How to bundle perl libraries with my cross platform script? - perl

Question

I developped a script in Perl that uses 2 extra libraries, Net::SSH::Perl and Spreadsheet::WriteExcel, which I installed easily using CPAN on my Debian laptop.
Ultimatly, my goal is to deploy this script on a solaris server. However, this server is not connected to internet and thus cannot auto install missing dependencies.
So far, I tried using PP, which allowed me to run this script on another Ubuntu computer without needing to install manually the extra libraries, but returned an error : Cannot find /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 on Solaris.
As I suspected this was due to the differences between both architectures, I packed my script with a ./lib folder containing all dependencies (the ./lib was obtained by doing pp -B -p -o script.par myscript.pl and extracting the resulting ./lib folder).
Following the leads I found in this question, I tried with use lib "./lib and with BEGIN { unshift #INC, "lib"; } at the start of my script, but I got an error saying I didn't include my libraries when I ran it.
Is there a way to port those libraries ? Is there another approach ?

Answer 1

Net::SSH::Perl relies upon several XS modules, such as Math::GMP, Math::Pari and others. There's no way around actually compiling them (as in compiling them with C, not Perl) on the Solaris box.
You will also need the underlying C libraries (i.e. libgmp, libpari). The Math::Pari build script will download its library, but you've indicated that's not possible on your target Solaris box.
cpanm can help you download the Perl dependencies in preparation for moving them to your target machine and build them on it.
If you have proper dependency entries in your project's Makefile.PL or cpanfile, running
cpanm --installdeps -L deps --save-dists dists .
on your devel machine in your project directory (note the trailing dot) will download all of its dependencies into the dists directory.
You can then copy that directory to your target Solaris box (along with cpanm) and pass it to cpanm using its --mirror option.
For example, I just did this for Net::SSH::Perl's dependencies:
cpanm --installdeps -L deps --save-dists dists Net::SSH::Perl
It downloaded and installed 34 distributions into deps, saving the archives in dists.
I can build Net::SSH::Perl using the downloaded distributions via:
cpanm --mirror file://${PWD}/dists Net::SSH::Perl
Note that while cpanm is handy, you don't actually need it to install the required modules. You can manually install them (in the correct order) by unpacking them and then running
perl Makefile.PL
make
make install
or
perl Build.PL
./Build
./Build install
as appropriate for the specific module