Welcome to libwin32 version 0.191. WHAT ---- This used to be a bundle of extensions that provided a quick migration path for people wanting to use the core support for win32 in perl 5.004 and later. With the release of Perl version 5.005 (which brings ActiveState's changes to Perl sources into the mainstream), this library of extensions has assumed loftier motives. The long term goal of this project is to provide a coherent collection of modules that allow access to the functionality provided by the Win32 API, while maintaining the style and spirit of Perl. Like Perl, the intention is to make "easy things easy, and hard things possible". Note that we are nowhere close to this goal at the present time, but we are slowly getting there. As the name suggests, all modules in this distribution are Win32-specific. They cannot be used on platforms that do not support the Win32 API. WHAT HAS CHANGED ---------------- The top level "Changes" file contains a version by version overview of the most significant changes. This release has the following changes over the previous one (version 0.18): + Win32::Job is now available (thanks to Neil Watkiss). This extension allows you to manipulate "job" objects (which are groups of processes) in Windows 2000 or later. See the pod documentation for details. + Most modules that autoloaded their constants could reset $! during autoloading. Such locations now localize $! before potentially modifying it. + EventLog has been upgraded to 0.073 (thanks to Brett Williams). EventLog/Changes has a list of bug fixes. + NetResource has been upgraded to 0.053. See NetResource/Changes for the change log. + A Win32::GetOSName() function is now available. It is documented in the Win32.pod distributed with perl 5.8.0-RC2 and with ActivePerl. + Some issues with building it under 5.8.0-RC2 have been fixed. + This release corresponds to the version of libwin32 included in ActivePerl 5.6.1.633. Many thanks to all the contributors. WHAT TO DO ---------- NOTE: If you already have ActivePerl build 633 or later installed, you may already have a more recent version of libwin32 installed, and you will not need to install this. To be sure, run this: C:\> perl -MWin32 -e "print $Win32::VERSION" If that prints 0.191 or later, you don't need to install this package. Many modules come with their own test files. You may want to use them as a source of examples. Many of the test files will only run on Windows NT, others may require Windows NT 4.0, and still others may require Administrator privileges, or a full-fledged Windows network. This set of modules will build with perl v5.6.0 and later on the Windows NT platform. Building on Windows 95 is not supported (it *may* be possible if you use the 4DOS command shell, but your mileage may vary). + First you need to build perl 5.6.0 or later (you will need either Visual C++ 5.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. ActivePerl build 613 or later will also suffice. + Make sure your perl is properly configured. "perl -V:libpth" should report a valid path to your compiler's library files. If you built perl yourself, make sure you specify the C compiler's library location properly in the Makefile used to build perl. If your C compiler and libraries are installed in a path with spaces, you'll need to quote any components with spaces, or use the short path name equivalents. + All 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 (from Office 2000) 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++ (OLE needs 4.2b, 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). [NOTE: I have only tested building this release with Visual Studio 98, aka Visual C++ 6.0. Please send patches if you hit problems with the other compilers.] + If the Internet extension doesn't build due to lack of libraries (the wininet.h header is included), fetch the Platform SDK from "http://www.microsoft.com/msdn/sdk/". You need to look for wininet.h and wininet.dll. If either of those is newer than the ones you already have, replace the older ones, and copy the newer 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 --------- If you find any problems with these modules, kindly report them to both the original author and to me. While I have fixed many problems in these modules, I may also have introduced brand new bugs in the process :) I wish to thank the authors of these modules for their effort in making them useful, and for making them freely available. Suggestions, patches, testsuite additions, and wholesale rewrites welcome. Enjoy! Gurusamy Sarathy gsar@ActiveState.com 8 July 2002 WHATEVER -------- Copyright for many of the modules is held by their respective authors. Look in the module subdirectories for any conditions of use. The following copyright applies to all files that don't have an explicit copyright statement: (c) 1995 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed by ActiveWare Internet Corp., http://www.ActiveWare.com Other modifications (c) 1997-2000 by Gurusamy Sarathy (c) 1999-2002 by ActiveState Corp. 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.