How To Install Perl On Windows Server & IIS 7

Perl is a scripting language that has been around for quite a long time. Since its inception in 1987, it has been ported to many platforms such as Linux / Un*x (of course!), Windows Server, Mac OS, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX and many more.

Today’s tutorial will show you how to install Perl on Windows Server 2000, 2003 and 2008 and how to configure IIS 7 properly.

I assume you have no prior version of Perl installed.

Step 1: Getting and Installing ActivePerl

ActiveState.com provides portability for Perl on Windows Server (among other OS). Their Standard ActivePerl distribution is available for free whereas ActivePerl Enterprise is a commercial release.

For this tutorial, let’s get the free Perl distribution for Windows Server here (click the Get ActivePerl button at the top). You will be asked to provide some information before downloading the installer. I have chose to download the MSI package.

The latest version available at the time of this writing is Perl 5.10.0.1002

Going through the installation wizard, I’ve left all default options and installed Perl in c:\perl

That’s it for the installation part!

Step 2: Configuring IIS 7 For Perl Support

Open the Internet Information Services Manager (Start => Programs => Administrative Tools => Internet Information Services Manager). Select your web server from the left column list and double click on the ISAPI and CGI Restrictions icon.

click to zoom

Now point your browser to http://your-server-hostname/PerlEx/benchmain.htm to see some Perl example scripts in action. If that doesn’t work, use the browser locally on your server and open http://localhost/PerlEx/benchmain.htm

That’s pretty much it! You’ve got a running IIS 7 server with Perl 5 support.

For more information on Perl, visit Perl.com, Perl.org and ActiveState.com.

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