You import that as well - and SVN can give you a new version from the author, with your custom code ...

You have obviously not used SVN's merging tools. While very nice when they work, they often don't work, requiring a lot of hand-merging. Frankly, it's much better just to use the CPAN shell to install the version you want to install. Most of the time, installing the latest and greatest will be good enough.

I was thinking along the lines of having an older machine with OS that client has (FreeBSD or Linux in 99.99% cases) to compile the code myself ...

Assuming you're running the same Perl version. 5.6 and 5.8 are NOT XS-compatible. This means that something compiled against 5.6 will NOT run with 5.8 and vice-versa. 5.10 is rumored to be XS-incompatible with 5.8. The solution you're looking for is a list of prerequisites that you (or the client) install on the client machine. Period. Anything else is asking for more trouble than you want to deal with.

My criteria for good software:
  1. Does it work?
  2. Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?

In reply to Re^3: Professional development with Perl - how it's done? by dragonchild
in thread Professional development with Perl - how it's done? by techcode

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