My company sells an application that links a bugtracking tool with an SCM tool so that, for example, the files changed for each bug are recorded in the bugtracking tool. It is currently written in (mostly) non-object-oriented perl5.
We are re-architecting the application so that it can work with different bugtracking tools and SCM tools, and do things like sync data from specific fields between a help desk tool and the bugtracking tool. This would be a good time for us to transition to perl6. As far as I can tell from the various faqs and wikis, the existing functionality in rakudo should support most of our needs for the initial release. I may need to assist with the porting of some database access and other modules from CPAN to C6PAN in the longer term. However, I am concerned about deployment of a perl6 based product to customers. Perl5 can be reasonably specified as a prerequisite for loading our application, since it is generally available (and shipped with some of the products we integrate). That is not the case with Perl6. Is it practical now to deploy a Perl6/Parrot runtime with a (possibly precompiled) version of our product? Will it be practical any time soon? I can probably get away with occasionally requiring Linux and Solaris users to rebuild Parrot to fit their local configuration, but Windows is another matter. (Shipping a known version of the runtime with our product will also allow us to tune our application to a known set of available perl6 functions.) The mechanism for generating the packages I ship to my customers does not need to be pretty, it just needs to exist. If there are instructions already online about how to generate such packages (now or in the near future), I would appreciate a pointer to them. Thanks -- Elyse Grasso CTO ReleaseTEAM Inc. http://www.releaseteam.com phone 720-887-0489 fax 720-977-8010 cell 303-356-2717
