NOTES ON BUILDING TLPERL 2015

BUILD PLATFORM

32-bits Windows 7 SP1 running under VirtualBox on
Linux.

GETTING THE PERL SOURCE

I downloaded the latest stable Perl source 5.20.2 from CPAN.

THE COMPILER

The file README.win32 in the root of the distribution contains
compilation instructions, which lists various supported MinGW
distributions, including a trimmed-down version of MinGW64 offered
by the Strawberry Perl project. I unzipped
mingw64-w32-gcc4.8.3_20140727.zip from
http://strawberryperl.com/package/kmx/32_gcctoolchain/ and
32bit_dmake-4.12.2-bin_20140810.zip from
http://strawberryperl.com/package/kmx/32_tools/

This MinGW compiler does not require installation; it is sufficient
to prepend <root>\bin to the searchpath before use.

BUILDING PERL

I went to the win32 subdirectory of the Perl source. In makefile.mk
I adjusted relevant settings to my build environment. As in the
previous release, I turned off optimization in the hope to avoid
some intractable failures:

*** makefile.mk.orig	2015-01-28 22:08:46.000000000 +0100
--- makefile.mk	2015-04-24 14:02:38.037487500 +0200
***************
*** 27,33 ****
  # newly built perl.
  #
  INST_DRV	*= c:
! INST_TOP	*= $(INST_DRV)\perl
  
  #
  # Uncomment if you want to build a 32-bit Perl using a 32-bit compiler
--- 27,33 ----
  # newly built perl.
  #
  INST_DRV	*= c:
! INST_TOP	*= $(INST_DRV)\tlperl
  
  #
  # Uncomment if you want to build a 32-bit Perl using a 32-bit compiler
***************
*** 144,150 ****
  # If you are using GCC, 4.3 or later by default we add the -fwrapv option.
  # See https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=121505
  #
! #GCCWRAPV       *= define
  
  #
  # If you are using Intel C++ Compiler uncomment this
--- 144,150 ----
  # If you are using GCC, 4.3 or later by default we add the -fwrapv option.
  # See https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=121505
  #
! GCCWRAPV       *= define
  
  #
  # If you are using Intel C++ Compiler uncomment this
***************
*** 209,215 ****
  # not be quoted)
  #
  .IF "$(CCTYPE)" == "GCC"
! CCHOME		*= C:\MinGW
  .ELSE
  CCHOME		*= $(MSVCDIR)
  .ENDIF
--- 209,215 ----
  # not be quoted)
  #
  .IF "$(CCTYPE)" == "GCC"
! CCHOME		*= X:\mingw
  .ELSE
  CCHOME		*= $(MSVCDIR)
  .ENDIF
***************
*** 465,474 ****
  		  -lwinmm -lversion -lodbc32 -lodbccp32 -lcomctl32
  
  .IF  "$(CFG)" == "Debug"
! OPTIMIZE	= -g -O2 -DDEBUGGING
  LINK_DBG	= -g
  .ELSE
! OPTIMIZE	= -s -O2
  LINK_DBG	= -s
  .ENDIF
  
--- 465,474 ----
  		  -lwinmm -lversion -lodbc32 -lodbccp32 -lcomctl32
  
  .IF  "$(CFG)" == "Debug"
! OPTIMIZE	= -g -O0 -DDEBUGGING
  LINK_DBG	= -g
  .ELSE
! OPTIMIZE	= -s -O0
  LINK_DBG	= -s
  .ENDIF

[end of patch]

I compiled with

  dmake

and installed with

  dmake installbare

`installbare' omits the generation of html.

INSTALLING MODULES

When adding modules, I added the new Perl bin directory to the
searchpath. I downloaded all the modules from CPAN and added them with

  perl Makefile.PL && dmake && dmake test && dmake install

They are, in order of processing:

Math::Int64 0.52
IO::String 1.08
Digest::SHA1 2.13
File::Which 1.16
Encode::compat 0.07
Encode::Locale 1.04

Windows-specific:

Win32::API 0.80
Win32::WinError 0.04 (just copying WinError.pm to lib/Win32)
Win32API::Registry 0.33
Win32::Console 0.10
Win32::TieRegistry 0.29 (errors in testing, as always)
Win32::Shortcut 0.08
Win32::OLE 0.1712 - warnings

LWP and dependencies, in order of compilation/installation:

Socket 2.018
Date::Parse 2.30 (file TimeDate-2.30.tar.gz)
HTTP::Date 6.02
File::Listing 6.04
IO::HTML 1.001
LWP::MediaTypes 6.02
URI 1.67
HTTP::Message 6.06
HTML::Tagset 3.20
HTML::Parser 3.71
WWW::RobotRules 6.02
HTTP::Negotiate 6.01
Net::HTTP 6.07
Mozilla::CA 20141217
HTTP::Daemon 6.01
HTTP::Cookies 6.01
LWP 6.13 (file libwww-perl-6.13.tar.gz)

Perl/Tk:

Tk 804.033

This module did not compile rightaway.

1. In Tk-804.033/PNG/zlib/win32/zlib.def I had to remove the LIBRARY
line at the start. I also removed - maybe unnecessarily - the lines
starting with `;'.

2. An entry '-limm32' somehow did not make it into LDLOADLIBS in the
generated makefile. After manually adding this at the end of the
LDLOADLIBS definition, the module compiled.

Tk-DirSelect 1.12

MAKING PERL PORTABLE

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 and other characters where necessary. I also
parameterized the location of the mingw compiler.

Config_heavy.pl got a similar treatment, in particular the
single-quoted here-documents with markers !END! (very long) and
EOVIRTUAL.

The original versions are still present under the names Config.pm.orig
and Config_heavy.pl.orig.

MODIFICATIONS FOR TEXLIVE

- as explained above: our versions of lib/Config.pm and lib/Config_heavy.pl
  compute the location of tlperl dynamically.
- The site/lib subdirectory is folded into lib.
- The lib/pods directory has been removed.
- 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_sjlj_1.dll, libstdc++-6.dll and libwinpthread-1.dll

TESTING WITH TEXLIVE

For testing the new Perl with the installer, I unpacked the net
installer and replaced its tlperl with the new one.

For testing the new Perl with tlmgr-gui.exe from the installed TeX
Live, I copied it into the fresh installation.

Both tests were done with 32-bits Windows 7 Home Premium as regular
user and 64-bits Windows 8 Professional as admin user.

tlmgr-gui appeared to work as intended.  I also successfully ran the
uninstaller. However, later there turned out to be a transient
problem with updating tlperl, whose update coincided with a tlmgr
update.

Siep Kroonenberg

Last revision: May 5 2015