http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=246660

jerrygarciuh has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Monks,

I have recently acquired a really nice new box with XP. I have always used ActiveState on my Win 98 boxes but as I am making many changes right now I thought I would solicit the opinion of our community as to the best distribution available.
So, what do folks think?

TIA
jg
_____________________________________________________
"The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods.
The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Which Perl for my new XP box?
by fokat (Deacon) on Mar 30, 2003 at 02:24 UTC

    ActiveState is what I recommend to everybody and this is what lives in my Win98SE box at home. I am not familiar with other pre-compiled distribution for the Wintel platform, but anyway this seems to be the most popular anyway.

    I think your other choice, provided you have a C compiler, is to build your own Perl from sources. I've never needed to do that... You might also take a look at running Perl under cygwin, but you should have a *very* good reason to do so.

    Just remember to grab gzip/gunzip and nmake along with your ActiveState distribution :)

    Best regards

    -lem, but some call me fokat

    Update: Also check which build of ActivePerl will you download. At the time of this writing, both 5.6.1 and 5.8.0 are out. I am running 5.8.0 in my PowerBook and have found no issues with it so far, but YMMV.

[reply]
Re: Which Perl for my new XP box?
by dws (Chancellor) on Mar 30, 2003 at 00:24 UTC
    ... as I am making many changes right now I thought I would solicit the opinion of our community as to the best distribution available.

    I don't know about best, but I'm putting ActiveState on my new XP laptop a few moments after it arrives next week. Aside from repository hiccups, I've had very good luck with ActiveState's distribution.

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Re: Which Perl for my new XP box?
by strat (Canon) on Mar 30, 2003 at 10:46 UTC
    If you do also web development, you could try WAMPP from www.apachefriends.org. This is a combination of Apache, Mysql, ActivestatePerl (mod_perl or CGI), PHP for Windows (with addons like phpMyAdmin, OpenSSL and the like). It is very easy to install, and I like to use it for development boxes under Win2k and WinXP.

    I prefer using it in combination with the command line tools from cygwin (installed with Windows line endings) where I get tools like tar and so on required by CPAN and CPANPLUS. I just don't like the CPAN's configuration of WAMPP (told the author, but no response); but if you delete the CPAN-configuration file (e.g. X:\wampp1\perl\lib\CPAN\Config.pm) and then restart CPAN (perl -MCPAN -e shell), then you can enter your configuration easily.

    Best regards,
    perl -e "s>>*F>e=>y)\*martinF)stronat)=>print,print v8.8.8.32.11.32"

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Re: Which Perl for my new XP box?
by hsmyers (Canon) on Mar 30, 2003 at 06:04 UTC
    The three main choices are:
    • ActiveState
    • Indigo
    • Cygwin
    Yes you could roll your own, but other than for educational purposes, why? I use AS on all of my boxen and wouldn't look else where...

    --hsm

    "Never try to teach a pig to sing...it wastes your time and it annoys the pig."
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Re: Which Perl for my new XP box?
by vek (Prior) on Mar 30, 2003 at 00:37 UTC
    jerrygarciuh - FWIW, I've had ActiveState on my wife's XP box for a little over a year now without any problems whatsoever.

    -- vek --
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Re: Re: Which Perl for my new XP box?
by Marza (Vicar) on Mar 30, 2003 at 06:21 UTC

    Activestate is the main guy in the arena. At work we use it, at home I use Indigo.

    Kind of like supporting others so competition keeps the main guy from getting sloppy due to owning the market.

    Update:

    Sorry that was supposed to be a response to the main thread

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