Okay. One mystery solved. This kinda reminds me of your sig.

You can't make shit up for your error messages and expect the user to know what you mean retardo!

But now another mystery to solve. I've seen people (mostly you actually :), talking about ppm2 and ppm3. I don't ever recall having been asked which I want to use, or even being made aware that there are different versions. I just type "ppm".

P:\test>ppm
PPM - Programmer's Package Manager version 3.1.
Copyright (c) 2001 ActiveState Corp. All Rights Reserved.
ActiveState is a devision of Sophos.

Entering interactive shell. Using Term::ReadLine::Stub as readline lib
+rary.

Type 'help' to get started.

ppm> quit

P:\test>ppm3
PPM - Programmer's Package Manager version 3.1.
Copyright (c) 2001 ActiveState Corp. All Rights Reserved.
ActiveState is a devision of Sophos.

Entering interactive shell. Using Term::ReadLine::Stub as readline lib
+rary.

Type 'help' to get started.

ppm> quit

P:\test>ppm2
Can't locate PPM.pm in @INC (@INC contains: c:/Perl/lib c:/Perl/site/l
+ib .) at c:\perl561\bin/ppm2.bat line 21.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at c:\perl561\bin/ppm2.bat line 21.
[download]

From that, is it safe to assume that:

1. The PPM I get when I type PPM is indeed v3.1? (or is that version info another red herring? (feeling kippered!)).
2. I don't need a patch for that. (Or rather, your ppd2 patch won't help me)?

If, given your detective work above, B::Generate builds elsewhere but not on Win32, then the problem lies not in the module, but in the Module::Build mechanism for Win32?

I've been trying to work my way through the process, but so far I cannot even drop the warnings level (-W3 to -W2) successfully.

First, I modified Generate.ccs, but that gets regenerated by the build process. So then I disabled the generation (by temporarially hacking C:\Perl\site\lib\Module\Build\Platform\Windows.pm )

sub _generic_write_compiler_script {
  my ($self, %spec) = @_;

  my $script = File::Spec->catfile( $spec{srcdir},
                                    $spec{basename} . '.ccs' );

  $self->add_to_cleanup($script);

  print "Generating script **DISABLED** '$script'\n";
=disabled
  open( SCRIPT, ">$script" )
    or die( "Could not create script '$script': $!" );

  print SCRIPT join( "\n",
    map { ref $_ ? @{$_} : $_ }
    grep defined,
    delete(
      @spec{ qw(includes cflags optimize defines perlinc) } )
  );

  close SCRIPT;
=cut
  push @{$spec{includes}}, qq{\@"$script"};

  return %spec;
}
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But even though I dropped -W3 -> -W2 and removed the (duplicated) -O1 optimisation flag in Generate.ccs

-nologo
-Gf
-W2 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
-MD
-Zi
-DNDEBUG
-DWIN32
-D_CONSOLE
-DNO_STRICT
-DHAVE_DES_FCRYPT
-DNO_HASH_SEED
-DPERL_IMPLICIT_CONTEXT
-DPERL_IMPLICIT_SYS
-DUSE_PERLIO
-DPERL_MSVCRT_READFIX
-MD
-Zi
-DNDEBUG

-I"C:\Perl\lib\CORE"
-I"C:\cl\include"
[download]

Something somewhere comes along and sticks these back onto the command line anyway:

P:\packages\B-Generate-1.06>nmake

Microsoft (R) Program Maintenance Utility Version 7.00.9466
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

        c:\Perl\bin\perl.exe Build
Generating script **DISABLED** 'lib\B\Generate.ccs'
cl -nologo -c @"lib\B\Generate.ccs" -nologo -Gf -W3 -MD -Zi -DNDEBUG -
+O1 -DWIN32 -D_CONSOLE -DNO_STRICT -DHAVE_DES_FCRYPT -DNO_HASH_SEED -D
+PERL_IMPLICIT_CONTEXT -DPERL_IMPLICIT_SYS -DUSE_PERLIO -DPERL_MSVCRT_
+READFIX -MD -Zi -DNDEBUG -O1 -I"C:\Perl\lib\CORE" -I"C:\cl\include" -
+I"C:\hla\include" -I"C:\Perl\lib\CORE" -Fo"lib\B\Generate.obj" "lib\B
+\Generate.c"
cl : Command line warning D4025 : overriding '/W2' with '/W3'
cl : Command line warning D4029 : optimization is not available in the
+ standard edition compiler
Generate.c
Generate.xs(102) : warning C4101: 'val' : unreferenced local variable
Generate.xs(220) : warning C4101: 'value' : unreferenced local variabl
+e
Generate.xs(241) : warning C4101: 'value' : unreferenced local variabl
+e
Generate.xs(463) : warning C4133: '=' : incompatible types - from 'SV 
+*' to 'B__CV'
Generate.xs(617) : warning C4244: '=' : conversion from 'I32' to 'U16'
+, possible loss of data
Generate.c(883) : warning C4101: 'RETVAL' : unreferenced local variabl
+e
Generate.xs(638) : warning C4244: '=' : conversion from 'I32' to 'U16'
+, possible loss of data
Generate.xs(645) : warning C4013: 'fold_constants' undefined; assuming
+ extern returning int
Generate.xs(645) : warning C4047: '=' : 'B__OP' differs in levels of i
+ndirection from 'int'
Generate.c(914) : warning C4101: 'RETVAL' : unreferenced local variabl
+e
Generate.c(1482) : warning C4244: '=' : conversion from 'U32' to 'U16'
+, possible loss of data
Generate.c(1506) : warning C4244: '=' : conversion from 'U32' to 'U16'
+, possible loss of data
Generate.xs(1037) : error C2106: '=' : left operand must be l-value
Generate.c(2007) : warning C4244: '=' : conversion from 'line_t' to 'U
+16', possible loss of data
error building dll file from 'lib\B\Generate.c' at C:\Perl\site\lib/Mo
+dule/Build/Platform/Windows.pm line 106.
NMAKE : fatal error U1077: 'c:\Perl\bin\perl.exe' : return code '0x2'
Stop.

P:\packages\B-Generate-1.06>
[download]

I was kind of hoping to be able to go to p5p with something that actually fixed the problem, or at least narrowed the target area of where to look, but so far (as is all too typical with every attempt I've made to understand this sh...stuff), even the simplest changes to the build process are just impossible.

Any thoughts or advice welcomed.