Perl projects for beginners
Gabor Szabo
in a blog post http://szabgab.com/blog/2009/09/1251862435.html
I recently asked how to make a project beginner friendly.
The best answer I got was to ask the beginners. Clever :-)
So let me ask it on this list.
As I think think the best way to learn Perl is tor practice a lot
and the best place to practice is an open source project I wonder
how can open source project become more beginner friendly?
Many projects assume a lot of background already that beginners
might not yet have. What things would beginners need in order to
get involved in a project?
regards
Gabor
http://szabgab.com/blog.html
Philip Potter
I'm not sure I understand you correctly. Is the purpose of the project
to educate newbies, or to produce something of good quality? I feel
these are conflicting objectives.
Nevertheless, in order to get involved with an open source project,
you need to learn a lot about things external to the Perl language
itself: about testing, design, division of labour, source code
management systems, frequent updates, and so on. I would guess you
need to make all of this easy for the newbie (and easy to *get right*)
in order to get them involved. To get newbies from a lot of different
backgrounds and OSes all set up with SVN or git or whatever won't be
easy. To further get them educated about the importance of branches
and tags and suchlike rather than just folding all changes directly
into the trunk will be worse.
I guess the question then becomes: what level of beginner are you
talking about? They should surely already be familiar with the
language, up to and including packages, modules, OO principles, CPAN,
and so on. They probably also need to be familiar with source
management systems and writing and running tests at the point when
they make their first real contribution to a project. At this point,
I'm not sure they can still be described as beginners...
Phil
--
"I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my
telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out
how to use my telephone."
--Bjarne Stroustrup
Raymond Wan
Hi Gabor,
Gabor Szabo wrote:
> As I think think the best way to learn Perl is tor practice a lot
> and the best place to practice is an open source project I wonder
> how can open source project become more beginner friendly?
Follow-up to Philip's message...but I didn't reply to his post since I
wanted to highlight your comment here.
The best place to learn Perl [or "anything" for that matter] is to
practice a lot. Agreed. "Best place to practice is an open source
project" -- oh...I'm not so sure that is true. Let's remove the phrase
"open source"...even so, I'm not so sure that a project [which
presumably has more than one person working on it] is the best way to
learn Perl as you end up with the issues that Philip mentioned...issues
with software engineering which will end up distracting people.
I think some (of course, not all) universities would teach a language or
programming first by getting students to work alone. And then a year or
two later, put them into groups and then that's when the teachers go
nuts. :-)
There are a lot of beginner books (not just Perl) out there which
sometimes have "Practice problems" at the end of the chapter. I'm sure
you could start with those if you want newbies to start with
something... Of course, a more Perl-oriented book would be ideal.
Ray
Erez Schatz
2009/9/7 Gabor Szabo <sza...@gmail.com>:
> Hi,
>
> Many projects assume a lot of background already that beginners
> might not yet have. What things would beginners need in order to
> get involved in a project?
I think it all boils down to clear, simple guides on the following matters:
one, how to do: The developer usually access the home page, looks
around for a while until they find the "developers" link, which
usually leads to the source-control server, which shows the code. This
is usually first point of departure.
Never assume people know how to use svn, git, etc. Show, not tell. A
graphic, detailed guide will do wonders ("for Windows, click here to
download and install tortoisesvn, then do a, b, c, to create a
repository, etc. etc. for Linux, do this and that).
two, what to do: The developer got the source code, and managed to run
the application. Now what? This is second point of departure.
