On-line price updating?

[Wm]

On Sat, 23 Jul 2016 07:14:40 -0700, in gmane.comp.gnome.apps.gnucash.user,
John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote: 

>> On Jul 22, 2016, at 4:02 PM, Alain Belzile <abe_qt01 at videotron.ca>
>> wrote: 
>> 
>> I have been using GnuCash for over a year on a Windows system and now I
>> would like to add the stock price updating module. 
>> 
>> Per the instructions in the help file, I launched « install-fq-mods.cmd
>> », which yielded the attached result. 
>> 
>> What is the error referring to? 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Any clue would be much appreciated. 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Alain Belzile Montréal, QC, Canada 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> <install-fq-mods.txt>_
> 
> It failed for an HTTP-401 error, authentication required. After a bit of
> looking around I find that manual downloads from ActiveState require a
> business edition license ($1200US/year/seat!), so I guess we'll have to
> drop ActivePerl support from the install-fq-mods script. 

That's worse than I thought!  There isn't much reason for a gnc user to use ActiveState's perl these days unless you already have it.

Historically there was (sort of)
perl trying to understand Win (confused people)
ActiveState (perl understanding win)
strawberry (best  of both)

now ripe, strawberry fits the gnc model much better and works nicely if you don't need a Win interface to the stuff under the bonnet

Perhaps the script should be changed to 
 "It looks like you've got Active Perl, please use the available tools to install [modules] and try again"
if they (AS) are going to be that pissy about it.

To be clear: I don't think JohnR is saying you need a business edition license to get the modules, just to get them automagically.  From gnc and most users POV having to go and find the modules yourself by hand using the interface (which I think is free) sort of defeats the purpose of the script.

> If you want to continue to use ActivePerl you'll have to install the two
> modules Date::Manip and Finance::Quote plus their dependencies using the
> module installation tool that came with ActivePerl. If you've got an
> older version of ActivePerl (5.16 or earlier) you'll need to upgrade
> that first, as Active State supports modules for those versions only for
> business edition licensees. 

That'll be a nightmare to script.

> Another solution, and the one I recommend if you don't have some
> particular reason to use ActivePerl, would be to uninstall ActivePerl.
> Then install-fq-mods will install Strawberry Perl for you, which has two
> advantages: First, Strawberry Perl uses the usual CPAN infrastructure
> for modules so you don't have to wait for ActiveState to build a new ppm
> after a module is updated. That's a major advantage for Finance::Quote
> that changes often because of website changes at the quote sources.
> Second, ActiveState is a closed-source commercial distribution (legal
> under the Perl license) while Strawberry is an open-source project on
> Github.

I'd second that.

Q: perhaps one for the dev list but can anyone think of a reason for keeping the two perl approach? unless
1. all the expected stuff is there (i can go for that but the script would probably work)
2. some of the expected stuff is there (looking dodgy based on the above)

-- 
Wm