[MacPerl] summary: Howto import modules ...

[Axel Rose <rose@ummagumma.sj.com>]

I'm so glad!
My MacPerl applets can now "use" modules and run without
further installations of files, i.e. real standalone applications.

Effectively this means for me the ability to build programs
which can make use of the lot of wonderful modules and
are distributable to the large amount of Macs I have to
care for.

Here is a summary of the necessary steps

1. Develop your Perl program as usual with MacPerl and save
it as droplet or as plain text.

2. Check the usage of modules with the help of this auxilliary code
foreach (keys %INC) { print "$_\n"; }

3. Remove the auxilliary code

4. Save your program as "Runtime Version"

5. Open the runtime version with ResEdit

6. Create new TEXT resources, copy the content of the modules
into them and name them accordingly
e.g. "Tie/Hash.pm" must be named "Tie:Hash.pm"
"Carp.pm" must be named "Carp.pm"
meaning that UNIXish "/" becomes Mac ":"

7. Save, exit and ready

My example was just a copy program
-------------------------------------------------------------
$BASEDIR = "330:Programmier-Werkzeuge:MacPerl:MacPerl 513Ä";
foreach $entry (@INC) { print "$entry\n"; }
use File::Copy;

$from = "${BASEDIR}:MacPerl Help";
$to = "${BASEDIR}:MacPerl Help Kopie";

copy( $from, $to );

# removed for runtime application
# foreach (keys %INC) { print "$_\n";}

MacPerl::Quit(2);
-------------------------------------------------------------
%INC in this example contained:
Tie/Hash.pm
Config.pm
Mac/MoreFiles.pm
Carp.pm
Exporter.pm
File/Copy.pm
vars.pm
AutoLoader.pm
DynaLoader.pm

After copying my application is 1.2 MB - much better
than 4MB of library files.

Helpful hint:
If MacPerl is complaining "can't find xyz.pm in @INC"
check your preferences or set @INC explicitly by
push (@INC, "your:library:path")

During testing I found two other problems

1)
Starting MacPerl, opening the runtime version and saving
doesn't save the changes. Closing asks again if the user
wants to save changes. Only workaround is to "Save as ..."
and overwriting the existing file.

2)
Executing my example code as a droplet still yields:
"Failed to launch MacPerl (possibly because of a memory problem)"
This was already discussed in the mailing list but no
improvement on my 68k Mac til now (I did hope an upgrade
to 513r2 or ObjectSupportLib 1.2 would help)


Many many thanks to the lot of people who did take time
to help me. This is the real Internet!


Axel

---
Axel Rose              | In the novel I never wrote, I wanted the hero
SPRINGER & JACOBY      | to be a computer programmer because it was the
Werbung GmbH           | most poetic and romantic occupation I could
rose@ sj.com           | think of... -- John Updike, "The Music School"


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