Re^2: Perl 64-bit versions

Good insight, having never tried that on Linux, I can't comment, but on Windows (based on experience) it isn't perfect.

The killer is the file associations (assoc) which tie the .pl extension to a specific executable. So no matter what your system PATH environment variable is, you may not be executing with the Perl version you think you are unless you're calling your scripts with 'perl.exe <scriptname>' specifically.

I've seen other options talked about on this site (Perlbrew for one, IIRC) but I don't know about the Windows support.

I do have Strawberry 5.14.x (can't remember) installed on a Windows VM on my current Windows box, but it takes so bloody long to launch that I rarely ever use it unless I'm looking to release something into the wild (CPAN) and want to validate on different versions (in which case I also have an Ubuntu VM with Perl 5.10.x for limited *nix testing). So there is another multiple-version approach, albeit not the most efficient

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Re^3: Perl 64-bit versions by Eliya (Vicar) on Mar 13, 2012 at 14:26 UTC
The killer is the file associations (assoc) which tie the .pl extension to a specific executable. Yes, but what about associating .pl with the new version (i.e. make it the default), and re-associating things back in case you should encounter problems. I'm only an occasional Windows user, but this seems rather straightforward to me — at least I can't remember to have ever had any problems with multiple Perl versions on Windows. And precompiled Windows Perl installations have "always" been relocatable to an arbitrary top-level directory (at least the ActiveState versions), while that feature has not been available on Unix before Perl 5.10.	[reply]

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Re^3: Perl 64-bit versions
by Eliya (Vicar) on Mar 13, 2012 at 14:26 UTC

The killer is the file associations (assoc) which tie the .pl extension to a specific executable.

Yes, but what about associating .pl with the new version (i.e. make it the default), and re-associating things back in case you should encounter problems.

I'm only an occasional Windows user, but this seems rather straightforward to me — at least I can't remember to have ever had any problems with multiple Perl versions on Windows. And precompiled Windows Perl installations have "always" been relocatable to an arbitrary top-level directory (at least the ActiveState versions), while that feature has not been available on Unix before Perl 5.10.

[reply]