On 11 Mar 2005 at 23:15, Robin Macharg wrote: > Hi, > > I've just started using PAR and am really impressed at how well it > does what it does, and how easy it makes redistributing script > applications. This is my first post to this list and while I've > looked over past postings I'll apologise up front if this idea has > been discussed before. >
This is new :) > I've written a small filter, in Perl naturally, which I'm dubbing pppp > (the Perl Packager Pre Processor) which uses POD comments in a script > to configure the packaging of that script. This serves two purposes: > firstly it provides documentation in a script about how to package it, > and what its dependencies are, and secondly it allows a script author > to take on the maintenance of the PAR (and .exe) creation, which we > are automating as part of an inhouse project to deliver Perl apps to > the desktop. The script was created primarily out of a need to > manually include Tk xbms, but is more generally applicable. > > My POD looks like this: > > --- BEGIN POD --- > > =head1 PAR Options > > The following options are intended to be machine readable to assist in > PAR packaging of this script. > > =over 4 > > =item PAR --gui > > =item PAR --addlist=addlist_file.txt > > C:\temp\a_file1.txt;/a/path/to/a/file1.txt > C:\temp\a_file2.txt;/a/path/to/a/file2.txt > > =back > You may have done this, but how about =item / =back bracketing for other options like "-l" that can occur multiple times? One =item bracket could generate multiple "-l". > --- END POD --- > > Only '=item POD' clauses are processed. pod2html leaves this looking > quite nice. The --addlist section is placed in an appropriate file, > and used to supply additional files for packaging. I run pppp which > creates additional files as necessary, and invokes pp to generate the > packaged executable. On the other hand, why not process the "=item PAR --addlist" into multiple "--addfile" options and avoid the extra file? It's equivalent. > > I see no reason pp couldn't be extended to include this functionality. > I just avoided fixing something which wasn't broken ;-) I'm happy to > provide my source if it would be useful (it's not at all complicated), > and either way I'd be grateful for any feedback, good or bad! > At the very least, show it to us, and I'll add it to the contrib/ directory ! I wrote gpp found there, and if this doesn't get integrated into pp, I think it might fit with gpp (opening a source file directly instead of a .gpp file). > Thanks in advance, > Robin Alan Stewart
