http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=25950


in reply to Installing DBI on Win32 with GCC 2.8.1

Well, I'm not sure, but here are some observations. Anyone more knowledgeable feel free to correct and add info.

There is a file called "Config.pm" in perl's lib. It contains information on what C compiler to use, and what flags to pass to it when compiling any C code for installing a perl module.

The data in Config.pm about these things seem to be dependant on what compiler perl itself was compiled with in the first place, for your computer. ActivePerl is a binary distribution and hence precompiled. For ActivePerl 5.005 this is Microsofts C compiler (cl.exe). I guess this is true also for v 5.6 that you are using.

It should be possible to edit Config.pm and tweak the settings so that you can use gcc instead, e.g. change:

cc='cl.exe'
to:
cc='gcc.exe'
... and then go on to change flags in a suitable way. You must also have gcc in your PATH. I tried doing this yesterday, with mingw's gcc and the help of a friend who knows C. It didn't work out,and we resorted to installing Microsoft C++ instead. Then it worked like a breeze, installing Text::CSV_XS for DBD::CSV.

In order to install a module with C code in it you then do the usual "make", "make test" and "make install". So you need a make program. There is one with gcc but I don't know if it works with perl on Win32, never tried it. There is however a make program from Microsoft called nmake freely available. It works well and you type "nmake", "nmake test" .. etcetera to use it.

/jeorgen