PAR
Current version is 1.002.
Note
Originally written by Audrey Tang, I just maintain this distribution.
Download
Distribution from this site.
CPAN site
README
This is the README file for PAR, a toolkit to create and use perl scripts
and modules stored inside compressed .par files.
Please type "perldoc PAR" after installation to see the module usage
information, and "perldoc PAR::FAQ" for frequently answered questions.
With version 0.97 of PAR, the logic for generating stand-alone executables
has been refactored into the PAR-Packer distribution. It should be available
from the same source you got PAR from. Hence, for packing scripts with
prerequisite modules into stand-alone scripts or executables
(aka PerlApp, Perl2exe, or 'perlcc that works'), see "perldoc pp"
and "perldoc tkpp".
For running ".par" files directly, please install PAR-Packer and
see "perldoc parl".
To generate/execute self-contained perl scripts, install PAR-Packer
and see "perldoc par.pl" or "perldoc pp".
An extensive "Cross-Platform Packaging and Deployment with PAR" tutorial
is available as "perldoc PAR::Tutorial". A slightly outdated version is
also available online at .
* Installation
PAR uses the standard perl module install process:
cpansign -v # optional; see SIGNATURE for details
perl Makefile.PL
make # or 'nmake' on Win32
make test
make install
Since version 0.97 of PAR, you do not need a C compiler any more to build it.
All logic that required a C compiler previously was moved into the PAR-Packer
distribution.
* Notes for Windows users
If you are using Microsoft Windows, you will probably need the 'nmake'
utility before installation. It's available at:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/vc15/Patch/1.52/W95/EN-US/nmake15.exe
If you are connected to the internet, "perl Makefile.PL" is capable
of automatically fetch it, and install into your Perl/bin directory.
You will see a message like this:
The required 'nmake' executable not found, fetching it...
However, if you are not yet online, or wish to install 'nmake' into
another directory, then please download the file manually, save it to
a directory in %PATH (e.g. C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND), then launch the MS-DOS
command line shell, "cd" to that directory, and run "nmake15.exe" from
there; that will create the 'nmake.exe' file.
You may then resume the installation process above, but replace 'make'
with 'nmake' in the last three lines.
* Source Repository
You can check out the most recent revision from PAR's Subversion repository:
http://svn.openfoundry.org/par/trunk/
There is anonymous access to all. Commit access is handed out liberally;
contact the mailing list for details.
* Contact
is the official PAR website. You can write
to the mailing list at , or send an empty mail to
to participate in the discussion.
Please submit bug reports to .
* Copyright
Copyright 2002-2010 by Audrey Tang .
Copyright 2006-2010 by Steffen Mueller .
All rights reserved. You can redistribute and/or modify
this bundle under the same terms as Perl itself.
See .
Documentation
PAR
PAR::FAQ
PAR::Tutorial
PAR::SetupProgname
PAR::Heavy
PAR::SetupTemp
PAR::Environment
Change Log
[Changes for 1.002 - Jul 25, 2010]
- Fixes to VERSIONs of PAR::Setup*.
- No change in behaviour since 1.001
[Changes for 1.001 - Jul 25, 2010]
- RT #57399: extract everything (including DLLs) in File::ShareDir
directories. Module::ScanDeps classifies everything in
File::ShareDir directories as "data", but PAR uses it's own
heuristics what to extract from a .par.
- Previous release was missing META.yml.
- Upgrade Module::Install to 1.00
[Changes for 1.000 - Apr 10, 2010]
- Fix defined(%hash) deprecation warning in PAR::Heavy
[Changes for 0.994 - Jul 23, 2009]
- Fix for the PAR::Heavy fix to the INC priority handling.
[Changes for 0.993 - Jul 19, 2009]
- The priority (fallback=>0) repositories should look at @PAR_INC
for the loaded PARs instead of @PAR_INC_LAST.
- Don't reload from a downloaded .par file after installing it
via "upgrade".
- Band-aid fix for the loading priority of shared librares from
PAR files: Try PAR's first, the local stuff, then fallback-PARs.
- Initial support for running external perl scripts from a packaged
interpreter.
[Changes for 0.992 - Apr 5, 2009]
- Support for non-fallback repositories.
[Changes for 0.991 - Mar 10, 2009]
- Promote previous release to stable release.
[Changes for 0.989_01 - Mar 2, 2009]
* Bug fixes, etc.
- Track the locations of all archives that have been extracted to
$ENV{PAR_TEMP}/inc in this run.
[Changes for 0.988 - Mar 1, 2009]
- Promote previous release to stable release.
[Changes for 0.987_01 - Feb 20, 2009]
* New features
- Better cleanup of the $TMPDIR/par-$USER/temp-$$ directories
that are typically used as caches in the "use PAR 'foo.par'" use case.
* Bug fixes, etc.
- Very slightly more careful handling of PAR-specific environment
variables.
- Cleanup of PAR::SetupTemp
[Changes for 0.986 - Feb 19, 2009]
- Promote to stable release.
[Changes for 0.985_01 - Feb 2, 2009]
* New features
- Support for the brand new static dependency resolution
of PAR::Repository::Client 0.23.
* Bug fixes, etc.
- Fix issue with running scripts from repositories:
The INC hooks used to be set up too late for this to
automatically pick up dependencies.
[Changes for 0.984 - Jan 25, 2009]
* New features
- Implemented the auto-upgrading option for loading and installing
from PAR::Repositories.
* Bug fixes, etc.
- Fix issue with PAR::Repository::Client development versions.
