All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Installing Perl Web Apps

Skud on 2007-07-18T01:35:05

Pet topic du jour... the suckiness of installing Perl web apps, as compared to apps written in certain other languages starting with P.

Last night I posted this blog post about CPAN and installability. I've also been making some generalised notes on the subject.

Any thoughts/comments/suggestions/etc would be welcome, if you've got 'em.

big problem with rpm/dpkg and maybe msi????

ddick on 2007-07-18T04:26:58

they all assume that you have root privileges on the host. So not the case for most people installing an app on a web host. /me thinks its time to create a build script for this case. I wonder if windows users can install an msi without root privileges. somehow i suspect so.

Re:big problem with rpm/dpkg and maybe msi????

Aristotle on 2007-07-18T14:49:12

You need Administrator privileges for installing most apps on Windows, even though many could be created not to need them in theory. But no one makes such installers in practice.

Re:big problem with rpm/dpkg and maybe msi????

Skud on 2007-07-18T22:23:28

Yes, very true. Someone over on my blog was all "duh, just use dpkg/rpm/whatever!" and just not getting it.

Re:big problem with rpm/dpkg and maybe msi????

ddick on 2007-07-19T00:09:39

agreed, but even in theory, rpm/dpkg require a ton of "disable-everything" options because a fundamental part of their operation assumes a root administrator who relys on the existing package database to determine dependencies AND to update it with the current installed package details. Whereas, for good/evil, i don't think msi has that issue. There is no concept of a dependency database in msi.

Movable Type

stu42j on 2007-07-18T15:06:14

Thew new Movable Type beta tries to do a PHP-easy style installer. They had a screen cast (can't find it now) and it looked interesting. They totally skimmed over the dependencies issue though.

Re:Movable Type

Skud on 2007-07-18T22:25:51

I'll have to check that out. IIRC from last time I used MT, it was the hairy sort of code that probably *doesn't* use non-core CPAN modules :-/ I'd like to think that'd changed but I'm not confident.

Re:Movable Type

stu42j on 2007-07-18T23:27:57

Here is that install video.

krang

Qiang on 2007-07-18T17:38:08

as you mentioned in the end of your blog, developers need a good installation system to bundle up the app. i think krang ( http://krang.sf.net/ ) can help. it has a neat build system that compile modules for you. you do it on different OS then tar and distribute them to the users.

Re:krang

Skud on 2007-07-18T22:36:46

Thanks! I'll look into it.