From cathy.kleinsmith@mciworld.com

You have got to be kidding!! I have been working with computers as a programmer and technical writer for the past 15 years. I wanted to install the perl compiler on my PC so I could do some work from home rather than work. At www.perl.com, it says "This may sound harder than it is, and if you are able to follow instructions, you can build Perl on your system without too much difficulty. Building it yourself gives you additional flexibility to determine which options you want to use on your system." HA! What instructions?? Where?? I read the README, the README.win32, the Install files, and from a technical writer's viewpoint, they were just a bunch of mental meanderings. Nothing about step 1--this is what you do. Just yada, yada, yada, if this, then maybe that. Obviously, so obviously, written by a software engineer!!!

So, I'll be a real incompetent and get the Binary. In a word, your directions are the most abysmal I have ever seen since the very first Sun microsystems manuals came out.

Cathy Kleinsmith

From [Unknown Contact. See original ticket]

Just so you know, this perl stuff is all at NO CHARGE. No one on this
conferences receives one penny whether you download the binary or the
source.

Everyone here is a volunteer. Nothing they might want more than a
technical writer to clean up some of the beginner documentation, such as
installation and make it easier.

--
___cliff rayman___cliff@​genwax.com___http​://www.genwax.com/

"cathy.kleinsmith" wrote​:

You have got to be kidding!! I have been working with computers as a
programmer and technical writer for the past 15 years. I wanted to
install the perl compiler on my PC so I could do some work from home
rather than work. At www.perl.com, it says "This may sound harder
than it is, and if you are able to follow instructions, you can build
Perl on your system without too much difficulty. Building it yourself
gives you additional flexibility to determine which options you want
to use on your system." HA! What instructions?? Where?? I read the
README, the README.win32, the Install files, and from a technical
writer's viewpoint, they were just a bunch of mental meanderings.
Nothing about step 1--this is what you do. Just yada, yada, yada, if
this, then maybe that. Obviously, so obviously, written by a software
engineer!!! So, I'll be a real incompetent and get the Binary. In a
word, your directions are the most abysmal I have ever seen since the
very first Sun microsystems manuals came out. Cathy Kleinsmith

From @tamias

On Fri, Jul 21, 2000 at 04​:45​:29PM -0600, cathy.kleinsmith wrote​:

You have got to be kidding!! I have been working with computers as a
programmer and technical writer for the past 15 years. I wanted to
install the perl compiler on my PC so I could do some work from home
rather than work. At www.perl.com, it says "This may sound harder than
it is, and if you are able to follow instructions, you can build Perl on
your system without too much difficulty. Building it yourself gives you
additional flexibility to determine which options you want to use on your
system." HA! What instructions?? Where?? I read the README, the
README.win32, the Install files, and from a technical writer's viewpoint,
they were just a bunch of mental meanderings. Nothing about step 1--this
is what you do. Just yada, yada, yada, if this, then maybe that.
Obviously, so obviously, written by a software engineer!!!

So, I'll be a real incompetent and get the Binary. In a word, your
directions are the most abysmal I have ever seen since the very first Sun
microsystems manuals came out.

Patches welcome.

Ronald

From @btilly

As everyone else has said, this is a volunteer effort, patches
are welcome. But since your problem is that you could not find
your way through the installations the first time, I should hasten
to add that any sign of interest from you on actually improving
the documentation would be met with much willingness to help you
understand.

Now Perl started as a Unix program. Any Unix or Unix-like system
can follow the instructions in INSTALL. For the record I had
little problem following those instructions on a Linux machine
the first time I wanted to compile my own version of Perl.

Here is an explanation of those steps. They do not directly apply
to Windows but they will help you understand what is going on.

1. rm -f config.sh Policy.sh
  Delete the existing config.sh and Policy.sh files

2. sh Configure -de
  This runs a shell program called Configure. A shell program in
  Unix is sort of like a bat file in DOS. (Except that sh is a
  much better programming language than DOS, for instance it has
  an if-then-else construct that does not require that you goto
  a label.) Configure is an interactive program that locates
  what you have, figures out reasonable defaults, and then builds
  a file called "makefile".

3. make
  This runs a program called "make" that reads the makefile, and
  follows the default instructions it finds. Among other things
  those instructions tell it to compile the C source-code into
  a working version of Perl.

4. make test
  This again runs "make", which reads the makefile and follows the
  instructions it finds that have to do with "test". This will
  actually run a test-suite that verifies that the thing it just
  built is a working version of Perl.

5. make install
  This again runs "make", which reads the makefile and follows the
  instructions it finds that have to do with "install". This will
  copy Perl to the final locations. Typically this would be some
  global location so that people can run Perl and its associated
  utilities from anywhere on your machine.

Now what do you need to have a hope of success on Windows?

1. A working C compiler that is compatible with Perl. Most Windows
  systems will NOT have one. Three are listed in README.win32.
  Two of those cost a fair amount of money, the third is available
  for free, will require some set-up, and has not been tested as
  completely as people would like.

2. A version of make that is compatible with Perl. Again, most
  Windows systems will NOT have one. Additionally the versions
  that ship with the compilers are generally not compatible, but
  a free one (dmake) is available.

3. A working makefile. Go into the the win32 directory, and open
  up Makefile with a text editor. Lines starting with '#' are
  comments. The initial section has instructions for how to set
  a few Windows defaults. If you read those and make those edits
  then you are doing something similar to what Configure does,
  but you are doing it by hand and you are doing a lot less of it.

Now do the make, make test, make install as you do on Unix, except
using your version of make.

So why is this so much smoother for Unix systems? Well there are
two reasons. The trivial one is that Perl is a Unix program which
has been ported to Windows, and it shows. The fundamental reason
is that the Unix culture is set up for compiling your own programs
while the Windows culture is set up for distributing binaries.

Why? Well that is a talk for another day...

Cheers,
Ben
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@iabyn - Status changed from 'open' to 'resolved'