Re: Does anyone use Perl on Windows?

[dasgar]

I do use Perl on Windows and have used berrybrew.

I'm aware that you have put in a lot of time and work on berrybrew. Because of that, I hesitate to complain or say anything negative because I don't want to disrepect you or your work. One aspect that held me back a little bit on using berrybrew more than I have was not being able to specify where (directory) to install it, but I found work arounds for that (and perhaps newer versions of berrybrew provided this functionality).

Personally, I would like to see berrybrew (or something like it) to continue. Unfortunately I don't think that I have the skills to contribute and I'm not in a position right now to contribute financially (currently unemployed after being laid off). That kind of makes me feel like a freeloader asking for the free ride to continue.

I'm not trying to suggest a total rewrite of berrybrew, but here's something that has been on my mind for some time. I was always thought that perlbrew (the inspiration for berrybrew) basically used Linux shell scripting and line command tools (like curl). I just took a very quick look at its files on GitHub and it looks like it's all shell and Perl code. So I was thinking maybe a similar conceptual approach could be used in berrybrew.

I haven't dug deep into what berrybrew is doing under the hood, but it looks like it reads/modifies the registry and environment variables - and leverages some config files. My thinking is that these can be done by using PowerShell with some Perl code or all in Perl. For the Perl content, to avoid issues regarding availability of Perl and versions of Perl (and modules), use PAR::Packer to bundle the Perl code into a stand-alone Windows executable. Of course, I admit that it's possible that berrybrew is doing something or has some functionality that is only available in a compiled language.

Let me finish by saying thank you for all of the work that you have put into berrybrew since you have taken over the project.