I should perhaps stress that I am thinking of InstallShield-like type of delivery.

I've always wondered this: What's to stop a Perl developer from wrapping his application in an InstallShield-like installation program? Modules are just additional required files (a la DLL's and the like). I'm not 100% sure how this works, but if you can install stuff in a directory of the user's choosing plus $WINDOWS, why can't you extend that and install things into $PERL_LIB/site_perl (or however you need to go about determining that destination)?

If you're installing a module once on a single machine, it pays to use stuff like CPAN or PPM. Nevermind that it seems to be buggy for you (I've never had problems). If there's a problem with the tool, report it and/or help to get it fixed.

If you're going from there and mass-distributing an application between different systems, just extend your process to include the modules that your application needs. Go from this: 

c:\myapp\myapp.pl
c:\myapp\myapp.conf
c:\myapp\MyModule.pm

[download]
to this: 
c:\myapp\myapp.pl
c:\myapp\myapp.conf
c:\myapp\MyModule.pm
$PERL\lib\site_perl\Some\Module.pm
$PERL\lib\site_perl\Another\Module.pm

[download]
Or just 'use lib' in your code, and install Some::Module and Another::Module straight into c:\myapp\!

I really don't understand what the big deal is. If you're already going to have to invent a mechanism to mass-distribute your Perl application, why can't you just take it a trivial step further and include the modules in that? Am I missing something?

It is my opinion that people just don't want to even think about figuring out how to do this extra step, so they invent a "no non-core Perl modules" restriction in their development. It just doesn't make any sense to me. What we need is someone with experience with some of the various installation program toolkits that can tell us how to bundle Perl modules with it in a reliable way (either placing them straight away in the Perl's lib directory (maybe watching for versioning even), or just a simple installation with bundled modules placed in the application's directory).

In reply to Extend known installation processes to include modules by Fastolfe
in thread Modules or lack thereof by Blue

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