source: trunk/essentials/dev-lang/perl/README.win32@ 3212

If you read this file _as_is_, just ignore the funny characters you
see. It is written in the POD format (see pod/perlpod.pod) which is
specially designed to be readable as is.

=head1 NAME

perlwin32 - Perl under Windows

=head1 SYNOPSIS

These are instructions for building Perl under Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP
on the Intel x86 and Itanium architectures.

=head1 DESCRIPTION

Before you start, you should glance through the README file
found in the top-level directory to which the Perl distribution
was extracted.  Make sure you read and understand the terms under
which this software is being distributed.

Also make sure you read L<BUGS AND CAVEATS> below for the
known limitations of this port.

The INSTALL file in the perl top-level has much information that is
only relevant to people building Perl on Unix-like systems.  In
particular, you can safely ignore any information that talks about
"Configure".

You may also want to look at two other options for building
a perl that will work on Windows NT:  the README.cygwin and
README.os2 files, each of which give a different set of rules to
build a Perl that will work on Win32 platforms.  Those two methods
will probably enable you to build a more Unix-compatible perl, but
you will also need to download and use various other build-time and
run-time support software described in those files.

This set of instructions is meant to describe a so-called "native"
port of Perl to Win32 platforms.  This includes both 32-bit and
64-bit Windows operating systems.  The resulting Perl requires no
additional software to run (other than what came with your operating
system).  Currently, this port is capable of using one of the
following compilers on the Intel x86 architecture:

      Borland C++           version 5.02 or later
      Microsoft Visual C++  version 2.0 or later
      MinGW with gcc        gcc version 2.95.2 or later

The last of these is a high quality freeware compiler.  Use version
3.2.x or later for the best results with this compiler.

The Borland C++ and Microsoft Visual C++ compilers are also now being given
away free.  The Borland compiler is available as "Borland C++ Compiler Free
Command Line Tools" and is the same compiler that ships with the full
"Borland C++ Builder" product.  The Microsoft compiler is available as
"Visual C++ Toolkit 2003", and also as part of the ".NET Framework SDK", and
is the same compiler that ships with "Visual Studio .NET 2003 Professional".

This port can also be built on the Intel IA64 using:

      Microsoft Platform SDK    Nov 2001 (64-bit compiler and tools)

The MS Platform SDK can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/.

This port fully supports MakeMaker (the set of modules that
is used to build extensions to perl).  Therefore, you should be
able to build and install most extensions found in the CPAN sites.
See L<Usage Hints for Perl on Win32> below for general hints about this.

=head2 Setting Up Perl on Win32

=over 4

=item Make

You need a "make" program to build the sources.  If you are using
Visual C++ or the Platform SDK tools under Windows NT/2000/XP, nmake
will work.  All other builds need dmake.

dmake is a freely available make that has very nice macro features
and parallelability.

A port of dmake for Windows is available from:

    http://search.cpan.org/dist/dmake/

Fetch and install dmake somewhere on your path.

There exists a minor coexistence problem with dmake and Borland C++
compilers.  Namely, if a distribution has C files named with mixed
case letters, they will be compiled into appropriate .obj-files named
with all lowercase letters, and every time dmake is invoked
to bring files up to date, it will try to recompile such files again.
For example, Tk distribution has a lot of such files, resulting in
needless recompiles every time dmake is invoked.  To avoid this, you
may use the script "sync_ext.pl" after a successful build.  It is
available in the win32 subdirectory of the Perl source distribution.

=item Command Shell

Use the default "cmd" shell that comes with NT.  Some versions of the
popular 4DOS/NT shell have incompatibilities that may cause you trouble.
If the build fails under that shell, try building again with the cmd
shell.

The nmake Makefile also has known incompatibilities with the
"command.com" shell that comes with Windows 9x.  You will need to
use dmake and makefile.mk to build under Windows 9x.

The surest way to build it is on Windows NT/2000/XP, using the cmd shell.

Make sure the path to the build directory does not contain spaces.  The
build usually works in this circumstance, but some tests will fail.

=item Borland C++

If you are using the Borland compiler, you will need dmake.
(The make that Borland supplies is seriously crippled and will not
work for MakeMaker builds.)

See L</"Make"> above.

=item Microsoft Visual C++

The nmake that comes with Visual C++ will suffice for building.
You will need to run the VCVARS32.BAT file, usually found somewhere
like C:\MSDEV4.2\BIN or C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\VC98\Bin.
This will set your build environment.

You can also use dmake to build using Visual C++; provided, however,
you set OSRELEASE to "microsft" (or whatever the directory name
under which the Visual C dmake configuration lives) in your environment
and edit win32/config.vc to change "make=nmake" into "make=dmake".  The
latter step is only essential if you want to use dmake as your default
make for building extensions using MakeMaker.

