As of this writing, AxKit’s support for the Microsoft Windows environment should be considered experimental. Anyone who decides to put such a server into production does so at her own risk. AxKit will run in most cases. (Win9x users are out of luck.) If you are looking for an environment in which to learn XML web-publishing techniques, then AxKit on Win32 is certainly a viable choice.

If you do not already have ActiveState’s Windows-friendly version of Perl installed, you must first download and install that before proceeding. It is available from http://www.activestate.com/. I suggest you get the latest version from the 5.8.x branch. In addition, you need the Windows port of the Apache web server. You can obtain links to the Windows installer from http://httpd.apache.org/. Be sure to grab the latest in the 1.3.x branch. Next, grab the official Win32 binaries for libxml2 and libxslt from http://www.zlatkovic.com/libxml.en.html and follow the installation instructions there.

After you install Apache, Perl libxml2, and libxslt, you can install AxKit using ActiveState’s ppm utility (which was installed when you installed ActivePerl). Simply open a command prompt, and type the following:

C:> ppm
ppm> repository add theoryx http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/ppms
ppm> install mod_perl-1
ppm> install libapreq-1
ppm> install XML-LibXML
ppm> install XML-LibXSLT
ppm> install AxKit-1

Finally, add the following line to your httpd.conf and start Apache:

LoadModule perl_module modules/mod_perl.so

This combination of commands and packages should give you a workable (albeit experimental) AxKit on your Windows system. If things go wrong, be sure to join the AxKit user’s mailing list and provide details about the versions of various packages you tried, your Windows version, and relevant output from your error logs.