On Mon, 01 Nov 2004, Mathieu Longtin wrote:
>  Mildly related question: when you package perl software, do you just
>  pack up the file as they are on disk, or do you let perl "compile"
>  first, and save the state of the interpreter before it starts running
>  the code?

It is mostly just the files from disk.  Some modules get modified a little
to make them work inside PerlApp (e.g. when a module accesses %INC to find
its own location on disk), and we strip POD from some core modules where
it is safe to do so.

Saving the state of the interpreter could only be done using the bytecode
technique.  Unfortunately bytecode files in Perl are both larger, and
slower to load than the corresponding source code, so there is no advantage
in using the bytecode.

Cheers,
-Jan