Install and configure the Perl development environment in Windows

Perl is a practical abstract and report language that is favored by developers all over the world. although it was born and developed on Unix, it also has a place in the Windows programming field. Under the leadership of companies such as ActiveState, Perl began to develop steadily in the middle of 1995, not only adding standard Perl features, but also adding a lot of Perl for Windows

Perl is a practical abstract and report language that is favored by developers all over the world. although it was born and developed on Unix, it also has a place in the Windows programming field.

Under the leadership of companies such as ActiveState, Perl began to develop steadily in the middle of 1995. it not only added standard Perl features, but also added many Windows-oriented features, for example, OLE and COM integration.

As a matter of fact, so far, all Perl programmers have been convinced that the Perl applications they write for UNIX servers can run smoothly and stably after being transplanted to Windows servers, even fork's implementation of this type of long-standing biggest transplant problem has been solved.

We also have reason to believe that Perl/Windows integration will be further developed. Microsoft has become a major contributor since the beginning of Windows Perl Development. this fact is sufficient to prove Microsoft's commitment to Perl support. According to the three-year investment agreement recently signed between Microsoft and ActiveState, Perl will undoubtedly become part of the future development of Windows.

If you are looking for more information about Windows Perl, you can find many excellent websites on the Internet, including:

ActiveState Perl.com Aldo Calpini&single;s Perl Lab Roth Consulting Perl Page Evangelo Prodromou&single;s Win32 Perl FAQ Robin&single;s Perl for Win32 Page

Whether you want to learn the core features of the Perl language on a Windows operating system or the following Perl integration tools for Windows, you must start from the same place, install Perl on Windows:

Using Perl to operate OLE (object linking and Embedding, object link and Embedding ),

Manage the Windows registry through Perl,

Compile a COM Object (Component Object Model, Component Object Model) using Perl ),

Communicates with other COM objects in the Perl program,

Use Perl scripts to implement dynamic web pages in the IIS environment

This article is a guide to installing and configuring the Perl Development environment on Windows. Several subsequent articles will introduce Perl's Windows-oriented functions in more depth.

However, before the official start, we must declare that the installation of Perl is not a simple process like "click to complete". On the contrary, adding Perl support for Windows is a repeating process. Thanks to the incredible development vigor of Perl, not only is its core language in the process of change, but new releases regularly emerge, as many Perl developers continuously release free new tools through resource collection websites such as CPAN, "installation" also means regular upgrades and close attention to the latest development of Perl.

As mentioned above, the core organization of Perl Windows is ActiveState, and its home page is http://www.activestate.com.

Perl for Windows can be downloaded from the ActiveState website. The product name is ActivePerl. The latest release of ActivePerl in this article is build 522, which can be downloaded directly from http://www.activestate.com/activeperl/download.htm.

For Windows users, download the Intel version. In addition, as pointed out on the download page, installing this software package on Windows 95 also requires DCOM support, which can be found on the Microsoft website. Download via HTTP or FTP is the same, no matter which method is used. After the download is complete, you will have to extract the compressed execution file, as shown in api509.exe. You only need to double-click the execution file to start installation.

It must be noted that if Perl has been installed in the system and a process is using it during a new installation, the new installation process may not work properly, you will see a warning window.

In this case, you should immediately end the installation process, close all services/applications that may use Perl, and then install them again.

If you are using Windows NT and cannot determine which services are using Perl, you can open "start --> Settings --> Control Panel --> services" and check the list of services displayed by the system, find the services that may be using Perl. Close these services and then reinstall them.

Of course, most users do not need to worry about this issue. In fact, it is very likely that when you double-click to automatically decompress the execution file, you will see the ActiveState license agreement statement.

After reading and accepting the license agreement, you will see the "Installation Notes" window, which prompts you all the available Installation options for ActivePerl. The description document contains multiple titles, each of which has a detailed explanation. These headers include:

Add the bin directory of Perl to the search path

Associate the extension and perl.exe in the Windows resource manager.

Associate ingress .pl.exe and perl.exe for the webserver

Associate ". plx" and Perl "for IIS isapis

At the bottom of the window, ask if you have read and understood these instructions.