perlwin32.1 manual page -- Interix / SUA

Interix / SUA

perlwin32.1

Interix / SUA

PERLWIN32(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLWIN32(1)

NAME
perlwin32 - Perl under Windows

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

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 under-
stand the terms under which this software is being dis-
tributed.

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

The INSTALL file in the perl top-level has much informa-
tion 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 build-
ing a perl that will work on Windows NT: the README.cyg-
win and README.os2 files, each of which give a different
set of rules to build a Perl that will work on Win32 plat-
forms. 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). Cur-
rently, 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 "Usage Hints for Perl on Win32"
below for general hints about this.

Setting Up Perl on Win32

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.

Command Shell
Use the default "cmd" shell that comes with NT. Some
versions of the popular 4DOS/NT shell have incompati-
bilities 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 cir-
cumstance, but some tests will fail.

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 "Make" above.

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++; pro-
vided, 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 build-
ing extensions using MakeMaker.

Microsoft Visual C++ Toolkit 2003
This free toolkit contains the same compiler and
linker that ship with Visual Studio .NET 2003 Profes-
sional, 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 Frame-
work 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/down-
loads/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:

* 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

* 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 explic-
itly reference "lib" rather than taking their
value from $Config{ar}.

* 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.

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.

Microsoft Platform SDK 64-bit Compiler
The nmake that comes with the Platform SDK will suf-
fice 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.

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 ear-
lier versions of MinGW/gcc.

You also need dmake. See "Make" above on how to get
it.

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 bun-
dle. You may need to set up a few environment vari-
ables (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:

* 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.

* 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.

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

Building

o Make sure you are in the "win32" subdirectory under
the perl toplevel. This directory contains a "Make-
file" 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 compil-
ers. The defaults in the dmake makefile are setup to
build using MinGW/gcc.

o 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 partic-
ular, this may cause problems with the lib/ExtU-
tils/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 cor-
rectly 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 "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 con-
tains 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 with-
out 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.

o 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.

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 Win-
dows NT/2000/XP. Many tests 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 fail-
ure 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) compatibil-
ity 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 "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 "make test"
you do not have any GNU tool packages in your path: some
toolkits like Unixutils include some tools ("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 "BUGS
AND CAVEATS".

Installation of Perl on Win32

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

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

If you opted to uncomment "INST_VER" and "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: "$INST_TOP\$INST_VER\bin" and
"$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%

Usage Hints for Perl on Win32

Environment Variables
The installation paths that you set during the build
get compiled into perl, so you don't have to do any-
thing 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 perlrun.

You can also control the shell that perl uses to run
system() and backtick commands via PERL5SHELL. See
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 "HKEY_CUR-
RENT_USER\Software\Perl" and "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Soft-
ware\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 $] in the above is not literal. Substitute
whatever version of perl you want to honor that entry,
e.g. 5.6.0. Paths must be separated with semicolons,
as usual on win32.

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

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 File::DosGlob for details.

Using perl from the command line
If you are accustomed to using perl from various com-
mand-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 com-
mand shell (usually CMD.EXE on Windows NT, and COM-
MAND.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 spe-
cial 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 "<", ">", and "|" can
be quoted by double quotes (although there are sugges-
tions 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 quot-
ing 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

This pipes "foo" to the pager and writes "bar" in the
file "blurch":

perl -e "print 'foo'; print STDERR 'bar'" 2> blurch | less

Discovering the usefulness of the "command.com" shell
on Windows 9x is left as an exercise to the reader :)

One particularly pernicious problem with the 4NT com-
mand shell for Windows NT is that it (nearly) always
treats a % character as indicating that environment
variable expansion is needed. Under this shell, it is
therefore important to always double any % characters
which you want Perl to see (for example, for hash
variables), even when they are quoted.

Building Extensions
The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) offers a
wealth of extensions, some of which require a C com-
piler to build. Look in http://www.cpan.org/ for more
information on CPAN.

Note that not all of the extensions available from
CPAN may work in the Win32 environment; you should
check the information at http://testers.cpan.org/
before investing too much effort into porting modules
that don't readily build.

Most extensions (whether they require a C compiler or
not) can be built, tested and installed with the stan-
dard mantra:

perl Makefile.PL
$MAKE
$MAKE test
$MAKE install

where $MAKE is whatever 'make' program you have con-
figured perl to use. Use "perl -V:make" to find out
what this is. Some extensions may not provide a test-
suite (so "$MAKE test" may not do anything or fail),
but most serious ones do.

It is important that you use a supported 'make' pro-
gram, and ensure Config.pm knows about it. If you
don't have nmake, you can either get dmake from the
location mentioned earlier or get an old version of
nmake reportedly available from:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/vc15/Patch/1.52/W95/EN-US/nmake15.exe

Another option is to use the make written in Perl,
available from CPAN.

http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Make/

You may also use dmake. See "Make" above on how to
get it.

