Phoenix.pm: nsPerl

[Janis]

Well it's working so far...  yes you DO have to point your perl scripts to
wherever you installed nsPerl, but it makes no difference to me since I'm
wrting my scripts from scratch, and I don't have write access to /usr/bin
(so this was kinda the point.)

It installed really quickly, so I'm still wondering what the 'catch' is,
but I'll keep ya posted.

P.S. I found this linked from CPAN (http://www.cpan.org/ports/index.html),
so I kinda think it might be maybe OK... :-)

> 
> 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
>