-Malcolm Beattie has written a multifunction backend compiler,
-available from CPAN, that can do both these things. It is included
-in the perl5.005 release, but is still considered experimental.
-This means it's fun to play with if you're a programmer but not
-really for people looking for turn-key solutions.
-
-Merely compiling into C does not in and of itself guarantee that your
-code will run very much faster. That's because except for lucky cases
-where a lot of native type inferencing is possible, the normal Perl
-run-time system is still present and so your program will take just as
-long to run and be just as big. Most programs save little more than
-compilation time, leaving execution no more than 10-30% faster. A few
-rare programs actually benefit significantly (even running several times
-faster), but this takes some tweaking of your code.
-
-You'll probably be astonished to learn that the current version of the
-compiler generates a compiled form of your script whose executable is
-just as big as the original perl executable, and then some. That's
-because as currently written, all programs are prepared for a full
-eval() statement. You can tremendously reduce this cost by building a
-shared I<libperl.so> library and linking against that. See the
-F<INSTALL> podfile in the Perl source distribution for details. If
-you link your main perl binary with this, it will make it minuscule.
-For example, on one author's system, F</usr/bin/perl> is only 11k in
-size!
-
-In general, the compiler will do nothing to make a Perl program smaller,
-faster, more portable, or more secure. In fact, it can make your
-situation worse. The executable will be bigger, your VM system may take
-longer to load the whole thing, the binary is fragile and hard to fix,
-and compilation never stopped software piracy in the form of crackers,
-viruses, or bootleggers. The real advantage of the compiler is merely
-packaging, and once you see the size of what it makes (well, unless
-you use a shared I<libperl.so>), you'll probably want a complete
-Perl install anyway.
-
-=head2 How can I compile Perl into Java?
-
-You can also integrate Java and Perl with the
-Perl Resource Kit from O'Reilly and Associates. See
-http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/prkunix/ .
-
-Perl 5.6 comes with Java Perl Lingo, or JPL. JPL, still in
-development, allows Perl code to be called from Java. See jpl/README
-in the Perl source tree.
+(contributed by brian d foy)
+
+In general, you can't do this. There are some things that may work
+for your situation though. People usually ask this question
+because they want to distribute their works without giving away
+the source code, and most solutions trade disk space for convenience.
+You probably won't see much of a speed increase either, since most
+solutions simply bundle a Perl interpreter in the final product
+(but see L<How can I make my Perl program run faster?>).
+
+The Perl Archive Toolkit ( http://par.perl.org/ ) is Perl's
+analog to Java's JAR. It's freely available and on CPAN (
+http://search.cpan.org/dist/PAR/ ).
+
+There are also some commercial products that may work for you, although
+you have to buy a license for them.
+
+The Perl Dev Kit ( http://www.activestate.com/Products/Perl_Dev_Kit/ )
+from ActiveState can "Turn your Perl programs into ready-to-run
+executables for HP-UX, Linux, Solaris and Windows."
+
+Perl2Exe ( http://www.indigostar.com/perl2exe.htm ) is a command line
+program for converting perl scripts to executable files. It targets both
+Windows and Unix platforms.