using PAR to create a custom “hosted” Perl environment
September 23rd, 2005 at 11:16 amOne of Perl’s greatest strengths is CPAN – the staggering collection of modules that help solving a very wide range of tasks. This strength has a catch, though – some of these modules are very, very difficult to install, especially on Windows machines.
One of such modules is Win32::SerialPort and its brethen, which I use at work to amaze my colleagues in showing off that “this Perl thing” can even speak to our hardware via RS232.
Win32::SerialPort is a torture to install, however, requiring a C compiler (not always present in EE development computers) and a lot of tweaking. I managed to install it on my PC some time ago and I don’t want to repeat this experience.
But, a need arouse to run custom Perl scripts with SerialPort on another computer. I like working with Perl code instead of a GUI. Send “abs”, no probs – uncomment a little code that does it and run, this allows great flexibility. So, to “port” this method to a colleague’s PC I used an original approach with PAR:
First, I created a simple “host” script that “use”s SerialPort and other modules I need. This script allows to write a Perl file (using a simple GUI) and then “eval”s it, so that file can use these modules.
The basic idea is demonstrated by the following code:
use Win32::SerialPort;
use [other modules I need];
my $text = join('', <FILE>);
eval($text);
This is packaged with PAR on my PC, hence SerialPort is included. The FILE however can run on any other PC, using the executable generated by PAR.
Then, I wrapped the script in a simple GUI and packed it to an .exe with PAR. Voila ! I can now run my small Perl scripts with Win32::SerialPort even on the laboratory laptop that has no network connection.
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