
But I lean towards Strawberry Perl because the environment is closer to Unix and so there are not many incompatibilities. I have used both before and it seemed to work for most cases.
#Activeperl latest releaswe install#
Although easier to install than CPAN modules, PPMs are specifically created for Windows and so some CPAN modules will not work (because they do Unix-specific things). You can find PPMs for most of the popular modules so you shouldn't have any trouble unless you are looking for an obscure or really new package (so bleeding-edge stuff won't work because PPM usually lags behind CPAN). The official repository is hosted by ActiveState. I think Strawberry Perl also comes with a few modules that let you install PPMs (Perl Package Manager files).ĪctivePerl installs modules using its own format called PPM (Perl Package Manager). The MinGW distribution comes with gcc, make, ld and other tools to help you build modules. Strawberry Perl also comes with MinGW which means that Strawberry Perl can use quite a few XS modules directly from CPAN without any modification. When things are added to CPAN, you have immediate access to them. Strawberry Perl uses CPAN, which means that you are up to date as far as modules are concerned. And I have to say one should just learn Perl - it's a very beautiful language. Strawberry Perl is at least as great if not greater. It was super-easy for me to get started with Perl language while I was on vacation when I wasn't always online.
#Activeperl latest releaswe Offline#
I ended up going with ActivePerl simply because it comes with offline documentation (in HTML) - a great life-savior for those who are on the road or just not always connected. I actually liked both which is a good thing! One can't go wrong with either of these. I gave both distributions a run for a couple of weeks. And I wonder: What should I pick to get started? If I pick one how hard, is it to migrate to the other? There's a clear trade-off between those two.

It also says that ActivePerl has a lot of prepackaged modules which are easier to install with PPM. Wikipedia says that Strawberry Perl comes with additional development tools to compile CPAN modules if necessary. I read about two rival distributions available for Windows platform (I guess there's just Perl on other OSes :). I'm totally new to Perl, but I'd like to try it out.
