NAME

perlce - Perl for WinCE

Building Perl for WinCE

\s-1DESCRIPTION\s0

This file gives the instructions for building Perl5.8 and above for WinCE. Please read and understand the terms under which this software is distributed.

General explanations on cross-compiling WinCE

o 
miniperl
is built. This is a single executable (without DLL), intended to run on Win32, and it will facilitate remaining build process; all binaries built after it are foreign and should not run locally. 

miniperl
is built using 
./win32/Makefile
; this is part of normal build process invoked as dependency from wince/Makefile.ce
o After 
miniperl
is built, 
configpm
is invoked to create right 
Config.pm
in right place and its corresponding Cross.pm.

Unlike Win32 build, miniperl will not have 

Config.pm
of host within reach; it rather will use 
Config.pm
from within cross-compilation directories.

File 

Cross.pm
is dead simple: for given cross-architecture places in 
@INC
a path where perl modules are, and right 
Config.pm
in that place.

That said, 

miniperl -Ilib -MConfig -we 1
should report an error, because it can not find 
Config.pm
. If it does not give an error — wrong 
Config.pm
is substituted, and resulting binaries will be a mess. 

miniperl -MCross -MConfig -we 1
should run okay, and it will provide right 
Config.pm
for further compilations.
o During extensions build phase, a script 
./win32/buldext.pl
is invoked, which in turn steps in 
./ext
subdirectories and performs a build of each extension in turn.

All invokes of 

Makefile.PL
are provided with 
-MCross
so to enable cross- compile.

\s-1BUILD\s0

This section describes the steps to be performed to build PerlCE. You may find additional information about building perl for WinCE at <http://perlce.sourceforge.net> and some pre-built binaries.

Tools & SDK

For compiling, you need following:
o Microsoft Embedded Visual Tools
o Microsoft Visual C++
o Rainer Keuchel’s celib-sources
o Rainer Keuchel’s console-sources
Needed source files can be downloaded at <http://www.rainer-keuchel.de/wince/dirlist.html>

Make

Normally you only need to edit 

./win32/ce-helpers/compile.bat
to reflect your system and run it.

File 

./win32/ce-helpers/compile.bat
is actually a wrapper to call 
nmake -f makefile.ce
with appropriate parameters and it accepts extra parameters and forwards them to 
nmake
command as additional arguments. You should pass target this way.

To prepare distribution you need to do following:
o go to 
./win32
subdirectory
o edit file 
./win32/ce-helpers/compile.bat
o run compile.bat
o run compile.bat dist 

Makefile.ce
has 
CROSS_NAME
macro, and it is used further to refer to your cross-compilation scheme. You could assign a name to it, but this is not necessary, because by default it is assigned after your machine configuration name, such as wince-sh3-hpc-wce211, and this is enough to distinguish different builds at the same time. This option could be handy for several different builds on same platform to perform, say, threaded build. In a following example we assume that all required environment variables are set properly for C cross-compiler (a special *.bat file could fit perfectly to this purpose) and your 
compile.bat
has proper MACHINE parameter set, to, say, 
wince-mips-pocket-wce300
. 


  compile.bat
  compile.bat dist
  compile.bat CROSS_NAME=mips-wce300-thr "USE_ITHREADS=define" "USE_IMP_SYS=define" "USE_MULTI=define"
  compile.bat CROSS_NAME=mips-wce300-thr "USE_ITHREADS=define" "USE_IMP_SYS=define" "USE_MULTI=define" dist

If all goes okay and no errors during a build, you’ll get two independent distributions: 

wince-mips-pocket-wce300
and 
mips-wce300-thr
.

Target 

dist
prepares distribution file set. Target 
zipdist
performs same as 
dist
but additionally compresses distribution files into zip archive.

NOTE: during a build there could be created a number (or one) of 

Config.pm
for cross-compilation (foreign 
Config.pm
) and those are hidden inside 
../xlib/$(CROSS_NAME)
with other auxilary files, but, and this is important to note, there should be no 
Config.pm
for host miniperl. If you’ll get an error that perl could not find Config.pm somewhere in building process this means something went wrong. Most probably you forgot to specify a cross-compilation when invoking miniperl.exe to Makefile.PL When building an extension for cross-compilation your command line should look like 


  ..\miniperl.exe -I..\lib -MCross=mips-wce300-thr Makefile.PL

or just 


  ..\miniperl.exe -I..\lib -MCross Makefile.PL

to refer a cross-compilation that was created last time.

