Anyone using Perl to develop and deploy MS Windows apps?

  • Thread starter Stefan Fischerländer
  • Start date
S

Stefan Fischerländer

I'm looking for some experiences or even some guidance ...

There are some freeware tools I provide on my homepage, which are
written in Visual Basic. For a couple of reasons I want to get rid of
VB and want to switch to another language.

Because I'm rather experienced with Perl, this would be an obvious
choice. But there is one problem: the deployment of my Perl apps. My
users are no tech gurus, just average computer users. This means the
programs have to be deployed as self-installing single .exe files. (To
tell them to install ActiveState Perl for Windows distribution is no
option!)

After some googling, I found several tools which together seem to form
a complete development environment to build (simple) Windows
applications:

Perl "Compilers":
http://tinyperl.sourceforge.net/
http://search.cpan.org/author/AUTRIJUS/PAR-0.69/
http://www.indigostar.com/perl2exe.htm

"GUI Builder" for Win32::GUI:
http://www.bahnhof.se/~johanl/perl/Loft/

Installation Program:
http://www.nullsoft.com/free/nsis/


Does anyone here has any experiences with what I intend to do?
Is Perl with any of the perl-to-exe "compilers" a reasonable solution
to create and deploy Windows applications?

Stefan
 
R

Richard Bennett

Hi,
Stefan Fischerländer said:
Because I'm rather experienced with Perl, this would be an obvious
choice. But there is one problem: the deployment of my Perl apps. My
users are no tech gurus, just average computer users. This means the
programs have to be deployed as self-installing single .exe files. (To
tell them to install ActiveState Perl for Windows distribution is no
option!)

I did exactly the same, I also wanted to translate a few VB apps.

What I can highly recommend is Activestate's Perl Dev Kit 5.
It's not free, but there's an eval version. (don't distribute anything built
with it though, as they will also expire)
From the readme: 'you can create standalone ActiveX components, Windows
services, self-contained Windows applications, and .NET compliant objects
and applications'.

You build your app in perl, using win32::gui if you need a gui (or TK), and
then use the dev-kit to compile it into an exe.
It includes all modules and 'require' files within the exe, as well as the
perl interpreter. The end-user just needs to click on your exe to run the
program, no installing or dependancies.
If you want you can also make system-tray programs the same way (with or
without GUI).
In all cases the shell window can be completely hidden.
There's also a visual debugger included.
I found most programs end up around 6 to 700k, which is reasonable, given
that everything that's needed is in there.

I can mail you a program offlist if you'd like to test the look & feel.

Richard.
 
J

John W. Krahn

Stefan said:
I'm looking for some experiences or even some guidance ...

There are some freeware tools I provide on my homepage, which are
written in Visual Basic. For a couple of reasons I want to get rid of
VB and want to switch to another language.

Because I'm rather experienced with Perl, this would be an obvious
choice. But there is one problem: the deployment of my Perl apps. My
users are no tech gurus, just average computer users. This means the
programs have to be deployed as self-installing single .exe files. (To
tell them to install ActiveState Perl for Windows distribution is no
option!)

If you already know BASIC then you may want to have a look at
PowerBASIC.
http://www.powerbasic.com/


John
 
W

William Alexander Segraves

Stefan Fischerländer said:
I'm looking for some experiences or even some guidance ...
Does anyone here has any experiences with what I intend to do?
Is Perl with any of the perl-to-exe "compilers" a reasonable solution
to create and deploy Windows applications?

TinyPerl works fine for me. With TinyPerl, it is possible to fit a TinyWeb
webserver and a TinyPerl executable file (with the required directories and
support files, as well as Shortcuts for launching programs), together with a
fillable Adobe Acrobat PDF form, all on a single 3.5 inch floppy. This has
also been done, with all of the files on a CompactFlash memory card.

I expect this could also be done with USB-type CompactFlash devices. It
should also be doable with CD-ROM (provided you put the tmp files and logs
on the host computer).

With bootable media, you should be able to set up a system that requires no
user installation at all.

Cheers.

Bill Segraves
 

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