Getting started guide v0.4

Well here it is.  The latest and greatest.  Making its first appearance 
in POD, the "getting started" guide.  There is a lot of work to do on 
it.  There are sections that read like bad notes.  But some might find 
this realease of use.

And in my tinkering around, I compile a lot.  I have also added this 
handy little perl script that helps.

I only know that it works on win32 (XP).  I could get it working on 
linux if anyone is interested.

Extensions are in win32 speak.  But it uses Config.pm so it should be 
somewhat easy to make work for linux if it already does not.  Here is a 
summary of what it does.

perl ecomp.pl -s dir
     This builds a static libparrot.lib in the specified dir

perl ecomp.pl -d dir
     This builds a dynamic libparrot.lib and libparrot.dll in the 
specified dir

perl ecomp.pl -o dir/test
     this will compile dir/test.c into dir/test.obj (leave off all file 
extensions)

perl ecomp.pl -b dir/test
     this will compile and link dir/test.c into dir/test.exe (leave off 
all file extensions).  Handy when you just want to run something without 
the fuss.

perl ecomp.pl -link dir/test
     this will link dir/test.obj with other parrot obj files to create 
dir/test.exe

perl ecomp.pl -liblink dir/test libdir/lib
     this will link dir/test.obj with libdir/lib.lib (use libparrot for lib)

I think I know the answer, but is there a reason why in Config.pm  'so' 
maps to '.dll' and 'ar' only maps to 'lib' with no dot?  Does it have to 
do with 'hello.lib' for windows and 'libhello.a' for linux?

Thanks,
Erik

• Getting started guide v0.4 by Erik Lechak
• RE: Getting started guide v0.4 by Brent Dax