Fwd: Visual Studio 2008 and ActiveState Perl 5.10 updates

["William A. Rowe, Jr." <wr...@rowe-clan.net>]

For information only; my post today based on new research into
Visual Studio 2008, and ActiveState Perl 5.10 binary release, over
these last few days.

Will focus the discussion on the modperl@perl.apache.org list for
now since it's most intricately affected (permalink)

http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/perl-modperl/200712.mbox/%3c47753789.9040302@rowe-clan.net%3e

Re: Fwd: Visual Studio 2008 and ActiveState Perl 5.10 updates

[Mladen Turk <mt...@apache.org>]

William A. Rowe, Jr. wrote:
> ...for 95% of the modules it *just doesn't matter*.  A module that
> uses only apr or only system I/O or memory allocation will probably
> never trip up.  We can build mod_jk, for example, to VC 2008 and use
> it on our VC6 httpd.  Or we can build mod_jk with VC6 and it will
> still work fine on VC 2008.
> 

Probably true. mcvcrtXX.dll will work with msvcrt.dll and vice versa,
but muvcrtXX.dll won't work with msvcrtYY.dll, so that give us the
only logical solution, and that is using the common denominator
which is msvcrt.dll

For example, httpd binaries from Apache2 Lounge are build with
msvcrt80.dll. Now if you build a module with msvcrt90.dll it probably
won't work because there is no chained dependencies between them,
so you actually have two libraries that collide.
The same situation was with httpd build against msvcrt71.dll
(from hunter.campbus.com).
In that case msvcrt80.dll modules behaved faulty for almost every
stdio file functions.
(at least we noticed that with mod_jk and it's logging)
For mod_jk binaries we are linking with msvcrt.dll simply because
this gives the reusability to run on httpd compiled against
any consecutive (msvcrt71, msvcrt80, msvct90, msvcrtXX) version.

> 
> So I didn't mean to slight folks following dev@httpd, but for almost
> everyone the discussion would mean nothing, but to the mod_perl guys
> it's all much more fragile and needs coordination ;-)
>

Of course.

Regards,
Mladen

Re: Fwd: Visual Studio 2008 and ActiveState Perl 5.10 updates

["William A. Rowe, Jr." <wr...@rowe-clan.net>]

William A. Rowe, Jr. wrote:
> Mladen Turk wrote:
>>>
>>> Will focus the discussion on the modperl@perl.apache.org list for
>>> now since it's most intricately affected (permalink)
>>
>> IIUC, you are on the same track ;)
> 
> FYI - it would be more useful if you would post to modperl@perl.a.o,
> Mladen, where ActiveState folk are already engaged in the discussion :)
> Not asking you to subscribe of course (I believe your posts are
> easily moderated in, that it's not a subscriber only list.)

FYI - to answer the obvious question raised by my response...

...for 95% of the modules it *just doesn't matter*.  A module that
uses only apr or only system I/O or memory allocation will probably
never trip up.  We can build mod_jk, for example, to VC 2008 and use
it on our VC6 httpd.  Or we can build mod_jk with VC6 and it will
still work fine on VC 2008.

Only when you put your fingers in the works do they get chopped off.
And that's precisely what mod_perl, or rather a host of various perl
modules (loadable xs files) tend to do.

So I didn't mean to slight folks following dev@httpd, but for almost
everyone the discussion would mean nothing, but to the mod_perl guys
it's all much more fragile and needs coordination ;-)

Bill

Re: Fwd: Visual Studio 2008 and ActiveState Perl 5.10 updates

["William A. Rowe, Jr." <wr...@rowe-clan.net>]

Mladen Turk wrote:
>>
>> Will focus the discussion on the modperl@perl.apache.org list for
>> now since it's most intricately affected (permalink)
> 
> IIUC, you are on the same track ;)

FYI - it would be more useful if you would post to modperl@perl.a.o,
Mladen, where ActiveState folk are already engaged in the discussion :)
Not asking you to subscribe of course (I believe your posts are
easily moderated in, that it's not a subscriber only list.)

Bill

Re: Fwd: Visual Studio 2008 and ActiveState Perl 5.10 updates

[Mladen Turk <mt...@apache.org>]

William A. Rowe, Jr. wrote:
> For information only; my post today based on new research into
> Visual Studio 2008, and ActiveState Perl 5.10 binary release, over
> these last few days.
> 
> Will focus the discussion on the modperl@perl.apache.org list for
> now since it's most intricately affected (permalink)
> 

IMHO the major problem is that people don't understand the
way how msvcrt and msvcrtXX interoperates.
It is obvious that Microsoft tries to keep the msvcrt binary
compatibility (both for 32 and 64 bit), so we should do that
as well (not because Microsoft does it, but because users needs it).

I'll be strongly against any attempt to make official binaries
linked to anything beyond msvcrt.dll.
If that means that ActiveState binaries won't work with our
official binaries, well, that's their problem, not ours.

IIUC, you are on the same track ;)

Regards,
Mladen