Phoenix.pm: nsPerl

[Kevin Buettner]

On Mar 7, 10:45am, Janis wrote:

> Has anyone used/installed nsPerl?
> (http://people.netscape.com/kristian/nsPerl/)
> 
> I've managed to install it (rather easily, it's pre-built) on an AIX
> server, but I was wondering if there were known problems, bugs or 'issues'
> with it that I'm unaware of (before I tell da boss.)  Are there any other
> advantages/disadvantages?  (We aren't intending to do anything too fancy
> with it.)

I'd never heard of nsPerl, 'til now.  How did you come across it?

After reading the web page, I have the following concerns:

1) How does it differ from standard Perl?  (I.e, did Netscape make
   any modifications beyond providing a wrapper.) 

2) One of the README files says that bin/perl contains the standard
   perl program, but is not of much use unless invoked by the
   wrapper.  This concerns me because "standard" scripts which use
   either

	#!/usr/bin/perl

   of

	#!/usr/local/bin/perl

   won't work.  Instead, you'll need to provide the path to the
   nsperl wrapper.  (I think.)

3) My last concern you raise yourself.  This is (I think) a rather
   obscure perl distribution and it's unclear what bugs there are.

OTOH, I think this framework would be marvelous in settings where you
are providing a product which uses perl, but are concerned about the
the version of perl that may (or may not) be installed at the
customer's site.  You can install nsPerl (or something like it) along
with the rest of your application and not have to worry about it
either interfering with the customer's install or about
incompatilibities between the customer's installed version and your
software.  It would also be useful if you wanted to provide perl on
the CD in order to script the installation process itself.  (I've been
in the position of wanting/needing to do both at previous jobs.)

Let us know it works for you.  I would certainly avoid using it for
anything mission critical until you've put it through its paces. 
(You might see if you can figure out a way to run Perl's test suite
with it.)

Kevin