On Sat, Jul 26, 2003 at 07:52:28PM +0100, Ed Avis wrote:
> I don't know if this has come up before, but this is a download
> location for Microsoft's nmake, which could be a bit easier to find
> and install than the other make programs on Windows (I haven't tried
> the pure-Perl make).

>From 5.8.0's perlmodinstall man page:
o   If you're running ActivePerl (Win95/98/2K/NT/XP,Linux, Solaris)
...
  You'll need the "nmake" utility, available at
  ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/MSLFILES/nmake15.exe

Though the advice in that man page for Windows is very bleak and at this
point probably wrong.

"Does the module require compilation...?  If it does, life is now officially
touch for you, because you have to compile a module yourself -- no easy
feat on Windows.  You'll need the "nmake" utility..."

Equally disturbingly...

       D. INSTALL

           Copy the module into your Perl's lib directory.
           That'll be one of the directories you see when you
           type

              perl -e 'print "@INC"'

AUGH!  No no no!  If you have nmake on Windows, things should just work
these days so I'll have to fix that.  I'll also have to check if Make.pm
works with the Makefile generated on Windows.  That would solve a lot
of problems.


Over to the discussion about MakeMaker to generate a GNU compatible Makefile
on Windows.  I'm not going to do it.  But if someone else wants to try, here's
the problems as I see them.

Right now MakeMaker is layed out according to operating system and *not* by
make variant.  This is Bad because *both* OS and make variant are important
to MakeMaker.  I'm not up to the massive rearchitecting that would be
necessary to fix this design flaw (it took nearly a year between
stable versions for my last relatively minor rearchitecting).  But it could 
be done on a smaller scale just for Windows as MM_Win32 and MM_Win95 are 
relatively small.

So what you need to do is one of:

A) Get MM_Win32/95 to generate a single Makefile which is at the same time
nmake, dmake and gmake compatible (good luck)

B) Generate a GNU Makefile with all the special cases necessary for Windows.

A would be preferable, but I fear its impossible.  B has a number of difficult
problem just to get it off the ground.  The first is how do you know which
to write?  When a Windows user writes "perl Makefile.PL" do you write an
nmake, dmake or gmake compatible Makefile?  Currently we look at $Config{make}
but that is inherently flawed since its the make Perl was compiled with and
while that's usually a good guess on Unix, its a very poor one on Windows.
Maybe looking at the MAKE environment variable.  Maybe you can scan around
in their PATH for something.

Then you have to split the current MM_Win* modules into MM_Win32::gmake,
MM_Win32::dmake and MM_Win32::nmake.  The nmake and dmake variants are
pretty straight forward, its what's there right now.

Then you have to actually write MM_Win32::gmake and figure out what bits of
MM_Unix will work and what you'll have to override.  A good template is
the existing MM_Win32, everything it doesn't override is probably safe.
Everything it does override you'll have to figure out if its because its
not compatible with nmake or with Windows.

And then you have to get the patch past me. ;)


> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 19:16:24 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Robert Eden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: xmltv-devel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: [Xmltv-devel] nmake for windows
> 
> A while back there was a discussion about the fact that makefiles
> generated by ActivePerl wanted to use Microsoft's NMAKE and not GNU
> MAKE.
> 
> I'm in the process of migrating to a new laptop and ran into the
> problem.  I don't currently have MS VC++ on my new laptop, but want to
> use it for my XMLTV work.
> 
> A google search revealed this page
> http://www.verysimple.com/scripts/support_modules_windows.html
> 
> The author has some strange delusions (he thinks the fact that Perl
> uses MAKE -- which doesn't ship on windows -- is a conspiracy by Linux
> advocates to move everyone off windows) but does provide some good info
> on Windows Perl.
> 
> One thing he provided was this link for NMAKE from Microsoft!
> http://download.microsoft.com/download/vc15/Patch/1.52/W95/EN-US/Nmake15.exe
>                  or
> http://makeashorterlink.com/?S12961445 
> 
> I just downloaded it and was able to build XMLTV with it! (CYGWIN was
> still in my path.. not sure if it was used)

-- 
Sometimes I read your mail.

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