[samandhi]

What is happening is you left out a step after installing perl. Well, you also have to have a copy of nmake.exe. Here is a quote to help you. And the link to download nmake.exe is here.

Originally Posted by Lurker_005

To get perl installed and working

Download activestate perl 5.8 msi package Then install using the default settings for everything. Now reboot so path changes take affect.
Congradulations, Perl is installed.

Now to install IO::scalers
You will need a copy of nmake.exe if you don't have one. nmake.exe save with a .exe extension.
Type the following in a dos window

Code:
perl -MCPAN -e shell

hit enter on all config defaults except for location of nmake.exe
Put quotes around the path to your nmake.exe if it includes spaces

Code:
install IO::Scalar

Wait till it is done, and says "install OK"


Perl problems people have had
If perl isn't installed propperly the zone windows will seem to just disapear after starting up.
Zone.exe with perl quests requires perl58.dll to ONLY be in your perl\bin directory. Make sure you do not have another copy on in your windows\system32 (or elsewhere in your path) Note that is perl58.dll
While IO::scalers is not required for perl quests, the precompiled exe's that were released with perl scripts also included the perl plugins as well, which do require IO::scalers to be installed for perl. To test if IO::Scalars is installed type the following in a dos window

Code:
perl -MIO::Scalar -e "print 'AOK'"
If you get an error it isn't working. See above for how to install IO::scalers

And if you havnet compiled eqemu to be perl enabled, you will have to follow this guide (as Im not sure if there are any perl enabled binaries out YET in the 0.5.3 versions).

Originally Posted by Lurker_005

You either have to download the pre-compiled binaries with perl support, or you have to compile the binaries yourself.

Right now by default perl is not enabled when you compile. You will need to define EMBPERL for perl quests, and/or EMBPERL_PLUGIN for perl plugins (remember plugins require IO::Scalers)

To create another build configuration with perl support in VC++6
open the server (or zone) project
menu-- build,configurations
select zone-win32-Release and press add
set the configuration name to Relase with Perl
set copy configuration from zone-win32-Release
menu-- build,set active configuration
select zone-win32-Relase with Perl
menu-- Project, settings
Select c/c++ tab
with the category pulldown reading General add ,EMBPERL,EMBPERL_PLUGIN to the end of the Preprocessor defines
Change category to Preprocessor and put c:\perl\lib\core in the Additional include Directories
select the link tab
change the category to input and put c:\perl\lib\core in the Additional library path
Close window
menu-- project, add to project, files
select zone\embparser.cpp make sure it has insert into: zone selected
do the same for embperl.cpp embparser.h and embperl.h

Now you can build a zone.exe with or without perl support. It will put the zone.exe with perl in a sub directory of the zone source. This is how I set it up so that it worked. If there is a "proper" way please let me know.

If compiled with perl quest, all quests must be in perl format. the *.qst files will not be read!