Clemens Eisserer writes:
> Hi there!
>
> I卒m a java programmer
Uh oh :-)
> and I卒m not really experienced with perl.
>
> [...]
>
> I think that parrot could be the Gnu-version of .NET and could be a
> realy benefit for the whole opensource-world. No 20 runtimes need to be
> installed on a system - parrot would do the job better than each could
> alone (Because if many apps rely on parrot the JIT will be tuned by guys
> from IBM ;-) ).
>
> But in my opinion parrot needs a more complete "classpath" that perl5
> currently has.
There is a big problem with that: it kinda precludes the whole
"community" thing that made everyone love Perl 5. In particular, CPAN.
The plan for Perl 6, at least, is to include almost nothing in the base
distribution, so administrators are forced to install some stuff from
CPAN order for Perl to be useful at all[1].
We need to harness the community work force of CPAN, for one because we
don't have the work force ourselves to put together such a library. But
the bigger reason is to enable the community to write modules, so we
always have forward progress on the language.
> Parrot is another level like perl5, perl5 was fine for scripting and
> even bigger apps worked great, bt it never tried to be a complete
> framework for many languages.
> Parrot is in my eyes a way to go away from C to higher level languages.
>
> So, my question: Is it planned to include a complete classpath into
> parrot, including gui,
maybe
> network,
yes
> db,
no
> sound functionality
no
> or will it have only the "really needed" things like perl5 had?
> I know that everything is already available for perl5 installing
> bindings, but in my eyes this doesnt solve the problem
> Many users dont want to install seperat libraries, they simply want to
> use parrot based apps with nice frontends, etc.
Ahh, I see what you mean. You want to distribute your app and parrot
and have it Just Work. You can always include the needed modules in
your distribution and install them when you get there... but that kills
the platform independence thing. You could tell parrot to install them
when you get there off the CPAN automatically, but from a commercial
standpoint, that puts all your users in the hands of a -- possibly
mischievous -- module author (though I don't know any authors who would
do such a thing, it's still a concern).
There will be a solution to the commercial thing. One of the (smaller)
goals of Perl 6 is to be used commercially to some extent.
A bigger goal, though, is to keep the open source support we already
have. Including a big default classpath makes people feel like
everything is "easy enough," which, ironically, isn't easy enough. It
doesn't motivate people to write/install modules.
So there you go, we're including everything we need to make the Easy
Things Possible, and the community will worry about making them Easy.
Luke
>
> I hope I didnt make you angry, and please dont missunderstand me, I
> think what you do is great!
>
> Please let me know what you think about the idea to include a "complete"
> classpath into parrot.....
>
> lg Clemens
>
>
[1] This was a big problem in Perl 5: admins would install Perl, and
assume that it's ready because it already comes with, like, 40 modules.
And then nobody could use it, because there were no good modules
installed.
