If you have cygwin installed, you can simply download the standalone version. Perl is installed with cygwin. Here are the steps:
$ vim .bash_profile
Remove the comments from the lines:
# if [ -d "${HOME}/bin" ] ; then# PATH="${HOME}/bin:${PATH}"# fi
Load the changes:
$ source .bash_profile
Make a bin directory:
$ mkdir ~/bin
Download ack (from the homepage):
$ curl https://beyondgrep.com/ack-2.22-single-file > ~/bin/ack && chmod 0755 ~/bin/ack
Note: you will have to manually install curl as it doesn't come with cygwin by default.