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in reply to New-to-Perl: recommendations for windows setup?

> P.S. I have asked this on CB and LanX and Discipulus already gave some advice. Thanks!

I understood your question in the CB as directed at a total beginner who should see progress ASAP.

That's why I recommended ActivesState (AS), that is AS Perl + AS Komodo.

BUT this is a mixed bag, because I don't like using them in production.

AS Komodo has a flat learning curve, people can visually set breakpoints in the code and run the debugger with a click. It automatically runs perl -c in the background and shows compilation problems by underlining them. (called "flymake" in emacs'ish)

And there are opensource versions out now.

BUT I don't like it being slow compared to Emacs, and I'm worried about it's dependency on Mozilla's XUL

AS Perl comes with an installation GUI called 'ppm', many modules are pre-compiled on their servers and you just install them by choosing from a list and updating. BUT not all modules are available, firewall might block their servers, and if you want to maintain a slightly outdated Perl installation you need to pay for licensing.

I prefer being able to use cpanm (m for minus) anytime.

My colleagues are hooked on these products and I'm continuously struggling to explain to them that "reality" is more complex than their spoiled Perl interface shows.

They excel simply because dumbed down features are easier to make fool-proof. But with a growing project/team you can't dumb down reality anymore.

It's AS business model! (which is fine if you know about the consequences)

OTOH this interface could hardly be easier for total beginners.

YMMV

Cheers Rolf
(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery

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Re^2: New-to-Perl: recommendations for windows setup?
by bliako (Monsignor) on Feb 16, 2021 at 20:35 UTC

    Thanks for sharing and the suggestions. This is intended for a kid so I will start with the IDE-based but I think I will try Strawberry and berrybrew first before ActiveState. I do too use cpanm from my linux commandline and I hope that I will have it available on the windows terminal too with Strawberry (I mean all that PATH hell).

[reply]
      I do too use cpanm from my linux commandline and I hope that I will have it available on the windows terminal too with Strawberry (I mean all that PATH hell).

      This is what confuses me. Where have you gotten the impression that it's hard to set up the paths correctly for cpanm with Strawberry? Literally, if you install the full-installation strawberry, it sets the path correctly (adds three directories) one time, and it just works. If you use the portable strawberry, you either have to use its portableshell.bat to set up the environment each time you need it, or you can manually add those three directories into your permanent path, and it works. Since this is for a new-to-perl user, you're not going to be setting up multiple perls (in the end), so you don't have to worry about multiple strawberries, or strawberry-vs-active-state.

      c:\strawberry\c\bin          => this is where gcc and gmake (etc) live
c:\strawberry\perl\bin       => this is where perl.exe and cpanm (aka 
+cpanm.bat) (and other similar tools) live
c:\strawberry\perl\site\bin  => this is where other module-installed t
+ools live (for example, in my setup, Devel::Cover's cover (aka cover.
+bat) goes here)

      [download]

      For my experience with Strawberry, cpanm just works. It's only if you are trying something unusual that things go awry. (More likely to cause a problem is having some other mingw gcc compiler in your path before strawberry's gcc. And that can be easily solved by giving the priority to the strawberry path. ;-) )

[reply]
[d/l]
         Where have you gotten the impression that it's hard to set up the paths correctly for cpanm with Strawberry

        You mentioned some. I have not installed Strawberry before. And I will not do that installation myself, so I want to have something robust to start with. I am being cautious that's all.

[reply]

      berrybrew's purpose is managing all of that PATH hell.

      That's literally its job, and what it does.

      Install it via its installer, then in the UI, Install a version of Perl, Switch to it, then open it up to use it.

      You can install any number of Perls you want, and switch back and forth between them, or "Use" any one of them on the fly without having to change anything else.

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

        I think eventually this will be my setup: berrybrew, strawberry and IDEA.

[reply]
      Well if it's for a kid this might be the best choice, good luck! :)

      Cheers Rolf
      (addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
      Wikisyntax for the Monastery

[reply]

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