This is a bundle of Win32 extensions that provides a quick migration path for people wanting to use the core support for win32 in perl 5.004. It features the complete set of Win32-specific extensions available from CPAN that could previously only be used with Activeware's "Perl for Win32"(TM). Most other non-Win32 extensions should build fairly smoothly using the MakeMaker support available in perl 5.004, so they are not included in this bundle. ---NOTE----NOTE----NOTE----NOTE----NOTE----NOTE----NOTE----NOTE---NOTE--- | | | This distribution does not contain binaries. Look for a binary | | distribution of perl 5.004 and this bundle on CPAN. | | | ---NOTE----NOTE----NOTE----NOTE----NOTE----NOTE----NOTE----NOTE---NOTE--- This collection will build with perl5.004, using either Visual C++ 4.x+ or Borland C++ 5.0x+, on the Windows NT platform. You need to apply a largish patch to perl5.004 and rebuild and install perl, before building this set of modules. See README.win32 in the perl distribution for details on how to build perl on Win32. Here is what this bundle contains: * The collection of modules originally distributed by the Activeware folks as part of their "Perl for Win32"(TM) port. These have been modified so that they will build under MakeMaker using perls greater than 5.004 and Visual C++. Along the way, I have added many bugfixes to make these modules work correctly. The complete list of Activeware extensions is available: Win32/EventLog Win32/File Win32/FileSecurity Win32/NetAdmin Win32/NetResource Win32/OLE Win32/Registry Win32/Service Win32/WinError Win32/ChangeNotify Win32/IPC Win32/Mutex Win32/Process Win32/Semaphore Note this covers all of the Win32 extensions distributed by Activeware (as of build 306). These extensions have been re-engineered to use the XS interface language, yet the changes are compatible with the originals. This should minimize any problems for people wanting to migrate their application to 5.004. The design of these modules is subject to change in future. The only deliberately incompatible change is in the Win32::OLE module. While the Activeware port used the "OLE::" and "Win32::" namespaces for the functionality contained in this module, this port uses "Win32::OLE::" consistently. For a list of other incompatibilities in Win32::OLE, see the embedded documentation in "OLE/OLE.pm". * The following five modules maintained by Aldo Calpini : Win32/Clipboard Win32/Console Win32/Internet Win32/Shortcut Win32/Sound These also have been converted back to XS. I have added bug fixes as I found them during the conversion process. * Three useful modules maintained by Dave Roth . Win32/AdminMisc Win32/ODBC Win32/Pipe These have only received just the bare modifications needed to build them under MakeMaker. *.xs are really C/C++ files masquerading as XS. Win32/ODBC hasn't been tested much. Building: + First you need to apply a patch to perl 5.004 and rebuild it. If you don't have GNU patch for win32, get it from: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~gsar/patch2_1-win32-exe.zip and put the binary somewhere in your path. Extract perl 5.004 source, and cd to the perl toplevel, and apply the patch contained in this distribution like so: patch -p1 -N < \path\to\this\dist\perlwin-400_1.patch Follow instructions in README.win32 in the perl distribution to build perl (you will need either Visual C++ or Borland C++), and install it. + That done, you need to extract this distribution into an NTFS partition (the tests in the FileSecurity module and Net* modules will fail otherwise). The testsuite for OLE needs Excel to run. NetAdmin will only work if you have some kind of live network connection. NetResource requires that you be part of a domain or workgroup. You may also need Administrator prvileges for running some of the tests. If one or more of these conditions will not be met, you may wish to build in the subdirectories one by one. The steps below will work either at the toplevel directory, or in each of the individual extension subdirectories. + You need either MS Visual C++ (NetAdmin needs ver. 4.x+, Internet needs ver. 5.0. ver. 2.0 should suffice for the others) or Borland C++ 5.0. Make sure you have the full installation of either of these compilers ("Minimal" installations or CDROM-based installations may have problems finding all the libraries). If the Internet extension doesn't build due to lack of libraries (the wininet.h header is included), fetch the libraries from Aldo Calpini's website: "http://www.divinf.it/data/perl/internet/". Look for a file named "WinInet.zip". + perl Makefile.PL [either at toplevel or in subdirs] + nmake [either at toplevel or in subdirs] + nmake test [optional, some interactive tests] + nmake install [either at toplevel or in subdirs] A brief statment of intent: I am doing this to ease the transition for many people who may wish to start using the latest perl on win32 platforms. Long term development of these modules remains the responsibility of the respective authors. I wish to thank the authors of these modules for their effort in making them useful, and for making them freely available. If you find any problems with these modules, kindly report them to me. While I have fixed many problems in these modules, I may also have introduced brand new bugs in the process :) Suggestions, patches, testsuite additions, wholesale rewrites and additional ports of modules welcome. Gurusamy Sarathy gsar@umich.edu 28-MAY-1997 COPYRIGHT Copyright for the following modules: AdminMisc ODBC Pipe Clipboard Console Internet Shortcut Sound is held by the respective authors. Look in the module subdirectories for any conditions of use. The following copyright applies to the remaining, Activeware-derived modules: (c) 1995 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed by ActiveWare Internet Corp., http://www.ActiveWare.com Other modifications (c) 1997 by Gurusamy Sarathy You may distribute under the terms of either the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License, as specified in the README file of the Perl distribution.