tool for managing perl in win32

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

Without perlbrew, perl installation switch in win32 is a Minotaur to me. I've been sticking to 5.10.1 for years, building ,testing all around it and hope that the day of upgrading never come.

But life can't be always smooth. Recently I have to upgrade my perl to 5.16/5.18(yes, it's you! who make your modules require 5.16+! you ruin my life! ;) ) Before I start to test all modules manually.(nightmare!) I'd like to ask monks here:

is there a safe/standard/smart way to detect, build, test, and switch all modles from low version perl to the high on in Windows ?

Thanks in advance

UPDATE:

Many many thanks monks replied!! I did some work with your help in couple of days, and think the final solution is portable strawberry perl + cpanm/ExtUtils::Installed. Portable strawberry perl provides a very handy tool portableshell.bat to let user switch various perl in machine.

And next step is using cpanm or other modules(ExtUtils::Installed) like it to list all modules installed and install to the new directory.

I've now installed 5.16.3 strawberry perl and doing all tests on it. Thanks again for your generous help! hope the author of perlbrew could consider supporting windows platform in next version.

I am trying to improve my English skills, if you see a mistake please feel free to reply or /msg me a correction

Comment on tool for managing perl in win32

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Re: tool for managing perl in win32 by daxim (Curate) on Jul 31, 2013 at 14:16 UTC
perlall does not fare much better: http://matrix.cpantesters.org/?dist=App-perlall Perhaps rurban can spend some tuits to make it work not only on Cygwin, but also plain Windows.	[reply]
Re: tool for managing perl in win32 by glasswalk3r (Friar) on Jul 31, 2013 at 15:29 UTC
Maybe you could create a bundle for all non-core modules that you have installed for for perl 5.10 and try to use perlbrew to install the new version (but I'm almost sure perlbrew works only in Unix-like OS). If perlbrew cannot help, you could go with a VM, install the newest perl and try to install your bundle by using CPAN, running all tests available during setup. Alceu Rodrigues de Freitas Junior --------------------------------- "You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Sir Winston Churchill	[reply]
Re: tool for managing perl in win32 by ig (Vicar) on Aug 01, 2013 at 03:10 UTC
You don't say what release of perl you use or how you installed your modules or how you will install modules on your new version of perl. These details may make a difference to what you can do. I use Strawberry perl and install additional modules with cpan. To re-install all currently installed modules after installing a new version of perl I would use the `cpan -a` command from the old version of perl to create a bundle listing all currently installed modules then install this bundle from the new version of perl. I rarely do this. Over time the set of modules installed on my system grows as I try various new ones. I generally only use a small subset of these on an ongoing basis. When I install a new version of perl, I usually only install additional modules as needed.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: tool for managing perl in win32 by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Aug 01, 2013 at 03:31 UTC
If you use active state and all or most of your packages were installed using ppm (or ppm-shell) then you can create a list of all your installed packaged usiing: `ppm profile save [ filename ] Write profile of configured repositories and installed packages to the given file. If no file is given then print the profile XML to standard output.` [download] And then (try) install them into your new installation using: `ppm profile restore [ filename ] Install the packages listed in the given profile file. If no file +is given try to read the profile from standard input.` [download] Which would be great if a) all the packages we needed were available as PPDs and if all the packages for which PPDs ~~are~~ were once available for 5.10.1 were also available for the newer versions; b) if the restore didn't stop every time it encounters a package that isn't available; C) if the profile mechanism would handle non-AS repositories. With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday' Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error. "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: tool for managing perl in win32 (PATH/PERLLIB/INSTALL_BASE) by Anonymous Monk on Aug 01, 2013 at 07:56 UTC
Test new modules in a sandbox before installing them using INSTALL_BASE or cpanm -L... Test new versions of perl in a sandbox before installing them :) you can install many different portable perl distributions like strawberry/citrusperl or the .zip download of activestate (provide you edit install.bat), and most good ones won't diddle your registry to add themselves to path or setupassociations if you ask :) More notes on building below , all perlbrew/perlall really do is save you some typing Re: how ship perl in my application? Re: if Digest::SHA1 loaded Can't load LibXML/LibXML.dll Invalid access to memory location MinGW/MSYS development environment - Setting up the base system How to install CPAN modules into ActivePerl http://sourceforge.net/projects/perlmingw/#Citrus GCC (mingw-w64) for Perl http://strawberryperl.com/package/kmx/64_gcctoolchain/ # (a mirror) Installing a make utility and C compiler on 64-bit Windows standard-msys-20111122.7z Re: openssh build with Strawberry Perl provided gcc Dmake configuration for building Perl with MinGW on win32. Compiling C/C++ based Modules under ActiveState using MinGW Re^2: Compiling modules for win32 ActivePerl RFC: Setting up a minGW compiling envronment for Perl 5.10 The MinGW and dmake cpan starts to install Re: Installing iodbc 0.1 via CPAN (or other means) on Mac OS 10.6 Building Math-GSL-0.07 on Win32 (MinGW compiler) Re^3: Active Perl 5.16 email code problem" Re: install activestate 5.10 over 5.8.9 (no, zip) http://strawberryperl.com/release-notes/5.18.0.1-32bit.html http://strawberryperl.com/releases.html cpanm -L... PERLLIB ... Re: CPAN won't install into personal directory; probably an o conf problem Re: cpanm --sudo installs to /root/perl5 instead of /usr	[reply]
Re: tool for managing perl in win32 by rpnoble419 (Pilgrim) on Aug 01, 2013 at 20:25 UTC
I have five different Perls on my windows box (I like strawberry so I have 4 versions of that and one Active State for running PerlApp) for testing and application distribution. I use .bat files to manage the various settings that need to be adjusted and this works very well for me. Like IG I also have a large number of modules I "play" with over time. What I do is use my programming IDE to scan all of my active perl code and make a list of my "use" statements and then I know what modules I "need" to test first when moving to a new version of perl. I support five active products and this process takes me about 30 minutes to.	[reply]


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