http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=967228


in reply to Make program used by Perl in windows

I want to understand why Dmake and not GNU Make is used for Perl and Perl modules in Windows.

There are many choices on windows, dmake is the StrawberryPerl choice, and it is used because it is used, chosen because nmake15 had limitations, and because strawberryperl team chose not to bundle MSYS (and along with it sh/make/mingw32-make )

Actually, the way I remember it,  sh configure didn't work for compiling perl with mingw, so someone picked dmake and ported Makefile to makefile.mk, then MakeMaker was patched with dmake support (by strawberryperl team, adamk? )

update: See Dmake configuration for building Perl with MinGW on win32., Compiling C/C++ based Modules under ActiveState using MinGW, Re^2: Compiling modules for win32 ActivePerl, RFC: Setting up a minGW compiling envronment for Perl 5.10, The MinGW and dmake cpan starts to install

See also MinGW/MSYS development environment - Setting up the base system, See Re: Installing iodbc 0.1 via CPAN (or other means) on Mac OS 10.6, Building Math-GSL-0.07 on Win32 (MinGW compiler)

Can ExtUtils::MakeMaker still be "doomed"? Or is it time to revive it?

Both. MakeMaker Is DOOMED! but I doubt it will die (I won't let it :)