For reasons of corporate policy I'm forced to have Windows NT as my desktop system. Thankfully I know have some *nix web servers, for production, but not yet as my "dev area".

For years I have used ActiveState Perl on my NT boxen, and it has worked fine, most of the time. Like others I have problems now and then, and I realy know how people feel when AS Perl goes belly up - For users of ActiveState Perl, this may someday save you some grief!, as it does now and then.

However as I don't have MS's Visual C, I am forced to download binaries via PPM after someone else has compiled them for me. If I can't find them, I can't use them.

There are several threds on the topic of PPM and it's repositories, and the truth is that there isn't a sigle CPAN style binary repositor yet for AS Perl - see CrazyPPM repository, interested? for example.

If the module doesn't require compilation, I can get it off CPAN, and using nmake I can install it most of the time without problems.

Over the years I've also grown to rely on the Cygwin "layer" on my NT box. It provides all those little tools that Microsoft forgot to include, like ssh, a decent shell, grep, gcc, etc. etc. Of late I've even got Cygwin/XFree86 up and running - most useful.

I've known that you can install Cygwin Perl on NT for some time, and even Apache, but never used it, as AS Perl is the default Perl on NT, it's what the books all talk about, and everyone assumes you have if you say "NT - Perl".

I'm also aware of both IndigoPerl and the SiePerl, but I already have Cygwin installed, and don't see any benefit from my perspective in these binary distributions over AS Perl.

I know that Cygwin is still officially beta code, and I know that the emulation layer does slow software down - Apache runs 30% slower apparently. Given a modern box, with plenty of RAM, that's not a prodcution server, I work mostly with CGI/HTML/XML and not Tk, my questions are:

As ever, humble thanks in advance.

In reply to Has anyone compared Cygwin Perl to AS Perl? by ajt

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