=item Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003

This free toolkit contains the same compiler and linker that ship with
Visual Studio .NET 2003 Professional, but doesn't contain everything
necessary to build Perl.

You will also need to download the "Platform SDK" (the "Core SDK" and "MDAC
SDK" components are required) for header files, libraries and rc.exe, and
".NET Framework SDK" for more libraries and nmake.exe.  Note that the latter
(which also includes the free compiler and linker) requires the ".NET
Framework Redistributable" to be installed first.  This can be downloaded and
installed separately, but is included in the "Visual C++ Toolkit 2003" anyway.

These packages can all be downloaded by searching in the Download Center at
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/search.aspx?displaylang=en.  (Providing exact
links to these packages has proven a pointless task because the links keep on
changing so often.)

Try to obtain the latest version of the Platform SDK.  Sometimes these packages
contain a particular Windows OS version in their name, but actually work on
other OS versions too.  For example, the "Windows Server 2003 SP1 Platform SDK"
also runs on Windows XP SP2 and Windows 2000.

According to the download pages the Toolkit and the .NET Framework SDK are only
supported on Windows 2000/XP/2003, so trying to use these tools on Windows
95/98/ME and even Windows NT probably won't work.

Install the Toolkit first, then the Platform SDK, then the .NET Framework SDK.
Setup your environment as follows (assuming default installation locations
were chosen):

        SET PATH=%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003\bin;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\Bin;C:\Program Files\Microsoft.NET\SDK\v1.1\Bin
        SET INCLUDE=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003\include;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\include;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Vc7\include
        SET LIB=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003\lib;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\lib;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\Vc7\lib

Several required files will still be missing:

=over 4

=item *

cvtres.exe is required by link.exe when using a .res file.  It is actually
installed by the .NET Framework SDK, but into a location such as the
following:

        C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322

Copy it from there to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\Bin

=item *

lib.exe is normally used to build libraries, but link.exe with the /lib
option also works, so change win32/config.vc to use it instead:

Change the line reading:

        ar='lib'

to:

        ar='link /lib'

It may also be useful to create a batch file called lib.bat in
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003\bin containing:

        @echo off
        link /lib %*

for the benefit of any naughty C extension modules that you might want to build
later which explicitly reference "lib" rather than taking their value from
$Config{ar}.

=item *

setargv.obj is required to build perlglob.exe (and perl.exe if the USE_SETARGV
option is enabled).  The Platform SDK supplies this object file in source form
in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\src\crt.  Copy setargv.c, cruntime.h and
internal.h from there to some temporary location and build setargv.obj using

        cl.exe /c /I. /D_CRTBLD setargv.c

Then copy setargv.obj to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDK\lib

Alternatively, if you don't need perlglob.exe and don't need to enable the
USE_SETARGV option then you can safely just remove all mention of $(GLOBEXE)
from win32/Makefile and setargv.obj won't be required anyway.

=back

Perl should now build using the win32/Makefile.  You will need to edit that
file to set

        CCTYPE = MSVC70FREE

and to set CCHOME, CCINCDIR and CCLIBDIR as per the environment setup above.

=item Microsoft Platform SDK 64-bit Compiler

The nmake that comes with the Platform SDK will suffice for building
Perl.  Make sure you are building within one of the "Build Environment"
shells available after you install the Platform SDK from the Start Menu.

=item MinGW release 3 with gcc

The latest release of MinGW at the time of writing is 3.1.0, which contains
gcc-3.2.3.  It can be downloaded here:

    http://www.mingw.org/

Perl also compiles with earlier releases of gcc (2.95.2 and up).  See below
for notes about using earlier versions of MinGW/gcc.

You also need dmake.  See L</"Make"> above on how to get it.

=item MinGW release 1 with gcc

The MinGW-1.1 bundle contains gcc-2.95.3.

Make sure you install the binaries that work with MSVCRT.DLL as indicated
in the README for the GCC bundle.  You may need to set up a few environment
variables (usually ran from a batch file).

There are a couple of problems with the version of gcc-2.95.2-msvcrt.exe
released 7 November 1999:

=over

=item *

It left out a fix for certain command line quotes.  To fix this, be sure
to download and install the file fixes/quote-fix-msvcrt.exe from the above
ftp location.

=item *

The definition of the fpos_t type in stdio.h may be wrong.  If your
stdio.h has this problem, you will see an exception when running the
test t/lib/io_xs.t.  To fix this, change the typedef for fpos_t from
"long" to "long long" in the file i386-mingw32msvc/include/stdio.h,
and rebuild.

