Installation and configuration of the Perl development environment under Windows

Perl is a practical summary and reporting language that is popular with developers around the world, and although it was born and developed on Unix, it has a niche in the area of Windows programming.

Under the leadership of companies such as ActiveState, Perl began to develop steadily from the middle of 1995, not only adding standard Perl functionality, but also adding many Windows-oriented features such as OLE and COM integration.

In fact, all Perl programmers have been able to convince themselves that Perl applications written for UNIX servers can also run smoothly and stably after porting them to a Windows server, even though the fork implementation of this long-standing and most troublesome porting problem has been resolved.

And we have reason to believe that perl/windows integration will be further developed. The fact that Microsoft has become its primary sponsor since the beginning of the Windows version of Perl is enough to confirm Microsoft's commitment to Perl. Following the recent three-year investment agreement signed by Microsoft and ActiveState, Perl will undoubtedly be a part of future windows development.

If you are looking for more information about the Windows version of Perl, you can find many excellent sites on the web, including:

ActiveState perl.com Aldo calpini&single;s perl Lab Roth Consulting perl Page evangelo prodromou&single;s Win32 Pe RL FAQ robin&single;s Perl for Win32 Page

Whether you want to learn the core features of the Perl language on the Windows operating system, or if you want to learn about the following Windows-oriented Perl integration tools, you must start from the same place, which is to install Perl on Windows:

Using Perl to manipulate OLE (object linking and embedding, objects linking and embedding),

Manage the Windows registry through Perl,

Write COM objects (Component object model, Component object models) in Perl,

Communicating with other COM objects in a Perl program,

Using Perl scripts to implement dynamic Web pages in an IIS environment

This article is a guide to how to install and configure the Perl development environment on Windows. The subsequent articles will introduce Perl's Windows-oriented features in more depth.

But before we start, we have to make it clear that installing Perl is not a simple process like "Click and finish", but adding Perl support to Windows is a recurring process. Because the Perl language itself is incredibly dynamic, not only is the core language in the process of change, new releases are recurring, and many Perl developers continue to publish free new tools through resource-gathering sites such as CPAN, so "install" It also means regular upgrades and a close focus on the latest developments in Perl.

As mentioned earlier, the core organization of the Perl Windows version is ActiveState, and its homepage is http://www.activestate.com.

The Perl Windows version can be downloaded from the ActiveState Web site, and 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.

Windows users please download the Intel version. In addition, as the download page points out, installing this package on Windows 95 also requires DCOM support, which can be found on the Microsoft Web site. Downloading with HTTP or FTP is the same, regardless of which method you use. Once the download is complete, you will get an executable file of your own decompression, as shown in the Api509.exe below. Just double-click the execution file to start the installation.

It is important to note that if Perl is already installed on the system and a process is using it while a new installation is in progress, the new installation process may not work properly and you will see a warning message window.

If this happens, you should immediately end the installation process, turn off any services/applications that may be using Perl, and then install again.

If you are using Windows NT to determine which services are using Perl, you can open the start--> Settings--> Control Panel--> Service, check the list of services displayed by the system, and identify those services that may be using Perl. Close these services, and then restart the installation.

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

After reading and accepting the license agreement, you will see the "Installation Notes" window, which prompts the user to ActivePerl all available installation options. The description document contains multiple headings, each with a detailed explanation. These headings include:

Add Perl's Bin directory to the search path

Associating the ". pl" extension and Perl.exe in Windows Explorer

Associate ". Pl" and Perl.exe for the Web server

Associate ". Plx" and Perl for the ISAPI of IIS

The bottom of the window asks if you read and understand the instructions.