You'd need to persuade Par to change over to simple and incompatible Huffmann encoding, for which a pure-perl module exists (at plover, see http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=118361), or you have to rely on existing zip/unzip executables in the path, or provide binaries for the platforms you care about - I guess it's windows.
There exists a pure-perl tar module, so you can go without compression. Archive::Tar::Builder <https://metacpan.org/module/Archive::Tar::Builder> On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 5:08 PM, Tony Edwardson <tony.edward...@gmail.com>wrote: > Hi All > > Following a talk at last year's London Perl Workshop, I have been looking > at providing a mechanism similar to that available to jar mechanism for > Java. > The issue I am trying to address is the difficulty for Perl newbies to be > able to do something with a root installed perl to which they don't have > access, using CPAN modules which they don't know how to install without > access to a c compiler or learning how to use CPAN, CPANPLUS or cpanm or > equivalent. > The idea is to be able to set up a repository of PAR archives on the > internet so that perl beginners can simply download par files of their > choice and then > be able to use them with whatever perl is available to them without > needing to install anything. > For this to work, I need to be able to create a native perl module > (without dependency on any os specific modules or shared libraries) which > is able to use these par files. > Unfortunately, the PAR module relies on Archive::Zip which in turn needs > the Compress::Raw::Zlib module which are OS specific needing a compiler. > I would like to create a PAR::Lite module which performs a subset of the > PAR functionality using something like Compress::Zlib::Perl to just handle > using PAR files as an additional resource of CPAN modules. > In this way, users would only need to download and extract PAR::Lite and > dependencies somewhere and any PAR files they want - modify PERL5LIB to be > able to find PAR::Lite e.t.c and PERL5OPT to locate the parfiles needed (or > add 'use PAR::Lite ....' to their scripts') and it they can use the modules > provided by the PAR files. > > I have already been working on a new PAR builder which uses a simple > config file to describe what is wanted in a PAR file and includes the > ability to optionally 'autouse' modules when the PAR file is used and > optionally obfuscate and bleach modules included in the PAR. > This could persuade Third Party companies to provide perl api's to > commercial products via obfuscated and bleached (and possibly encrypted) > PAR files > > Does anyone have any major objection to me using the PAR namespace in this > way and anyone want to help in task ? > > I think that, it I get this working reliably, it could result a new > popularity for perl if newbies can start doing modern sexy things without > the current steep learning curve. > > Thoughts anyone ? > > Cheers > Tony > Miltonkeynes PM > -- Reini Urban http://cpanel.net/ http://www.perl-compiler.org/
