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

As a primarily Win32 Perlmonk, I've used ActiveState's ActivePerl for over a year and a half now, and I'm happy with it. I've run it under both the Win32 build of Apache and IIS. It's decently fast, and the ppm program distributed with it makes it fairly easy to install modules on a Win32 system(a bigger pain than you *nix monks probably realize). However, over the last week or two I've seen IndigoPerl mentioned an inordinately high number of times here on Perlmonks.

I've never used it, so I'd like to hear some tales of woe or success from those Win32-monks here that have. If any of you use IndigoPerl(or refuse/no longer use it for some reason), reply here and state why.

Theseus
-Hoping one day there is some implementation of Perl that comes built into Windows so he could distribute scripts to people without explaining to them what ActivePerl and IndigoPerl are...

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: ActivePerl or IndigoPerl?
by PodMaster (Abbot) on Nov 09, 2002 at 04:44 UTC
Re: ActivePerl or IndigoPerl?
by Beatnik (Parson) on Nov 09, 2002 at 01:43 UTC
    IIRC Indigoperl is ActivePerl stripped down and tweaked for their product. IndigoPerl is an out-of-the-box package that includes Apache, mod_perl and plain perl. It's an easy way to get Apache running on Win32 and I sometimes use it for testing. However, if you want a robust solution, you might be better off grabbing an ActivePerl and configurring Apache yourself.

    Greetz
    Beatnik
    ...Perl is like sex: if you're doing it wrong, there's no fun to it.

      ActiveState does not give Perl to other people to allow them to strip it down. Both ActiveState and IndigoStar get the Perl source code the same way anyone else can and then they each build a Perl distribution from it.

      So your understanding of IndigoPerl is wrong in both the idea that it "is ActivePerl" and in thinking that it is "stripped down". IndigoPerl includes the full Perl distribution plus has some very nice extra features such as coming with Apache, a GUI package manager that works with PPM files from other sources including ActiveState, and a "Perl Console" that can make the documentation easier to navigate.

      It also has a less restrictive license and a less fancy install process which I prefer. ActiveState's install tends to confuse people into thinking that installing Perl requires Registry settings, etc. like most Windows packages (which mostly isn't true) and requires an extra reboot in order to install the MS Installer (for many versions of Windows).

              - tye