All questions related to building for WinCE devices could be asked in perlce-user@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list.

Using Perl on WinCE

\s-1DESCRIPTION\s0

PerlCE is currently linked with a simple console window, so it also works on non-hpc devices.

The simple stdio implementation creates the files 

stdin.txt
, 
stdout.txt
and 
stderr.txt
, so you might examine them if your console has only a liminted number of cols.

When exitcode is non-zero, a message box appears, otherwise the console closes, so you might have to catch an exit with status 0 in your program to see any output.

stdout/stderr now go into the files 

/perl-stdout.txt
and 
/perl-stderr.txt.

PerlIDE is handy to deal with perlce.

\s-1LIMITATIONS\s0

No fork(), pipe(), popen() etc.

\s-1ENVIRONMENT\s0

All environment vars must be stored in HKLM\Environment as strings. They are read at process startup.
PERL5LIB Usual perl lib path (semi-list).
PATH Semi-list for executables.
TMP - Tempdir.
UNIXROOTPATH - Root for accessing some special files, i.e. 
/dev/null
, 
/etc/services
.
ROWS/COLS - Rows/cols for console.
HOME - Home directory.
CONSOLEFONTSIZE - Size for console font.
You can set these with cereg.exe, a (remote) registry editor or via the PerlIDE.

\s-1REGISTRY\s0

To start perl by clicking on a perl source file, you have to make the according entries in HKCR (see 

ce-helpers/wince-reg.bat
). cereg.exe (which must be executed on a desktop pc with ActiveSync) is reported not to work on some devices. You have to create the registry entries by hand using a registry editor.

\s-1XS\s0

The following Win32-Methods are built-in: 


        newXS("Win32::GetCwd", w32_GetCwd, file);
        newXS("Win32::SetCwd", w32_SetCwd, file);
        newXS("Win32::GetTickCount", w32_GetTickCount, file);
        newXS("Win32::GetOSVersion", w32_GetOSVersion, file);
        newXS("Win32::IsWinNT", w32_IsWinNT, file);
        newXS("Win32::IsWin95", w32_IsWin95, file);
        newXS("Win32::IsWinCE", w32_IsWinCE, file);
        newXS("Win32::CopyFile", w32_CopyFile, file);
        newXS("Win32::Sleep", w32_Sleep, file);
        newXS("Win32::MessageBox", w32_MessageBox, file);
        newXS("Win32::GetPowerStatus", w32_GetPowerStatus, file);
        newXS("Win32::GetOemInfo", w32_GetOemInfo, file);
        newXS("Win32::ShellEx", w32_ShellEx, file);

\s-1BUGS\s0

Opening files for read-write is currently not supported if they use stdio (normal perl file handles).

If you find bugs or if it does not work at all on your device, send mail to the address below. Please report the details of your device (processor, ceversion, devicetype (hpc/palm/pocket)) and the date of the downloaded files.

\s-1INSTALLATION\s0

Currently installation instructions are at <http://perlce.sourceforge.net/>.

After installation & testing processes will stabilize, information will be more precise.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The port for Win32 was used as a reference.

History of WinCE port

5.6.0 Initial port of perl to WinCE. It was performed in separate directory named 
wince
. This port was based on contents of 
./win32
directory. 
miniperl
was not built, user must have HOST perl and properly edit 
makefile.ce
to reflect this.
5.8.0 wince port was kept in the same 
./wince
directory, and 
wince/Makefile.ce
was used to invoke native compiler to create HOST miniperl, which then facilitates cross-compiling process. Extension building support was added.
5.9.4 Two directories 
./win32
and 
./wince
were merged, so perlce build process comes in 
./win32
directory.

AUTHORS

Rainer Keuchel <coyxc@rainer-keuchel.de> provided initial port of Perl, which appears to be most essential work, as it was a breakthrough on having Perl ported at all. Many thanks and obligations to Rainer!
Vadim Konovalov made further support of WinCE port.

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