Luke Closs wrote:
I'm somewhat new to the Perl community, so I don't know much history about PPM + perl, but I think PPM is actually a pretty good tool.
The history is that Activestate was originally a Windows-only product. Windows users generally don't have compilers, so they needed a way to get modules with C parts to them onto their users' machines. And if you're going to invent a package manglement system for C-ish modules you might as well use it for pure perl modules too.
We use it extensively for the applications we develop... This makes it really easy to deploy and re-use code. I'm really interested in how other people who build products in code build/deploy their stuff.
We build modules into Debian packages. That way those with C-ish bits can keep track of their dependencies on libwibble version 1.01234, or on version 37.4 of our database schema, or whatever. I don't think PPM handles that.
I think this would be rad:
This court finds you guilty of gross abuse of language. Your sentence is to translate the perl docs into Swahili.
- PPM becomes part of the perl core
No thanks. The core is already FAR too big, and this would just duplicate functionality which already exists both in the perl core (CPAN.pm) and in operating systems (RPM, Debs, ports, ...).
PPM is only really useful on Windows. It makes sense for it to bundled with the main Windows port of perl, but not to include it otherwise.
- All CPAN packages are built to into PPDs automatically on common platforms
Thankyou for volunteering to do this. Note, however, that the only place that PPM is common is Windows, so that's the only one you won't be wasting your effort on.
This would allow non-perl people to install perl packages much easier,
There are lots of programs out there which are built using perl but for which the user need not know a thing about perl. They generally use stuff like autoconf and make, not ppm.
without having to mess with the CPAN shell and running tests.
Tests are a Very Good Thing. If you're installing my code on a platform I've never seen, such as Windows 2000, then I want you to run the tests, and I want my code to not install if they fail. That way, when you email me to say "it doesn't work" you'll be able to include something useful like the test results and there's a possibility that I might be able to fix the code for you.
And anyway, what's so hard about "perl -MCPAN -e 'install Foo::Bar'"? > It
would also make installing CPAN packages into hosted environments much easier.
Can you explain why? I don't understand. Surely if a hosting company doesn't let people install stuff from the CPAN they'll be just as idiotic about the CPPMAN?
-- David Cantrell
