22 March 2000