Give a clear and simple guide on what you need, ("we are looking for
expanding the UI, which is defined on APP::GUI... We look for
translators, here's what you need to do..."). Project goals are good,
but there's a lot of space between "We want to create an application
that does X" and "we need the web-code cleaned up". A simple tutorial
would do wonders, show how a bug was identified, tracked down, fixed
and submitted.
three, who to ask: goes without saying, but most times the people who
frequent #yourApp, mail.yourapp.com, and wiki.yourapp.net tend to
assume a given level ("you can get the latest build from CPAN, then do
perldoc yourApp, you need to merge your diff with the trunk...")
four, decide if you really want to make a project "beginner-friendly"
and accepting what this entitles:
Are you willing to sacrifice a lot of time better spent on
development, bug-fixing, release readying etc. on writing long,
elaborate manuals, tutorials, guides? Are you willing to hold user
hands while you explain the fine arts of subjects like moduls, tests,
etc.? Do you look for newcomers to Perl, or to programming at large?
Are you sure you want to be rummaging through patches that need more
work before they can even be considered?
The biggest issue, is not to make the project beginner-friendly, is
what to do once those beginners start arriving.
--
Erez
"The government forgets that George Orwell's 1984 was a warning, and
not a blueprint"
http://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/ -- http://www.whyweprotest.org/
Matt Young
So far, in my quest to learn perl, it's been pretty easy to learn how
to program basic applications, that perform simple functions using
modules from CPAN.
I think beginners would greatly benefit from learning how to write
their OWN perl module to aid in performing a task. This would probably
teach them a lot of what it would be like working on an actual
project, while giving the beginner in actually using perl, and not
perl modules. I know that I would probably greatly benefit from this,
as my only experience with perl so far has been downloading cpan
modules, and reading the synopsis in the documentation.
I'd like to get involved in projects, but it's really complicated to
get started. I could never get passed the 'get the sourcecode' step,
because I'd have to grab it from version control and I just don't know
how to do that at all - especially on windows where there is sometimes
a large lack of guidance. Even comitting to a module would be a
difficult thing because I have no idea how all of this CPAN module
testing works, or how to write tests for my own code.
Beginners should learn about creating modules, and then learn how to
contribute to other people's modules. I've just 'finished' the
Learning Perl book, and I'm going to try to get my hands on
intermediate perl sometime soon.
> --
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-...@perl.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: beginne...@perl.org
> http://learn.perl.org/
>
>
>
--
-Matthew
Tim Bowden
> Hi Gabor,
>
>
> Gabor Szabo wrote:
> > As I think think the best way to learn Perl is tor practice a lot
> > and the best place to practice is an open source project I wonder
> > how can open source project become more beginner friendly?
>
>
> Follow-up to Philip's message...but I didn't reply to his post since I
> wanted to highlight your comment here.
>
> The best place to learn Perl [or "anything" for that matter] is to
> practice a lot. Agreed. "Best place to practice is an open source
> project" -- oh...I'm not so sure that is true. Let's remove the phrase
> "open source"...even so, I'm not so sure that a project [which
> presumably has more than one person working on it] is the best way to
> learn Perl as you end up with the issues that Philip mentioned...issues
> with software engineering which will end up distracting people.
>
I'd agree with this. Contributing to a project is well above a
beginners level, unless you're already an accomplished programmer and
looking to pick up Perl as a new skill (in which case your life as a
'Perl beginner' is probably going to be reasonably short). Working on
someone else's code is *difficult* when your a newbie. One of the
'skills' of a newbie is to deliberately write simplistic code with the
idea of building up one piece at a time. That's the sort of code you
*don't* want to put out in public. For example, if your first
introduction to anonymous hash references is someone else's uber smart
nested data structure, you're probably going to be hosed.
Add the complications involved with project management issues (svn...,
code review practices, code standards...) and imho there's just too much
to learn for someone below intermediate coding skills (whatever
intermediate might mean). For my part I wouldn't think of joining a
project until I was comfortable with CPAN, creating modules, debugging
and probably a few other skills. Once there however, definitely an open
source project is a bloody good way to go. I'm not sure if joining an
existing project (with all the complexities involved) is better or worse
than scratching a little itch of your own in public for a first effort
though. I guess that's probably very much an individual thing. Maybe
projects that have 'plugin' type architectures are easier for
intermediate coders to get started on (though that doesn't rule out
complex multiple levels of abstractions which can do in a newbies head).
