Re: [MacPerl-Porters] Identifying Ported Modules

["Paul J. Schinder" <schinder@pobox.com>]

On Mon, 10 Jan 2000 22:19:50 -0600 (CST), Matthew Langford wrote:

>Ah, I hadn't thought of cases where XS modules could still work without
>binaries.  Would this be where the module provides an alternate, non-XS
>API?

Usually it's an identical API, with a pure Perl implementation.
MIME::Base64 still does this, IIRC.

>
>I keep thinking of this:  it is far more common for a MacPerl user to harm
>existing capabilities by downloading from CPAN than for a Linux or Solaris
>user.  (Under Linux or Solaris, you can install it, and if it doesn't
>work, you haven't lost anything.  No special safeguards or extra
>precautions necessary.)  Current MacOS functionality depends heavily on
>ported modules, and binary builds.  I'll concede ported modules may
>completely disappear over time.   (um, what the line ending?  does MacOS X
>use CR or LF?  and will 5.6 or some later Perl accept either/or/both?)
>
On the contrary. I think It's a little harder for a MacPerl user to mess
things up, because MacPerl comes with more things in the "core" than in
the standard Perl distribution. If you, say, install HTML::Parser, which
has now gone pure XS, from CPAN, all you need to do is pull Parser.pm out
of your site_perl and you're back to normal. Linux and Solaris users are
better protected in some ways simply because a lot of them *can't* affect
the core Perl distribution, since they don't have th necessary
permissions. But if you do have the permissions, you can easily break
things.

It's easy for *any* user to mess things up if they don't know 1) what they
have, 2) what's going to happen when they install. (How many times have
you seen people complain that "something broke my Mac" when it turns out
that it broke because they were pulling things out of the extensions
folder because "I don't know what that is, so I must not need it"?)
CPAN.pm is perhaps too much of a power user's tool, since there's no easy
way to restore what you had, but I can't think offhand of any MacOS
installer that lets you go back easily. Maybe it is too dangerous for the
"average Mac user". But then I don't think MacPerl users are average Mac
users, and so are more likely to have things like backups. I don't think
the current situation is all that bad. We probably need a README that says
"these are ported, be careful what you do to them". I perhaps should have
sent a message to the mailing list saying "watch out, HTML::Parser is now
pure XS, stay away from the 3.x series or wait for it to show up on mmp".
Since I'm aware of such things from cpan-testers, I could start doing
that.

I do agree with Chris that it would be great if CPAN.pm automatically
installed binary builds rather than uselessly grabbing a distribution that
needs a compiler, but simply to save the time it now takes to install by
hand. I don't think the current situation is beyond the skills of most
MacPerl users.

I don't know if 5.6 will accept any line ending. 5.5 takes both 012 and
015012, but not, I believe, 015.

>
>Okay.  Does that mean I should also subscribe to modules@perl.org, and
>lurk for a while, too?  Not only am I lazy, I'm impatient.  :)

I think that one is the private, invitation only,  list.



-------
Paul J. Schinder
schinder@pobox.com


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