Microperl dosn't do it all, and seems to have some small peculiarities compared to full perl. Notably, I needed to use `ls` and grep to simulate a glob or readdir.

This is because functions which need to be implemented in a system-specific manner are not incorporated into the microperl binary. This "feature" is mentioned in the Perl Journal article by Simon Cozens here.

As for the size of the compiled microperl binary, there is much room for hacking. For instance the supplied Makefile.micro incorporates no optimisation flags in the compile process - With the additional of a -O3 optimisation flag, a stripped microperl binary can be made as small as 705Kb. Building against a C library optimised for embedded programming may shrink this binary further.

However as Jarkko states, it is an experimental production and if you find problems with your build - Don't report them, fix them :-)

 

Update - Following prompting by PodMaster, I compressed the stripped microperl binary which had been built with the -O3 optimisation flag with UPX - The resultant binary was 308Kb in size.


kathmandu:/home/build/perl-5.8.0# upx -9 microperl -omicroperl.upx
                     Ultimate Packer for eXecutables
            Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001
UPX 1.20         Markus F.X.J. Oberhumer & Laszlo Molnar        May 23
+rd 2001

        File size         Ratio      Format      Name
   --------------------   ------   -----------   -----------
    721956 ->    315924   43.75%    linux/386    microperl.upx

Packed 1 file.

[download]

 

perl -le 'print+unpack("N",pack("B32","00000000000000000000001000011011"))'

In reply to Re: bootstrapping with microperl by rob_au
in thread bootstrapping with microperl by zentara

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