Practical Considerations

My company sells an application that links a bugtracking tool with an SCM tool 
so that, for example, the files changed for each bug are recorded in the 
bugtracking tool. It is currently written in (mostly) non-object-oriented 
perl5.

We are re-architecting the application so that it can work with different 
bugtracking tools and SCM tools, and do things like sync data from specific 
fields between a help desk tool and the bugtracking tool. This would be a good 
time for us to transition to perl6.

As far as I can tell from the various faqs and wikis, the existing 
functionality in rakudo should support most of our needs for the initial 
release. I may need to assist with the porting of some database access and 
other modules from CPAN to C6PAN in the longer term.

However, I am concerned about deployment of a perl6 based product to 
customers. Perl5 can be reasonably specified as a prerequisite for loading our 
application, since it is generally available (and shipped with some of the 
products we integrate). That is not the case with Perl6. 

Is it practical now to deploy a Perl6/Parrot  runtime with a (possibly 
precompiled) version of our product? Will it be practical any time soon? I can 
probably get away with occasionally requiring Linux and Solaris users to 
rebuild Parrot to fit their local configuration, but Windows is another matter. 
(Shipping a known version of the runtime with our product will also allow us 
to tune our application to a known set of available perl6 functions.)

The mechanism for generating the packages I ship to my customers does not need 
to be pretty, it just needs to exist. If there are instructions already online 
about how to generate such packages (now or in the near future), I would 
appreciate a pointer  to them.

Thanks
-- 
Elyse Grasso

CTO
ReleaseTEAM Inc. 
http://www.releaseteam.com
phone 720-887-0489
fax 720-977-8010
cell 303-356-2717

• Practical Considerations by Elyse M. Grasso
• Re: Practical Considerations by jerry gay
• RE: Practical Considerations --> Perl 6 Marketplace (Perl 6 wiki) by Conrad Schneiker