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in reply to Re^2: What can bring the excitement back to Perl?
in thread What can bring the excitement back to Perl?

It is such a "Bad Thing" because it would reduce the power of CPAN. The community feels very strongly that what we have definitely needs to stick around.

BUT . . . it doesn't have to be the only thing. If you want to set up an easier way to find and install modules, go right ahead! In fact, if you're willing to put in some work, I'm pretty sure Andreas would love to have help with CPAN. I've discussed some things with him in the past and he's a great guy to work with. Just talking about it doesn't help anybody. Go ahead and do it. Just make sure it's compatible and life is good.

As for Win32, check out Strawberry Perl.

My criteria for good software:
  1. Does it work?
  2. Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?
  • Comment on Re^3: What can bring the excitement back to Perl?

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Re^4: What can bring the excitement back to Perl?
by whakka (Hermit) on Mar 25, 2008 at 20:23 UTC

    Thank you, dragonchild, first and foremost, for the reference to Strawberry Perl.

    I didn't mean to belittle the opinion that CPAN shouldn't be touched, nor that I should just sit around and complain, nor that those who contribute don't provide an invaluable service to everyone, not least of which myself. Rather I was trying to constructively point out my own mini wishlist, thinking that making CPAN and the better parts of Perl more accessible to the uninitiated may be relevant to a discussion of drawing new users to Perl. The fact that you dismissed it out-of-hand shows that it's a tired argument, and I apologize for that.

[reply]
      I didn't dismiss it out of hand. I said that CPAN, as it stands right now, will not change. This doesn't mean you cannot write your own interface to the data www.cpan.org provides an interface to. Randy Kobes has done just that.
      My criteria for good software:
      1. Does it work?
      2. Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?
[reply]
Re^4: What can bring the excitement back to Perl?
by Anonymous Monk on Mar 26, 2008 at 03:10 UTC
    > As for Win32, check out Strawberry Perl.

    To be honest, what he REALLY wants is Chocolate Perl.

    For a while now, it's been my intention that we have...

    Vanilla Perl - Experimentation

    Strawberry Perl - Perl people that don't know Windows.

    Chocolate Perl - Windows people that don't know Perl

    Having a viable Chocolate Perl is the big pay day, because with the cornucopia of CPAN behind it we are in a position to create a high profile scripting language for doing Windows sysadmin and utility programming that doesn't rely on Microsoft, that won't change unexpectedly, that doesn't cost anything, and that you can whip up a quick solution to your problem even with nothing but Notepad.

    That would be exciting!
[reply]

      Isn't ActiveState's Perl distro Chocolate Perl? I installed it way back in the day when I was, effectively, a computer idiot (I am merely a computer rube these days). It installs quickly and easily, modules get installed via graphical PPM, and in general is easy as pie.

[reply]
        Way back in the day, ActivePerl worked great. It has been degrading of late (from about 5.8.7 it started to get quite bad) due to lack of resources and limitations imposed from old, unreversable, bad, decisions.
[reply]
        That impression left ActiveState Perl a couple of years ago I think, when the PPM repos started being neglected.

        Even before that, it was really quite important to have VC++ available to get a select few modules installed.

        Nowadays, Strawberry provides a surprisingly smooth experience.

        /J

[reply]

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