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://perlce.sourceforge.net>

       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.

   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.