# $File: //member/autrijus/PAR/README $ $Author: autrijus $
# $Revision: #8 $ $Change: 1845 $ $DateTime: 2002/11/02 21:03:41 $

This is the README file for PAR, a module to use perl scripts
and modules stored inside compressed .par files.

Please see the PAR.pm for typical uses, script/makepar.pl for
bundling prerequisite modules of scripts into a PAR file (aka
PerlApp or Perl2exe), and script/par.pl for running/making
self-contained PAR executables.

There is also a presentation "Introduction to PAR", available on
the web as <http://www.autrijus.org/par-intro/slide001.html>.

* Installation

PAR uses the standard perl module install process:

cpansign -v		# see SIGNATURE for details
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install

After installation, if you want to enable stand-alone binary support,
please apply the included patch to the B::C module first (5.8.0 only,
5.6.1 does not need this):

    % patch `perl -MB::C -e'print $INC{"B/C.pm"}'` < patches/perl580.diff

and then:

    % perlcc -o /usr/local/bin/par script/par.pl

Afterwards, you can generate self-executable binaries by:

    % makepar.pl -B -O./foo.par /home/test.pl
    % perlcc -o par.exe par.pl		# only need to do this once
    % par.exe -B -O./foo.exe foo.par	# self-contained .exe
    % foo.exe				# runs anywhere with same OS
					# (but see TODO for caveats)

If you want to make a self-contained script instead (without bundling
the perl binary and core modules), do this:

    % makepar.pl -S -B -O./foo.par /home/test.pl
    % par.pl -b -O./foo.pl foo.par	# or -B to bundle core modules
    % perl foo.pl			# runs anywhere with core modules

* Copyright

Copyright 2002 by Autrijus Tang <autrijus@autrijus.org>.

All rights reserved.  You can redistribute and/or modify
this bundle under the same terms as Perl itself.

See <http://www.perl.com/perl/misc/Artistic.html>.