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Re: [MacPerl] We need more evangelism...

At 15.43 -0400 1998.07.18, David Turley wrote:
>I would love to see standard perl build out of the box for Mac, like it
>does on windows. Perhaps, there could be an additional "make" to run that
>would add in the Mac specifics. It is somewhat disheartening, given the
>usual one-up that the Mac usually has over wintel, that it lags when it
>comes to perl. That on my laptop, I can install (most) CPAN modules simply
>by running 'dmake', the win version of make. The modules build just like
>they do under *nix. Having to install MPW to run perl like it was meant to
>run just doesn't do it for this user.

Well, first let me say that this has nothing to do directly with MacPerl,
but with Mac OS in general.  And then let me say that apart from the fact
that (probably) more modules on CPAN run under Windows perl than MacPerl
(most notably DBI and Tk), I don't see how MacPerl lags behind Windows
perl.  And I also don't see how this situation can ever be rectified.  You
need a compiler to build the modules.  You can't just open up a window and
type "make" in Mac OS, unless you have MPW or something.  I don't see how
this will ever change under what we now know as Mac OS.


>Now, before the evangelist dander flies to far, to the MacOS I say, "I am,
>and always will be your friend." :-) But interoperabilily is the key. I
>think Matthias has done a wonderful thing bringing perl to the mac,
>personally, I don't think he gets the praise he deserves from most users
>(the ones who don't read this list :-) But I don't want to see the mac left
>out of standard perl, strictly for the sake of the "toolbox." This would
>also, I believe, relieve some of the burden from Matthias.

It is not just for the sake of the toolbox.  I should have made that more
clear.  However, it is also not going to be left out of standard perl;
where the files are common, the aim is to make them work with MacPerl as
with any system.  But it is not reasonable at all to make the standard perl
distribution build on a Mac, not just because of the toolbox.

First, consider the IDE, the application itself.  In Januray, Matthias
counted 600K of source just for that, about 23,000 lines of code and some
binary files.  No way that is going into the standard distribution.

There are Mac-specific core files, about 20K worth, which could reasonably
be fed back into the standard distribution.  But the app would never build
without this extra stuff.  That does not even include Berkeley DB and sfio
(which maybe someday will be included in the perl distribution, and
regardless are available on CPAN), or GUSI, which is required to make
POSIX/sockets/etc. work.  Here is what Matthias said in January:

# On this issue, there is my theoretical position and OTOH the practical
# implementation.
#
# The theoretical position is that eventually, I'd like to have every file
# that occurs in both the Mac and standard Perl releases to be identical
# in both. I will *not* merge Mac specific files into the standard
# distribution
# (but will not stop anybody from doing so either), because that would
# enlarge the standard distribution a lot. The numbers that I came up with:
#
# - Mac specific core files:    ~20K source, ~1000 LOC
# - ext/MacPerl and ext/Mac:      1M source, >40000 LOC
# - MacPerl IDE (Application): ~600K source, ~23000 LOC & some binary
# files
#
# (And with those, you'd still not have all sources you need to build
# MacPerl.  There are a few non Perl specific libraries needed in addition).
#
# Regarding the practical implementation of my theoretical position, I'm
# putting this off for "after I finish my PhD thesis" which, itself, has been a
# target far more moving than I'd like to admit.

My understanding is this: his thesis is about done, perl5.005 is about
done, and as MacPerl is updated to 5.005, one of the goals is to do what
Matthias said above:

"I'd like to have every file that occurs in both the Mac and standard Perl
releases to be identical in both.

I think this is the only reasonable course of action, and I also don't see
how merging GUSI and the IDE (and other miscellaneous files) back into the
standard distribution would help anybody.

--
Chris Nandor          mailto:pudge@pobox.com         http://pudge.net/
%PGPKey = ('B76E72AD', [1024, '0824090B CE73CA10  1FF77F13 8180B6B6'])

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