Note that MakeMaker actually emits makefiles with dif-
ferent syntax depending on what 'make' it thinks you
are using. Therefore, it is important that one of the
following values appears in Config.pm:

make='nmake' # MakeMaker emits nmake syntax
make='dmake' # MakeMaker emits dmake syntax
any other value # MakeMaker emits generic make syntax
(e.g GNU make, or Perl make)

If the value doesn't match the 'make' program you want
to use, edit Config.pm to fix it.

If a module implements XSUBs, you will need one of the
supported C compilers. You must make sure you have
set up the environment for the compiler for command-
line compilation.

If a module does not build for some reason, look care-
fully for why it failed, and report problems to the
module author. If it looks like the extension build-
ing support is at fault, report that with full details
of how the build failed using the perlbug utility.

Command-line Wildcard Expansion
The default command shells on DOS descendant operating
systems (such as they are) usually do not expand wild-
card arguments supplied to programs. They consider it
the application's job to handle that. This is com-
monly achieved by linking the application (in our
case, perl) with startup code that the C runtime
libraries usually provide. However, doing that
results in incompatible perl versions (since the
behavior of the argv expansion code differs depending
on the compiler, and it is even buggy on some compil-
ers). Besides, it may be a source of frustration if
you use such a perl binary with an alternate shell
that *does* expand wildcards.

Instead, the following solution works rather well. The
nice things about it are 1) you can start using it
right away; 2) it is more powerful, because it will do
the right thing with a pattern like */*/*.c; 3) you
can decide whether you do/don't want to use it; and 4)
you can extend the method to add any customizations
(or even entirely different kinds of wildcard expan-
sion).

C:\> copy con c:\perl\lib\Wild.pm
# Wild.pm - emulate shell @ARGV expansion on shells that don't
use File::DosGlob;
@ARGV = map {
my @g = File::DosGlob::glob($_) if /[*?]/;
@g ? @g : $_;
} @ARGV;
1;
^Z
C:\> set PERL5OPT=-MWild
C:\> perl -le "for (@ARGV) { print }" */*/perl*.c
p4view/perl/perl.c
p4view/perl/perlio.c
p4view/perl/perly.c
perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
perl5.005/win32/perllib.c
perl5.005/win32/perlglob.c
perl5.005/win32/perllib.c

Note there are two distinct steps there: 1) You'll
have to create Wild.pm and put it in your perl lib
directory. 2) You'll need to set the PERL5OPT environ-
ment variable. If you want argv expansion to be the
default, just set PERL5OPT in your default startup
environment.

If you are using the Visual C compiler, you can get
the C runtime's command line wildcard expansion built
into perl binary. The resulting binary will always
expand unquoted command lines, which may not be what
you want if you use a shell that does that for you.
The expansion done is also somewhat less powerful than
the approach suggested above.

Win32 Specific Extensions
A number of extensions specific to the Win32 platform
are available from CPAN. You may find that many of
these extensions are meant to be used under the
Activeware port of Perl, which used to be the only
native port for the Win32 platform. Since the Active-
ware port does not have adequate support for Perl's
extension building tools, these extensions typically
do not support those tools either and, therefore, can-
not be built using the generic steps shown in the pre-
vious section.

To ensure smooth transitioning of existing code that
uses the ActiveState port, there is a bundle of Win32
extensions that contains all of the ActiveState exten-
sions and several other Win32 extensions from CPAN in
source form, along with many added bugfixes, and with
MakeMaker support. The latest version of this bundle
is available at:

http://search.cpan.org/dist/libwin32/

See the README in that distribution for building and
installation instructions.

Notes on 64-bit Windows
Windows .NET Server supports the LLP64 data model on
the Intel Itanium architecture.

The LLP64 data model is different from the LP64 data
model that is the norm on 64-bit Unix platforms. In
the former, "int" and "long" are both 32-bit data
types, while pointers are 64 bits wide. In addition,
there is a separate 64-bit wide integral type,
"__int64". In contrast, the LP64 data model that is
pervasive on Unix platforms provides "int" as the
32-bit type, while both the "long" type and pointers
are of 64-bit precision. Note that both models pro-
vide for 64-bits of addressability.

64-bit Windows running on Itanium is capable of run-
ning 32-bit x86 binaries transparently. This means
that you could use a 32-bit build of Perl on a 64-bit
system. Given this, why would one want to build a
64-bit build of Perl? Here are some reasons why you
would bother:

* A 64-bit native application will run much more
efficiently on Itanium hardware.

* There is no 2GB limit on process size.

* Perl automatically provides large file support
when built under 64-bit Windows.

* Embedding Perl inside a 64-bit application.

Running Perl Scripts

Perl scripts on UNIX use the "#!" (a.k.a "shebang") line
to indicate to the OS that it should execute the file
using perl. Win32 has no comparable means to indicate
arbitrary files are executables.

Instead, all available methods to execute plain text files
on Win32 rely on the file "extension". There are three
methods to use this to execute perl scripts:

1 There is a facility called "file extension associ-
ations" that will work in Windows NT 4.0. This
can be manipulated via the two commands "assoc"
and "ftype" that come standard with Windows NT
4.0. Type "ftype /?" for a complete example of
how to set this up for perl scripts (Say what?
You thought Windows NT wasn't perl-ready? :).

