Update packer and PerlPowerTools.exe

[kal247]

Hello Brian,

I'm catching up with this topic after a very long break.

There are a few changes from 2022 for which I've never submitted a PR. It's a massive simplification plus improvements and bugfixes, and it would make perlpowertools.exe feature complete (I think).

List of changes :

1. Only Windows is supported, to limit scope (it doesn't really make sense for other platforms anyway).
2. The helper script bin\perlpowertools is standalone (not generated), with dynamic tools list.
3. With option -V, bin\perlpowertools will display the version of PerlPowerTools module itself.
4. The packer script packer\packer.pl has been moved and renamed as util\packer.
5. Perldoc's POD is now included in the package, meaning this works : perlpowertools.exe perldoc perldoc.
6. Bugfixes
7. Basic tests specific to the packer and helper scripts in t/perlpowertools/ (I'm not sure it's the right place).
8. Rough documentation in README_PerlPowerTools.exe.pod.

List of changes to other tools in bin:

9. Modulinos need the following patch run() if !caller() || caller(0) eq 'PAR' || caller(1) eq 'PAR'. I've already patched the following tools : date, echo, factor, glob, units.

Future work :

10. If the modulinos changes are accepted, document it somewhere. Maybe also in PROGRAMMING_STYLE.md?
11. The documentation needs to be improved and must explain how to build your own custom executable, what is PAR::Packer and its startup process (unzip). Problems with antivirus software. POD missing in packer (but usage ok).
12. Issues with $0. Some tools in bin might need review/patch. See notes in packer header.

Should I raise one (or more) PR for this?

Thank you and best regards.

[briandfoy]

Yes, let's start with a new PR. Your plan looks really good.

To answer some questions:

10. Modulinos are fine (and maybe even preferred). A patch to PROGRAMMING_STYLE.md would be nice. You can open a separate issue/PR for that if you like.
11. I don't know what needs to happen to document this, but if you start it, I'll go through the instructions to test it.
12. We have started work to get away from $0 (or use it once). If you need something for your stuff to work, let me know and we'll see how we can get it done.

[briandfoy]

• [x] Let's make the fixes to the caller stuff in separate PRs. We can do that now and things should keep working. We don't need to wait to apply those.

[kal247]

Hello Brian, I've open pull request https://github.com/briandfoy/PerlPowerTools/pull/570 with points 1-9, 11 from my initial post.

[briandfoy]

This is not really "rejected", just moved to its own repo. See #96 and the new repository https://github.com/kal247/perlpowertools-exe where this idea will go forward without worrying about what's going on here.