Perl modules come in 3 forms.

• Those that are in pure Perl. These will usually build on anything.
• Those that are in C and Perl ie XS - these may or may not build, like any C source.
  • + you need a C compiler
• Finally you have C/XS modules that are thin wrappers for C/C++/other compiled libraries. Text::Iconv is of the final type <UNDERSTATEMENT>all</UNDERSTATEMENT> it does is provide a wrapper layer that glues Perl to the underlying libiconv library.
  • Naturally you need a C compiler
  • Additionally you need the actual library as well

So down to practicalities. The easy way is to use ppm. If you Google for Text::Iconv you will find dozens of repositiories that have a ppm available. ppm install http://domain.com/path/to/good_stuff/iconv.ppd

A good place to start is often the README. Typically it is suggested you READIT but in this case there is little/nothing on Win32 so you are forgiven ;-) See also A Guide to Installing Modules and A Practical Guide to Compiling C based Modules under ActiveState using Microsoft C++ HTH