Hi, I have been testing a way to generalize the new Makefile.PL for the Encode module, primarily some tweaks for VMS along the lines of those proposed in: http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/vmsperl/2000-12/msg00127.html I thought that I'd try that Makefile.PL out on a particularly challenging perl build platform: namely nmake and MSVC on NT 4. The good news is that that patch (see above URL) to Encode's Makefile.PL seems to allow for the build of the binary dll form of Encode on NT. The bad news is that I am a bit bewildered by the extension handling in the NT Makefiles and cannot offer a comprehensive patch to add Encode to NT's list of dynamic_ext's at this time, although working with analogs of the other ext/ modules ought to yield results. Other bad news is that with MSVC I did seen these warnings whilst test building Encode and my not yet ready for prime time Makefile.PL patch: ----- cl -c -nologo -Gf -W3 -Od -MD -DNDEBUG -DWIN32 -D_CONSOLE -DNO_STRICT - DPERL_MSVCRT_READFIX -Od -MD -DNDEBUG -DVERSION=\"0.01\" -DXS_VERSION=\"0.01 \" -I..\..\lib\CORE Encode.c Encode.c Encode.xs(59) : warning C4013: 'PerlIOBuf_pushed' undefined; assuming extern ret urning int Encode.xs(274) : warning C4013: 'PerlIO_unread' undefined; assuming extern retur ning int cl -c -nologo -Gf -W3 -Od -MD -DNDEBUG -DWIN32 -D_CONSOLE -DNO_STRICT - DPERL_MSVCRT_READFIX -Od -MD -DNDEBUG -DVERSION=\"0.01\" -DXS_VERSION=\"0.01 \" -I..\..\lib\CORE encengine.c encengine.c "Running Mkbootstrap for Encode ()" ..\..\miniperl -I..\..\lib -I..\..\lib -MExtUtils::Command -e chmod 644 Encode.bs ----- So that may portend a possible linking problem assuming that the dll form of Encode gets built by nmake. At any rate, at last I come to the reason for this message: Whilst doing a vanilla nmake/MSVC build of the perl@8211 kit I noted this failure toward the end of the nmake win32/Makefile: ------ Creating library ..\..\lib\auto\Storable\Storable.lib and object ..\..\lib\au to\Storable\Storable.exp ..\..\miniperl -I..\..\lib -I..\..\lib -MExtUtils::Command -e chmod 755 ..\..\lib\auto\Storable\Storable.dll ..\..\miniperl -I..\..\lib -I..\..\lib -MExtUtils::Command -e cp Storabl e.bs ..\..\lib\auto\Storable\Storable.bs ..\..\miniperl -I..\..\lib -I..\..\lib -MExtUtils::Command -e chmod 644 ..\..\lib\auto\Storable\Storable.bs cd ..\..\win32 cd ..\ext\Filter\Util\Call ..\..\..\miniperl -I..\..\..\lib Makefile.PL INSTALLDIRS=perl The name specified is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. NMAKE : fatal error U1077: '..\..\..\miniperl' : return code '0x1' Stop. ------ And it looks like there was a directory depth typo in the win32/Makefile that was not present in the makefile.mk employed by dmake users, but which this patch is intended to correct (warning uni diff with ^M characters to be extracted and applied carefull to a DOS endl file): --- win32/Makefile.orig Wed Dec 20 10:52:47 2000 +++ win32/Makefile Fri Dec 22 14:28:17 2000 @@ -989,9 +989,9 @@ $(FILTER_DLL): $(PERLEXE) $(FILTER).xs cd $(EXTDIR)\Filter\Util\Call - ..\..\..\miniperl -I..\..\..\lib Makefile.PL INSTALLDIRS=perl + ..\..\..\..\miniperl -I..\..\..\..\lib Makefile.PL INSTALLDIRS=perl $(MAKE) - cd ..\..\..\win32 + cd ..\..\..\..\win32 $(ERRNO_PM): $(PERLEXE) $(ERRNO)_pm.PL cd $(EXTDIR)\$(*B) End of Patch. With that perl builds but fails one test: io/utf8........FAILED test 19 Failed 1/25 tests, 96.00% okay FWIW (if it even matters) the build and test were done on a FAT file system not (NT|HP)FS. Peter PrymmerThread Next