RE: Need some Help with Advocacy re: Java vs. Perl

[Peter Scott]

At 01:44 AM 6/16/00 -0400, Turoff, Adam wrote:
>Are they so tied to a closed-source business model that they
>flee Perl because it is so aggressively Open Source?

I think perhaps a more common issue is the ease with which applications can 
be distributed.   Most useful scripts in the real world depend on modules 
that aren't in the core; fine.  But there is no really clean, user-friendly 
way of installing what the user needs to run one of those scripts; it 
usually comes down to something like:

User runs program, gets complaint "Can't locate Foo/Bar.pm in @INC";
User reads program comments, hopefully finds list of dependencies;
User begs SA to install said dependencies;
User installs dependencies that SA won't in private path, inserts use lib 
statement or wraps in script setting PERL5LIB;
User handles any problems caused by version mismatches and missing require 
VERSION statements.

Perhaps this issue can be taken care of completely by using PREREQ_PM in 
Makefile.PLs; I haven't used it enough to be sure.  But the practice of 
passing programs (rather than modules) around with attached makefiles 
certainly isn't well established; maybe we could do something to make the 
process easier.

--
Peter Scott
Pacific Systems Design Technologies