[Bioperl-l] Module issue with cygwin-perl vs. Activestate Perl

[Jonathan Cline]

Mark A. Jensen wrote:
> Sorry, I cut off the last script. The entire thing follows:
>  
This is exactly what I was looking for - thanks.  A method to modify
Makefile.PL, install in Activestate, etc is great.  Perhaps your method
could also be improved for portability by using `cygpath` although few
cygwin installs modify this beyond the default (to get rid of hardcoded
"/cygdrive/x/").   I will definitely save your code for later.

I've implemented another workaround, which is to use Win32::Pipe and
other Win32:: methods.  This has problems of it's own  (support is not
100%) and error-free implementation not as easy as requiring Activestate
Perl, however it should work with both Activestate and cygwin-perl (and
Unix).


## Jonathan Cline
## jcline at ieee.org
## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223
########################


> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jonathan Cline" <jncline at gmail.com>
> To: <bioperl-l at lists.open-bio.org>
> Cc: <jcline at ieee.org>
> Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 11:24 PM
> Subject: [Bioperl-l] Module issue with cygwin-perl vs. Activestate Perl
>
>
>> I recently mentioned working on Bio::Robotics for Tecan.  Vendors
>> being MS-Win specific, the vendor software allows third-party software
>> communication through a named pipe (the literal filename is
>> "\\\\.\\pipe\\gemini" where the multiple front slashes are MS specific
>> and this pseudo-pipe is opened with sysopen() ).  This is broken under
>> cygwin-perl due to cygwin's method of handling paths -- the sysopen
>> fails.  However it works under ActiveState Perl and communication
>> through the named pipe (to the robot hardware) is OK.  The standard
>> workaround is usually to use cygwin bash, and force the PATH to use
>> ActiveState perl.  (Typical MS Windows incompatibility problem.)  The
>> issue is:  Perl module libraries for CPAN work under cygwin-perl
>> (only?).  Attempts to run "activestate-perl Makefile.PL" for CPAN
>> module use, or "make test", result in a bad list of incompatibility
>> problems.  Yet ActiveState Perl is required for communicating to the
>> vendor application (unless there is some workaround to raw filesystem
>> access in cygwin-perl that I haven't found in 2 days of working this).
>>  The stand-alone scripts I have work fine to access the named pipe
>> (using ActiveState Perl) since the standalone scripts have no module
>> INC dependencies, no CPAN module test harness, etc etc.
>>
>> This isn't specifically a Bio:: issue, though if anyone has
>> suggestions please email.  I could try msys and see if it handles the
>> named-pipe-special-file better, if msys has an msys-perl distribution.
>>
>> -- 
>> ## Jonathan Cline
>> ## jcline at ieee.org
>> ## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223
>> ########################
>> _______________________________________________
>> Bioperl-l mailing list
>> Bioperl-l at lists.open-bio.org
>> http://lists.open-bio.org/mailman/listinfo/bioperl-l
>>
>>
>