This is a collection of modules originally distributed by the Activeware
folks as part of their "Perl for Win32"(TM) port.  They have been modified
so that they will build under MakeMaker using perls greater than 5.003_99
and Visual C++.  Along the way, I have added many bugfixes to make these
modules work correctly.

This collection will build with perl5.003_99a and later.  You will first
need to build and install that perl before proceeding with this set
of modules.  See README.win32 in the perl distribution for details on
how to build perl on Win32.

The following extensions have been "ported":

    Win32/EventLog
    Win32/File
    Win32/FileSecurity
    Win32/NetAdmin
    Win32/NetResource
    Win32/OLE
    Win32/Registry
    Win32/Service
    Win32/WinError
    Win32/ChangeNotify
    Win32/IPC
    Win32/Mutex
    Win32/Process
    Win32/Semaphore

Note this covers all of the Win32 extensions distributed by
Activeware (as of build 306).

These extensions have been re-engineered to use the XS
interface language.  Working on these was a rather unpleasant
task due to what I consider to be poor design and
implementation of these modules.  While I have tried to keep most
of my changes compatible with the originals at the present time, I
plan to rework these modules radically when I find the time.

The only incompatible change is in the Win32::OLE module.  While
the Activeware port used the "OLE::" and "Win32::" namespaces for
the functionality contained in this module, this port uses
"Win32::OLE::" consistently.  For a list of other incompatibilities
in this module, see the embedded documentation in "OLE/OLE.pm".

Building:

    + You need to extract this into an NTFS file system (the
      tests in the FileSecurity module and Net* modules will
      fail otherwise).  The testsuite for OLE needs Excel to
      run.  NetAdmin will only work if you have some kind of
      live network connection.  NetResource requires that you
      be part of a domain or workgroup.  You may also need
      Administrator prvileges for running some of the tests.
      If one or more of these conditions will not be met, you may
      wish to build in the subdirectories one by one.  The steps
      below will work either at the toplevel directory, or in each
      of the individual extension subdirectories.
   
    + You need MS Visual C++ (NetAdmin needs ver. 4.0+, ver. 2.0
      should suffice for the others).
   
    + perl Makefile.PL
   
    + nmake
   
    + nmake test					[optionally]
   
    + nmake install

I hope this kickstarts the process of bringing the divergant Win32::
extensions back into the MakeMaker fold.

Suggestions, patches, testsuite additions, wholesale rewrites and
additional ports of modules welcome.

Gurusamy Sarathy
gsar@umich.edu
11-MAY-1997


COPYRIGHT


    (c) 1995 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. 
	Developed by ActiveWare Internet Corp., http://www.ActiveWare.com

    Other modifications (c) 1997 by Gurusamy Sarathy <gsar@umich.edu>

    You may distribute under the terms of either the GNU General Public
    License or the Artistic License, as specified in the README file
    of the Perl distribution.


