All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Perl Ports Page

hfb on 2002-08-31T17:40:32

jhi writes "One of the largely unknown services of CPAN is the Ports page, which offers links to ready-packaged binary distributions of Perl for various platforms, and also other related links (to other UNIXy software, if the platform isn't, and to IDEs and editors).

I would like to get feedback on the ports page either here or by sending email to cpan@perl.org. Any kind of feedback is welcome, but I will feel free to ignore any I don't like :-)"

Recent experience with CPAN/ports

samtregar on 2002-08-31T21:05:36

While working on a 5.8.0 threading experiment I had the idea to test my program under Windows, figuring that it might uncover some unportable assumptions in my use of threads. So I headed over to ActiveState.com only to discover that ActivePerl isn't running 5.8.0 yet. Next stop, CPAN/ports, where I encountered a similar situation. Shouldn't we provide a pre-built binary of 5.8.0 for Windows? I'm sure I'm not alone in running my Windows systems without a compiler installed!

If there's a general lesson in this, I guess it's that we need to keep our ports up-to-date if they're to be generally useful.

-sam

Re:Recent experience with CPAN/ports

jhi on 2002-08-31T21:17:02

Shouldn't we provide a pre-built binary of 5.8.0 for Windows?

Ahhh, okay. Let's clear one misconception away: we (as we the CPAN) don't provide any of the builds. Other people do. Either via their PAUSE accounts, or external sites, or in some rare cases CPAN hosts a copy of a binary directly under the CPAN/ports/ (usually when the user does not have the disk space or a public server to host the binary themselves).

In other words: the Ports is a metaservice.

In other words: Win32 Perl 5.8.0 will appear there as soon as someone (ActiveState, or anybody else) builds one and someone tells us the CPAN of it.

Re:Recent experience with CPAN/ports

samtregar on 2002-09-01T01:20:50

Sorry, I should have been clearer. By "we" I meant the CPAN author community. I realize the people that run CPAN don't create the ports themselves.

-sam

Re:Recent experience with CPAN/ports

jhi on 2002-09-01T01:30:33

Your comment was useful, though, we've (the CPAN hive mind, that is) got that question before. I added clarification on that now.

Re:Recent experience with CPAN/ports

rkobes on 2002-09-01T03:53:32

We have a perl-5.8 Win32 binary distribution under ftp://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/pub/other/, as perl-5.8-win32-bin.tar.gz. It was compiled with VC++, and comes with Apache2/mod_perl-2, and a number of common modules. It unpacks into Apache2/ and Perl/ subdirectories, with a top-level INSTALL file.

Re:Recent experience with CPAN/ports

jhi on 2002-09-01T05:14:38

How stable is this /pub/other for the win32 build going to be? If stable enough (as in: it's not going to go away before 5.8.1 comes out), I could add a link to the ports page.

Re:Recent experience with CPAN/ports

rkobes on 2002-09-01T06:34:20

I intend to have the perl-5.8-win32-bin.tar.gz in ftp://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/pub/other/ around for as long as it's useful (probably at least until ActiveState releases a 5.8 build). It'll be routinely updated, especially the Apache-2/modperl-2 side.

Very effective

boru on 2002-08-31T22:58:25

This CPAN page is very well organized. Looking there some time ago for info about where to get the 5.8 release, I who don't have any CS background discovered I could download a GNU compiler that works on Windows and thus install 5.8 without waiting for the binaries. All the instructions were very clear and I installed the compiler and Perl 5.8 with little difficulty. Bravo!

Re:Very effective

jhi on 2002-09-01T14:36:42

Thanks.