Okay, finally here is the solution to compiling external source GNU applications into your Perl source on Win32 systems using http://www.indigostar.com/perl2exe.htm compiler. My GNU applications came from an installation of cygwin http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/ or http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/

As per IndigoStar's manual page http://www.indigostar.com/pxman.htm you have to use the "-tiny" option when compiling your source.

perl2exe -tiny /path/to/your/source/code/source.pl
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In your Perl source code you also have to add in commands to "include" the external dependent modules into your EXE at compile time.

#perl2exe_bundle "C:\cygwin\bin\find.exe"
#perl2exe_bundle "C:\cygwin\bin\cygwin1.dll"
#perl2exe_bundle "C:\cygwin\bin\cygintl-1.dll"
my $this_dir = $ENV{TEMP} || $ENV{TMP} || ($^O eq "MSWin32" ? $ENV{WIN
+DIR} : '/tmp');
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For this example I'm importing GNU find.exe. The extra DLL's are required also by cygwin. If you run it without these DLL's compiled you get an error requesting you import them also. And yes the hash (#) at the beginning of the line is required.

The last line there is important, once its compiled how does your application know where the compiled components will reside at runtime? IndigoStar's compiler makes temporary copies of the imported programs to a temporary directory, which are removed at the end of execution. Where that temporary directory actually is for your system is based on this command, so use it yourself. Then in your code when you utilise the "find.exe" add this variable into your code so your program can find it.

open( FIND, "$this_dir\\find . -type d -print0 |" )
    or die "can't run find: $!";
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This will compile all the external dependencies into one exe, with a few extra dll's that are created because of the "-tiny" option. This is now fully portable to any other box, and doesn't require perl or cygwin installed. No more dependencies!!

Enjoy!
Dean

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