Going from PerlScript on NT to *NiX

Buckaroo Buddha has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Howdy ya'll,

I'm currently working on and NT server in PerlScript and ASP (VBscript, Javascript as well). It turns out that ASP is VERY easy to develop, there are also more VisualBasic developers available than there are PERL developers and the ones that can do VB & not PERL tend to be cheaper (concerns of a large corporation)

There are however some reasons big reasons why some of the people on the team (me) would like to move to a Linux or Unix environment

to sell the rest of the team on it however, I'd probably need to convince them that they wouldn't lose all of their experience in ASP (VB) which converts (relitively easily) to PerlScript

does anyone know If it is possible to run ASP on a *Nix environment? Even just the PerlScript part? or is it the case that there are too many calls directly to the OS when using ASP and It would be "impossible" at this time? probably the second one ... but i thought i'd ask :)

Comment on Going from PerlScript on NT to *NiX

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Re: Going from PerlScript on NT to *NiX by thatguy (Parson) on Jul 12, 2001 at 20:34 UTC
If you are using apache, you can use Active Scripting for Apache or Apache::ASP (which requires mod_perl). Update: I can't get to the Active Scripting page, but Apache::ASP doesnt support VBScript or JScript but it does do Perlscript and some ASP. They have some examples here which might give you an idea of what it can do. There is also Chilisoft but it's 495$ for a Linux license.	[reply]
Re: Going from PerlScript on NT to *NiX by voyager (Friar) on Jul 12, 2001 at 23:46 UTC
I wish you luck, because I fear you'll need it. People who have spent their lives on Windows don't look kindly at a nix CLI. Have you ever seen someone's first attempt at using vi? I always get out of swinging range when they can't figure out insert/command mode. On a more serious note, you'll need to see if you are using any MS-specific stuff. Don't want to find out down the road that you must* have access to a bunch of COM objects not available on the *nix platform.	[reply]
Re: Re: Going from PerlScript on NT to *NiX by Anonymous Monk on Jul 13, 2001 at 17:45 UTC
Why CLI? Even vi has a GUI (so I hear)... so does Emacs. And Komodo runs under Linux, giving you Perl & Python in a GUI. As for porting from VB, there once was something out there to interpret VB, but it was pretty poor... I thought I got it from CPAN, but I don't see it there any more. `Inline::VBASIC` or something similar. Plus, there's the option of "staging" the transition. Teach Perl, leave the Win32 box up, gradually move things over as they're rewritten. I've worked in (several) shops where the migration from Win32 to Linux was carried out by making rewrites of each module in the schedule... Don't forget about VNC. VNC's Java plugin is an easy way to get access in "GUI mode" to your server (over the LAN, unless you're using SSH and have bandwidth to spare!) from non-Linux workstations. (Linux \|\| Unix \|\| Solaris \|\| Irix, &c. ad nauseum)	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Going from PerlScript on NT to *NiX by $code or die (Deacon) on Jul 13, 2001 at 04:33 UTC
ChilliSoft do an ASP package that runs on Linux. Personally, ASP drives me crazy. I've been doing it a bit recently - but using perlscript in ASP forces you write a lot of non-portable code. It's not easy to get perlscript running with regular perl - some modules don't work properly, IO is all magically handled by special MS scripting objects, and if you take advantage of any of the shortcuts that microsoft provide, especially with IIS5, you'll have to do a lot of work getting it to run anywhere else. give me native perl, HTML::Template or Template Toolkit and CGI any day of the week! Error: Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue.	[reply]


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