PAR packaging woes

thomas11 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi monks, I'm trying to package up a Perl script --- Module::ScanDeps' own scandeps.pl --- along with its dependencies, so I can easily run it on another machine that lacks these dependencies.

Using PAR, there are two options: create a Perl script, or create a stand-alone executable.

Trying to create a Perl script with

pp -P -B -o scandeps.par.pl `which scandeps.pl`

I get

$ perl ~/scandeps.par.pl 7tmr_stats_updater.pl 
No such file or directory at /work/software/perlbrew/perls/current/bin/par.pl line 855.

I had expected a standalone script to not depend on par.pl, but maybe I misunderstood. Trying to create a stand-alone executable with

pp -o scandeps `which scandeps.pl`

fails because the target machine's glibc is older than the one on the build machine, so the perl that pp embeds cannot run.

Is there a way I can package scandeps.pl with all its (Perl) dependencies, and run the resulting bundle with the target machine's perl?

Comment on PAR packaging woes

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Re: PAR packaging woes by Anonymous Monk on Nov 02, 2010 at 18:04 UTC
`No such file or directory at /work/software/perlbrew/perls/current/bin +/par.pl line 855.` [download] I had expected a standalone script to not depend on par.pl I don't think that error message is telling you that `par.pl` itself is missing, but rather that something which `par.pl` is trying to do in line 855 is causing a "no such file or directory" error. Perhaps taking a look at that line will give you a clue what's going wrong?	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: PAR packaging woes by thomas11 (Novice) on Nov 03, 2010 at 08:27 UTC
Thanks! Gotta learn to actually read the error messages... The failing line is an "eval { require Carp::Heavy }". This goes away when not including the core with -B. Unfortunately, now I get "Can't locate PAR/Heavy.pm". Even explicitly including the module using -M, as in pp -P -M PAR::Heavy -o scandeps.par.pl `which scandeps.pl` doesn't work, still the same error. I verified that the module gets included, but it isn't found at runtime.	[reply]
Re: PAR packaging woes by Anonymous Monk on Nov 02, 2010 at 19:33 UTC
Is there a way I can package scandeps.pl with all its (Perl) dependencies, and run the resulting bundle with the target machine's perl? Yeah, don't pack the core for starters	[reply]
Re: PAR packaging woes by lamprecht (Friar) on Nov 03, 2010 at 17:11 UTC
Hi, I doubt, that your approach will give you the desired results: Even if you are successful packaging `scandeps.pl` using `pp`, it will pull in a lot more modules than actually needed. The packed modules will mask the ones actually present on the system you try to examine, therefore you can't rely on version numbers and dependencies of these modules. `Module::ScanDeps` has only core dependencies from perl 5.10 on and only few if you need to run it on 5.8. see http://deps.cpantesters.org/?module=Module%3A%3AScanDeps&perl=5.12.1&os=any+OS	[reply] [d/l] [select]