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barbie (2653)

barbie
  reversethis-{ku. ... m} {ta} {eibrab}
http://barbie.missbarbell.co.uk/

Leader of Birmingham.pm [pm.org] and a CPAN author [cpan.org]. Co-organised YAPC::Europe in 2006 and the 2009 QA Hackathon, responsible for the YAPC Conference Surveys [yapc-surveys.org] and the QA Hackathon [qa-hackathon.org] websites. Also the current caretaker for the CPAN Testers websites and data stores.

If you really want to find out more, buy me a Guinness ;)

Links:
Memoirs of a Roadie [missbarbell.co.uk]
[pm.org]
CPAN Testers Reports [cpantesters.org]
YAPC Conference Surveys [yapc-surveys.org]
QA Hackathon [qa-hackathon.org]

Journal of barbie (2653)

Tuesday January 13, 2004
06:33 AM

PDFLib on Win32

[ #16802 ]
Time for another Windows rant....

I've been toying with idea of writing PDF documents, and thought it would be a good idea to look at PDFLib, having spotted it as a pre-requisite on a recent CPAN test of Games::Bingo::Print. However, I am using Windows, and as is always the case trying to doing anything on Windows, it's a nightmare. I currently have expat, libxml and libxml2 all installed, but the number of Perl modules that just can't find them is a real pain. I partly blame myself for not taking the time to fully research how to fix that, but also the library authors for largely ignoring the install documentation for Windows.

The same applies to PDFLib. There is an entry in the PDFLib manual about Perl, but it gives no indication as to why, having created auto/pdflib_pl and copied all the relavent .pm and .dll to both the site/lib and site/lib/auto/pdflib_pl directories (which is what it implies), when I try to install Matt's PDFLib Perl interface it doesn't find them. The current version is 5, whereas PDFLib.pm requires 4 so that shouldn't a problem. I thought I'd search Google and discovered ziggy had the same problem over 18 months ago.

After a bit more research I stumbled upon GnuWin32 sourceforge project. They have a pdflib binary as well as libxml and libxslt. I downloaded the zip files and it's version 4.0.2 with the same minimal documentation as on the official site. It seems the only difference is the fact the binary was compiled on Win32.

I haven't the time to figure out how to do the install properly now, so will have to leave further research till later. Unless anyone has a working version of pdflib on Win32, who can point me in the right direction.


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  • I partly blame myself for not taking the time to fully research how to fix that, but also the library authors for largely ignoring the install documentation for Windows.

    If you by this, mean that the authors are not writing install instructions for Windows, then I for one must plead quilty!

    I plead for the mercy of the court, claiming that I could not do otherwise, as my build system is not Windows, I have no build system on Windows and not least I am not mad^Weager enough to go and try to build on all possible systems. Can anyone loan me a largish Alpha running VMS, a mainframe running MVS and ....

    Windows is a major pain, and I am fighting a readgaurd action here to avoid us moving to it (phb's in management have been to some nice presentations and wants us to go .Net - yuck), so you have all my sympathy- but no promises to write install instructions for Windows.

    If the phb's have their way, I'll be joining you in the chorus and clamouring for better instructions (perhaps as a part of the CPANTS).

    • A fair point.

      I can understand there being little or no documentation if you are unable to test on Windows. However, if there is a start to write install instructions it would be nice to reach the end ;)

      Windows *IS* a major pain, but it's what I have been developing on.

      I picked PDFLib as that was what I have been trying recently, but there have been several other instances of frustration. Perl stuff on the other hand is pretty good at the Windows bit ... CPAN, CPANPLUS or PPM :)

      Are you part of the PD

      • No I (try to) maintain DBD::Ingres. I had a number of requests for installation instructions for Windows, but couldn't help, so I think I know your problem.

        But even on Unix you can have the same kind of problems, we use Dec^WCompaq^WHP Alphas with Tru64; and there is quite a number of libraries that have been a pain to port.

        As long as you can keep to the Perl stuff I find that things are fine mostly. Sometimes people assume that the whole world is Linux (or Win32!).

  • FWIW, it's conceivable (though perhaps not likely) that upgrading to the latest version of ExtUtils::MakeMaker will heal your hurt; I've seen library-related problems described and resolved on perl.makemaker [perl.org].

    Caveat: upgrading ExtUtils::MakeMaker might (again, conceivably) introduce problems.
    • PDFLib has nothing to do with the Perl make/build process. How will upgrading EU::MM help? Although I guess you might be confusing it with my reference to PDFLib.pm, which isn't the problem.

      The problem is the binary C library, or more acurately finding the right place to put it and knowing how to link to it (via registry or the like). All the traditional routes don't seem to work. As there is sparse documentation, the manual isn't helpful.

      • There is an entry in the PDFLib manual about Perl, but it gives no indication as to why, having created auto/pdflib_pl and copied all the relavent .pm and .dll to both the site/lib and site/lib/auto/pdflib_pl directories (which is what it implies), when I try to install Matt's PDFLib Perl interface it doesn't find them.

        I see. The Makefile.PL in PDFLib.pm requires pdflib_pl and that's what's failing, right? Can you trace into pdflib_pl?
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