[Bioperl-l] Status 0.7

[Todd Richmond]

On 2/1/01 4:20 PM, "Aaron J Mackey" <ajm6q@virginia.edu> wrote:

> 
> On Thu, 1 Feb 2001, Todd Richmond wrote:
> 
> [ ... lots of stuff about Bioperl not working under MacPerl ... ]
> 
> Two things to note before anyone invests much time in this:
> 
> a) MacOS X will be released March 24th.

<snip>

> b) Chris Nandor has recently announced (see useperl.org) the rekindling of
> the MacPerl project ... it has seriously lagged behind mainstream perl
> development.  I would expect to see a 5.6 perl, with more modern module
> support (including a module-savvy Test.pm that knows all about t/
> directories, and IO::String support, etc. etc.) sooner rather than later

<snip>

> Just my two cents.  Flame away.

Okay :)

1) MacPerl 5.6 <=> perl 5.6 on MacOS X. One of the nice things about MacPerl
is that you can make droplets that you can drag-n-drop files on, use
AppleEvents, bring up dialog boxes, etc. I'm sure GUI interfaces to perl and
the like exist on the Unix side of things - but they're probably X-based and
won't work under standard MacOS X. There's a few other concerns - MacPerl
5.6 uses Mac line-endings and MacOS X perl uses Unix line-endings. Means you
can't share lib/site_perl folders and will have to install everything twice
(unless Apple decides to make a change). There's the whole CLI - which Mac
users in general tend to shy away from.

2) Many of the biologists I know aren't going to make the switch to MacOS X
any time soon. We have a number of Macs here still running MacOS 8.5. If
people won't take the plunge to 9.1, they certainly won't switch to MacOS X.
I'll have MacOS X installed on March 25th, but I expect that many people
will wait for MacOS X.1 or until their favorite applications are Carbonized
or run natively. MacPerl 5.6 may be our savior, but only if it keeps up with
current development. It might be awhile before MacPerl 5.6 is complete and
you can download an installer with the complete kit.

That said, I do have to agree with Aaron. By coincidence, I spent this
afternoon building MacPerl 5.6, and IO::String works like a charm now. We'll
see about the rest of bioperl this weekend...

Todd

-- 
Dr Todd Richmond                 http://cellwall.stanford.edu/todd
Carnegie Institution             email: todd@andrew2.stanford.edu
Department of Plant Biology      fax: 1-650-325-6857
260 Panama Street                phone: 1-650-325-1521 x431
Stanford, CA 94305