Re: activestate perl on cygwin

[Andrew DeFaria <Andrew at DeFaria dot com>]

Kevin T Cella wrote:
> Offer an alternative. As I mentioned in my original post, I got this 
> script online. In using it I found it was not sufficient, I started 
> this thread in the hopes that someone would provide me with a better 
> wrapper script. Instead I got a bunch of replies about how it is a bad 
> idea to use Activestate with cygwin.
But it is a bad idea to use ActiveState under Cygwin. Would you prefer 
if we lied to you?
> My scripts are written to make my life on Windows easier, so that 
> means using Windows specific code to automate common tasks.
But you really don't need to do such things in a "Windows specific" way! 
I used to run my whole domain under Cygwin. Apache for my web server, 
exim for a mail server, Cygwin's own inetutils for ftp, ssh, etc. 
Everything ran fine albeit a bit slower due to the fact that Cygwin is 
an emulation environment.

Eventually I got another box and initially installed SuSE on it and 
moved over all my scripts and processes. Porting was minimal at best 
because I grew up on HP-UX actually in a Unix environment and just 
thought that way. Later I moved to Fedora Core 3 which is what I have 
today.

But again, the point is that I use scripts to make my life easier too. 
And my scripts were written with a Unix mentality to start with and 
leaned on Cygwin to provide that Unix/Linux/Posix style environment. My 
scripts are useful and work well and ported with minimal effort.

Just because you're one a Windows box doesn't mean you have to code like 
Microsoft!
> Ideally I'd prefer to stay in a pure Linux environment, but for 
> reasons I do not need to go into, I am stuck with Windows. 
Again, that's the whole point of Cygwin at least to me. You can be 
"stuck with Windows" and still think with a Unix/Linux mindset and get 
even more useful work done with less effort.
> It was my understanding that the intent of this mailing list was to 
> offer a place to discuss issues involving cygwin and develop solutions 
> to those problems.
And if the real, long term, more portable solution is to use a Cygwin 
based, thus more normal Perl...

BTW you never told me what setsid does under ActiveState Perl...
> Seeing as I do not have a whole lot of free time to research a better 
> solution, I hoped a quick answer would be provided via this medium. 
Answers were provided to you. Apparently they don't tickle your fancy. 
People have commented on that wrapper script that you posted. I still 
don't see what your problem is. If your Perl script expects 
C:\mydir\foo.dat then give it C:\mydir\foo.dat. Of course you'll need to 
do that under a cmd shell or, for Cygwin's bash shell you'll need to 
double the backslashes (C:\\mydir\\foo.dat) or use forward slashes 
(C:/mydir/foo.dat). If you insist on giving your Perl script 
/cygdrive/c/mydir/foo.dat then perhaps your Perl script should expect 
that and translate it. A quick Perl subroutine to do that shouldn't be 
that hard to code.
> While I appreciate the suggestions that have been made on this thread, 
> I want to install two copies of the perl interpreter or port my 
> existing scripts to cygwin as that appears to be the compromise. Are 
> there any other ideas?
I don't think there is anything stopping an ActiveState Perl script to 
call a simple Perl subroutine that translates any Cygwin style paths to 
paths that ActiveState likes seeing.

--

Andrew DeFaria <http://defaria.com>
I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather... Not 
screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.


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