Using CPAN on Win32 ActivePerl

Aug 3, 2011 by chromatic

or easier than tying your shoelaces

Most of you know ActivePerl, the commercial Perl distribution provided to the community for free by ActiveState. In the beginning, ActivePerl did not bundle a C compiler. As Windows does not include a compiler, much of the CPAN was inaccessible to Windows users—any dependency on an XS module would fail. ActiveState instead provided a repository of binary PPM packages so that users could avoid the need to install and configure a C compiler.

So began a rumor, and so the rumor became lore, that “ActivePerl Does Not Do CPAN.”

As wrong as that preconception had been (and a clever hacker could use MSVC or MinGW with ActivePerl), that rumor became even more wrong on 26 August 2009, when ActiveState delivered Perl 5.10.1 with a bundled C compiler. Even though Windows does not support all POSIX features, using CPAN with ActivePerl on Windows is almost as nice as using CPAN on a Unix-like system:

• Download and install ActivePerl (5.12.4 and 5.14.1 are available at the time of this writing) with the default options
• Open a command line window ( Start > Run > cmd )
• Run cpan

That’s it. That’s only one extra step over running on Linux. For proof, here’s the output of my first run of the cpan command (edited for brevity) and an installation of local::lib and cpanminus (yes, they work too):

D:\>cpan

It looks like you don't have a C compiler and make utility installed.  Trying
to install dmake and the MinGW gcc compiler using the Perl Package Manager.
This may take a a few minutes...

Downloading MinGW-5.1.4.1...done
Downloading dmake-4.11.20080107...done
Unpacking MinGW-5.1.4.1...done
Unpacking dmake-4.11.20080107...done
Generating HTML for MinGW-5.1.4.1...done
Generating HTML for dmake-4.11.20080107...done
Updating files in site area...done
1070 files installed

Please use the `dmake` program to run commands from a Makefile!


cpan shell -- CPAN exploration and modules installation (v1.9600)
Enter 'h' for help.

cpan> install local::lib
Fetching with LWP:
...
Running install for module 'local::lib'
Running make for A/AP/APEIRON/local-lib-1.008004.tar.gz
Fetching with LWP:
http://ppm.activestate.com/CPAN/authors/id/A/AP/APEIRON/local-lib-1.008004.tar.gz
Fetching with LWP:
http://ppm.activestate.com/CPAN/authors/id/A/AP/APEIRON/CHECKSUMS
Checksum for C:\Perl14\cpan\sources\authors\id\A\AP\APEIRON\local-lib-1.008004.tar.gz ok
...

  CPAN.pm: Going to build A/AP/APEIRON/local-lib-1.008004.tar.gz


*** Module::AutoInstall version 1.03
*** Checking for Perl dependencies...
*** Since we're running under CPAN, I'll just let it take care
    of the dependency's installation later.
[Core Features]
- ExtUtils::MakeMaker ...loaded. (6.57_05 >= 6.31)
- ExtUtils::Install   ...loaded. (1.56 >= 1.43)
- Module::Build       ...loaded. (0.38 >= 0.36)
- CPAN                ...loaded. (1.9600 >= 1.82)
*** Module::AutoInstall configuration finished.
Checking if your kit is complete...
Looks good
Writing Makefile for local::lib
...
Running make test
All tests successful.
Files=7, Tests=29,  1 wallclock secs ( 0.06 usr +  0.08 sys =  0.14 CPU)
Result: PASS
  APEIRON/local-lib-1.008004.tar.gz
  C:\Perl14\site\bin\dmake.exe test -- OK
Running make install
...

cpan> install App::cpanminus
Running install for module 'App::cpanminus'
Running make for M/MI/MIYAGAWA/App-cpanminus-1.4008.tar.gz
...
Running make test
All tests successful.
Files=1, Tests=1,  0 wallclock secs ( 0.03 usr +  0.03 sys =  0.06 CPU)
Result: PASS
  MIYAGAWA/App-cpanminus-1.4008.tar.gz
  C:\Perl14\site\bin\dmake.exe test -- OK
Running make install
...
cpan> exit
Lockfile removed.

D:\>cpanm
Usage: cpanm [options] Module [...]

Try `cpanm --help` or `man cpanm` for more options.

D:\>

Happy hacking!