Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi all,

I'm new to the world of Perl so may have gone about this in the wrong way (my background is mainly Java and Bash).

I have a Perl script (gallery.pl) which takes in various arguments (the only mandatory arguments is a directory full of images) and creates an HTML, standards compliant gallery. Seeing how images might be too big, I use the Image::Magick module to do any resizing that is necessary.

If I want to pass this script to a technically minded user to use then I'd just email the script or put it on my site for them to download and then they can sort out any modules they need to install.
However, what about non-technically minded users? How can I distribute my script in such a way that the end user doesn't have to care about missing dependancies?

I've thought about an installation script to install the main script under /opt/local/bin, could I use this installation script to install missing modules? If so, how might I do this?

I've tried looking at things like Module::AutoInstall and ExtUtils::MakeMaker but my interpretation is that these are only for modules, not for scripts.

Sorry to sound so dim about it all, but as I said, it's all rather new to me!

Many thanks,
Ben

If you're using modules ( CPAN or other ) you can bundle them together with your code in an extractable tar file. Then set your @INC appropriately in your perl code.

eg.

Code:

app_dir/
        lib/
             my_module.pm
        bin/
             my_app.pl

I'm not sure if this suits your needs or not ...