Re: Building DBD::Oracle with one version but deploying with another

On 18/04/2013 16:22, John Wiersba wrote:
> [A previous version of this question was asked on dbi-users -- I haven't gotten any response there.  Not sure which list to post to.]
>
> Hi, I'd like to find out how to build/install DBD::Oracle with one
> version of Oracle client but then deploy it with a potentially different client version, say on a server without the original client version (or with it installed in a different location).  It seems like the Oracle
> client libraries can be loaded dynamically at runtime, based on
> ORACLE_HOME, so there doesn't need to be a dependency on those exact
> client libraries that were used at build/install time.
>
> Another
> way of asking:  How does ActiveState deploy DBD::Oracle without needing
> to build it (maybe no C compiler is available), on servers with
> different versions of the Oracle client libraries installed?

I built DBD::Oracle on windows recently. I did need the Oracle client 
libraries for the tests to pass, and ActiveState would have too. Once 
built they package up the binaries for distribution, and expect the 
target system to have the appropriate libraries. If I remember 
correctly, I had to download the appropriate libraries from Oracle. I 
spoke to the vanilla Perl people about this, as they currently don't 
have a DBD::Oracle bundled in with their distro. They had been looking 
at bundling the client libraries as well, but I think there is a 
licensing issues surrounding doing that which is why ActiveState do not 
do it. We agreed to take another look at it next month as I'm very busy 
this month.

> I've searched the archives for both dbi-dev and dbi-users and can't find this issue addressed, although I did see a similar issue asked once.  If there's any reference material that I have overlooked, could you please point it out.  The README for DBD::Oracle seems to indicate that this is not possible or not advised, but then what is ActiveState doing to make it work?

With ActiveState's ppm, it wont work on the target system unless the 
correct client libraries are there. I think that's what led me to build 
my own DBD::Oracle in the first place. I was building for 64 bit 
Windows, and found this blog post:
http://www.pythian.com/blog/dbdoracle-and-windows-64bit/
I found errors in that post and commented with my findings, yet my 
comment has yet to be accepted. I think Pythian is on this list? So 
maybe they will comment.


Lyle