2 Since file associations don't work everywhere, and
there are reportedly bugs with file associations
where it does work, the old method of wrapping the
perl script to make it look like a regular batch
file to the OS, may be used. The install process
makes available the "pl2bat.bat" script which can
be used to wrap perl scripts into batch files.
For example:

pl2bat foo.pl

will create the file "FOO.BAT". Note "pl2bat"
strips any .pl suffix and adds a .bat suffix to
the generated file.

If you use the 4DOS/NT or similar command shell,
note that "pl2bat" uses the "%*" variable in the
generated batch file to refer to all the command
line arguments, so you may need to make sure that
construct works in batch files. As of this writ-
ing, 4DOS/NT users will need a "ParameterChar = *"
statement in their 4NT.INI file or will need to
execute "setdos /p*" in the 4DOS/NT startup file
to enable this to work.

3 Using "pl2bat" has a few problems: the file name
gets changed, so scripts that rely on $0 to find
what they must do may not run properly; running
"pl2bat" replicates the contents of the original
script, and so this process can be maintenance
intensive if the originals get updated often. A
different approach that avoids both problems is
possible.

A script called "runperl.bat" is available that
can be copied to any filename (along with the .bat
suffix). For example, if you call it "foo.bat",
it will run the file "foo" when it is executed.
Since you can run batch files on Win32 platforms
simply by typing the name (without the extension),
this effectively runs the file "foo", when you
type either "foo" or "foo.bat". With this method,
"foo.bat" can even be in a different location than
the file "foo", as long as "foo" is available
somewhere on the PATH. If your scripts are on a
filesystem that allows symbolic links, you can
even avoid copying "runperl.bat".

Here's a diversion: copy "runperl.bat" to "run-
perl", and type "runperl". Explain the observed
behavior, or lack thereof. :) Hint: .gnidnats
llits er'uoy fi ,"lrepnur" eteled :tniH

Miscellaneous Things

A full set of HTML documentation is installed, so you
should be able to use it if you have a web browser
installed on your system.

"perldoc" is also a useful tool for browsing information
contained in the documentation, especially in conjunction
with a pager like "less" (recent versions of which have
Win32 support). You may have to set the PAGER environment
variable to use a specific pager. "perldoc -f foo" will
print information about the perl operator "foo".

One common mistake when using this port with a GUI library
like "Tk" is assuming that Perl's normal behavior of open-
ing a command-line window will go away. This isn't the
case. If you want to start a copy of "perl" without open-
ing a command-line window, use the "wperl" executable
built during the installation process. Usage is exactly
the same as normal "perl" on Win32, except that options
like "-h" don't work (since they need a command-line win-
dow to print to).

If you find bugs in perl, you can run "perlbug" to create
a bug report (you may have to send it manually if "perl-
bug" cannot find a mailer on your system).

BUGS AND CAVEATS
Norton AntiVirus interferes with the build process, par-
ticularly if set to "AutoProtect, All Files, when Opened".
Unlike large applications the perl build process opens and
modifies a lot of files. Having the the AntiVirus scan
each and every one slows build the process significantly.
Worse, with PERLIO=stdio the build process fails with
peculiar messages as the virus checker interacts badly
with miniperl.exe writing configure files (it seems to
either catch file part written and treat it as suspicious,
or virus checker may have it "locked" in a way which
inhibits miniperl updating it). The build does complete
with

set PERLIO=perlio

but that may be just luck. Other AntiVirus software may
have similar issues.

Some of the built-in functions do not act exactly as docu-
mented in perlfunc, and a few are not implemented at all.
To avoid surprises, particularly if you have had prior
exposure to Perl in other operating environments or if you
intend to write code that will be portable to other envi-
ronments, see perlport for a reasonably definitive list of
these differences.

Not all extensions available from CPAN may build or work
properly in the Win32 environment. See "Building Exten-
sions".

Most "socket()" related calls are supported, but they may
not behave as on Unix platforms. See perlport for the
full list. Perl requires Winsock2 to be installed on the
system. If you're running Win95, you can download Winsock
upgrade from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/downloads/contents/WUAdminTools/S_WUNetworkingTools/W95Sockets2/Default.asp

Later OS versions already include Winsock2 support.

Signal handling may not behave as on Unix platforms (where
it doesn't exactly "behave", either :). For instance,
calling "die()" or "exit()" from signal handlers will
cause an exception, since most implementations of "sig-
nal()" on Win32 are severely crippled. Thus, signals may
work only for simple things like setting a flag variable
in the handler. Using signals under this port should cur-
rently be considered unsupported.

Please send detailed descriptions of any problems and
solutions that you may find to , along
with the output produced by "perl -V".

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The use of a camel with the topic of Perl is a trademark
of O'Reilly and Associates, Inc. Used with permission.

AUTHORS
Gary Ng <71564.1743@CompuServe.COM>
Gurusamy Sarathy
Nick Ing-Simmons
Jan Dubois
Steve Hay

This document is maintained by Jan Dubois.