Maybe a more visible tutorial to 'scratching your first public itch with
Perl' type doc (and it might already be there; I've not looked).
> I think some (of course, not all) universities would teach a language or
> programming first by getting students to work alone. And then a year or
> two later, put them into groups and then that's when the teachers go
> nuts. :-)
I wonder if it's not time well spent to have students doing
git/svn/whatever right from the start (regardless of language)? Just to
get students used to the idea at a very simple level. After all, open
source or not, code repos are something everyone has to get used to at
some point.
>
> There are a lot of beginner books (not just Perl) out there which
> sometimes have "Practice problems" at the end of the chapter. I'm sure
> you could start with those if you want newbies to start with
> something... Of course, a more Perl-oriented book would be ideal.
>
> Ray
I find I tend to skip over (or more likely quickly skim) the exercises
at the end of chapters. Yes, I know they are great at reinforcing the
material covered, but I get sidetracked by scratching my own itch.
Those bits I need I tend to write my own 'exercises' till I understand
the feature in question. Still, I suppose they do help some people.
Again, each to their own.
I'm wondering if your really targeting newbies, or rather intermediates
that are 'newbies to a project'? I don't think they're the same.
Regards,
Tim Bowden
Tim Bowden
> Accidentally sent to Gabor, rather to the list:
>
> 2009/9/7 Gabor Szabo <sza...@gmail.com>:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Many projects assume a lot of background already that beginners
> > might not yet have. What things would beginners need in order to
> > get involved in a project?
>
> I think it all boils down to clear, simple guides on the following
> matters:
>
> one, how to do: The developer usually access the home page, looks
> around for a while until they find the "developers" link, which
> usually leads to the source-control server, which shows the code. This
> is usually first point of departure.
>
> Never assume people know how to use svn, git, etc. Show, not tell. A
> graphic, detailed guide will do wonders ("for Windows, click here to
> download and install tortoisesvn, then do a, b, c, to create a
> repository, etc. etc. for Linux, do this and that).
Completely out of left field: Would having a virtual VMware machine
with everything 'set up already' help newbies get involved? For a lot
of projects where most of the devs work on linux machines (is this a
fair claim?), getting set up and translating *nix centric instructions
from well meaning devs to windows equivalents can perhaps be a bit of a
stumbling block for those (still?) wedded to Windows. Running a
'virtual linux dev box' may well be an easy way to get newbies going in
a known environment (easing the support load on project devs(?) and
providing an easy intro to linux if needed). It's horribly inefficient
in terms of 'count the bytes', but if it creates a lower friction path
to participation it may be worth considering. In my past experience
customised live CD's go down well with those new to open source because
much of the 'daunting' work or decisions have already been sorted.
All true imho & limited experience.
How many projects try and take advantage of GSOC? It's a big
undertaking for a project, but I don't think making a project newbie
friendly is any less of an undertaking.
Regards,
Tim Bowden
Goke Aruna
I suggest a newbie should flag himself as such and I am a completely
newbie and am ready to work with anyone on a new project.
I guess looking at an application written in another language and
converting it to perl version of it worked for me.
begginers need well experienced perl mentor to lead this for the
sometimes before beginners can get it right especially for non
computer scientist.
Goke
On 9/7/09, fudmer rieley <southo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> --- On Mon, 9/7/09, fudmer rieley <southo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> From: fudmer rieley <southo...@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: Perl projects for beginners
> To: "Raymond Wan" <r....@aist.go.jp>
> Date: Monday, September 7, 2009, 6:57 AM
>
> The need is for a problem book with real explained answers
> [producing such a problem book would be a massive undertaking].
> Such a questions and answers server project would advance programming, and
> it
> would probably extend the need for books of all types of computer knowledge.
> the idea would advance programmer knowledge base.
