How To Install Perl on a WAMP Server

Step 1:

Download and install WAMP server (WampServer), default installation is c:\wamp. Installing WampServer is not in the scope of this, “how to”. You can read my article on WAMP vs. IIS for a better understanding of WAMP.

Step 2:

Download and install Active Perl from http://www.activestate.com/activeperl/downloads/ ; based on this tutorial, download the Windows Installer (MSI). Run the installer;

• Click Next on the first screen, “Using ActivePerl at work?”.
• Read and accept license agreement, hit next.
• Custom setup screen, choose browse and install it in c:\wamp\bin\Perl\. click next, and keep all the following defaults, and finally install it. It will take some time to install depending on your computer.
• And finally once installed, uncheck, Display the release notes, and click finish.

I chose the installation directory c:\wamp\bin\Perl\, to keep consistency for all apache related applications.

Step 3:

Verify the installer actually wrote the PATH variable in your system. This will save you a lot of headaches. Right click on “My Computer”, select properties, select Advanced Properties, click on Environmental Variables and under System variables scroll down and double click on PATH and verify c:\wamp\bin\Perl\site\bin; is in the Variable value.

Or simply open a command prompt, start> run> cmd> and type:

It should spit out the version of the perl your running.

Step 4:

Configure httpd.conf on WAMP server (WampServer) for perl. Open C:\wamp\bin\apache\Apache2.2.11\conf\httpd.conf, file which is your apache configuration file.

• Look for, Directory “c:/wamp/www/”, and under this line look for and replace:
  

  Options Indexes FollowSymLinks

  with:

  Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI

  This will activate Perl for your WAMP server (WampServer), so you can run Perl scripts.

• Look for and replace:
  

  #AddHandler cgi-script .cgi

  with:

  AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
  AddHandler cgi-script .pl

  This will activate the AddHandler for cgi and pl. These are common, so enable them.

• Look for and replace:
  

  DirectoryIndex index.php index.php3 index.html index.htm

  with:

  DirectoryIndex index.php index.php3 index.html index.htm index.cgi index.pl

  Apache executes these in the respective order; if it doesn’t find index.php it will look for index.php3 than index.html and so on.

Step 5:

Restart WAMP server (WampServer) apache service. Wampserver > Apache > Service > Restart Service. Your server is ready to run, Perl. You can test by downloading this file and placing into one of your development site, c:/wamp/www/dev-site.com/perl-stuff, and executing it via browser, i.e. http://dev-site.com/perl-stuff.

Configuring your WAMP server (WampServer) to run a development site is not in the scope of this, “how to”.

Bookmark to: