Enbugger on Windows

[morgon]

Hi

in my current project I have to maintain a perl-app (a system-monitor) that runs on Windows.

At the moment the app is based on ActiveState and is (for ease of deployment - not for obfuscation) packaged with perl2exe.

The pain in some of my body parts is that when I have to investigate problems I deal with a Windows-exe, i.e. I cannot simply add traces to a script but have to go to my build-machine, package a new version and move it to the machine I need to investigate.

As I recently came across the very cool Enbugger-module I wonder if that could ease the pain for me a bit but I don't have any real Windows-experience.

So my question is:

Is there an Enbugger-ppm for ActiceState somewhere or can you build it for Strawberry - and does it work with perl2exe?

Many thanks!

[tye]

    if(  'morgon' eq $ENV{PERLDEBUG}  ) {
        delete $ENV{PERLDEBUG};
        exec( $^X, '-d', $0, @ARGV );
        die "Can't exec $^X: $!\n";
    }

Though, if perl2exe ends up passing -I or similar switches to the extracted perl.exe, then this trick requires minor adjustments. You'll also need to generate the exe so that it includes perl5db.pl and maybe a couple of other things.

[morgon]

This is unfortunately not working for me.

In my perl2exe-compiled binary $^X is set to the exe itself and the -d does then not start the debugger but is passed on to the application.

Any ideas on what I could try?

[tye]

Sad that perl2exe breaks $^X. They probably consider this a "feature". You could try asking the OS more directly:

use Win32::API ();

sub GetPerlExePath {
    my $f= 'GetModuleFileName';
    my $m= Win32::API->new( 'kernel32', $f, 'III', 'I' )
        or  die "Can't find $f() in kernel32.dll: $^E\n";
    my $l= 512;
    my $s= ' ' x $l;
    my $a= unpack "I", pack "P", $s;
    my $r= $m->Call( 0, $a, $l );
    die "$f failed: $^E\n"
        if  ! $r;
    $s= substr( $s, 0, $r );
    return $s;
}

[dasgar]

Is there an Enbugger-ppm for ActiceState somewhere or can you build it for Strawberry - and does it work with perl2exe?

Just because you're using ActivePerl from ActiveState does not mean that you can't install modules from CPAN.

Assuming that you're using a 32-bit version of ActivePerl on a system with access to the internet, here's what you need to do to be able to install modules directly from CPAN.

• Use PPM to install mingw and dmake, which are available from the default ActiveState repository.
  • If you're wanting to use Strawberry Perl, it already has the components needed to install modules from CPAN.
• If your system is behind a proxy, you'll need to add the http_proxy environment variable with the correct information to you Windows OS.
• Now, from a command prompt, you can install modules directly from CPAN by using syntax like cpan install Enbugger

As far as compatibility with perl2exe, I can't say since I've never used that utility before. If for some reason you do encounter issues with perl2exe, you can always install PAR::Packer and use the pp utility to bundle your code into a stand-alone exe file.