----- Original Message -----
From: "Autrijus Tang" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, May 26, 2003 5:06 PM
Subject: Survey: How important is pp --standalone?
> Hi there. Since PAR 0.68's loader can now arbitrarily load
> libraries before executing the Perl interpreter on Win32
> (via $ENV{PATH} munging) and Unixes (via $ENV{LD_LIBRARY_PATH}
> and execv(argv[0],argv)), PAR 0.70 will be capable to
> include a copy of dynamically-linked libperl.so / perl58.dll
> inside the executable, thereby producing a true "stand-alone"
> executable.
>
> Now, I'd like to ask a few questions:
>
> - Is this feature desired?
Yes.
The perl scripts that I distribute to others are invariably used on
win32 workstations that don't have perl installed on them. At the moment
I am using Perl2exe to make standalone executables of them. I am,
however, interested in alternative solutions.
> - Should this feature be made default? i.e.
Yes - My preference as this is how I am most likely to use it.
>
> pp foo.pl # generate standalone executable
> pp --dependent foo.pl # now this requires perl5x.dll
Someone else suggested:
pp --no-libperl foo.pl # to inhibit default inclusion of libperl/dll
I endorse this suggestion.
>
> - Should we compress the libperl image using zlib?
> Since it's quite bulky, uncompressing will take a bit time,
> and there will always be UPX for people wants to minize the
> executable size. But I'm willing to be convinced the other way.
I would prefer to keep the distributed executable as small as possible
as I generally distribute either by floppy disk or email attachment. The
time taken to extract the distribution package is not significant for my
purposes.
I do see that extraction times may be significant for some application
and it may be best to make libperl compression optional. I vote for
compressed libperl as the default condition.
--
Regards
John McMahon (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