> Each section should be clearly identified, and should outline the intention
> of each question, the design of the question basis and assumptions, the
> prerequisite knowledge required to answer it, and tutorial skills to get
> those deficient, the type of machines the answers given will run on, and the
> ways to study the concepts being tested by varying the question.
>
> Instructional design is what is needed. Top down is too slow, and covers
> too much of what people already know
> about. I need more knowledge in comma usage, but you need more in sentence
> construction. Why should we both study the weakness of the other?
>
> The questions should also state whether the solution is machine specific,
> language specific, or cross modal and its intentions, design, construction
> and intended outcomes. The University of Illinois tutor system called Plato
> had it worked out pretty well, but the colleges refused to use it, because
> it took away from the need for class and cost the book vendors and colleges
> revenues.
>
> Teaching like this needs to become open source and be available for no
> charge and it needs to be created by those who are still learning. The
> knowledge involved in Instructional design is a Phd in and of its self.
>
> But with proper ID, every person who learns off the Q&A server, could while
> they are learning programming, become highly aware and maybe even proficient
> in Instructional
> Design. The profession is not short on knowledge, it is short on
> distributing that knowledge.
>
> Teaching pilots to fly is the responsibility of every pilot in the sky.
> Some pilots have lots of experiences and knowledge, and some have nearly
> none. If "learners" are to become skilled, they need the help of the already
> skilled. Yet not one skilled pilot, knows it all. Weather is the greatest
> teacher, since weather changes the environment at will and without notice.
> Learning to fly must be done over and over again. Each new weather and
> each different aircraft environment makes a novice of the skilled and a
> Phd of the survivor.
>
>
> Same with programming, its a teach the teacher and learn from the student
> kind of profession. What is lacking is the interactive Q&A server that
> brings to novice to the skilled and makes instructional designers of the
> entire profession.
>
> I would really
> like to work on a project like that if there were some reasonable funding.
>
>
> --- On Mon, 9/7/09, Raymond Wan <r....@aist.go.jp> wrote:
>
> From: Raymond Wan <r....@aist.go.jp>
> Subject: Re: Perl projects for beginners
> To: "Gabor Szabo" <sza...@gmail.com>
> Cc: begi...@perl.org
> Date: Monday, September 7, 2009, 5:12 AM
>
>
> Hi Gabor,
>
>
> Gabor Szabo wrote:
>> As I think think the best way to learn Perl is tor practice a lot
>> and the best place to practice is an open source project I wonder
>> how can open source project become more beginner friendly?
>
>
> Follow-up to Philip's message...but I didn't reply to his post since I
> wanted to highlight your comment here.
>
> The best place to learn Perl [or "anything" for that matter] is to practice
> a lot. Agreed. "Best place to practice is an open source project" --
> oh...I'm not so sure that is true. Let's remove the phrase "open
> source"...even so, I'm not so sure that a project [which presumably has more
> than one person working on it] is the best way to learn Perl as you end up
> with the issues that Philip mentioned...issues with software engineering
> which will end up distracting people.
>
> I think some (of course, not all) universities would teach a language or
> programming first by getting students to work alone. And then a year or two
> later, put them into groups and then that's when the teachers go nuts. :-)
>
> There are a lot of beginner books (not just Perl) out there which sometimes
> have "Practice problems" at the end of the chapter. I'm sure you could
> start with those if you want newbies to start with something... Of course,
> a more Perl-oriented book would be
> ideal.
>
> Ray
>
>
>
> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-...@perl.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: beginne...@perl.org
> http://learn.perl.org/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
--
Sent from my mobile device
Shawn H Corey
> Teaching like this needs to become open source and be available for no charge and it needs to be created by those who are still learning. The knowledge involved in Instructional design is a Phd in and of its self.
Perhaps you should start a FLOSS Manual,
<http://en.flossmanuals.net/write>, and request contributions from others.
--
Just my 0.00000002 million dollars worth,
Shawn
Programming is as much about organization and communication
as it is about coding.
