On Thu, 30 Jun 2005, imacat wrote: > On Wed, 29 Jun 2005 12:49:37 -0500 (CDT) > Randy Kobes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [ ... ] > > Alternatively, there > > are free C compilers for Windows, including Visual C++ 7, > > for people willing to build their own perl. > > Could you tell me where to obtain it? Thank you.
The README.win32 of the perl sources: http://search.cpan.org/src/NWCLARK/perl-5.8.7/README.win32 has the basic information on getting Visual C++ Toolkit 2003 (part of the .NET Framework SDK) and building Perl with it. Note though that, due to different C runtime libraries between this version of VC++ and VC++ 6 (which ActiveState uses), there may be problems in principle with mixing extensions built with one version using a Perl built with the other. So if one wants to use this free compiler to build extensions, one should also use it to build Perl. To anticipate, why does ActiveState use VC++ 6? One reason is that, with VC++ 7, extensions built with VC++ 7 depend on the specific version of the runtime library msvcrt7x.dll used. Distributing compiled extensions as a ppm package, for example, would then involve the user having to also get the specific msvcrt7x.dll. -- best regards, randy