=back

A potentially simpler to install (but probably soon-to-be-outdated) bundle
of the above package with the mentioned fixes already applied is available
here:

    http://downloads.ActiveState.com/pub/staff/gsar/gcc-2.95.2-msvcrt.zip
    ftp://ftp.ActiveState.com/pub/staff/gsar/gcc-2.95.2-msvcrt.zip

=back

=head2 Building

=over 4

=item *

Make sure you are in the "win32" subdirectory under the perl toplevel.
This directory contains a "Makefile" that will work with
versions of nmake that come with Visual C++ or the Platform SDK, and
a dmake "makefile.mk" that will work for all supported compilers.  The
defaults in the dmake makefile are setup to build using MinGW/gcc.

=item *

Edit the makefile.mk (or Makefile, if you're using nmake) and change
the values of INST_DRV and INST_TOP.   You can also enable various
build flags.  These are explained in the makefiles.

Note that it is generally not a good idea to try to build a perl with
INST_DRV and INST_TOP set to a path that already exists from a previous
build.  In particular, this may cause problems with the
lib/ExtUtils/t/Embed.t test, which attempts to build a test program and
may end up building against the installed perl's lib/CORE directory rather
than the one being tested.

You will have to make sure that CCTYPE is set correctly and that
CCHOME points to wherever you installed your compiler.

The default value for CCHOME in the makefiles for Visual C++
may not be correct for some versions.  Make sure the default exists
and is valid.

You may also need to comment out the C<DELAYLOAD = ...> line in the
Makefile if you're using VC++ 6.0 without the latest service pack and
the linker reports an internal error.

If you have either the source or a library that contains des_fcrypt(),
enable the appropriate option in the makefile.  A ready-to-use version
of fcrypt.c, based on the version originally written by Eric Young at
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/crypt/mirrors/dsi/libdes/, is bundled with the
distribution and CRYPT_SRC is set to use it.
Alternatively, if you have built a library that contains des_fcrypt(),
you can set CRYPT_LIB to point to the library name.
Perl will also build without des_fcrypt(), but the crypt() builtin will
fail at run time.

If you want build some core extensions statically into perl's dll, specify
them in the STATIC_EXT macro.

Be sure to read the instructions near the top of the makefiles carefully.

=item *

Type "dmake" (or "nmake" if you are using that make).

This should build everything.  Specifically, it will create perl.exe,
perl58.dll at the perl toplevel, and various other extension dll's
under the lib\auto directory.  If the build fails for any reason, make
sure you have done the previous steps correctly.

=back

=head2 Testing Perl on Win32

Type "dmake test" (or "nmake test").  This will run most of the tests from
the testsuite (many tests will be skipped).

There should be no test failures when running under Windows NT/2000/XP.
Many tests I<will> fail under Windows 9x due to the inferior command shell.

Some test failures may occur if you use a command shell other than the
native "cmd.exe", or if you are building from a path that contains
spaces.  So don't do that.

If you are running the tests from a emacs shell window, you may see
failures in op/stat.t.  Run "dmake test-notty" in that case.

If you're using the Borland compiler, you may see a failure in op/taint.t
arising from the inability to find the Borland Runtime DLLs on the system
default path.  You will need to copy the DLLs reported by the messages
from where Borland chose to install it, into the Windows system directory
(usually somewhere like C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32) and rerun the test.

If you're using Borland compiler versions 5.2 and below, you may run into
problems finding the correct header files when building extensions.  For
example, building the "Tk" extension may fail because both perl and Tk
contain a header file called "patchlevel.h".  The latest Borland compiler
(v5.5) is free of this misbehaviour, and it even supports an
option -VI- for backward (bugward) compatibility for using the old Borland
search algorithm  to locate header files.

If you run the tests on a FAT partition, you may see some failures for
C<link()> related tests:

    Failed Test                     Stat Wstat Total Fail  Failed  List

    ../ext/IO/lib/IO/t/io_dup.t                    6    4  66.67%  2-5
    ../lib/File/Temp/t/mktemp.t                    9    1  11.11%  2
    ../lib/File/Temp/t/posix.t                     7    1  14.29%  3
    ../lib/File/Temp/t/security.t                 13    1   7.69%  2
    ../lib/File/Temp/t/tempfile.t                 20    2  10.00%  2 4
    comp/multiline.t                               6    2  33.33%  5-6
    io/dup.t                                       8    6  75.00%  2-7
    op/write.t                                    47    7  14.89%  1-3 6 9-11

Testing on NTFS avoids these errors.

Furthermore, you should make sure that during C<make test> you do not
have any GNU tool packages in your path: some toolkits like Unixutils
include some tools (C<type> for instance) which override the Windows
ones and makes tests fail. Remove them from your path while testing to
avoid these errors.

Please report any other failures as described under L<BUGS AND CAVEATS>.

=head2 Installation of Perl on Win32

Type "dmake install" (or "nmake install").  This will put the newly
built perl and the libraries under whatever C<INST_TOP> points to in the
Makefile.  It will also install the pod documentation under
C<$INST_TOP\$INST_VER\lib\pod> and HTML versions of the same under
C<$INST_TOP\$INST_VER\lib\pod\html>.

