Re: Perl2exe aggrivations

[ase]

I have been using ActivePerl and Perl2exe for over a year with no problems. I haven't tried ALL the modules but all the one's I've needed worked. If you read the Perl2Exe documentation (which I admit is a little cryptic at times), There are a lot of potential issues to watch out for:

• Make sure the version of Perl you're using is supported by the version of Perl2exe you're using.
• The target machine will require some files, besides the .exe file you made. Perl2exe should tell you which one's are needed (and put them in the directory) when you run it.
• One in particular that got me is that perl2exe sometimes requires extra use statements (especially for Tk submodules)
• Older versions of Win95 will require DCOM to run the resulting exe.

That's not everything, but it's what caused the most problems for me.

Instead of remembering how exactly I got a program to go .exe every six months when I update it. I write a batch file:

perl2exe -tiny -gui ts.plx

That's a pretty basic one -- they can get pretty complex. The -gui is for Tk apps (gets rid of ugly dos window, but you lose visibility of STDOUT) and the -tiny (registered version only) splits the program into multiple DLL's to help start up time.

Here's a header for one of my larger programs (1000+ lines) that converts pretty easily.

use SDBM_file;
use Fcntl;
use FILE::DosGlob;        # perl2exe
use File::DosGlob 'glob';    # override CORE::glob
use Tk 8.0;
use Tk::Menu;
use Tk::Menu::Item;
require Tk::Dialog;
use Win32::API;
use Win32::SerialPort;

Hope this helps.