ActivePerl for Linux

[Kirsle]

Has anyone ever actually tried installing ActivePerl for Linux? Is there any pros to using ActivePerl instead of the one Linux comes with? And how would ActivePerl work with the normal Perl (i.e. would you need to do like "yum remove perl" first so they don't conflict?)

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Cuvou.com | My personal homepage
Project Fearless | My web blog

 

[travs69]

Any reason you would use the activeperl vs the normally installed perl? I think you would be "downgrading" your perl and limiting what modules you can use.

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Travis - Those who say it cannot be done are usually interrupted by someone else doing it; Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions;

 

[ishnid]

FWIW I've used Perl on many different Linux machines and have never felt the need to try to install ActivePerl.

 

[KevinADC]

I've never tried it either. And I've installed Strawberry perl
on my Windows box and so far, so good. It's 100% CPAN compatible:

http://strawberryperl.com/

works on Win98 too, which the website does not list (W2000,XP,Vista).

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- Kevin, perl coder unexceptional!

 

[travs69]

I keep saying that I am going to go to strawberryperl on my windows boxes but I haven't done it yet

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Travis - Those who say it cannot be done are usually interrupted by someone else doing it; Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions;

 

[Kirsle]

I was just curious as to why anyone would want ActivePerl for Linux (or why it even exists). Googling for it just turns up links to the ActivePerl download but nobody's really discussed it. I've always just used the Perl that came with Linux and never felt any real need to get ActivePerl (well, an exception: when I was a noob to Linux and couldn't figure out how to compile and install Tk, I tried to install ActivePerl hoping it would come with Tk precompiled like it does on Windows, but wasn't successful in resolving dependency hell. Plus this was on an Ubuntu and I couldn't run the RPM. )

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Cuvou.com | My personal homepage
Project Fearless | My web blog

 

[ishnid]

You can get Perl/Tk on Ubuntu by running:

# apt-get install perl-tk

As I said, I've yet to come across a reason for Linux-based Active Perl either, given that any distro I've come across has Perl available anyway, in addition to which I've always recommended sticking to your distro's package manager for installing software on Linux where possible anyway. Yet another reason not to bother trying it.

 

[Kirsle]

Yeah, about that:

apt-get install perl-tk

That's almost always a bad idea. See thread219-1433531 for more info. The precompiled version in most package managers is compiled with XFT support and that segfaults like crazy (I've heard reports that Tk's own widget program even segfaults, let alone anything somebody *actually* programmed using Perl Tk).

-------------
Cuvou.com | My personal homepage
Project Fearless | My web blog

 

[ishnid]

Ah. I wasn't aware of that (don't use Tk). Good to know though.

 

[hungryhungryhippo]

i actually had a very good reason to install activeperl on my debian etch machine:
i always ran the perl coming with debian. then i installed some extra modules through cpan, and when i upgraded the perl-package (debian provided some security fix), the whole installation broke: it kept complaining about the machine perl was compiled ondiffers from the one i want to run it on. that's just great. i couldn't run hardly any script. i downloaded the source package to compile perl myself, but dpkg-buildpackage requires perl and failed with the same error. even better, i thought. that was when i installed activeperl to build perl from the source package.
by the way, that still didn't work...i got perl from perl.org, pinned the debian packages and bent some fs-links. not a desireable solution, but i don't have the time right now to fix this more nicely, unfortunately. however, if anyone knows a solution to this problem, i'd be glad to hear it
so bottom line: activeperl saved my ass when my distros perl broke.

cheers
michael