use Perl

• Compiler optional? (Score:2)

  by bart (450)

  Could you please please please make the download of the compiler optional. I don't wish to download the same multi-megabyte compiler package again and again for every little upgrade of this Perl distro.
  • Re:Compiler optional? (Score:1)

    by Alias (5735) on 2006.07.12 9:40 (#48741) Homepage Journal

    The entire mandate of this distribution is that it comes with a compiler built in by default.
    
    If you do not want a compiler in your Perl distribution, ActiveState makes an excellent Win32 Perl distribution that can meet your needs.
    
    Further, as dagolden mentions, "each little release" only applies during alpha, and I'm afraid we're going with simplicity here.
    
    Once we get to production releases, we expect there to only be one release per Perl release. So it adds 10meg of extra download per 6 months.
    
    I don't see an obvious way to do what you want, and achieve some of the other goals of the project, like making the package installable from Active Directory.

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    • Re:Compiler optional? (Score:2)

      by bart (450)

      The entire mandate of this distribution is that it comes with a compiler built in by default.The entire mandate of this distribution is that it comes with a compiler built in by default.

      I am talking about upgrades... You're not suggesting people should upgrade to ActivePerl, are you?

      I don't see an obvious way to do what you want

      Well, you could have a package with compiler, and the same package but without compiler, for the people who already have the latter.
      • Re:Compiler optional? (Score:2)

        by nicholas (3034)

        Put a current release tarball (unpacked?) on an rsync server, and let rsync do its magic? Clearly this is only easy if someone has a suitable rsync server already set up.
        • Re:Compiler optional? (Score:1)

          by kwilliams (1467)

          Yeah, you could do this with just a regular tarball (doesn't need to be unpacked). The sequential nature of the tar format should let rsync do its thing fine.
          
            -Ken
          
          • Re:Compiler optional? (Score:1)

            by audreyt (6654)

            You can even use gzip 1.3.5 [sourceforge.net] with the --rsyncable flag, which allows rsync over the entire .tar.gz file.
            • Re:Compiler optional? (Score:1)

              by audreyt (6654)

              Here's maybe a better [utah.edu] link.
              • Re:Compiler optional? (Score:1)

                by audreyt (6654)

                The link above would need gzip-rsyncable.diff [samba.org]; the link from sf.net seems to have it pre-applied.
      • Re:Compiler optional? (Score:1)

        by Alias (5735)

        I'm suggesting when people upgrade, we have no idea what will be different.
        
        In the last round, perl stayed the same, some files moved to different directories, a new version of dmake was bundled, IO from the core was upgraded and so on.
        
        When you upgrade, you download again. It's once every 6 months or so, so it's no biggie for 90% of people.
        
        We may well be able to do some sort of no-compiler version for experts, with a big caveat-emptor that we can't predict what will happen with a compiler we haven't preconfi