A very long time ago I use to be a Happy Windows user. Then I found Unix and for a very long time I was an unhappy Windows user. Except at work were I'm forced to use Windows as my desktop system, I don't really use Windows any more - it's simply a window manager for PuTTY or the SAP GUI.
I've just spent the past 3 hours trying to get a version of Perl onto Windows from which I can then install SAP::Rfc so I can talk to the SAP systems at work. I've tried Cygwin Perl, Stwarbery Perl and two versions of ActiveState Perl. Eventually I found a combination of AS Perl 5.8.8 and a pre-compiled binary of SAP::Rfc that worked and after some messing I got a test to work.
I know it's not Perl's fault that Windows is so rubbish, but developing/testing Perl code on Windows is a miserable experience when compared with pretty much anywhere else...
Re:Install a compiler
ajt on 2008-06-23T12:07:57
I had hoped that Strawberry Perl would work as it comes with MinGW, but it wasn't very happy. Cygwin does dome with gcc but not everything compiles as you would expect. In the end I used a binary provided by the module owner which solved the problem in the short term. However you look at it though Windows is a naff development environment when compared to something that is actually complete like Linux.
To be honest I'd rather not be using Windows at all but in this case I don't have much of an option...
Re:Install a compiler
neilh on 2008-06-25T06:15:25
At previous $job, we were a Windows shop and they provided MSVC. It didn't help much. There were still whole piles of modules that refused to compile. Some were patchable (e.g. module authors assumed directory separator was/), but others were plainly just not going to be worth the grief. Tis indeed true, that the best platform to use software on is the one it was developed on. In most cases for Perl modules, that's unix. I got to the point where I considered it a bonus if a module compiled rather than a right. Re:Install a compiler
ajt on 2008-06-26T08:09:18
Old Sir Bill G has a lot to answer for. When he illegally created DOS and then Windows, by stealing code from others they chose to deliberately break sensible norms and the infamous back-slash directory separator was born. I know that module authors should be more platform independent but it's a pain in the posterior when vendors deliberately create confusion...