[Changes for 0.983 - Sep 12, 2008]
* Dependencies
- Require AutoLoader 5.67 which contains a PAR-related
bug-fix.
- Require PAR::Dist 0.32.
* Internal changes
- The full extraction process _extract_inc
(which is triggered when a non--clean pp packaged
executable is run) can now be forced to do the
extraction (instead of doing if !-d).
- That same extraction routine now accepts Archive::Zip
handles or file names.
- When, during the full extraction, the extracted paths
are to be added to @INC, we now make sure they're not
in @INC yet.
[Changes for 0.982 - Aug 10, 2008]
* New features
- Moved the routines that setup the PAR_TEMP environment variable
to a separate module in the distribution so it's possible to
use PAR::Repository::Client without loading all of PAR.
- Same for the function that sets up PAR_PROGNAME.
* Bug fixes, etc.
- Upgrade to Module::Install 0.77
- Fix for running scripts from repositories.
[Changes for 0.980 - May 22, 2008]
* Bug fixes, etc.
- The function PAR::get_filehandle() that was introduced in 0.979
is really broken because Archive::Zip is broken. Turns out calling
Archive::Zip::Member->fh() returns a file handle to the zip file,
not a virtual/tied/whatever file handle to the member file.
Therefore, the get_filehandle() function has been removed again until
we work around this issue.
- Upgrade to Module::Install 0.73
[Changes for 0.979 - May 13, 2008]
* New features
- New function PAR::get_filehandle() returns a file handle for a file
in any open .par files. Similar to read_file().
[Changes for 0.977 - Oct 19, 2007]
* Bug fixes, etc.
- HPUX doesn't like shared libraries being unlinked while in use. So don't
try to do this even in clean mode. (Workaround will be in par.pl)
(Scott Stanton)
- Fix DLL extraction file name matching in PAR::Heavy.
- Save two system calls per DLL during DLL extraction in PAR::Heavy.
[Changes for 0.976 - Jul 29, 2007]
* New features
- Use Archive::Unzip::Burst for unpacking binary executables if
available. (This yields a significant startup speed-up.)
* Bug fixes, etc.
- Removed the auto_install feature from Makefile.PL. auto_install
is conceptually broken.
[Changes for 0.973 - Feb 3, 2007]
* New features
- A new option for the "use PAR { ... };" use case:
"no_shlib_unpack" signals that for this particular .par file,
shared libraries that were added with the --lib option should
not be extracted. This allows users to do their own cache
handling for these libraries.
- PAR no longer unpacks *all* shared libraries by default but only
those in the shlib/ directory (i.e. added with --lib).
The shared libraries in auto/ should be picked up by the DynaLoader
hack.
- If available, the prefork.pm module will be used to declare
run-time dependencies for better memory use in forking
environments.
- PAR now uses a caching mechanism to speed up the extraction process.
This should particularly impact users of the "use PAR {file =>...}"
form.
* Bug fixes, etc.
- Applied an optimization of the unpacking process on case insensitive
file systems.
[Changes for 0.972 - Jan 16, 2007]
* Bug fixes, etc.
- Removed PAR::AutoLoaderFix again. It wasn't working as expected
all the time.
- To fix the problem AutoLoaderFix was supposed to fix, we now
require AutoLoader 5.62 or newer which was just recently released
to CPAN. (Previously only available from blead perl.)
[Changes for 0.971 - Jan 12, 2007]
* Bug fixes, etc.
- Fixed typo in the POD. (Jerrad Pierce)
- Included fix for a bug in AutoLoader.pm as shipped with all
perl versions up to and including 5.8.8 as PAR::AutoLoaderFix.
This cures a problem of endless looping when the %INC entry of a
module doesn't point to a file of the same name.
This may happen during "use PAR 'foo.par'".
[Changes for 0.970 - Dec 3, 2006]
* This release introduces some rather radical changes, so read carefully:
* All PAR::Packer related logic has been moved to a separate distribution,
PAR-Packer. This includes pp, parl and all packaging tools. This way,
PAR becomes a pure-Perl distribution that can be most easily installed by
users of software which requires PAR.
Developers who want to use the PAR packager, pp, need to install the
PAR-Packer distribution from CPAN.
[Changes for 0.961 - Nov 23, 2006]
* Bug fixes, etc.
- PAR::StrippedPARL::Base->write_parl() failed to work if the @INC
directories contained spaces in 0.960. (Steven Mackenzie)
- Much improved documentation of the environment variables
(Glenn Linderman)
- Fix for a spaces-in-pathname problem on Windows for
t/30-current_exec.t. (Malcolm Nooning)
[Changes for 0.960 - Nov 21, 2006]
* Bug fixes, etc.
- myldr/Makefile.PL fix: Clean up myldr/usernamefrompwuid.h.
- Silence warning in myldr/internals.c.
- Silence warnings seen on Irix from myldr/env.c.
- Skip most tests in 10-parl-generation.t if there is no parl.
- Skip loading ActiveState Perl's "sitecustomize.pl" in par.pl.
- Load modules via require and other files via do.
- The parl-regeneration-for-every-pp-call addition of the 0.958 release
should now also work for static perls.
* New features
- Adressing RT ticket #6612: Now using getpwuid() to determine the
user name if supported by the OS.
[Changes for 0.959 - Nov 12, 2006]
* This is just a hotfix release because 0.958 lacked META.yml. One day, I will
switch from Module::Install to Module::Build...
[Changes for 0.958 - Oct 25, 2006]
* Bug fixes, etc.