To use the Perl you just installed you will need to add a new entry to
your PATH environment variable: C<$INST_TOP\bin>, e.g.

    set PATH=c:\perl\bin;%PATH%

If you opted to uncomment C<INST_VER> and C<INST_ARCH> in the makefile
then the installation structure is a little more complicated and you will
need to add two new PATH components instead: C<$INST_TOP\$INST_VER\bin> and
C<$INST_TOP\$INST_VER\bin\$ARCHNAME>, e.g.

    set PATH=c:\perl\5.6.0\bin;c:\perl\5.6.0\bin\MSWin32-x86;%PATH%

=head2 Usage Hints for Perl on Win32

=over 4

=item Environment Variables

The installation paths that you set during the build get compiled
into perl, so you don't have to do anything additional to start
using that perl (except add its location to your PATH variable).

If you put extensions in unusual places, you can set PERL5LIB
to a list of paths separated by semicolons where you want perl
to look for libraries.  Look for descriptions of other environment
variables you can set in L<perlrun>.

You can also control the shell that perl uses to run system() and
backtick commands via PERL5SHELL.  See L<perlrun>.

Perl does not depend on the registry, but it can look up certain default
values if you choose to put them there.  Perl attempts to read entries from
C<HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Perl> and C<HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Perl>.
Entries in the former override entries in the latter.  One or more of the
following entries (of type REG_SZ or REG_EXPAND_SZ) may be set:

    lib-$]              version-specific standard library path to add to @INC
    lib                 standard library path to add to @INC
    sitelib-$]          version-specific site library path to add to @INC
    sitelib             site library path to add to @INC
    vendorlib-$]        version-specific vendor library path to add to @INC
    vendorlib           vendor library path to add to @INC
    PERL*               fallback for all %ENV lookups that begin with "PERL"

Note the C<$]> in the above is not literal.  Substitute whatever version
of perl you want to honor that entry, e.g. C<5.6.0>.  Paths must be
separated with semicolons, as usual on win32.

=item File Globbing

By default, perl handles file globbing using the File::Glob extension,
which provides portable globbing.

If you want perl to use globbing that emulates the quirks of DOS
filename conventions, you might want to consider using File::DosGlob
to override the internal glob() implementation.  See L<File::DosGlob> for
details.

=item Using perl from the command line

If you are accustomed to using perl from various command-line
shells found in UNIX environments, you will be less than pleased
with what Windows offers by way of a command shell.

The crucial thing to understand about the Windows environment is that
the command line you type in is processed twice before Perl sees it.
First, your command shell (usually CMD.EXE on Windows NT, and
COMMAND.COM on Windows 9x) preprocesses the command line, to handle
redirection, environment variable expansion, and location of the
executable to run. Then, the perl executable splits the remaining
command line into individual arguments, using the C runtime library
upon which Perl was built.

It is particularly important to note that neither the shell nor the C
runtime do any wildcard expansions of command-line arguments (so
wildcards need not be quoted).  Also, the quoting behaviours of the
shell and the C runtime are rudimentary at best (and may, if you are
using a non-standard shell, be inconsistent).  The only (useful) quote
character is the double quote (").  It can be used to protect spaces
and other special characters in arguments.

The Windows NT documentation has almost no description of how the
quoting rules are implemented, but here are some general observations
based on experiments: The C runtime breaks arguments at spaces and
passes them to programs in argc/argv.  Double quotes can be used to
prevent arguments with spaces in them from being split up.  You can
put a double quote in an argument by escaping it with a backslash and
enclosing the whole argument within double quotes.  The backslash and
the pair of double quotes surrounding the argument will be stripped by
the C runtime.

The file redirection characters "E<lt>", "E<gt>", and "|" can be quoted by
double quotes (although there are suggestions that this may not always
be true).  Single quotes are not treated as quotes by the shell or
the C runtime, they don't get stripped by the shell (just to make
this type of quoting completely useless).  The caret "^" has also
been observed to behave as a quoting character, but this appears
to be a shell feature, and the caret is not stripped from the command
line, so Perl still sees it (and the C runtime phase does not treat
the caret as a quote character).

Here are some examples of usage of the "cmd" shell:

This prints two doublequotes:

    perl -e "print '\"\"' "

This does the same:

    perl -e "print \"\\\"\\\"\" "

This prints "bar" and writes "foo" to the file "blurch":

    perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" > blurch

This prints "foo" ("bar" disappears into nowhereland):

    perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> nul

This prints "bar" and writes "foo" into the file "blurch":

    perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 1> blurch

This pipes "foo" to the "less" pager and prints "bar" on the console:

    perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" | less

This pipes "foo\nbar\n" to the less pager:

    perl -le "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2>&1 | less