Welcome to libwin32 version 0.09. WHAT ---- This is a bundle of "Win32-only" extensions that provides a quick migration path for people wanting to use the core support for win32 in perl 5.004 and later. 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 and later, 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 the latest perl and various other goodies on CPAN. | | | ---NOTE----NOTE----NOTE----NOTE----NOTE----NOTE----NOTE----NOTE---NOTE--- WHAT HAS CHANGED ---------------- OLE has been seriously overhauled, thanks largely to the valiant efforts of Jan Dubois . Jan has added many exciting new features, and a much more streamlined implementation. See the pod documentation for compatibility info. The AdminMisc extension has been dropped, because newer versions with support (and binaries) for the standard perl port are available from the original author. See "http://www.rothd.net/perl" for details. New compatibility functions (got via C) : LookupAccountName(), LookupAccountSID(), InitiateSystemShutdown(), AbortSystemShutdown(), ExpandEnvironmentStrings(). Numerous bugs have been fixed. See "Changes" files in individual module subdirectories. WHAT IT HAS ----------- 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/ChangeNotify Win32/EventLog Win32/File Win32/FileSecurity Win32/IPC Win32/Mutex Win32/NetAdmin Win32/NetResource Win32/OLE Win32/Process Win32/Registry Win32/Semaphore Win32/Service Win32/WinError Note this covers all of the Win32 extensions distributed by Activeware (as of build 313). 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. * Two useful modules maintained by Dave Roth . 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. WHAT TO DO ---------- This collection will build with perl5.004_01 and later on the Windows NT platform. Building on Windows 95 is not supported (but it may be possible if you use the 4DOS command shell, but YMMV). + First you need to build perl 5.004_01 or later (you will need either Visual C++ 4.x+ or Borland C++ 5.02+), and install it. See README.win32 in the perl distribution for details on how to build perl for the Win32 platform. + 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, and are in a domain with a properly configured domain controller. NetResource requires that you be part of a domain or workgroup. You may also need Administrator privileges 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++ 5.02. 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". If the wininet.h or wininet.dll in your system are newer than the ones in WinInet.zip, discard them before copying WinInet.lib into the Internet/ directory. + perl Makefile.PL [either at toplevel or in subdirs] + $MAKE [either at toplevel or in subdirs] + $MAKE test [optional, some interactive tests] + $MAKE install [either at toplevel or in subdirs] $MAKE above stands for either "dmake" or "nmake" depending on your available compiler, and perl configuration. WHAT THEN --------- 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. Enjoy! Gurusamy Sarathy gsar@umich.edu 14 December 1997 WHATEVER -------- Copyright for the following modules: 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 (unless stated otherwise): (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.