Re: question on glade/gtkperl application packaging

[Dermot Musgrove <dermot glade perl connectfree co uk>]

Hi Joe and Thomas,

Joe Smith wrote:
> Thomas Ledbetter wrote:
> >   I've been messin' around with gtk perl for a while...
>  >
> >   Has any one had much success in _easily_ packing everything up into a
> > single executable?
>  > ...
>
> Oh man would I like to hear an answer to this!
>
> I have an application built with Glade.  By the time it gets installed,
> there are files in three different sub_trees_ of /usr/lib/perl5, three
> different sub_trees_ of /usr/local/lib/perl5, an application code tree
> under /usr/local, an application data tree under /usr/local and user
> configuration and data in each home directory.  It's an absolute
> nightmare to get it to build and install and run correctly.
Nobody has asked me about this before so I would appreciate some
feedback from people who use Glade-Perl. 

How did you end up with so many trees? Are you including the Gtk-Perl
tree and Glade/PerlRun.pm in this count? 

As far as I can work out, these are the files that are usually installed:
1) src/Project.pm - handlers could be merged with 2) below.
2) src/ProjectUI.pm
3) Run script - this also could be added to the src/Project.pm file
4) man pages - If you remove the inline pod markup they will not be 
   generated by 'make dist' and they will not be installed.
5) pixmaps - at the moment these are loaded from files but it would
   be easy enough to change Glade::PerlRun->load_pixmap() to load them
   from data returned by a sub (as Glade::PerlGenerate->our_logo() does)
6) Support modules use()d by 1) or 2) above - these could be cat()ed
   onto the end of 1) above and change 'use(Your::Module)' to an import().
   BTW - You could take the same approach with Glade::PerlRun.
7) Documentation files - remove them from MANIFEST and show information
   in a Gtk::Text loaded from documentation subs if you like.
8) Data files - up to you.

So only one file is absolutely needed - although pixmaps would have to be 
merged in to the source again if they change.

> Tracking all the dependencies (Gtk-perl, glade, glade-perl, icons,
> various CPAN modules) is another nightmare.
Have you tried CPAN.pm or CPANPLUS.pm to automate all this?

> Has anyone thought about something like Java, where everything can be
> stuffed in an archive and 'exec'ed from there?
If there is a need for this and people have suggestions I will try to
make Glade-Perl generate this sort of file.

Regards, Dermot