Using Alien on Windows for Gtk-Perl module installation, was Re: Installing Glib::Object::Introspection

[Brian Manning <cpan xaoc org>]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 3:15 PM, Ed . <ej_zg hotmail com> wrote:
> I have a "vision" of a Windows-compatible way of abstracting the finding of
> non-perl libraries, using Alien::*, probably using Alien::Base. This would
> mean there would be an Alien::Glib, etc, which on install would either find
> or build and install in perl's site library glib, and at runtime would
> dynaload it into perl.
>
> What are your thoughts?

The first thing that comes to my mind is compilers.  On Windows, it's
not guaranteed that a compiler is installed; this is why Strawberry
bundles a copy of MinGW with it's install, so it can compile Perl
modules that have XS extensions.  Also, the interaction of software
compiled with different C compilers is not guaranteed, i.e. if you
compile Perl with one compiler, and then compile XS modules with
another, things may not work as you expect.  This is true even on Unix
systems; it's generally best to use the same compiler for everything
that is meant to run together, like Perl and Perl modules that have XS
code.

In principle, I whole-heartedly support making things easier for end
users.  I'm not sure right now that Alien would do that, at least on
Windows platforms, without more thought towards how to set up and/or
guarantee a stable base to install Perl/Perl modules on top of.

I'd love to be proved wrong with something that sets your build
environment up on Windows (compilers, support binaries), and then does
the grunt-work of installing things for you (Glib/Gtk2/Gtk3 and
friends).

Does this answer your question?

Thanks,

Brian