You need to tell MakeMaker what kind of makefile to generate. If you built your copy of Perl with cygwin, then you shouldn't see this problem.

If you are using something like ActivePerl, then you need to change some Config.pm settings so MakeMaker will know that you are using cygwin and not MS VC++ (which is what ActiveState used to build ActivePerl).

Sorry, but I don't know exactly which variable to change nor what to change them to. Grab the source code for Perl and go through the steps of building Perl for cygwin. This will give you a Config.pm that works with cygwin. Then you can compare the two and apply some of the differences to your ActivePerl's Config.pm and try building again.

You might still run into a few problems since it sounds like libwin32 hasn't been tested with cygwin. But we can probably help you get past those if you run into them.

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")