Perl¶

Last updated by Greg Mathis. Updated over 4 years ago

In years past we could go to ActiveState.com to download 32 bit community edition of Perl for Windows for free.
That appears to be over now. From their website:

"If you need 32-bit or other older/legacy versions, they are available through our new ActiveState Platform by subscribing to at least Team Tier. See pricing here."

I have been saying for a few years now you must use the 32 bit version of Perl. But that was only because the serial port package was only supported for 32 bit Perl. As it turns out for both EMIRS and LTES, we never had to control a serial port in a shell application, so we could probably use the 64 bit version.

Anyhow, in Files section below, you can download the 32 bit version of Perl I did use, 5.22.1 for EMIRS and LTES.

MUST USE 32 BIT VERSION!!!!
See below for notes on problems with 64 bit version.
Installed ActivePerl-5.22.1.2201-MSWin32-x86-64int-299574.msi
Use all default options

Some additional libraries (modules) are needed.
After Perl installed, run Perl Package Manager (PPM) in a DOS command shell, run “ppm”
select View All Packages

Highlight Win32-SerialPort version 0.22 (to use serial port features in serialPortLib.pm)
Go to Action menu, pull down to select it

Highlight IO-Tee (to use the script logging features in commonLib.pm)
Go to Action menu, pull down to select it

Highlight IO-Callback (to use the script logging features in commonLib.pm)
Go to Action menu, pull down to select it

Highlight Tk (for TkLib.pm pop up messages)
Go to Action menu, pull down to select it

Highlight Email-MIME (to allow script to send emails)
Go to Action menu, pull down to select it

Highlight Email-Sender (to allow script to send emails)
Go to Action menu, pull down to select it

Highlight Authen-SASL (to allow script to send emails)
Go to Action menu, pull down to select it

Go to File and select Run Marked Actions to install the 5 packages
Exit PPM

Created emirs.egse@gmail.com account with password "Emirs2468" to use to send emails from Perl scripts (using our emailLib.pm) Note the gmail security settings that have to be changed, as shown below:

Problems with 64 bit Perl:
DO NOT INSTALL 64 bit version of Active Perl such as:
ActivePerl-5.22.3.2204-MSWin32-x64-401627.exe
When you run PPM, Win32-SerialPort is no longer an option.
I did go to http://search.cpan.org/~bbirth/Win32-SerialPort-0.22/lib/Win32/SerialPort.pm
On right side of page, download Win32-SerialPort-0.22.tar.gz
Go to http://www.7-zip.org/ and download 7-Zip to gunzip and untar files
Copy Win32-SerialPort-0.22\lib\Win32 to C:\Perl64\site\lib
Copy Win32-SerialPort-0.22\lib\Win32API to C:\Perl64\site\lib
But this didn’t work, neither did trying to use the Makefile and make_install, which appeared to install OK,
but when running comPortTest.pl, it didn’t work (but didn’t show any errors either …)
Bottom line: No reason not to use 32 bit version of Perl, so keep using it.