Compiling DBD::MariaDB with strawberry-perl-5.42.0.1-64bit

[zb226]

Warning: While the recipe below did work for my local use case, it's not recommended!
Please read the comments below for more information.

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I've spent some time today trying to get the current DBD::MariaDB (1.24) to work with Strawberry perl 5.42.0.1. The way it should work as per documentation - and the way it does compile on 5.38.2.2 - got me this error when running gmake:

C:/dev/strawberry-perl-5.42.0.1/c/bin/../lib/gcc/x86_64-w64-mingw32/13.2.0/../../../../x86_64-w64-mingw32/bin/ld.exe:
dbdimp.o:dbdimp.c:(.text+0x885): undefined reference to `__imp___pioinfo'

Looking for differences to 5.38.2.2 I found out that 5.42.0.1 does not ship with c\x86_64-w64-mingw32\lib\libmsvcrt.a. When I copied this file over to 5.42.0.1, compilation started to work. After that it was necessary to copy libmariadb.dll to c\bin and then I could use DBD::MariaDB.

Is there a problem with 5.42.0.1? Hope this information helps someone.

[shawnlaffan]

We use the winlibs distribution for the C compiler and related libs, so everything under the ...c/lib/gcc/ dir is from winlibs.

In the case of 5.40 and above, we shifted to use the UCRT runtime instead of the MSVCRT runtime. This fixed several issues related to locales but also introduced a few issues with CPAN modules that required patching (e.g. #185).

It looks like MariaDB falls into the latter category and probably needs some updates to work with UCRT.

[sisyphus]

@zb226, just a word of caution regarding your solution:
Presumably the need for the inclusion of libmsvcrt.a signifies that the MSVC runtime is involved.
If, say, a filehandle is created by perl (ie by the UC runtime) and that filehandle gets passed to the MSVC runtime, then the program will probably crash.
And, of course, vice versa - if a handle generated by MSVCRT gets handed to UCRT it's crash time again.
I don't know if such an issue is likely in your case - with any luck it won't be.
Just something to consider.

Incidentally, if I'm reading https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/c-runtime-library/internal-crt-globals-and-functions?view=msvc-170 correctly, __pioinfo should not be called directly.
However, in the DBD-MariaDB-1.24 source, it does get called directly at line 123 of dbdimp.h.

[zb226]

Thanks for sharing background information. Yeah, I assumed my dodgy recipe is nothing you'd use in production, I will add a warning above. It worked fine for a little homebrewn webapp, though (i.e. some basic CRUD, nothing fancy).

[shawnlaffan]

@zb226 - it's worth raising this as an issue on the DBD::MariaDB issue tracker.

[zb226]

Opened an issue over there.

I think it might be beneficial to note the MSVCRT/UCRT situation and its implications on the Strawberry homepage? As it is now, people (like me) will download 5.40+ and expect a similar experience to the versions before, i.e. "my DB stuff just works out of the box".

[shawnlaffan]

Thanks @zb226

For purposes of linking, it is perl5-dbi/DBD-MariaDB#231

The website could do with a note regarding the shift to UCRT. Most modules build without issue but there are always some that depend on specific behaviour.