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
<
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 auxiliary 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 limited 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.
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.