How do you compile PerlIO::gzip for AS Perl 5.10?

DrWhy has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Update: I finally got this working. Details are at the bottom of Re^2: How do you compile PerlIO::gzip for AS Perl 5.10?

I've got code that reads and processes the contents of gzip files. It needs to run on both AS Perl 5.10 and AS Perl 5.8. When I originally wrote it and 5.8 was the latest Perl, I used PerlIO::gzip obtained from ppm and life was good. Now that I have to support both 5.10 and 5.8 I thought I'd just ppm install PerlIO::gzip for 5.10, but no such luck. It's not there on the PPM repos I kinow about. My attempts to download and build it with CPAN using all the normal mechanisms that work for other modules don't work for this module. My suspicion is that it's a c-lib and/or c-header issues; like I don't have the right gzip lib/header version installed on my workstation.

So all that leads to this question - has anyone ever compiled PerlIO::gzip for perl 5.10 for Windows versions of perl? If so, what was the magic incantation you used to achieve success?

Now, in attempt to keep the responses on topic, let me address some tangents that might come to a fellow monk's mind: Yes, I can use PerlIO::via::gzip, but 1. it won't work under Perl 5.8, so I have to complicate my code and keep two different gzip handling modules around, 2. PerlIO::via::gzip has a number of dependencies whereas PerlIO::gzip does not, and 3(ish). I suspect, but could be wrong, that since it's a via module PerlIO::via::gzip will run slower than PerlIO::gzip. None of these are showstoppers, but I'd prefer to keep this system as simple and fast as possible.

Thanks !

--DrWhy

"If God had meant for us to think for ourselves he would have given us brains. Oh, wait..."

