Make program used by Perl in windows

bojinlund has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I want to understand why Dmake and not GNU Make is used for Perl and Perl modules in Windows. Using the same make program on Unix and Windows would make things easier! or?

There is a dmake-4.12 distribution in CPAN. Could it also be a GNU Make distribution? Is there any licensing problems? Is it feasible to use GNU Make in Windows?

In Build.PL versus Makefile.PL from Feb 06, 2007 it is said: "I'm just curious to the current state of play". How has the state of play changed since 2007? Is there any clear trend? What is the current state of play?

From http://deps.cpantesters.org/depended-on-by.pl I get: ExtUtils-MakeMaker-6.62 is depended on by 8024 and Module-Build-0.40 is depended on by 2445. ExtUtils-MakeMaker is still the "leader" after many years.

Can ExtUtils::MakeMaker still be "doomed"? Or is it time to revive it?

What is the strategy used in Perl 6?

Comment on Make program used by Perl in windows

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Make program used by Perl in windows by Anonymous Monk on Apr 26, 2012 at 04:25 UTC
I want to understand why Dmake and not GNU Make is used for Perl and Perl modules in Windows. There are many choices on windows, dmake is the StrawberryPerl choice, and it is used because it is used, chosen because nmake15 had limitations, and because strawberryperl team chose not to bundle MSYS (and along with it sh/make/mingw32-make ) Actually, the way I remember it, `sh configure` didn't work for compiling perl with mingw, so someone picked dmake and ported Makefile to makefile.mk, then MakeMaker was patched with dmake support (by strawberryperl team, adamk? ) update: See Dmake configuration for building Perl with MinGW on win32., Compiling C/C++ based Modules under ActiveState using MinGW, Re^2: Compiling modules for win32 ActivePerl, RFC: Setting up a minGW compiling envronment for Perl 5.10, The MinGW and dmake cpan starts to install See also MinGW/MSYS development environment - Setting up the base system, See Re: Installing iodbc 0.1 via CPAN (or other means) on Mac OS 10.6, Building Math-GSL-0.07 on Win32 (MinGW compiler) Can ExtUtils::MakeMaker still be "doomed"? Or is it time to revive it? Both. MakeMaker Is DOOMED! but I doubt it will die (I won't let it :)	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Make program used by Perl in windows by syphilis (Archbishop) on Apr 26, 2012 at 12:54 UTC
There is a dmake-4.12 distribution in CPAN. Could it also be a GNU Make distribution? No - dmake and GNU Make each have slightly different syntax requirements, and can therefore not be interchanged. Is it feasible to use GNU Make in Windows? Possibly, but first ExtUtils::MakeMaker would need to be patched so that it can create a Makefile that the Windows version of GNU Make could understand. Afaik, for Windows systems, ExtUtils::MakeMaker can currently write only nmake-compliant or dmake-compliant Makefiles. Cheers, Rob	[reply]
Re^2: Make program used by Perl in windows by bojinlund (Monsignor) on Apr 29, 2012 at 08:08 UTC
No - dmake and GNU Make each have slightly different syntax requirements, and can therefore not be interchanged. Not replacing dmake, but using Gnu Make in parallel! Must everything (Perl and Perl modules) use the same make program? Is it possible to have a Gnu Make and a dmake distribution in CPAN at the same time?	[reply]
Re^3: Make program used by Perl in windows by Anonymous Monk on Apr 29, 2012 at 08:28 UTC
Is it possible to have a Gnu Make and a dmake distribution in CPAN at the same time? Yes, but you shouldn't be writing makefiles, you should do everything possible to avoid writing makefiles.	[reply]
Re^4: Make program used by Perl in windows by bojinlund (Monsignor) on May 01, 2012 at 15:17 UTC
Re^5: Make program used by Perl in windows by Corion (Patriarch) on May 01, 2012 at 15:27 UTC
Some notes below your chosen depth have not been shown here


Perl: the Markov chain saw
	PerlMonks