in reply to Large Windows network: One 32 bit perl or 32 and 64 bit perls?

Is it worth the admin hassle of having all the perls locally installed?
That depends on how you've set up things. I'm sure Windows will have equivalents for tools like Puppet, Cfengine and other management software. Assuming you have a tool like that, installing things locally isn't much of a hassle.

Of course, you should be able to install both perl32 and perl64 on the central server, and make it that 32-bit machines see the 32-bit perl, and 64-bit machines see the 64-bit perl.

But I would assume that this issue has already been solved in your organization. Surely, perl isn't the first piece of software you encounter that exists in both 32-bit and 64-bit variants? What have you done for other such software?

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Re^2: Large Windows network: One 32 bit perl or 32 and 64 bit perls?
by Boldra (Curate) on Jan 08, 2010 at 11:33 UTC
    Hi JavaFan, thanks for your answer.

    We do have deployment software, I just don't trust it much :) I don't know if there's a policy on 64 bit software, but the pattern tends to be, "if the 64 bit version offers important advantages, we install it, otherwise not". Eg databases or large application software is almost always matched to the hardware, but we also have a suite of about 50 32 bit command-line tools which are available and used on all machines.

    So I guess you've helped me refine part of my question to: "are there important advantages in installing 64 bit perl on 64 bit windows?" I have not yet come across any.



    - Boldra
[reply]
      I think you answered your own question: do you use perl for large applications, or just for command line tools?

      Reasons to use 64 bits: larger memory use, linking 64-bit libraries, 64-bit integers (those can be mimiced on 32-bit perls as well), large file support (requires 64-bit integers), long doubles (perhaps).

      Note that you may not be able to build a 32-bit perl on a 64-bit platform.

      BTW, you did read the INSTALL file, didn't you?

[reply]
        Not sure which file you mean. Do you have a link?


        - Boldra
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