Cross Compiling Perl Modules

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

At work we are developing a database driven web site for a client.
It's getting near done so the install is becoming more and more considered.
We are developing the project in house on linux/apache with straight CGI no mod_perl as the client cannot use it.
It will be deployed on Novell with netscape enterprise web server.
Is there any way to build the modules ourselves and ftp them over instead of pulling teeth with our client's IS department?
We have one project that has been waiting 6 months for install for the same client.
But we do not have a novell box. We need DBI DBD::Oracle CGI CGI::Cookie Net::SMTP.
We already plan to upload HTML::Template and Crypt::UnixCrypt which we known are solid perl.
Excuse me if I left some solid perl modules on the must be compiled list .... I haven't checked them all yet.

Flymolo
"Sometimes it's hard to tell the dancer from the dance."-Corwin in CoC

Comment on Cross Compiling Perl Modules

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Re: Cross Compiling Perl Modules by Fastolfe (Vicar) on Jan 10, 2001 at 22:33 UTC
The big problem I see is going to be with DBD::Oracle. I'm not sure how it works with non-Unix installations, but when I've had to install it, it uses the native, local copies of the Oracle client libraries. If you can't build DBD::Oracle on your development machine in such a way that the Oracle client libraries are the same on the production machine, I don't think this is going to work. The other modules don't (to my knowledge) require much in the way of extra-Perl code/libraries. You might have the most luck using CPAN and setting yourself up with a bundle file, and just have the IS people use CPAN to install that bundle. Else, just archive up the whole Perl lib directory that you're using for this project and distribute it en masse (assuming nothing in there is proprietary or is licensed in such a way as to disallow it). Without access to a Novell system, though, I'm wondering if DBD::Oracle might be the difficult piece to get installed right.	[reply]
Re: Cross Compiling Perl Modules by runrig (Abbot) on Jan 10, 2001 at 21:58 UTC
Its never recommended, but its always possible. If you've got the same hardware and OS then its probably OK. We had HP's but the production box did not have an HP compilier license, so we built modules (the ones needing compiling) on the development box, then copied stuff to production. Sure, we maybe we could have installed gcc on both boxes, but let's not go there...	[reply]
Re: Cross Compiling Perl Modules by clemburg (Curate) on Jan 11, 2001 at 14:19 UTC
Is there any way for you to get remote shell access to their server? Since you seem to have ftp access to their production directories, they might give it to you. Then you could work remotely. I have to say that I doubt that you can just copy over something like DBD::Oracle. And the CPAN module won't work for that, too. Maybe you can follow up on a CPAN module build attempt - patch the files in the build directory with the right values for environment variables etc. with a simple perl script, and rerun the CPAN module command. Christian Lemburg Brainbench MVP for Perl http://www.brainbench.com	[reply]