PAR/pp vs. PerlApp et al.

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

Hello, fellow monks.

I'm developing some perl code for a non-developer friend and would like to distribute it to him as a standalone executable. I'm aware of how to do this, as it has been discussed before. What I'm wondering is, what's the "best" solution.

I'm currently using PerlApp, which seems to work pretty well, but I've also been hearing a lot about PAR recently. There's also perlcc, perlbin, and perl2exe (and likely more).

I'm using PerlApp since I have a license for it and Komodo, so cost is not an issue. That said, I've never used any of the alternatives. What's your favourite "perl compiler" (an inaccurate term for some of these, but you know what I'm getting at), and why?

Comment on PAR/pp vs. PerlApp et al.

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Re: PAR/pp vs. PerlApp et al. by jdtoronto (Prior) on Nov 22, 2006 at 21:42 UTC
Okay, I'll bite! Since no-one else has. I have used all these products. PAR is possibly the best of the others. I use PerlApp all day every day and release currently five products using it. I also use PerlTray for creating a service tray application. perlbin is by crazyinsomniac who seems to have disappeared in recent times, it was last updated in 2002. perlcc is said to be very experimental, does not provide for binding additional files and has not support for GUI's specifically so that you cannot turn off the console window in Win32. perl2exe is proprietary and generally seems to lag a little behind the current Perl release. But there is a reason I use PerlApp, and it isn't just that I have a Komodo licence either! It handles the binding of additional modules and other files very well. You can easily handle extraction from within your code. It also allows you to create applications that dep[end in part on the Perl installed on teh target machine and you can share the contents of packaged applications to reduce total package size for the installation. The Perl Dev Kit (PDK) has a unified suite of applications for creating exe's, tray app's, services, installers and even COM objects. It has good support and all of the little annoyances I found with PAR are dealt with in PerlApp. Rather than compiler, I use the term "packager". jdtoronto	[reply]
Re^2: PAR/pp vs. PerlApp et al. by geekphilosopher (Friar) on Nov 22, 2006 at 22:03 UTC
Thanks for the thorough reply! It looks like PerlApp is a pretty good choice. I've never gone through official ActiveState support, but I know a lot of the guys personally so I'm sure I can get a bit of help if I run into trouble :)	[reply]
Re^3: PAR/pp vs. PerlApp et al. by Marza (Vicar) on Nov 23, 2006 at 05:08 UTC
I would be surprised if you had to call support. I have had next to no problems with perlapp. The problems I did have were answered by the website....	[reply]
Re^2: PAR/pp vs. PerlApp et al. by dottom (Initiate) on Jan 20, 2007 at 07:38 UTC
One thing I like about perl2exe is the standalone exe size is half that generated by PerlApp (not using -tiny option either which requires a DLL). I do like the service packaging with PerlApp a lot. With perl2exe you have to use SRVANY which is just a workaround.	[reply]