- myldr/Makefile.PL fix: make static.o depend on mktmpdir.c, my_perl.c,
my_par.c. (Roderich Schupp)
- Modules included with the -M option to pp were previously scanned
for dependencies but not mapped through the
%Module::ScanDeps::Preload hash for custom dependencies. That's
fixed now.
- $ENV{PAR_RUN} isn't set by PAR::Packer any more because nothing in
the PAR sources uses it. $ENV{PAR_RUN} is no longer used by PAR
at all.
- Unified the environment variables which are looked at for
finding the system's temporary directory.
* New features
- During the build process, PAR appends stripped down copies of parl
(and parldyn if applicable) to the data classes
PAR::StrippedPARL::Static and ::Dynamic. These
parls-without-embedded-modules are used for packaging so the formerly
embedded modules are now packaged from the packaging system. (Instead
of stemming from the system where PAR/parl was built.)
- The "use PAR { repository => $url };" syntax now also supports
the use of user-constructed PAR::Repository::Client objects instead
of an URL.
- The -F (module code filter) option now supports selective filtering
of modules. The syntax is "-F FILTER=REGEX" or - as before -
"-F FILTER". The regular expression is applied to the *file name*,
of the module inside the PAR (e.g. Foo/Bar.pm). This behaviour was
chosen over matching against the module name (e.g. Foo::Bar) because
the filters can be applied to module-like and script files as well
(.pl, .al, etc.).
- Updated PAR/FAQ.pod with the new FAQ's from the PAR wiki.
- Added a POD file PAR/Environment.pod which is intended to become
an index of all environment variables PAR uses of its own or
recognizes from its users. Still mostly a stub.
[Changes for 0.957 - Oct 24, 2006]
* Bug fixes, etc.
- Fix executable PARs top properly detect embedded scripts
named the same as the executable. (Jesse Vincent)
- Comment out the call to par_current_exec_proc (in the C loader)
which breaks the use of symlinks to pp-ed executables when not
called with a path. (I.e. using a search in $PATH).
[Changes for 0.956 - Oct 3, 2006]
* This is another hotfix release. Fixed a mindless bug introduced in 0.955.
[Changes for 0.955 - Oct 3, 2006]
* Bug fixes, etc.
- 0.952 introduced removal of system module search paths if -B is in
effect. This resulted in some valid PAR-related paths being removed
as well. Fixed. Upgrading from 0.952 and 0.954 is suggested.
- Changed the use of hard-coded '/' as path-separator to using File::Spec.
[Changes for 0.954 - Sep 26, 2006]
* This release is equivalent to 0.953. The 0.953 CPAN upload is
broken!
[Changes for 0.953 - Sep 18, 2006]
* Bug fixes, etc.
- Added optional POD tests.
- Modified -B so that if -B is in effect, all entries are stripped
out of @INC except for the PAR hooks. This happens right before
the script contained in the pp-ed binary is executed.
[Changes for 0.952 - Aug 22, 2006]
* New features
- Added the "install" option to the PAR loading syntax.
If specified, the contents of the PAR distribution are
permanently installed.
This requires PAR::Repository::Client 0.04.
* Bug fixes, etc.
- Fixed broken META.yml in 0.951.
[Changes for 0.951 - Aug 12, 2006]
(This includes any changes up to 0.950.)
* New features
- Introduced new PAR loading syntax and semantics:
use PAR { file => 'path/to/par/or/URL' };
==> equivalent to "use PAR 'path/to/par/or/URL';"
- Introduced the 'fallback' option: (default = 0)
use PAR { file => 'foo.par', fallback => 1 };
==> Loads modules from the PAR file only if loading
them from @INC did not succeed.
- Introduced the 'run' option which executes a script
in a PAR archive just like
perl -MPAR foo.par script.pl
- If PAR::Repository::Client is installed, you can add a
repository of .par distributions to your library search path
as follows:
use PAR { repository => 'http://foo' };
- Of course, 'run' also works with repositories:
use PAR { repository => 'http://foo', run => 'my_app' };
(This searches the repository for any distributions that have a
my_app script.)
--> For details on repositories, have a look at the
PAR::Repository::Client module.
- Bug fixes, etc.
- Commented a couple of the routines in PAR.pm. (Yay!)
- New test script for the new fallback loading feature.
- Fixed a bug in the Spreadsheet::ParseExcel handling in
PatchContent.pm.
[Changes for 0.942 - Jul 22, 2006]
* Bug fixes, etc.
- Better support for diagnostics.pm (in conjunction with
Module::ScanDeps 0.62.)
- Now requiring Module::ScanDeps 0.62.
[Changes for 0.941 - Jun 20, 2006]
(No, PAR isn't stagnating. It's just that 1.00 would draw close if
we continued with 0.01 increases.)
* Bug fixes, etc.
- Version 0.94 of PAR would use the same cache area for all pp-ed
applications due to a faulty hotfix for Digest::SHA. This applies
to PAR 0.94 only. Think of 0.941 being PAR 0.94 done right.
[Changes for 0.94 - Jun 1, 2006]
* New Features
- Added support for reading options to pp from a file using a
'@filename' argument to pp: pp -o foo --gui @filename foo.pl
* Bug fixes, etc.
- Workaround for a bug in Digest::SHA 5.38 and 5.39 that would prevent
PAR from being built.
- Fixed details in the 2-pp.t test file.
- Now recognizes text files that aren't picked up by the -T operator
but by the "file" tool.
- Applied Roderich Schupp's patch to 30-current_exec.t to fix a
path issue.
