Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
NOTE: use Perl; is on undef hiatus. You can read content, but you can't post it. More info will be forthcoming forthcomingly.

All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

RFC: Portable Alien Library System 3 Comments More | Login | Reply /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More | Login | Reply
Loading... please wait.
  • > I still much prefer the concept of having the CPAN installer "co-ordinate" with other platform-specific binary package installers.

    I.e. ask dpkg, ask rpm, ask Windows installation machinery/registry, etc. whether this external application/library/developer SDK has been installed, etc. In itself that is not very hard: packaging tool specific plugings (query/install/uninstall) and then a large database of mappings (what is this package called under this packaging tool, and how is this package distributed
    • > This, indeed, was the original idea of the Alien:: namespace. I should know, I was in the meeting where this idea was discussed.

      I find this odd though, because I've never seen any of this.

      Based on what was uploaded to CPAN, I had come to see Alien:: as "We need this one specific thing really bad, so any evil thing you have to, just get it installed".

      I never really saw it as something that co-ordinates with various platform-specific backends.

      If so, I would have expected some to see some sort of Install:
      • > So how did your original concept get turned so backwards?

        So how long have you been around this community, anyway? :-) Just kidding. Kind of.

        That was the idea as I remember it. Maybe I didn't communicate it clearly enough. Maybe some other idea was thrown around that stuck more in people's minds. Maybe I should have followed up on the idea to produce actual implementations so that there would have been a precedent. I don't know.

        But I still think it's a good idea. Instead of trying to be essentially a cross-platform "Configure", try to be a cross-platform installation tool. I know from experience that Configure is both a terribly good and a horribly delicate tool. It has taken more than ten years to build and it still only works in "UNIX enough" platforms. Trying to do something similar e.g. in Windows makes my stomach turn.
Stories, comments, journals, and other submissions on use Perl; are Copyright 1998-2006, their respective owners.