I like Perl; it's the only language where you can bless your
thingy.
Dr.Ruud
Adding examples and comments as annotations to the standard
documentation, just like with the documentation of many other products
like MySQL and PostgreSQL and PHP.
Example:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/string-functions.html
(at the bottom)
--
Ruud
Raymond Wan
Hi Tim,
Tim Bowden wrote:
>> I think some (of course, not all) universities would teach a language or
>> programming first by getting students to work alone. And then a year or
>> two later, put them into groups and then that's when the teachers go
>> nuts. :-)
>
> I wonder if it's not time well spent to have students doing
> git/svn/whatever right from the start (regardless of language)? Just to
> get students used to the idea at a very simple level. After all, open
> source or not, code repos are something everyone has to get used to at
> some point.
I don't want to argue for/against how universities do things. I'm
nowhere near qualified and my comment was about what I've observed and
not what I support.
That said, you have a good point. In a 4-year degree, I believe some
places do the above in second-year; others do it in third-year. I think
first year has been avoided since (depending on the education system)
you might have students that are taking computer science as an elective
and really have no intention of going further. (I knew of classmates in
that situation.) If they leave the first year class and end up with a
basic notion of how to formulate an algorithm, I believe that would be
a "success".
I've also heard of repositories as a deterrent from cheating. If you
make a rule to commit every day, it leaves a record of how your project
[made by just you] grew. I'm not so sure how effective this is...
Ray
Raymond Wan
Hi Fudmer,
I didn't think my comments would have piqued your interest so much. :-)
Well, we're off-topic from Perl, but let me add just the following:
fudmer rieley wrote:
> The need is for a problem book with real explained answers [producing
> such a problem book would be a massive undertaking]. Such a
> questions and answers server project would advance programming, and
> it would probably extend the need for books of all types of computer
> knowledge. the idea would advance programmer knowledge base. Each
I somewhat wrote my comments with one particular book in mind:
Though I'm sure there are many others out there. I think you can browse
the pages on Amazon.
There are of course two other questions. How would such a book differ
from (say) the Perl Cookbook? And how can such a book work with
something like the ACM Programming Contest?
> Teaching like this needs to become open source and be available for
> no charge and it needs to be created by those who are still learning.
> The knowledge involved in Instructional design is a Phd in and of its
> self.
I have to admit that I'm in support of open source, but I think there
are limits to it. An excellent (IMHO) example is Wikipedia. It's open
and I do use it often; but there are certain topics which I would not
rely on. The quality control is good in some cases but very poor in others.
Likewise, a resource that is as open as you say is no different from
(say) a blog by Perl experts. In other words, what is the difference
between an O'Reilly book on Perl and a blog by the same authors? The
people who wrote it are the same, but the publisher adds quality
checking, support for authors in standardizing, etc. Also, I think an
author would put more care into something that is going "in print" [on
paper or on-line] than something that is going into a blog.
As the saying goes, "You get what you pay for...".
Ray
Gabor Szabo
I think you made very interesting and valuable points,
many of which I have not thought earlier.
Actually I was hoping to get the responses of beginners to understand
their POV but the input of the others was also interesting.
My objectives are two-fold.
1) understanding what can I do in the projects I am involved
to make it easier for beginners to get involved
2) get more beginners involved in those projects so they
start to contribute.
3) create a list of projects where beginners are especially
welcomed so the beginners have a way to learn more
4) let the beginners grow in these projects and make useful
contributions
(ok, that was 4)
While I understand that getting someone with minimal Perl knowledge
and minimal knowledge of the other things around might
be difficult to a project but I think enthusiastic beginners can also bring
a lot to the project. At least to some projects.
Benefits
=======
For the beginner, a steady process of mentoring can be a great way to
learn more. Also being part of an project that is already used by others
is a great feeling I think.