- Now requiring Module::ScanDeps 0.60 which fixes a couple of bugs
which might be observed as PAR bugs.
- Now working well with Spreadsheet::ParseExcel which uses an invalid
POD section to comment out a code block. This wasn't recognized by
PAR::Filter::PodStrip as POD and hence partly left in...
- If the output directory doesn't exist, we create it now and output
a meaningful error message if that failed.
[Changes for 0.93 - May 19, 2006]
* New Features
- Added support for PAR_TMPDIR (PAR_GLOBAL_TMPDIR) so that the
temp directory can be controlled for just the PAR file bits.
(Leolo)
- Added par_current_exec_proc() which finds the file of the current
executable in /proc, if possible. (Leolo)
- Added par_current_exec() which finds he file of the current
executable, if possible on this OS. (Leolo)
- par_findprog() now uses par_current_exec() if possible.
* Bug Fixes, etc.
- Upgraded to Module::Install 0.62+ (Audrey Tang, Steffen Mueller)
- Document a strange interaction with chdir() and relative
paths. (Chris Dolan)
- Documented the bits that make up PAR_TEMP. (Leolo)
- Fixed the call to par_findprog. path (aka val) was set to
tmpdir. (Leolo)
- Documented the CACHE name at the end of a self-executing
PAR. (Leolo)
- myldr/Makefile.PL now generates some dependencies for
main.c (Leolo)
- Applied patch from RT ticket. (tsee)
https://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=13959
- Applied Ivan Kudryavtsev's patch that fixes a couple of calls
to PAR subroutines in PatchContent filtered code. (tsee)
[Changes for 0.92 - February 22, 2006]
* Bug Fixes
- Now requiring Module::ScanDeps 0.56 which handles autouse
correctly.
- Now shipping with a correct SIGNATURE. (Which was broken for
0.91.)
[Changes for 0.91 - February 13, 2006]
* Bug Fixes
- Applied Alan Stewart's patch which fixes @ARGV pollution in
daughter programs. See also
http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.par/2152
- Now mentioning the ENV var "PAR_VERBATIM" in the documentation.
See also http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.par/2196
- Applied Malcolm Nooning's fix for the test suite. We used to get
failed tests on Windows because of spaces in path names.
- Applied Roderich Schupp's and Malcolm Nooning's patches to
the test suite fixing problems with Cygwin.
- Applied Vincent Ladeuil's patch to PAR::Filter::Bleach to return a
true value for modules that loaded okay.
- Changed 'PAR_BASE' in the Makefile.PL to 'SMUELLER'.
[Changes for 0.90 - November 25, 2005]
* Bug Fixes
- When compiling with static libperl, myldr/ may fail "make"
due to sha1.c not generated properly.
- Pod stripping could fail on __DATA__ sections for files
with CRLF line endings.
- The documentation erroneously referred to the PAR_TEMP
environment variable, whereas it should be PAR_GLOBAL_TEMP.
- Compilation fixes for MinGW/MSYS.
[Changes for 0.89 - June 10, 2005]
* Bug Fixes
- Stop static.c from pulling in Perl header files, otherwise
parl.exe ends up depending on the Perl DLL on Win32 when
Perl is built without PERL_IMPLICIT_SYS.
- With *nix and File::Path 1.06, par.pl's avoidance of loading
Cwd.pm caused syntax errors.
[Changes for 0.88 - June 7, 2005]
* Bug Fixes
- Extracted .pl files should be loadable via the coderef-in-@INC too,
just like .pm files and autosplit files. This makes PAR work with
Perl 5.8.7 on Win32.
- Fix the build with GCC 4.0.
- If $ENV{PWD} is not defined, fallback to use `pwd` to obtain the
working directory for invoking.
[Changes for 0.87 - January 31, 2005]
* Bug Fixes
- On Win32, some versions of File::Spec::Win32 contains explicit
"use Cwd;" lines, which renders parl.exe unusable.
- Executable made by "pp" may fail when invoked as "./a.out" or
"../a.out", due to incorrect PWD handling logic.
[Changes for 0.86 - December 11, 2004]
* New Features
- New "pp -z" (--compress) option to set compression level (0-9).
- New "pp -T" (--tempcache) option to override the per-executable
directory name; it defaults to a hash of the executable, computed at
compile time. This makes startup much faster for large executables.
- The hash algorithm described above now prefers Digest::SHA if installed,
otherwise Digest::SHA1, then fallbacks to Digest::MD5.
- Functionality of "pp -X" is now extended: if the argument after -X is a
zip or par file, files in it are excluded from the produced executable,
and the executable will "use" the zip/par instead. For multiple -X args,
successive args are only "use"d if they contain additional unique files.
- "pp -l" now searches for libraries in "." and PATH in Win32.
- "pp -l" shared libraries are now added to %skip, so it will not
be included in both shlib/ and lib/.
- "pp -l" now chases symbolic links. For example, if "libsomelib.so"
is a symlink to "libsomelib.so.1", which is another symlink to
"libsomelib.so.1.2", pp now follows these symlinks and add the real
file the par, rather than "libsomelib.so".
- New contributed code in "contrib/stdio/": Useful Tk console for
"pp -g" users.
- New contributed tutorial documents, currently in "contrib/docs/",
which will eventually be turned into POD documents.
- Running "perl Makefile.PL" with $ENV{DEBUG} set to true now produces
"parl" with debug symbols.
- Remove Cwd.pm (and Cwd.so) from the bundled dependencies.
* Bug Fixes
- More robust probing for case-insensitive file systems.
