[MOBY-dev] XML::LibXML - changing the underlying XML parser in MOBY?

[Mark Wilkinson]

Hi all, 

At the moment all of the code that I have written for MOBY has used
XML::DOM as the underlying XML parser.  Unfortunately, XML::DOM does not
handle XML namespaces *at all*, and that is becoming a right pain in the
arse!

Yesterday I installed XML::LibXML from CPAN, as it should be (almost)
plug-n-play swappable with XML::DOM.  It is namespace aware, and is
significantly faster than XML::DOM to boot.  However, the installation
was not a painless process - there were several missing dependencies, in
particular libxml2, which is the gnome XML parser, needed to be
installed.  This can be installed independently of Gnome, but I don't
know how troublesome that is going to be for others since I already have
it installed.  The CPAN install was also annoying as it didn't follow
dependencies the way it should have, but that isn't a huge barrier.

Anyway, I'm wondering if any of you would be willing to act as guinea
pigs, and try installing XML::LibXML on your systems.  Given that I will
want to use this for all Client/Server/Registry code I want to know if
LibXML is going to cause too many problems for end-users, which would be
a "Bad Thing" ((tm) Birney).

Cheers all!

Mark


-- 
Mark Wilkinson <markw at illuminae.com>
Illuminae