[Mingw-users] Re: MinGW-users digest, Vol 1 #104 - 10 msgs

[Soren A. <so...@wo...>]

On Mon, 27 Nov 2000, an entity purporting to be Nicholas Lewin-Koh wrote 
[regarding: Modules for perl on win32]  

> Hi,
> Has anyone had any success building modules for activeperl using Mingw? I
> was reading through the active perl docs and they are configured for VC++.
> If someone could outline how to do it or point me to some relevant
> documentation I would be very gratefull. Thanks

What Perl are you using -- for what Perl are you wanting to build mods? If it's for 
an ActivePerl bindist (you made reference to the AS docs) then you need to realize 
that not just any compilation-requiring mod will work; for most ActivePerl dists it 
*has to be* compiled with VC++. It's referred to as "binary compatibility" issues.

When you build a mod from source (such as distributed on CPAN) you are having 
perl (MakeMaker) use Config.pm to set up the build. You have to control what's in 
Config.pm, and you do that by building Perl yourself on your system, from scratch. 
Any other way is **not** "canonical" or "supported." Take a look at Config.pm 
from your own Perl and you'll see what's in there (it's a LOT, bewildering complexity 
and very huge text file). That's the key. If you have Perl built, you are (as I am) 
probably 90% of the way to being able to run the classic `make' invocation 
formulas for Perl mods and have it all go successfully.

Last month I built Perl 5.7 (devel branch) using minGW. I am talking the standard 
"plain vanilla" source code from CPAN, not anything from AS. I have never tried to 
build AS source, yet.

Let's keep in touch regarding this if the fundamental answers to my questions 
seem to point in the direction I am indicating (that you are going to, or have, built 
Perl on your own machine, using minGW + Free Software gnu tools). If that's the 
case maybe we could pool our knowlwdge and help each other out.


  Best,
     soren andersen