I had never seen this before, but it was mentioned on the Boston Perl Mongers list. It is another Win32 perl distribution from a company called DynamicState, and it is called DynamicPerl. It, too, is based on perl 5.6.0, and it comes with an "integrated Apache webserver."
I don't use Windows (I only ever use it to try to make sure something works with ActiveState's ActivePerl, or to try to play with the latest Windows virus), but some of you may find this interesting.
P.S. Am I the only one who sees a similarity in the above company and product names?
Hm
pudge on 2000-06-13T01:26:23
Maybe I'll try to install DynamicPerl in addition to ActivePerl on my test box (which is actually just VirtualPC on my PowerBook). Can the two peacefully coexist?
Who is Indy Singh?
chip on 2000-06-13T02:26:05
He's the registered contact for the domain:
Indy Singh (DYNAMICSTATE-DOM)
1531 Kenmuir Avenue
Mississauga, ON L5R-3B6
CA
Re:Who is Indy Singh?
pudge on 2000-06-13T13:26:25
Apparently, this is the company that makes Perl2Exe. Used to be Mercury Systems (demobuilder.com). The old URL for that points now to dynamicstate.com. They have the same mailing address and contact info. dynamicstate.com was created in November 1999.
It has some nice "one ups" on ActivePerl,
fozbaca on 2000-06-13T15:15:28
a web browser based package installation for one. There is not a nice InstallShield or WindowsInstaller type installer, you unzip to the desired directory and run a
.bat file. The PerlConsole doesn't work for me, not sure why but I am running Win98, and the package instalation didn't work til I kicked off Apache myself and hacked the url path. All in all a very nice one up so far.
No accident
indigo on 2000-06-13T21:20:00
The similarity of names is no accident. There are those who are concerned ActiveState is a little to close to Microsoft, fearing the embrace, extend, exterminate philosophy MS has employed in the past with C++ and Java.
Looking at their website, it would appear DynamicState wishes to provide a Win32 Perl alternative free from reliance on particular
Windows features, like InstallShield or the
registry.
Competition good.
jhi on 2000-06-13T21:55:22
I now added DynamicPerl to the CPAN ports page Win32 section.
Re:Competition good.
pudge on 2000-06-13T22:00:24
But this is _Windows_, where competition doesn't exist.
Typo, or sinister sign of impending doom? :)
Ranger Rick on 2000-06-14T02:55:24
I noticed that in his description of the Graphical Package Manager, he accidentally writes "VPM" instead of "GPM" once.
Re:Who is Indy Singh?
jmm on 2000-06-14T13:04:08
Indy is a member of Toronto Perl Mongers, the author of perl2exe. He is a knowledgeable and pleasant person.
I haven't used any Windows perl (that was not a complaint
:-), so I'm not about to compare the various incarnations.
Re:Who is Indy Singh?
pudge on 2000-06-14T15:44:42
Ah, cool, a fellow Monger. If I had the time, I would play with DynamicPerl on Virtual PC. But I am too busy working with MacPerl 5.6
:-).
Re:It has some nice "one ups" on ActivePerl,
bart on 2000-06-15T11:36:51
"The PerlConsole doesn't work for me, not sure why but I am running Win98, and the package instalation didn't work til I kicked off Apache myself and hacked the url path."
Me too. I kinda like it. It looks to me that it responds a lot faster than ActivePerl when starting up a script. The fact that the interpreter is a DLL and "perl.exe" itself only 5k, may make a difference. Run two scripts at once and the interpreter ought to be shared between them! Neat!
How is the PerlConsole supposed to work? The docs are very spartan. It does nothing. Well... I launched it, and immediately pressed Ctrl-Alt-Del, and yes: Apache is up and running. But no browser is launched, and after a few seconds, Apache just quits.
Start up Apache yourself, and then point your browser to <http://localhost/html/index.html>, and you've got the server running, including the search script.
