in reply to What is the big deal about PAR?

PAR is being developed rapidly and recently. It's the perfect replacement for commercial bundler solutions (like PerlApp and perl2exe). If you search here at the monastery, you'll find many recent references to PAR.

PAR solves a nice niche of problems. PAR bundles can also be used with Apache::PAR to create the equivalent of JSP units. Nice.

I haven't done a column on PAR... yet. It's in my short to-do list... probably in a few months or so when I fully get my head around all the ways it can be used.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
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Re: •Re: What is the big deal about PAR(rot)?
by Anonymous Monk on Mar 17, 2003 at 01:26 UTC
    It's the perfect replacement for commercial bundler solutions (like PerlApp and perl2exe).

    I vaguely remember reading that Parrot would create executables. Is this true? Would Parrot make any features of PAR obsolete? Where's a Perl 6 internals architect when you need one?

[reply]

      Parrot will produce bytecode, which is really an intermediary form. It will not be directly executable, you will still need an installed version of the Parrot VM to execute it, much like you need a Java VM to execute Java bytecode. This is not to say that something with functionality like PAR will not emerge, but from what I've read so far, it doesn't look like Parrot will include that functionality itself.

      kelan

      Perl6 Grammar Student

[reply]
        While you'll need a parrot install as well as the bytecode file, that's still a darned sight better than what we have now with perl, where it's "Install perl. Install these X modules from CPAN, install this whole dir tree of stuff for my app."

        End deployment should be as simple as possible. A single file deployment is best, but barring that a persistent environment (like the JVM or parrot) that doesn't need to change with a single file for the app's not bad either.

        And I am taking a shot at being able to build a single-file combined interpreter and bytecode app, though it might be large... :)

[reply]
      Parrot will potentially make all of PAR obsolete, but that's OK.

      If things work out right you'll be able to generate single-file standalone executables as well, but that's a separate thing.

[reply]
        Parrot will potentially make all of PAR obsolete

        Quick, someone tell Autrijus Tang!

        Seriously, I wonder of many active Perl projects Parrot will make less relevant. It would really stink to be working your heart out on something (like PAR) and then some other software comes out that makes all your hardwork go down the drain...

[reply]

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