Comment on How do you compile PerlIO::gzip for AS Perl 5.10?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: How do you compile PerlIO::gzip for AS Perl 5.10? by syphilis (Archbishop) on Sep 24, 2010 at 22:54 UTC
It builds without incident for me using ActivePerl with mingw/dmake - hard to believe that there's not a ppm package available for it at the AS repo, but I couldn't find one there either. If you already have mingw/dmake installed, it should build fine for you, too. What errors do you get ? If you don't already have mingw/dmake you can remedy that with `ppm install MinGW` If all else fails, I could send you a ppm package for it (if you /msg me an email address that will accept an email with a tar.gz attachment). Cheers, Rob UPDATE: Looks like it's not building for some because libz (which is found by default on my machine) is unlocatable. Once that's taken care of, it should build fine.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: How do you compile PerlIO::gzip for AS Perl 5.10? by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Sep 24, 2010 at 23:21 UTC
If all else fails, I could send you a ppm package for it Is there anything to stop people uploading PPMs to CPAN? I've built many modules for x64 that aren't available on any existing repository that I'm aware of, but I don't run a website, so I have nowhere to make them available. CPAN seems like an obvious choice, but it would be better if wherever they were acted as a repository rather than just a file-store, and I can't see that happening. Or maybe AS could find a place for user-built PPMs--with appropriate disclaimers of course. Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error. "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice. RIP an inspiration; A true Folk's Guy	[reply]
Re^3: How do you compile PerlIO::gzip for AS Perl 5.10? by syphilis (Archbishop) on Sep 25, 2010 at 01:30 UTC
Is there anything to stop people uploading PPMs to CPAN? I don't know. What would the PAUSE server and indexer make of a ppm package ? Is there a way of just sticking a file on CPAN such that PAUSE doesn't try to do the things it does when a source tarball is uploaded ? Even if it could be done, I wouldn't. I regard CPAN as a source repository, and would consider that I had "breached faith" if I started putting binaries there. (Yeah, I know ... it's a rather fuddy-duddy antiquated reason, and not a very good one. Btw, I've no objection to someone else putting Windows binaries on CPAN - it's just something that I myself am not currently prepared to do, even if it is possible.) Besides, I already have access to the Uwinnipeg repo - so I could stick it on there if I wanted to. But as (my perception of) my access to that repo isn't one of "anything goes, open slather", I don't usually put anything there unless: a) it's difficult/tedious to build, and b) I'm prepared to update it regularly. I must admit that there are some modules that I've placed on the Uwinnipeg repo that don't get updated as regularly as they should :-) ... but that's no reason to add to the list. Of course, offering to email a ppm package is a long way from the ideal situation - especially when someone digs up the offer 6 months down the track, by which time the package has been lost and needs to be re-built (as has happened to me more than once). It would certainly be good if there was some place to which we could just upload ppm packages willy-nilly. Cheers, Rob	[reply]
Re^4: How do you compile PerlIO::gzip for AS Perl 5.10? by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Sep 25, 2010 at 02:01 UTC
Re^3: How do you compile PerlIO::gzip for AS Perl 5.10? by cdarke (Prior) on Sep 25, 2010 at 09:22 UTC
Is there anything to stop people uploading PPMs to CPAN? The thing that would make me think twice is what are the license implications of distributing a binary - even if there is no statically linked runtime. FOSS licenses have become so complex that I no longer understand them (to tell the truth I probably never did). If I use a Microsoft compiler then all bets are off - it's safer not to. Not sure how ActiveState get around that one. Anyone from AS wish to comment? To be honest though, what people would really like (on Windows) is a .msi file. Many Python modules are available that way, and Rakudo is as well. Any reason why we don't do that with Perl 5 modules?	[reply]
Re^4: How do you compile PerlIO::gzip for AS Perl 5.10? by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Sep 25, 2010 at 12:56 UTC
Re^4: How do you compile PerlIO::gzip for AS Perl 5.10? by DrWhy (Chaplain) on Sep 27, 2010 at 20:52 UTC
Re^4: How do you compile PerlIO::gzip for AS Perl 5.10? by Anonymous Monk on Sep 28, 2010 at 00:37 UTC
Re^2: How do you compile PerlIO::gzip for AS Perl 5.10? by DrWhy (Chaplain) on Sep 28, 2010 at 21:27 UTC
What version of libz are you using? I tried the one out of my cygwin install, but get this at the end: C:\Perl5.10\cpan\build\PerlIO-gzip-0.18-dz4dHj>nmake Microsoft (R) Program Maintenance Utility Version 8.00.50727.762 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. gcc -c -DNDEBUG -DWIN32 -D_CONSOLE -DNO_STRICT -DHAVE_DES_F +CRYPT -DUSE_SITECUSTOMIZE -DPRIVLIB_LAST_IN_INC -DPERL_IMPLICIT_CONTE +XT -DPERL_I MPLICIT_SYS -DUSE_PERLIO -DPERL_MSVCRT_READFIX -DHASATTRIBUTE -fno-str +ict-aliasing -O2 -DVERSION=\"0.18\" -DXS_VERSION=\"0.18\" "-IC:\ +Perl5.10\li b\CORE" -DLAYERGZIP_DEFAULT_OS_TYPE=11 gzip.c Running Mkbootstrap for PerlIO::gzip () C:\Perl5.10\bin\perl.exe -MExtUtils::Command -e chmod 644 gzip +.bs C:\Perl5.10\bin\perl.exe -MExtUtils::Mksymlists -e "Mksymlist +s('NAME'=>\"PerlIO::gzip\", 'DLBASE' => 'gzip', 'DL_FUNCS' => { }, ' +FUNCLIST' = > [], 'IMPORTS' => { }, 'DL_VARS' => []);" dlltool --def gzip.def --output-exp dll.exp g++ -o blib\arch\auto\PerlIO\gzip\gzip.dll -Wl,--base-file -Wl +,dll.base -mdll -L"C:\Perl5.10\lib\CORE" gzip.o -Wl,--image-base,0x49 +1e0000 C:\ Perl5.10\lib\CORE\perl510.lib -lkernel32 -luser32 -lgdi32 -lwinspool - +lcomdlg32 -ladvapi32 -lshell32 -lole32 -loleaut32 -lnetapi32 -luuid - +lws2_32 -lm pr -lwinmm -lversion -lodbc32 -lodbccp32 -lmsvcrt dll.exp gzip.o:gzip.c:(.text+0x4fe): undefined reference to `inflateInit2_' gzip.o:gzip.c:(.text+0x5b7): undefined reference to `crc32' gzip.o:gzip.c:(.text+0xac0): undefined reference to `deflateInit2_' gzip.o:gzip.c:(.text+0xafe): undefined reference to `crc32' gzip.o:gzip.c:(.text+0xf3d): undefined reference to `crc32' gzip.o:gzip.c:(.text+0xfed): undefined reference to `inflateEnd' gzip.o:gzip.c:(.text+0x101d): undefined reference to `deflateEnd' gzip.o:gzip.c:(.text+0x12c5): undefined reference to `inflate' gzip.o:gzip.c:(.text+0x13d2): undefined reference to `crc32' gzip.o:gzip.c:(.text+0x14ba): undefined reference to `deflate' gzip.o:gzip.c:(.text+0x1618): undefined reference to `crc32' collect2: ld returned 1 exit status NMAKE : fatal error U1077: 'C:\Perl5.10\site\bin\g++.EXE' : return cod +e '0x1' Stop. [download] Update: In the example above I used nmake. However, afterwards, I reconfigured my system to use dmake instead and got the same result. Update/Solution: I found that using the MSYS zlib-dev distribution finally worked. http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/MSYS/zlib/zlib-1.2.3-2/zlib-1.2.3-2-msys-1.0.13-dev.tar.lzma/download. This delivers a set of two directories, include and lib, which contain resp. headers and precompiled library files. The other trick that I had to do to make this work was that the lib files had to be placed in the <Perl5.10>\lib\CORE directory. --DrWhy "If God had meant for us to think for ourselves he would have given us brains. Oh, wait..."	[reply] [d/l]
Re: How do you compile PerlIO::gzip for AS Perl 5.10? by ambrus (Abbot) on Sep 25, 2010 at 13:51 UTC
If you don't insist on the PerlIO::gzip module, you could try installing a standalone gzip program and then `open $F, "-\|", "gzip", "-dc", "--", $filename`. This has the advantage that the decompression runs in a separate process so it can run in parallel with your program if you have multiple cpu cores � that's of course relevant only with large files (and slower compressions like eg. bzip2).	[reply] [d/l]