Multiple Strawberry Perl Versions under Windows

[jmb]

Dear Perl Monks,

I would like to use multiple Strawberry Perl versions under Windows.

My understanding is that using the excellent perlbrew tool under windows is not possible, at least for the moment.

Could you please give me some pointers about how to handle this ? More specifically, is there a tool/script to help switching between different Perls, modifying the PATH environment variable ?

All suggestions are welcome !

[ikegami]

If you can install Strawberry Perl to a directory of your choice, all you need to do is specify the Perl you want when you start your script. Instead of

perl foo.pl

use

c:\progs\perl5142\bin\perl foo.pl

Set your PATH and the .pl association to the version you want to use by default. You could even create different associations for different versions. For example, .pl512 could be associated with an installation of Perl 5.12.

You can also change the PATH within a console and it will only affect what you do in that console.

[Kc12349]

Repointing strawberry entries in PATH should be all you need to do to achieve this. A simple batch script should suffice. I've managed this on ActiveState perl, though I haven't tried in Strawberry.

Strawberry also offers some portable distros that may fill the need as well.

[VinsWorldcom]

I use 'junction' in a batch script to achieve this. I installed the latest Strawberry Perl (5.16.1) for Windows 7 in the default directory. Then I just renamed the directory to 'strawberry-5-16'. I created a few new directories in the root:

cd c:\
mkdir strawberry-5-10
mkdir strawberry-5-12
mkdir strawberry-5-14

I then grabbed the ZIP versions of the associated Strawberry Perl versions corresponding to the directories and unzipped them directly into their respective directories.

Finally, to use the Perl I want, I just use the following batch script 'perlreloc.bat'. For example, if I want to use 5.16, I just type:

perlreloc 5-16

The script basically creates a junction (like a link in *nix) so c:\strawberry actually points to c:\strawberry-5-16 (in the above example). With this way, you don't need to use the Strawberry relocation script and older versions of Strawberry that don't support relocation will still work because when activated with the batch file, they appear to be running in their default directory - c:\strawberry.

perlreloc.bat:

@echo off

  REM
  REM Help
  REM
if {%1}=={/?} goto HELP
if {%1}=={--help} goto HELP

  REM
  REM Check args
  REM
if not {%2}=={} goto ERROR

REM -------------------------------------------------------
if {%1}=={} (
    junction c:\strawberry
    perl -e "print \"$]  \@  $^^X\n\""
) else (
    if exist c:\strawberry-%1\perl\bin\perl.exe (
        junction -d c:\strawberry
        junction c:\strawberry c:\strawberry-%1
        perl -e "print \"$]  \@  $^^X\n\""
    ) else goto ERROR
)

goto END
REM -------------------------------------------------------

:ERROR
echo %0: Parameter format not correct
goto END

:HELP
echo.
echo %0 manages different versions of Perl.
echo.
echo     USAGE:
echo.
echo     %0 ^<Perl_version_number^>
echo.
echo     Where ^<Perl_version_number^> is one of the following:
echo.
for /f "tokens=1,* delims=-" %%i in ('dir /b c:\strawberry-*') do @if 
+exist c:\strawberry-%%j\perl\bin\perl.exe echo %%j
echo.

:END

[perlfan]

Can you use perlbrew under cygwin? Also *nix shell related solutions include Tcl-based Modules might be useful. You're looking for something that is Windows environment specific, not necessarily Perl-on-Windows specific. I can't think of any others, maybe someone else can.