C:\.cpan\build\XML-LibXML-Common-0.10>dmake test
C:\perl\bin\perl.exe "-Iblib\lib" "-Iblib\arch" test.pl
1..5
# Running under perl version 5.008007 for MSWin32
# Current time local: Mon Sep 26 21:02:20 2005
# Current time GMT:   Tue Sep 27 02:02:20 2005
# Using Test.pm version 1.25
ok 1
ok 2
ok 3
ok 4
not ok 5
# Failed test 5 in test.pl at line 42
#  test.pl line 42 is: ok( length( $@ ) );
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Are you using at least version 2.4.20 of the libxml2 library? There is a check in the Makefile.PL of XML::LibXML::Common for this, but that may have been bypassed for your system.

By the way, the failures reported on MSWin32 for XML-LibXML-Common-0.13 are due to lack of the libxml2 header files on the tester's machine. At least for Win32 ActivePerl 8xx, this version of XML-LibXML-Common builds and tests fine when a suitable libxml2 library is available.

There's a discussion on the xml mailing list about the problem with an undefined reference to _imp__xmlFree error on mingw. This may be present in the libxml2 library you're using; if you can't find a more recent version, you might try building it yourself from the sources.

Im using version 2.6.20 of libxml2. After lots of fighting with this I remembered that Bloodshed's DevC++ uses mingw and had a libxml2 devpak that worked. so i grabbed a copy of DevC++ and their devpak for libxml2 (which was also version 2.6.20) copied the dll, headers, and library over to my main mingw setup and both XML-LibXML-Common 0.13 and XML-LibXML 1.58 built perfectly for me, all test past and appears to be working. Thanks to everyone for their help.