[Bioperl-l] Re: Installing Bioperl on Windows 98 [AND] Cygwin vs ActiveState Perl Programs

[Chris Devers]

On 18 Dec 2001, Elizabeth Bowen wrote:

> I was just wondering, since most BioPerl people tend to use ActiveState,
> if there were any issues between using either Cygwin or ActiveState for
> BioPerl which makes one more advantageous than the other, or is it just
> a matter of choice? 

>From my limited exposure to Win32/Perl, it seems like the ActiveState
distribution is more or less standard, and deservedly so, since it seems
to be well tested & supported. On the other hand, it seems like you're
pretty much locked into AS to provide you with PPM versions of libraries
that you might want to use, and I was never quite comfortable with that.

Using Cygwin seems to force you to build everything yourself (??), but
then ...you get to build everything yourself. You don't get to have a
third party porting & testing things for you, but then you don't have to
be held back by such a third party either. For mainstream sysadmin type
Perl use, sticking with ActiveState probably makes more sense, but for
more esoteric, bleeding edge stuff like BioPerl, it might be worth it to
go with Cygwin. 

But that's just my impression, and like I say I've only dabbled in Win32
Perl -- I could be way off base here. In any event, I would think that
once you have the same versions of the same libraries running, there
should be too much of a difference in the coding APIs you'll deal with. I
would think you'd only have problems with compiling / running custom
non-Perl modules, but even then the problems should be that bad. 


-- 
Chris Devers, 
trying to be helpful here
but expecting to be contradicted here
by someone with more experience here

"People with machines that think, will in times of crisis, 
make up stuff and attribute it to me" - "Nikla-nostra-debo"