in reply to Compiling modules for win32 ActivePerl

Last time (fairly recently) I installed ActiveState Perl 5.10, I first installed the whole MinGW suite of programs and utilities and only then AS Perl. During the install it automatically detected I had the MinGW C-compiler and dmake and configured itself so it now uses dmake and the C-compiler.

Still, not all is OK. Some modules seem to need a tool called dlltool which is missing and I haven't yet been able to find and install it. But even without this, most (for various definitions of the word) of the modules compile.

CountZero

A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

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Re^2: Compiling modules for win32 ActivePerl
by syphilis (Archbishop) on Sep 30, 2009 at 07:03 UTC
    Still, not all is OK. Some modules seem to need a tool called dlltool which is missing and I haven't yet been able to find and install it

    It's part of the binutils package, so you just need to grab a binutils binary and extract it to your MinGW installation.
    If you ppm install MinGW you'll certainly get dlltool.exe.

    Cheers,
    Rob
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      Actually, the install wizzard of AS Perl 5.10 did try to install through PPM (some elements of) MinGW, but maybe because I already had a minimal MinGW, it failed to get the binutils. I have downloaded it now by hand and will see if I can retrofit it.

      CountZero

      A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

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Re^2: Compiling modules for win32 ActivePerl
by Anonymous Monk on Sep 30, 2009 at 08:16 UTC
    Still, not all is OK. Some modules seem to need a tool called dlltool which is missing and I haven't yet been able to find and install it.

    You need binutils.

    <rant>

    strawberry perl is fantastic, but it still too disjointed from msys/mingw, which is too disjointed from gnuwin32. They all have similar goals, and need to cooperate more easily with each other.

    For example perl won't build with sh Configure under msys, so msys is stuck at perl5.6.1. Strawberry perl developers helped craft a dmake specific makefile to compile perl with mingw, but now it doesn't come with sh, so every module which builds easily under linux with sh configure needs special steps for win32. Even ExtUtils::MakeMaker (and related modules) needed special tweaks.

    Instead of msys sh configure being a familiar unifying interface, or gnuwin32 providing the latest binaries (lots are outdated), everything from zlib to libtiff to imagemagick to Image::Magick needs special steps.

    Strawberry perl hopes it is A 100% Open Source Perl for Windows that is exactly the same as Perl everywhere else but without GNU build system it falls short.

    They could all learn some things from http://portableapps.com/

    </rant>

    Sorry about the small rant, dlltool comes with binutils.

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      I'm not sure what you're getting at. Problems building perl are of no consequence for a Strawberry user because Strawberry provides a binary. And modules that you build with 'sh configure'? Huh? I've never come across anything like that. The CPAN standard way is either 'perl Makefile.PL' or 'perl Build.PL'.

      As for portableapps.com - that appears to be a tool for carrying your Windows programs around from one Windows machine to another. Strawberry perl, on the other hand, is an attempt to get a primarily Unixy program (perl) to run on Windows.

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        I'm not sure what you're getting at. Problems building perl are of no consequence for a Strawberry user because Strawberry provides a binary.

        Like I said, they're all too disjointed , and need to cooperate more easily with each other. Compiling perl is one example. It matters because strawberry doesn't provide 5.10.1 yet, and it doesn't provide blead.

        And modules that you build with 'sh configure'? Huh? I've never come across anything like that. The CPAN standard way is either 'perl Makefile.PL' or 'perl Build.PL'.

        Look in the Alien:: namespace (or different versions of Math::Pari). Without sh it gets complicated for no reason.

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