New Install Windows - Error After Error......

Hi, Im having issues setting up a new Foswiki install on Windows. Im following instructions from here:

http://foswiki.org/Support/InstallOverviewWindowsApacheActivePerl

and im hitting errors/issues at nearly every step. I've managed to stumble my way through first few parts and stuck at this point here:

http://foswiki.org/Support/InstallStepConfigureFoswikiWindowsApacheActivePerl

It asks to go to http://localhost/foswiki/bin/configure and when I do I get the error below. I know that if I manage to get past this, there's going to be some other issue on the way. The Windows set up instructions on the Foswiki site I believe are not very accurate. Does anyone have an exact rundown that has been tested, step by step? I would really appreciate if anybody has this. The Foswiki project looks very good and I would really like to use it. Thanks.

Software error:
Failed to load the perl module Foswiki::Configure::Util. The module was found at C:/www/foswiki/lib/Foswiki/Configure/Util.pm

Please ensure that:
1 Foswiki::Configure::Util is installed,
2 that the module is available on the @INC path,
3 that the webserver user (SYSTEM) has permission to read the Foswiki/Configure/Util.pm file.
The detailed error seen was:
Use of qw(...) as parentheses is deprecated at C:/www/foswiki/lib/Foswiki/Configure/Util.pm line 73.
Compilation failed in require at (eval 32) line 2.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 32) line 2.

It's not so much this error (as im getting a lot), I need a working set of instructions on Windows to avoid all the problems.

Unfortunately you are running into a couple of issues.

The instructions are a bit old - especially those on the Support Web. Much of these are contributed to the project and don't all track the software.
- Look at the guide: http://foswiki.org/System/InstallationGuidePart1 This is the latest and greatest - should be a bit clearer on how to run some of the tools. The rewriteshebang script was updated, but the older Support web instructions didn't get updated.
Very few of the developers do much with windows, so the instructions are a bit thin in places.
You are using a fairly new version of perl - I'd guess 5.12? The latest perl syntax has changed and has broken older versions of Foswiki, including 1.1.3.

We just released a beta of Foswiki 1.1.4 which has fixes for the "Use of qw(...) as parentheses is deprecated" error, as well as some fixes for some other windows related issues. You could try to install the Foswiki 1.1.4 beta1 package. See FoswikiRelease01x01x04RC1 Even though it's beta, it is still pretty stable. It's been running on foswiki.org for around 12 hours so far, with only one issue with image linking reported - Tasks.Item11189

I've got an old XP vm and could see if I do a dry run and update the instructions. For good news, one of our core developers is working on setting up a Windows server as a test build system so that we can automate some of the Windows testing.

-- GeorgeClark - 26 Oct 2011

Thanks for the reply, really apprecate it. Having a set of working Windows instructions would be excellent. I look forward to it.

I had similar problems with complaints about not being able to find util.pm - to include it in the perl @INC I went to control panel, system, advanced system settings, environment variables, and created a new system variable (i.e. not specific to the user) PERL5LIB with the value c:\www\foswiki\lib and started a new command window and it works. This is also needed to be able to run the foswiki configure step and presumably foswiki as a whole.

-- IanBarnard - 20 Nov 2011

You really should not need to do this. Foswiki has code to try to find it's lib directory and will add it (and a few other internal libs) to the path automatically. I've never had to do this in any windows perl environment that I've encountered.

When running scripts from the command shell, the argument "-I ..\lib" is typically used to add the Foswiki lib directory. But configure and the web serever definitely don't need this.

Could you provide some more information? What perl and windows were in use?

-- GeorgeClark - 20 Nov 2011