BrotherBrett has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hello,
I am an original author and maintainer of a large code base of Perl scripts used on several Unix platforms with in our shop. I also maintain a sizable codebase of Visual Basic applications for our Windows workstations.

My superviser is considering the ubiquitous "Should we migrate our code to the .NET framework" question.

I have just become aware of ActiveState's implementation of Perl as a .NET language. I would love to only have to stay polished on one language, and I would rather that language be Perl. However, I don't want to recommend Buying ActiveState Perl for .NET if there are serious limitations. Has anybody here used this product?

Thank you!

-Brett

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: ActiveState Perl for .NET
by Elian (Parson) on Apr 19, 2002 at 15:13 UTC
    ActiveState's Perl for .NET is an unmanaged component, if that makes any difference to you. It doesn't so much turn perl in to .NET code as embed a perl interpreter in your .NET app and just pass off the perl code to it.

    Actually translating perl to .NET is... an interesting task. (Having looked at it for Parrot) It's certainly possible, but it'll either be slow or require crippling some of the interesting parts of perl.

[reply]
      Whats an unmanaged component?

      Yves / DeMerphq
      ---
      Writing a good benchmark isnt as easy as it might look.

[reply]
        Basically something that's not .NET code. There are security implications (Unmanaged code can be insecure, as it bypasses most of .NET's security features) and potential stability issues.

        Think of it as XS for .NET--while you can do anything you want and interface to some external library or other, there's nothing to stop the code from stomping on the world. It also means you'll need the perl component on any machine executing your perl code in the .NET environment, though I think .NET's packaging scheme takes care of fetching that as need be. (I'm not 100% sure of that, thoug)

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Re: ActiveState Perl for .NET
by demerphq (Chancellor) on Apr 19, 2002 at 14:51 UTC
    Well, I personally cant say either way. However my colleague did test it out and was happy enough that he managed to convince the company to buy four development seats. (Im waiting for the licences to come through as we speak.)

    OTOH, a thought regarding .NET and VB. VB.NET is completely different to VB6. So dont uninstall if you want to keep using your old codebase.

    OTOH (yeah, i have three!) the .NET IDE is pretty nice looking...

    Yves / DeMerphq
    ---
    Writing a good benchmark isnt as easy as it might look.

[reply]
Re: ActiveState Perl for .NET
by Rex(Wrecks) (Curate) on Apr 19, 2002 at 16:24 UTC
    I can't comment on the specific question, however I do use several other ActiveState products, and most of them are very stable and solid! They also have a very good support group that is quite helpful.

    I realize this is not an answer directly, however, when evaluating tools it is nice to get references on the company building these tools. ActiveState has done quite well for what I have used them for, I give them a ++ :)

    "Nothing is sure but death and taxes" I say combine the two and its death to all taxes!
[reply]

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