- PodStrip now attempts to match "standard" pod start before =cut,
otherwise =cut gets removed by itself.
- Win32 slashes are now normalized in privlib and archlib directories.
- Don't extract shared libraries to inc/, since they were extracted
in $PAR_TEMP already.
- Don't re-extract shared libraries in subdirectories, since they
are picked up by corresponding "use".
- Tk now exits properly with a non-zero exit() value.
- Fix libperl probing problem on Debian and Gentoo that manifests as a
"libperl5.8.so not found" error during runtime.
- gpp: Fixed typo in options with multiple filenames; cleaned up
pp parameters.
- When PAR_TEMP is set, shlib/ was not correctly added to the dynamic
load path environment variables.
- PAR now builds with Win32 VC++ without CVTRES.EXE available.
- Detection of cl.exe, gcc.exe and cc.exe is now case-insensitive.
[Changes for 0.85 - July 2, 2004]
* New Features
- New version of "gpp"; see contrib/gui_pp/gpp_readme.txt for details.
* Bug Fixes
- MANIFEST and META.yml were not properly updated by PAR::Packer.
- Setting directory aliases with "pp -a"/"pp -A" was broken.
Fixed, and tests were added for it.
- Statically-built executables was needlessly extracting libperl
each time it runs; now it is eliminated and hence much faster.
[Changes for 0.83 - May 29, 2004]
* New Features
- Revamped PAR::FAQ and sychronized with par.perl.org.
- In pp-generated programs, $0 is now set to the pathname leading
to the invoked executable. Use $ENV{PAR_0} instead to get the
filename that contains the main perl program.
- Updated "contrib/gui_pp/gpp" to support PAR::Packer options.
* Bug Fixes
- Core XS modules, such as Data::Dumper, were skipped by "pp".
- Fix t/2-pp.t for Cygwin by probing $Config{_exe} rather than uname().
- Scripts made by "pp -P", when invoked as "perl scriptname",
should not search for the same-named programs in PATH.
- Correctly remove leading slash and drive letters from absolute
filenames passed to "pp -a". Also normalized blackslahes to slashes.
- The PP_OPTS environment variable was not recognized.
- "pp -a dirname;diralias" was broken.
- "pp -f" and "pp -F" were broken.
[Changes for 0.82 - May 24, 2004]
* New Features
- New module PAR::Packer provides an OO interface to "pp"'s
functionality; "pp" is now merely a thin wrapper for it.
- New module App::Packer::PAR is a modified version of
App::Packer, designed to work with PAR::Packer, and will
hopefully be merged back to App::Packer.
- The old, procedural "pp" is moved to contrib/; end-users
should notice no changes in "pp"'s behaviour.
- New options "pp -a" and "pp -A" (--addfile/--addlist) provides
ways to include extra files and directories in the package.
- The long option name for "pp -M" is changed from --add to
--module. The old name is still recognized but no longer
documented. Using "pp -M" to include non-library files
is now deprecated; use "pp -a" instead.
- par.pl and parl now writes messages to STDOUT, instead of
STDERR. As a consequence, t/2-pp.t no longer prints extra
warnings during "make test".
* Bug Fixes
- On Non-Win32 platforms, perl 5.8.0 and earlier versions produced
pp-generated executables that immediately segfaults.
- Running pp-generated executables with absolute pathname failed
on statically-built perls.
- Tests were failing due to a missing pipe_a_command.pm in MANIFEST.
- Add the missing myldr/win32.coff for building on Cygwin/MinGW.
- If the "perl" in path is different from the perl interpreter used
for "make test", t/2-pp.t is known to fail and is now skipped.
- Cygwin failed t/2-pp.t because "parl" is spelled as "parl.exe" there.
[Changes for 0.81 - May 23, 2004]
* New Features
- Regained support for Win9x, Cygwin and MinGW.
- PAR now supports 64-bit platforms, such as Tru64 and AIX.
- Cygwin and MinGW can now build EXEs with icons, too; MinGW can update
the icons, but Cygwin cannot.
- Newly supported modules: Pod::Usage, DBIx::SearchBuilder,
DBIx::ReportBuilder, SVK::Command, SVN::Core, and the ':encoding()'
IO discipline.
* Bug Fixes
- On non-Win32 systems, invoking pp-generated executable from PATH
did not work.
- Standalone executables were clobbered by existing perl environments
with an identical "auto/IO" libpath as the author's environment.
- Standalone executables did not work on systems with an unset
dynamic load path environment variable (eg. LD_LIBRARY_PATH).
- "pp -p -o multi.par 1.pl 2.pl; parl multi.par 1.pl" now works.
- $ENV{PATH} and $ENV{TEMP} were truncated at first path delimiter.
- "pp -f Bleach" did not work for ActivePerl on Win32.
- Windows 9x systems were generating invalid cache directory names.
- $ENV{path} is also recognized as $ENV{PATH} for Win32.
[Changes for 0.80 - March 17, 2004]
* New Features
- A comprehensive test suite for pp in contrib/automated_pp_test/.
It is run as part of the "make test" process from t/2-pp.t.
- Much better support for "pp -i" and "pp -N" (--icon/--info)
using the Win32::Exe module. You may now use EXE and DLL as
icon files.
- If PAR_GLOBAL_CLEAN (-C, --clean) is not set, we now preemptively
extracts files under the cache directory. That made POSIX.pm
and other modules that depends on %INC pointing to real files
work correctly.
- Now uses SHA-1 to create temporary directories and files,
instead of mtime.
