Re: Perl executables on a machine w/out Perl installed

[ezekiel]

There is a utility called perl2exe. It is meant to convert perl scripts to executable files. I have never used it myself, so I cannot vouch for how well it performs.

[merlyn]

That's not a compiler, except in the sense of "compile" meaning "to bring together". It's merely an installer-maker.

It does nothing to speed up the run time. It can certainly be fooled about which of your library versions need to be included. It duplicately installs modules. The source code is trivially contained within the exe file, for anyone to pluck out. And the interpreter is useless except for that program, and cannot be reused for other Perl programs.

Much better to tell people to spend two minutes installing Perl from activestate, the three PPM commands they'll need, and then they have not only your program up and running, but have an entire environment to use others as well.

perl2exe is a scam. Please stop promoting it.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

[jepri]

merlyn, it does have one use. It makes programs easy to install. VB kicks Perl in this regard.

Yesterday we walked into a clients office and installed a VB front end to a database on his machine. It was so easy - CDROM in drive, double click on icon, click go. After a couple of tries, even the client could get it right. Now we can just send him the updates, and he can install them himself. He can even install the program on other machines.

I'm really beginning to envy windows programmers for that little trick. No screwing around downloading this, running that, resolving this error - it's just "disc in drive, double click". Perl could really benefit from something like that. Then we (the whole community) could distribute our programs as exe files that just get up and do their stuff without forcing the users to spend time and mental effort figuring out how to install it.

Something like that is valuable in an enterprise environment. I know all your other comments are correct, but something like Perl2exe helps when dealing with people who have to pause to wipe the drool off the mousepad.

____________________
Jeremy
I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.

[tye]

It takes 10 minute's work to make a CD that installs Perl and your script with one mouse click. Do that rather than use perl2exe. (I'd start with IndigoPerl from http://www.indigostar.com as that install is trivial to script.)

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")

[Anonymous Monk]

I've used perl2exe on win32 with much success. I bought the LITE version and its seems quite solid.

PROS:
No need for perl or any modules to be installed on the destination machines. Just the host(Dev machine).

NEUTRAL:
EXE sizes are over 500K minimum. Not an issue for me.

CONS:
The registration process and KEYING to a windows username was a pain in the ***.

Hope that helps.


WrongWay

[Xxaxx]

A question about the Perl2Exe.
Did you use Perl2Exe with ActiveState or with IndigoPerl?

Thanks in advance
Claude

[mpolo]

I spent some time playing with Perl2Exe on a relatively big program and failed to have any success... "Out of the Box", it ignores your site_perl lib directories, so you have to either explicitly use libs or set an environment variable to get it to find them.

While the sample scripts included with the package did run, I never managed to get my script going. A Super Search here for perl2exe convinced me that I was wasting my time trying to get it to work.

Instead, I'm insisting that everyone install ActiveState Perl on their machines. Afterwards, I'm using a free <mode value="slashdot"> (speech, beer) </mode> InstallShield clone, InnoSetup to do the install. I have to put a lot of things in to batch files that run at the end of the install, though.