Re: Building on Win32 - the real problem

2009/9/1 David Goehrig <[email protected]>:
>> What if this was fixed with Alien::SDL as it is doing for windows now? Kmx
>> is also working on strawberry compatible makefiles. This way we can compile
>> for most platforms from scratch.
>
> The problem is as Andreas originally pointed out that there are a
> metric ton of SDL_* dlls out there, not all of which are easily found
> in a readily accessible form for Windows.  There are other issues with
> Perl on Windows, regarding thread support, conflicts between Perl
> threads, Windows threads, and SDL threads, but these issues are more
> black magic stuff that really should only interest those of us hacking
> the guts of the system.
>
> Alien::SDL doesn't necessarily solve your problem on this front as
> what a Windows user / casual developer actually needs is a
> click-wrapped installer that provides all of the necessary SDL_* dlls
> and does not assume that they have a compiler in place.

The assumption that a Windows Perl developers will have a compiler in
place is entirely reasonable.

Of the two major Perl distributions, Strawberry ships with MinGW out
of the box, and ActivePerl has a simple "ppm MinGW" command to install
it.

In a future release, the MinGW installation will be invisible and
silent under certain conditions, so that ActivePerl will have a
compiler as and when it is needed.

Alien:: is also named the way it is because it's designed to find
external ways to install things, even if they are potentially strange
and unusual.

What if Alien:: itself downloaded and silently /s installed the MSI package?

Adam K