PERLCE(1)

NAME
perlce - Perl for WinCE

Building Perl for WinCE

  DESCRIPTION
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

•   "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

•   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.

•   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.

  BUILD
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:

•   Microsoft Embedded Visual Tools

•   Microsoft Visual C++

•   Rainer Keuchel's celib-sources

•   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:

•   go to "./win32" subdirectory

•   edit file "./win32/ce-helpers/compile.bat"

•   run
      compile.bat

•   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

  DESCRIPTION
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.

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

  ENVIRONMENT
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.

  REGISTRY
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.

  XS
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);

  BUGS
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.

  INSTALLATION
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.