For the project, the first one or two beginners joining them might create
a lot of extra work. A lot of things and knowledge the core developer(s) take
granted need to be explained. As in many of the project the core developers
are usually more Linux/OSX people and the beginners will tend to be more
Windows people, one will have to go the extra miles and explain in terms
that make sense on windows. If done correctly and documents are generated
from these explanations then the second or third beginner will already
have all the info pointed out in a document or on a wiki.
There is a huge added value that a beginner can bring to a project though.
For one, the fact that s/he is not familiar with a lot of the assumptions
will require the documentation of the project better. A beginner, once s/he
understand a part of the project can describe it better for other beginners.
These people might be beginners in perl programming but they might have
a wealth of other experience the core developers don't have. So while they
are improving their perl coding their can use their other experience to
improve the overall value of the project.
Now I should shut up and point you to two projects in particular:
DreamWidth
=========
It is a fork from the LiveJournal code base and it is a
blogging/journaling community.
They are very welcoming to the beginners the drawback is that most of
their code is
old as it was inherited from LJ and it is in quite a bad shape. To put
a positive spin
to it, there are plenty of opportunities to learn from bad practices
and improve them
with the help of the people on the project.
In their development model for every change you create a patch, attach it
to a bug in their Bugzilla. Someone else in the project has to review
it and approve it
and only then can it be committed by one of the fee committers. This
makes the process
slow but it might be good for beginners as it gives plenty of opportunities to
discuss the changes. See http://www.dreamwidth.org/
http://dw-dev.dreamwidth.org/
and http://dw-dev-training.dreamwidth.org/
I have started to contribute a week ago.
Padre, the Perl IDE
===============
This is a development environment for Perl written in Perl.
We have not made so much preparations for accepting beginners
to the project as the people at DW did but recently we have started
to move in that direction too. I - as the one who started the project -
would be happy to see more beginners try out Padre both for
learning Perl and joining the project. I am sure we, who are already part of
the project will have to learn a lot on how to make it easier for newbies
to get involved but I think this is actually critical to the success
of the project.
After all we want to make Padre the "Best thing on Earth for Perl development".
If you are interested in the project, the home page is at
http://padre.perlide.org/
If you have any questions, I'd be glad to try to answer.
Gabor
oras...@gmail.com
> As in many of the project the core developers
> are usually more Linux/OSX people and the beginners will tend to be more
> Windows people, one will have to go the extra miles and explain in terms
> that make sense on windows. If done correctly and documents are generated
> from these explanations then the second or third beginner will already
> have all the info pointed out in a document or on a wiki.
It is also important that the programs should also run fine under Windows.
Unfortunately it is not the case of Padre anymore.
I've tried to install Padre using the CPAN shell but it gave very many
errors, including tens of error windows like:
perl.exe - Unable To Locate Component
This application has failed to start because wxbase28u_gcc_wxperl.dll was
not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem.
OK
(I use ActivePerl 5.10.0 under Win XP).
Octavian
Gabor Szabo
You never told us about this problem.
Actually currently Windows is most beginner friendly platform for Padre and
Padre has an installer on Windows. It currently brings a whole
Strawberry Perl with it
and it needs to be the only perl on the system but there are plans to
create a version
that would hide the fact that it is in Perl and would work well
together with any
other Perl on the system.
Gabor
oras...@gmail.com
Gabor
**
Aha, I understand. This might be the issue. I use ActivePerl and not
Strawberry. I've tried Strawberry Perl but I found very many modules I
couldn't install with it, the PPM under that distro of Perl has less
features than ActiveState's one, I also need ActiveState PDK that also
requires ActivePerl, so...
Octavian
Bob McConnell
Jeesh, I go away for a long weekend and miss a significant conversation.
I believe this whole mess boils down to a rather simple question. "How
do you capture and distribute tacit knowledge?". This has been cussed
and discussed many times over the years. It is an issue even within a
business setting, where the concern is managing product knowledge over
the long term when the primary storage devices walk out the door every
afternoon and occasionally don't come back the next day if at all.