- Verbosity level is now 1..3, not 0..5; "pp -v" now takes
an optional integer, so "pp -v input.pl" is no longer an error.
- New flags "-vv" and "-vvv", as shorthands for "-v 2" and "-v 3".
- The user-settable PAR_CLEAN and PAR_TEMP environment variables has
been renamed to PAR_GLOBAL_CLEAN and PAR_GLOBAL_TEMP; the original
variables are still accessible within the program. This is so that a
pp-generated program can exec() or system() another one without
crippling its environment variables.
- File lookups are now case-insensitive on case-insensitive filesystems.
- Another Tk-based GUI in contrib/gui_pp/; not installed by default.
- OOified "pp" in contrib/object_oriented_pp/; not installed by default.
* Bug Fixes
- "pp -d" (--dependent) prevented "pp -C" (--clean) from working.
- The "pp -m" (--multiarch) option was implemented incorrectly
and thus broken.
- Many documentation tweaks.
- Previously, "pp -M" (--module) did not add the module itself,
only its dependencies.
- Suppress a bogus warning when $ENV{$Config{ldlibpthname}} is empty.
- "parl -v" without Module::Signature installed could delete all
files within the current directory. Oops.
- On *nix systems, pp-generated executables erroneously linked to
libperl even if "pp -d" (--dependent) is not set.
- Spurious =cut directives in source files is now handled gracefully
by PAR::Filter::PodStrip.
- "pp -L" (--log) now logs all output messages to the log file,
not just the ones printed by "pp" itself.
[Changes for 0.79 - January 8, 2004]
* Bug Fixes
- Setting PAR_CLEAN had the reversed effect. Oops.
- Dynamic libraries in cached directories was not detected
properly, resulting in "permission denied" errors during
certain race conditions.
[Changes for 0.78 - January 7, 2004]
* New Features
- By default, executables generated by "pp" will now store
extracted files in cache directories. You may override
this by setting the PAR_CLEAN environment variable to "1",
or generate executables using "pp -C".
- New "pp -C" (--clean) option to make the generated executable
clean up temporary directories after each run.
- PAR_CLEARTEMP is renamed to PAR_CLEAN.
* Bug Fixes
- On Win32, temporary directories containing shared libraries
was not being properly cleaned up.
- If no suitable temporary directories are found, use the current
directory (".") instead of the root directory ("/").
[Changes for 0.77 - January 1, 2004]
* New Features
- New "pp -c" and "pp -x" (--compile/--execute) options run the
script with "perl -c" to check for dependencies.
- Also, the new "pp -n" (--noscan) command skips the default
static scanning altogether.
- Added support for "pp -c/-x/-n" to tkpp.
- For dynamically-built perls, pp-generated .exe files will now
appear in the process table with the same name as it was launched,
instead of "par.exe".
- New filter "Obfuscate", which uses B::Deobfuscate to strip away
PODs and comments, as well as mangling variable names.
- Merged tkpp 1.1 from Doug Gruber.
- OS/2 is now supported.
- External Zlib is no longer required to run pp-generated binaries.
* Bug Fixes
- Makefile.PL was failing if $Config{cc} contains spaces.
- No longer needs setting "Windows 95 compatible mode" to run on WinXP.
- On Win9x with Perl 5.6.1, "nmake" was failing due to extra "@[...]"
symbols in Makefile. It should be fixed now.
- The "bad signature" problem with newer Archive::Zip versions is fixed.
- App::Packer::Backend::PAR was misplaced into App/Packer/PAR.
- Signature tests were failing under new ExtUtils::MakeMaker versions.
- ActiveState's PPM building machine was having problem with PAR;
a ".pdb" entry in MANIFEST.SKIP is added to fix that.
- Some self-built PAR instances on Windows were failing due to
mismatching short and long pathnames.
[Changes for 0.76 - October 28, 2003]
* New Features
- Input filters. "pp --filter Bleach" now obfuscates the incoming
script with PAR::Filter::Bleach; "pp --modfilter Bleach" applies
Bleach to all packed modules.
- Two previously built-in filters, PodStrip and PatchContent,
are refactored out as PAR::Filter subclasses.
- Two new filters, Bleach and Bytecode, are added for source-hiding
purporses.
- New utility, "tkpp", provides a GUI frontend to "pp".
- New option, "pp --perlscript", to generate stand-alone scripts.
- The old "PAR::Intro" documentation has been replaced by two
new ones: "PAR::Tutorial" and "PAR::FAQ".
- Tk pixmap (.xpm) files can now be packed with "pp --add".
* Bug Fixes
- Perl 5.8.1 has an off-by-one bug that prevents "parl" to
function properly. We have now provided a workaround;
this bug should also be fixed in Perl 5.8.2.
- Fixed https support for LWP via the new Module::ScapDeps.
[Changes for 0.75 - September 21, 2003]
* New Features
- "pp -o file.exe file.par" now packs file.par into file.exe;
this means you can hand-tweak PAR files generated by "pp -p"
before packing it into an executable.
* Bug Fixes
- Packing multiple programs by "pp script1.pl script2.pl" was
producing syntax errors; fixed.
- "pp -M datafile" now works.
- Exit code from pp-packed executables now properly propagates out.
- Fixed "use base" detection, Math::BigInt support and spurious
signature warnings, by updated versions of Module::ScapDeps
and Module::Signature.
- On Win32, the PE info headers no longer show PAR_XXXXXXXXXXX.
