in reply to Disappointed with latest Strawberry Perl

I'm curious - did you bring this up with them before posting here? Knowing xdg and Alias, they would be absolutely delighted to get patches and improvement suggestions, particularly when you have links like you do in this post. As for g77, it may be that no-one needed it before you. So, if you were to provide a bundle with the g77 compiler back to Dave and Adam, I think they'd be pretty happy with that.
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?
  • Comment on Re: Disappointed with latest Strawberry Perl

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Re^2: Disappointed with latest Strawberry Perl
by xdg (Monsignor) on Dec 30, 2007 at 06:07 UTC

    g77 was brought up in the past, but it just fell off the todo list. Alias is the Strawberry pumpking right now -- as soon as he gets newly refactored build tools updated on CPAN and documented, it should be easy to patch in g77.

    I believe all the code is in Alias' open repository -- so contributing should be easy: http://svn.ali.as/cpan/trunk/Perl-Dist/

    PPM is more of a philosophical issue, I think. The version of PPM on CPAN is way out of date, I believe. Also, since much of the impetus for Vanilla and Strawberry in the first place was frustrations with the limitations of PPM, it hasn't been a priority for any of the developers. For a recent view, see Alias' post on use.perl.org, ActivePerl PPM repository design flaw goes critical.

    I also want to add that syphilis has provided excellent feedback and suggestions throughout our work on Vanilla and Strawberry. I heartily welcome it and appreciate his continued interest!

    -xdg

    Code written by xdg and posted on PerlMonks is public domain. It is provided as is with no warranties, express or implied, of any kind. Posted code may not have been tested. Use of posted code is at your own risk.

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      The version of PPM on CPAN is way out of date, I believe

      It's certainly well behind in terms of features when compared to the version that ships with ActivePerl. But it's still such a handy thing to have at one's disposal - and it's the first thing I'll be installing on my 5.10 Strawberry Perl.

      Sometimes I'm in the middle of something and I find I need a module - and it's a module that doesn't build easily. The last thing I want to be doing is heading off on a tangent trying to get that module to build, when I could quickly and easily ppm install it - and get back to the actual task at hand. It's in those types of situations that one really appreciates ppm.

      Cheers,
      Rob

      Update: I've just installed ppm using the tarball that randyk provided - then reset BUILDDIR as per his suggestion by running  ppm set build C:\Users\Rob\AppData\Local\Temp

      All works fine.
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      I think you should make a distinction between the current problems of a (popular) PPM repository and the PPM system as is (a distribution system for binary packages). Such systems may be very successful, think of Debian's dpkg/apt system.

      Personally, I find the approach taken by *BSD most appealing: there's a system for binary packages (just called "packages" in FreeBSD) and a system for building from source ("ports" in FreeBSD). Both are connected: a "package" is built using a build file from the "ports". One would use the source path if the binary package is not available (for whatever reason, including legal reasons), or if one needs a specific configuration, or if a newer version exists which is not yet available as a binary package.

      Translating this into perl's world:

      • "package" = ppm
      • "ports" = CPAN.pm
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