NOTES ON BUILDING TLPERL 2011

BUILD PLATFORM

32-bits Windows XP Professional SP3 running under VirtualBox on
Linux. The user is no administrator.

GETTING THE PERL SOURCE

I downloaded from CPAN: the latest stable Perl source 5.12.3

COLLECTING A NATIVE BUILD ENVIRONMENT

I found in the root of the distribution a file README.win32
containing compilation instructions, which listed both the older
mingw32 from mingw.org and the newer mingw64 from mingw-w64.sf.net
as possible compilers.

I downloaded and ran the automated downloader/installer
x86-mingw32-build-1.0-sh.tar.bz2. I selected gcc, g++ and, probably
unnecessarily, the MinGW developer toolkit. I skipped Fortran, Ada
and Objective C. I added the mingw32 bin subdirectory to the
searchpath.

Based on the same README.win32 from the Perl source, I downloaded
dmake-4.12-2009-SHAY.zip from
http://search.cpan.org/dist/dmake. Following the file readme.txt in
the root of this archive, I created a directory dmake somewhere and
copied to it the file dmake.exe and the entire startup
subdirectory. I also added the dmake directory to the searchpath.

BUILDING

I went to the win32 subdirectory of the Perl source. In makefile.mk I
edited CCHOME to point to the root of my mingw installation:

  CCHOME *= X:\mingw32

and uncommented the lines

  GCC_4XX		*= define
  GCCHELPERDLL	*= $(CCHOME)\bin\libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll

Then I typed

  dmake

and

  dmake install

These actions did not change the searchpath. If dmake tried to do so
and failed then I missed it. No other symptoms of system integration
either.

However, there were hard-coded paths in lib/Config.pm and
lib/Config_heavy.pl, which were likely to cause problems.

I edited lib/Config.pm and lib/Config_heavy.pl to compute Perl's
location dynamically. To both I add the code

  my $rootdir = __FILE__;
  $rootdir =~ s![\\/][^\\/]*[\\/][^\\/]*$!!;
  $rootdir =~ s!/!\\!g;

and used this in Config.pm for the definition of %Config, taking care
to replace single-quoted strings with double-quoted ones and
escaping backslashes where necessary.

Config_heavy.pl got a similar treatment: in single-quoted
here-documents with markers !END! (very long) and EOVIRTUAL I
replaced the hard-coded Perl paths. Because the $rootdir variable
needed to be interpolated, I shifted from single- to double-quoting,
which required escaping backslashes, existing dollar characters
(e.g. in 'Id=$Id') and an `@'. No need to escape single- or double
quotes.

I left the hard-coded paths for the mingw compiler alone.

The original versions are still present under the names Config.pmold
and Config_heavy.plold. Diffs are here.

To verify relocatability, I moved the tree elsewhere and added the
bin directory of the new location to my searchpath.

Next some Windows-specific modules and Tk. I downloaded from CPAN:

Windows-specific:

  Win32-API-0.59.tar.gz
  Win32-Shortcut-0.07.tar.gz
  Win32API-Registry-0.32.tar.gz
  Win32-TieRegistry-0.26.tar.gz
  Win32-Process-Info-1.018.tar.gz

Perl/Tk:

  Tk-804.029.tar.gz

LWP and dependencies:

  HTML-Tagset-Tagset-3.20.tar.gz
  HTML-Parser-3.68.tar.gz
  URI-1.58.tar.gz
  libwww-perl-5.837.tar.gz

Other:

  IO-String-1.08.tar.gz
  Carp-Always-0.09.tar.gz (for trace-backs)
  Digest-SHA1-2.13.tar.gz (for 3rd-party scripts)
  File-Which-1.09.tar.gz (for 3rd-party scripts)

They were all configured, compiled and installed with

  perl Makefile.PL
  dmake
  dmake install

MODIFICATIONS FOR TEXLIVE

- lib/Config.pm and lib/Config_heavy.pl now compute the location of
  tlperl dynamically; see above.
- The html directory has been removed.
- The site/lib subdirectory is folded into lib.
- The bin subdirectory now only contains exe- and dll files.
  Batch files and Perl scripts have been removed.
- Copied from mingw/bin to tlperl/bin:
  libgcc_s_dw2_1.dll and libstdc++-6.dll.

TESTING WITH TEXLIVE

For testing the new Perl with the installer, I did an advanced
installation from the Master repository with the old tlperl replaced
with the new one. The Master repository is on a network share. I
selected scheme basic without source/doc but with format
generation. A lot of complaints about missing Perl files (to be
expected) but otherwise uneventful.

For testing the new Perl with the installed TeX Live, I copied it
into the fresh installation.

tlmgr appeared to work as intended, both from the command-line and in
gui mode, except that quitting took up to 20 seconds, but this does
not seem to be specific to this Perl.

I also successfully ran epstopdf, updmap-sys and the uninstaller.

Siep Kroonenberg

Last revision: May 11 2011