[Changes for 0.74 - August 20, 2003]
* New Features
- pp now has a set of "PatchContent" rules, dealing with
non-PAR-compatible modules: Tk, Tk::Widget, Win32::API::Type,
Win32::SystemInfo, SQL::Parser, diagnostics. These rules may
get refactored back to PAR.pm in the future.
- New function, PAR::reload_libs(), to reload currently used
libraries inside PAR files.
- PAR.pm itself is now never packed into pp-generated files,
to perserve interface compatibility and reduce bloat.
- PAR.pm now handles "use PAR 'othercode.par'" called from
program or modules inside PAR files, even recursively.
- A new icon for Win32 that is hopefully prettier.
* Bug Fixes
- All data after __DATA__ are preserved for included libraries.
This helps self-reading modules like Net::LDAP::Constants.
- PAR::read_file() was broken. It now works.
- "use PAR" inside pp-generated executables was failing with
'file too short' errors due the mishandling of seek/tell.
- Occasional crashes on Win32 due to rmdir() called too early
with DLLs still open is fixed; however, "pp -d" executables
may still exhibit this problem.
- "pp -X" used to only take full pathnames as arguments.
It now also takes "Module::Name" and "Module/Name.pm".
- Dynamically built Perl under Cygwin failed to build, because
libperl.dll.a was not found.
- Eliminated "callback called on exit" warnings, and the related
"access violation" error on Win32.
[Changes for 0.73 - August 6, 2003]
* New Features
- The PAR Homepage is now online at http://par.perl.org/.
Documentations have been changed to link to it.
* Bug Fixes
- Tk applications can now properly access xpm/xbm files
with Tk->findINC.
- On Win32, pp-generated executables could not start from
Explorer, if its path contains space characters. Fixed.
- On Win32, pp-generated executables used to leave around an
empty directory in $ENV{TEMP}. It is now properly rmdir'ed.
- Some systems (notably OpenBSD and Debian) does not put their
libperl.so in the default location, which breaks the build
process; now searches inside $ENV{$Config{ldlibpthname}} and
$Config{libpth} to find it.
[Changes for 0.72 - August 2, 2003]
* New Features
- CHECK and INIT blocks in programs inside PAR are now supported.
* Bug Fixes
- Two debug statements were mistakenly left in the source,
resulting in "trying to get rid of /tmp/par_priv.xxxx.tmp"
messages.
- Building on Linux with GCC 3.2.2 was failing due to massive
heap required for my_perl.c. Fixed by splitting it into 3k
chunks.
- Depends on Module::ScanDeps 0.21; it supports utf8 on Perl 5.6.1
and can significantly reduce executable file size by eliminating
unneccessary shared libraries.
[Changes for 0.71 - July 30, 2003]
* Bug Fixes
- A nasty data-loss bug has been uncovered immediately after the
previous release; it only affects Windows platforms, and may
cause all files to be erased under the current root (\) directory.
- Building on Red Hat linux was failing, with error message that
says "my_perl not declared". This has since been fixed.
[Changes for 0.70 - July 29, 2003]
* New Features
- On machines with shared libperl, "pp" now makes truly stand-alone
executables; the old behaviour is available with "pp --dependent".
- Under Windows NT/2000/XP, "pp --icon=name.ico" now changes the icon
for the generated executable; otherwise, a default "white camel"
icon is used.
- "use PAR 'http://example.com/foo.par'" now works, as does
"perl -MPAR -Ihttp://example.com/foo.par".
- PAR::Dist is now a mandatory prerequisite, which provides
functions to turn any CPAN distribution into a PAR distribution,
as well as to install, uninstall, sign and verify such files.
- Integrated PAR::Dist into "par.pl" and "parl". For example,
"parl -i Foo-0.01-i386-freebsd-5.8.0.par" installs a PAR
distribution; "parl -v out.exe" verifies a digitally signed
executable generated by "pp --sign".
- A new option, "pp --multiarch", lets you generate PAR files
that can work on several architectures.
- "pp --sign" now adds digital signatures to generated executables
and PAR files.
- PAR files may now (recursively) contain other PAR files inside
their par/ directories.
- shlib/ and par/ directories inside PAR files can now contain
architecture- and perl-version-specific subdirectories.
- The "Cross-Platform Packaging and Deployment with PAR" tutorial
is now online as http://www.autrijus.org/par-tutorial/.
* Bug Fixes
- MANIFEST.SKIP was broken on Win32.
- C compilers that doesn't handle long line well can now
compile PAR.
- DLL files inside the same auto/ library as XS modules
was not properly extracted and loaded. This specifically
affects Win32.
- Because parl's @INC is '.', pp-generated executables may
miss IO.dll and other shared libraries since they couldn't
be correctly found in @INC.
[Changes for 0.69 - May 31, 2003]
* New Features
- Under Perl 5.8, "pp -p" now works with Apache::PAR.
See http://aut.dyndns.org/par-tutorial/slide018.html for
a simple example.
- "pp -M filename" now adds "filename" to /, not /lib/,
unless filename ends in (pm|ix|al). This makes it
possible to bundle "web.conf" needed by Apache::PAR.
- "pp -l" now searchs in system library paths, and
appends "lib" / prepends ".$dl_ext" where necessary.
* Bug Fixes
- PAR segfaults on some Unix platforms due to a NULL pointer
used in mktmpdir.c. Fixed.
- "pp -o out.par -p -e '...'" now honors -o; previously
it used "a.out.par" anyway.
- Inhibited spurious uninitialized warnings under -w in the
POD-stripping code.
- Win32 did not properly cleans up PAR_TEMP directory, resulting
in failure for executables that reused the same PID. Fixed.
