Project management via Perl?

[Anonymous Monk]

Hello. My company does Web development with VBScript and ASP pages and management is convinced that Perl is worthless (usual bogus argument like: Perl is not typed, Perl is not supported, etc). My company has a few programmers who appreciate the power of Perl, but we can't convince the powers-that-be that Perl is worthwhile.

However, we are looking for some project management software and I thought this might be an excellent opportunity to demonstrate that Perl actually has merit. Does anyone know of some free or inexspensive software in Perl which can handle this, perhaps in a Web-based format? Do you feel that Perl is suited to a task like this? I think it is.

The primary advantage that I see here is that we would actually have a project management software package that we could modify to suit our needs, fix any bugs that crop up, etc. I know that straight Perl evangelism is just going to put management off, so I keep my mouth shut (usually). If I can *show* them the power of Perl, perhaps I can actually convince them?

[TheoPetersen]

I've looked at some briefly, haven't tried to implement them:

Web Projects by Emmanuel Pierre has a good list of features, but the code comments are in French, there wasn't a lot of doc when I looked, and the developer was asking for someone else to take over. (Maybe someone did, I just tried the link again and don't see Web Projects. Fun fun. Time to go searching for more apps again.)

If you're only tracking time spent on projects, look at OnShore's time sheet app. Requires PostgreSQL.

There are other projects starting on Source Forge that may come up in time developing on your needs, but really, for Web-based project management you should be looking at PHP apps. Much more selection. Consider Achievo.

If Web-based isn't a requirement, then you have many Gnome and KDE apps to choose from.

[gryphon]

Greetings Anonymous Monk,

While I really hope you find success in your mission to increase the Perl use at your company, I have to (unfortunately) admit that in my experience, the best Project Management package out there right now (with a reasonable price tag) is Microsoft's Project 2000. With the addition of "Project Central," Microsoft finally got it right as far as global management and task automation and tracking. It's an extremely powerful package that will essentially do everytyhing you want including full company task tracking and reporting over an intranet.

What you might be able to get away with is writing some Perl stuff to increase the power of Project Central. Some of the displays are rather canned; you could use Perl to customize and make dynamic more of the reports. If you go this path, you'll have to run Perl on Win32 since Project Central will only run on NT/2K with IIS. :( But this shouldn't be a problem.

Personally, I really hope there is a package out there that's going to top MS Project. If you find one, please let us/me know; I'll use it at my office if the price is right.

-Gryphon.

[sierrathedog04]

I realize that Project Management and Version Control are different, but I have found Rcs.pm to be invaluable for automating the transfer of project files to or from an RCS version control system.

In addition, Rcs.pm is the only software I was able to find anywhere for scripting the RCS system.

When I used this software, I saved my company hours of manually moving files. That was last year, and since then I have been sold on Perl, because it has so many useful (and free) modules that are not found anywhere else.