I am not aware of any real solutions, although the wide range of
experiments in recent years have resulted in various knowledge bases,
CRM packages, wikis and other constructs devised to encourage people to
record and share the practical knowledge they have acquired. Mailing
lists like this, online discussion forums, CPAN, SourcForge, Usenet and
even bulletin boards were attempts to improve the collection process.
They still suffer from a lack of effective organization and/or indexing.
Books, correspondence courses (CBT), schools and other formal packages
are the historic method, but they can't efficiently capture the
experience people get when they actually go out and practice what they
have learned. Before that there were trade guilds with their apprentice
and journeyman programs. But many of their secrets were lost over time
because the knowledge transfers from master to apprentice were not
always complete for a variety of reasons.
There may be a way to do it efficiently short of a viable neural
interface, but so far no silver bullets have been found. Perhaps a few
more experiments are in order. Has anyone tried to imagine a "World of
PerlCraft" game.
Bob McConnell
Gabor Szabo
> Jeesh, I go away for a long weekend and miss a significant conversation.
> Has anyone tried to imagine a "World of PerlCraft" game.
Hmm, on that idea, it might be nice to setup a list of projects
where some of the core members will be ready to mentor less
experienced people in exchange of their contribution.
There are many (most of) the CPAN authors who prefer to work on
their own and maybe get a patch here and there.
There is probably a much smaller number - like Uri - who would be
ready to spend time on mentoring less experienced people.
There are a few CPAN modules that are maintained by a group of
people (e.g. Moose, Catalyst) and there are applications such
as Bricolage or Padre with teams of developers.
Each project might include a description of the level of experience
required as some might be ready to take people with 0 perl knowledge
(e.g. Dreamwidth) while others expect the person to
understand OOP.
It can be as simple as a page on the TPF Perl 5 wiki.
What do you think?
Gabor
Gabor Szabo
> I use ActivePerl and not
> Strawberry. I've tried Strawberry Perl but I found very many modules I
> couldn't install with it, the PPM under that distro of Perl has less
> features than ActiveState's one, I also need ActiveState PDK that also
> requires ActivePerl, so...
The primary module installation method on Strawberry is the CPAN client.
I think the Strawberry developers would be very happy if you reported
every problem you encounter to them and to the actual author of the module.
That will help them know which modules need attention to make life even
easier for Perl users on Win32.
Could you please tell us what does PDK give you?
regards
Gabor
oras...@gmail.com
> Could you please tell us what does PDK give you?
PDK doesn't extract the files with the perl source code and for most cases
this protection is enough.
It creates smaller files than PAR and it gives less errors.
Octavian
Gabor Szabo
Oh so it allows you to create exe files of your code.
Great. thanks.
Gabor
Octavian Râsnita
To: "Octavian R�snita" <oras...@gmail.com>
Cc: <begi...@perl.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 10, 2009 8:59 PM
Subject: Re: Perl projects for beginners
On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 8:08 PM, Octavian R�snita <oras...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> From: "Gabor Szabo" <sza...@gmail.com>
>>
>> Could you please tell us what does PDK give you?
>
> PDK doesn't extract the files with the perl source code and for most cases
> this protection is enough.
> It creates smaller files than PAR and it gives less errors.
Oh so it allows you to create exe files of your code.
Great. thanks.
Gabor
Yes, I have also tried to create a .exe file from an older installation of
Padre, but unfortunately I couldn't do it.
A .exe file is better because it can be easier associated with different
file types, create an association in the Registry and make it appear in the
context menu, and much easier to move and use on another computer without
needing to have Perl installed.
It would be very nice if Padre could be used as a Windows executable (made
with PDK or PAR).
Unfortunately when I've tried to create an .exe file from it, it gave some
errors about some modules that are missing and I don't know why.
(But it was an older version of Padre, because as I said, I couldn't install
the latest versions of Padre anymore with ActivePerl).
Octavian