[Changes for 0.68 - May 26, 2003]
* New Features
- New 'pp -l' option to pack additional shared libraries (DLLs).
- POD-stripped libraries inside PAR files now have #line directives
inserted, so they report the original line numbers on failure.
- PAR files generated by 'pp' now has a MANIFEST file that can be
viewed by Gecko-based browsers with Javascript turned on, e.g.:
jar:http://aut.dyndns.org/par/test.par!/MANIFEST
* Bug Fixes
- Each pp-executable instance now creates its own PAR_TEMP directory;
this avoids permission errors when multiple users run the same binary.
As a consequence, PAR_CLEARTEMP is now set to "1" by default.
- Newer versions of shared Zlib library no longer causes "pp" to
generate broken executables.
- Fixed dynamic loading on Cygwin was failing due to missing +x mode.
- Like "use lib", "use PAR 'name.par'" now unshift()s instead of push()es
into @INC. Same applies for "par.pl -A" and "parl -A".
- Fixed building on ActivePerl 626 and below due to a missing $Config{ld}.
[Changes for 0.67 - April 1, 2003]
* New Features
- PAR now works on Cygwin and MinGW/MSYS.
- Globbing support in PAR::import(): use PAR "/path/*.pm";
- New license clarification messages added to POD and 'pp -V'.
- All 'pp' options now has a short form (-o) and a long form (--output).
- Revamped documentation for 'pp'.
- New -g (--gui) flag for 'pp' to build console-less Win32 executables.
* Bug Fixes
- Building on Darwin Perl 5.6.0 was broken with 'cc -s'.
- Building on 5.6.0 was broken due to bad 'base.pm'.
- Win32 Tk::Widget autoloading was broken due to a binmode() bug.
- IPC::Run was pod-stripped incorrectly. Fixed.
- Depends on Module::ScanDeps 0.19, which supports utf8 and .ph files.
- Better AutoInstall support, which uses 'sudo' where necessary.
[Changes for 0.66 - March 20, 2003]
* New Features
- Adds PAR::Intro, a PODified version of the online presentation.
- Adds App::Packer::Backend::PAR, a bridge between PAR and App::Packer.
- Scripts and modules are now searched in "/" last, instead of first.
- Experimental patch for packing shared libraries via "pp -l".
- HTTP fetching of precompiled packages in addition to FTP.
* Bug Fixes
- Makefile.PL now downloads precompiled packages only if needed.
- AutoInstall has been made to work for an easier installation.
- The redundant "parl.exe.bat" is no longer created on Win32.
- Pre-0.63 PARs used to leave broken .dll in TEMP; now they're cleaned.
- "pp c:\something.pl" no longer treats c: as a relative path.
- "pp -I dir" now searches 'dir' first, instead of last.
- "pp" was broken on Perl 5.6.0 due to => stringification bugs.
- Support for Tk::Widget autoloading has been added.
- "parl" was not stripped if "gcc" was invoked as "cc"; fixed.
- On a machine with multiple "parl"s, "pp" now uses the correct one.
- File::Temp was missing as a dependency.
* Known Issues
- Cygwin support is still broken.
- PAR does not include utf8_heavy.pl nor unicore/* for scripts that
has "use utf8;". This has since been fixed by Module::ScanDeps 0.18.
[Changes for 0.65 - March 9, 2003]
This release comes with several significant improvements:
* Automatic binary installation
Previously, users without a C compiler cannot build the 'parl'
executable, and is therefore unable to create self-contained
binaries using 'pp'.
Now, if there is a binary package available for that architecture
under my CPAN directory, the Makefile.PL script will automatically
fetch it, unpack into blib/, and the installation will continue as
normal, resulting in a fully-functional 'pp'.
This feature is part of the soon-to-be-released Module::Install
framework; it will greatly benefit all CPAN authors with non-pure-perl
distributions.
* POD stripping
Packages generated with 'pp' will now strip POD sections from all
packed dependencies (your own scripts is unaffected); all binary
executables will save at least 276732 bytes, with additional ~20%
saving in additional packed dependencies.
You can turn off this feature with the PAR_VERBATIM environment
variable.
* XS Incompatibility solved
Because 'pp'-generated executables includes some fixed version of
shared libraries (IO, Zlib, etc), they used to break when the
target system has different version of shared libraries.
Now PAR::Heavy intercepts DynaLoader::dl_expandspec to always prefer
the library inside the PAR file, so this issue is resolved.
* 5.6.1 Reclaimed
Thanks to Sisyphus and various others, building on Perl 5.6.1
(with its old ExtUtils::MakeMaker and lack of PTHREAD_ATFORK)
now works again.
[Changes for 0.64 - March 2, 2003]
* New Features
- The t/0-signature.t test is re-enabled for people using my
Module::Signature to verify the module's OpenPGP signature.
- This release is the first distribution on CPAN to use the
Module::Install framework, which is a stand-alone, extensible
drop-in replacement for ExtUtils::MakeMaker that needs no
extra action/prerequisites for end users.
* Bug Fixes
- Dynamic loading on Win32 was broken, due to a binmode() bug
reported by Bill Atkins, D. Menzel and others.
- Building on Win32 in directory names that contain spaces
did not work.
[Changes for 0.63 - February 6, 2003]
* Bug Fixes
- The 'parl' binary (which replaces the old 'par' or 'par.exe')
didn't work properly when bundling perl modules for self-
contained executables, rendering 'pp' useless on machines
without core perl.
(c) 2002-2010 Steffen Müller; All rights reserved.
