As a long suffering (no, not really, but it sounds dramatic ;o) user of Perl on Win32... these are a few things you can try..

Firstly, it may seem obvious, but are you SURE the module you want is supported on Win32 ? Of late, the ActiveState PPM is fairly well stocked, so there may be a legitimate reason for the module not being included...

Another thing on the checklist, is the perl executable (ie: c:\perl\bin) added to your path ? You need to reboot your machine on Win98 for any changes to take effect to the setting of the path variable...

Along the same lines, the installation of ActivePerl might have bombed out for some reason.. did you notice any error messages etc ?

Next, although there might not be an error message, there should be a file named MakeFile as a result of executing perl MakeFile.pl.. You should check for its existence.. I build modules regularly these days, now I have VC++ on my machine, and its quite ok

For the next item on the checklist, I use nmake, and not dmake.. perhaps you should check your version of dmake ? (ok, this is a bit of a long shot, I know).. or perhaps even use nmake...

Another thing, if you installed the fancy MSI installer version of ActivePerl, if the module you have is NOT pure Perl, you *must* use Visual C++ 6.0 to build the module.. Building an XS module with any other C compiler is apparently not going to bring you any joy.. :o)
Ok, I've put down some of the things that I've encountered and others that I can think of... if these things are fixed or seem ok to you, please check back with some more information..
HTH

ActivePerl defaults to wanting you to use nmake rather than dmake. Here I documented where you can get it and a few other tidbits like how to fix things so you can use dmake, why building modules on Win98 sucks, etc.

'perl Makefile.PL' from the dospromt\new module's directory. But dos says bad command or file name. I also tried at same prompt: c:\perl\bin perl makefile.pl -- no error is returned

OK, then that means that C:/Perl/bin isn't listed in your PATH environment variable. If you haven't rebooted since you installed ActivePerl, then rebooting will probably fix that.

but the subsequent dmake command returns 'bad command or filename'. (dmake is in c:\perl\bin)

Yes, that would be the same problem.

But even after you resolve that, I'm afraid you'll still have problems trying to build modules under Win9x (as I touch on in the other node I linked to above). Be prepared to have to hack around some annoying bugs. ):

Also, I am soon going to post instructions for getting CPAN (perl -MCPAN -e shell) to work on NT/2K (i.e. - urls to tools, etc.). This may work on 95/98/ME, but I lack a box to test it on (unless I commandeer my kid's machine, but my son is addicted to Humongous Sports Backyard Baseball/Soccer. He can be VISCIOUS when he wats to be!).

HTH
--
idnopheq
Apply yourself to new problems without preparation, develop confidence in your ability to to meet situations as they arrise.

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