Appendix C. Installing Perl for Windows

This appendix explains how to obtain and install Perl for the Windows platform, sometimes known as Win32 Perl. Perl for Windows will run on Windows NT or Windows 95/98, although it is slightly more robust on Windows NT (I found very little that was different between the two platforms).

With the release of version 5.005 of Perl, Windows support has been incorporated into the core Perl source code tree, and is up to date with the Unix version. Previously, there had been several different versions of Perl for Windows, with each version supporting different features and lagging behind the Unix platform in different ways. The merged 5.005 version made a tremendous difference in stability and support for the Windows platform. If you have installed a previous version of Perl for Windows, I strongly suggest you upgrade to the latest version before starting this book.

To install Perl for Windows, you have two choices. You can

• Download the core Perl source code, and compile and build it yourself

• Download a prebuilt version of Perl for Windows, sometimes called ActivePerl, from ActiveState

Going the source code route enables you to be up-to-minute with the latest bug fixes, experimental features, and changes, but you must have a modern C++ compiler (Micro soft's Visual C++, Borland C++, and so on), and you must understand how to build large C projects. Windows 2000 and XP are definitely the better-supported platforms for building Perl yourself. You'll also need to download and install the Win32 modules (libwin32) yourself to get access to various Windows features such as OLE and processes.

The other choice is to download the prebuilt binary version of Perl from ActiveState. ActivePerl, as this version is called, contains Perl for Windows, some nice installation scripts, the Win32 Perl modules, PerlScript (an ActiveX scripting engine to replace JavaScript or VBScript inside Internet Explorer), Perl of ISAPI for Perl CGI scripts, and the Perl Package Manager (PPM), which makes installing extra Perl modules much easier.

Because the prebuilt ActiveState version of Perl is probably the better choice for most Windows users, this appendix will primarily cover downloading and installing that version. If you'd prefer to build Perl yourself, I've included a section at the end of this appendix (“Downloading the Perl Source Code”) to help you get started. The README files included with the source can help you get started from there.