As soon as you install a second program, the time spent installing Perl initially becomes a better investment.

It's the same case as Java. If it weren't installed by default with web browsers, people would have to go to some trouble to install appropriate JVMs. (I've gone through that with the official Sun JVM on Windows, and it's not as easy as just clicking 'OK' once or twice.)

Java does something right, sorta, with JAR files bundling up all of the class files (and additional libraries).

Of course, some enterprising hacker might use the CPAN module to create a nice bundler with Archive::Tar and maybe MD5 signatures. Windows folks will have to get by with PPM or whatever the Indigo folks provide. I'd like to see that, personally.

The bottom line is, if you're going to give people more than one Perl program to run, the executable method isn't as nice anymore. (And once you've talked people into running one Perl program, they'll want another.)

Of course, some enterprising hacker might use the CPAN module to create a nice bundler with Archive::Tar and maybe MD5 signatures.

And although it took 18 months after this post, PAR is basically that, usable now.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

This may be true, but Perl isn't about their only being one true path. In the spirit of TIMTOWTDI having more then one option on how to distribute is fine.

I'd like to make programs I've written available on my company's intraweb to run on their desktops. No way to install on all of them. In the past I've wondered about writing a game server and client in Perl, but realized that I did not have an executable to distribute.

Heck, I administer a horde of AIX (IBM's Unix) boxen that come with Perl as part of the standard distribution, but a C compiler license is extra so I have to fill out investment paperwork if I want to include certain modules that require compilation.

I love Perl because of it's flexibility. I just wish that the same flexibility also existed on the choice of how to execute.


...you might be eaten by a grue...