Genuine Perl distrib with web servers

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

Hi Monks,

As (I suppose) some of you, I'm used carrying an usb key from home to work and back with all my perl scripts and miscellaneous docs (aka. an electronic attaché-case. ). Moreover, I use it for demos purpose, brain extension (e-books), and sensible admin tools (out of subject: the usb key I've found totally fits my needs being literally a swiss knife...).

Since the most of executable things on my key are perl scripts aiming Win32 systems (nobody's perfect), I embedded also an ActiveState distrib to enable nomad running.

And my problem is now that I want(require?) to be able to have running a tiny web server handling cgi requests on my usb key with features such as:

Free!
Perl ditribution independent (5.6.1 compatible).
Able to run on mid-sized Win32 boxes.
Easily configurable.
Able to run cgi perl scripts.

Here's the results of my searchs (not all have been tested):

Apache + mod _perl

The best for compatibility, but the storage overhead is too much for my poor less-sized key. Following links may give you hints:

DeveloperSide.NET: Windows 2000/XP building and configuration of apache2 and related.
All-in-one package: binary version of perl-5.8 (compatible with ActivePerl 8xx), together with Apache 2.0 and mod_perl 2.0

Pure perl web services

Only several things more or less meeting requirements:

HTTPi: Designed for Unix, doing forks.
p5httpd: Tiny HTTP server written in perl in order to run perl CGI scripts on EPOC machines. Run smoothly even if configuration is to be made directly in the code. No extra packages required. Spartiatic, but a must.
JellyBean: From chromatic. Aimed to be able to run Everything servers. Distributed as a framework, it needs several extra CPAN packages in order to run. Relies on HTTP::Daemon.
PerlWebServer: Promising small server. Development seems to have stopped for a log time.

I would be glad having feedback on these servers (or some others). Thanks.

Update: modified title as requested, corrected typo.

____
HTH, Dominique
My two favorites:
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you will see every problem as a nail. --Abraham Maslow
Bien faire, et le faire savoir...

Comment on Genuine Perl distrib with web servers

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Re: Genuine Perl distrib with web services by borisz (Canon) on Jul 05, 2004 at 11:46 UTC
use `HTTP::Daemon`. Boris	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Genuine Perl distrib with web services by jdtoronto (Prior) on Jul 05, 2004 at 13:21 UTC
You could try Indigo Perl which has Apache and PHP as well as Perl, it is supposed to be 'unzip and run' - I tried it a year or so back and it worked okay. http://www.indigostar.com/indigoperl.htm jdtoronto	[reply]
Re: Genuine Perl distrib with web services by Arunbear (Prior) on Jul 05, 2004 at 13:15 UTC
Take a look at Xitami. Its small, free and can run cgi scripts.	[reply]
Re^2: Genuine Perl distrib with web services by bibo (Pilgrim) on Jul 06, 2004 at 03:58 UTC
Concur. I have used Xitami and found it very adequate for a lean,mean webserver. My experience with it is (sadly)limited to win32. --bibo	[reply]
Re: Genuine Perl distrib with web servers by neniro (Priest) on Jul 05, 2004 at 17:28 UTC
You could alternatively try to put a small (bootable) linux-distribution (knoppix?) to the usb-stick. Anyone tried this before?	[reply]
Re^2: Genuine Perl distrib with web servers by Joost (Canon) on Jul 06, 2004 at 08:46 UTC
I read an article on that a couple of months ago (in the Dutch C't magazine) and it appears to work fine, except for the fact that most BIOSes don't support booting from USB yet, and AFAIK there is no way to boot linux from a running windows system (loadlin.exe only runs in one of the "startup" DOS modes or something - I'm not an wintel expert) "What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"	[reply]
Re: Genuine Perl distrib with web servers by chromatic (Archbishop) on Jul 05, 2004 at 23:36 UTC
The goal of Jellybean isn't necessarily to run Everything. That'd be nice, but it'll take more cleanup (on the Everything side) to make it practical. The goal is to have a small, Perl-extensible server for multiple protocols. I've just written a module to run Maypole applications through Jellybean, not mod_perl, so it may be worth considering.	[reply]