Can I use Parrot Compiler Tools from installed parrot-devel package on Linux?

Question

I am interested in creating my own language using Parrot VM.

I have installed the parrot-devel package along with parrot and dependencies (using Synaptic package manager under Linux Mint 11).

I found a tutorial ( http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Parrot_Virtual_Machine/Squaak_Tutorial/Introduction ) saying to run:

perl tools/dev/mk_language_shell.pl myLang

and I eventually found that script at /usr/lib/parrot/2.6.0/tools/dev/mk_language_shell.pl

Here's what happened when I ran it:

dukereg@dukereg-compy /usr/lib/parrot/2.6.0 $ perl tools/dev/mk_language_shell.pl myLang
creating mylang/
mkdir mylang/: Permission denied at tools/dev/mk_language_shell.pl line 164

Now I don't know if the package put these files in the right place. I could just put a 'sudo' in front of it (?), but that might be ignoring a real problem with how I have installed parrot.

Questions:

Can I use the Parrot compiler tools from these packages I have installed (as opposed to uninstalling the packages, cloning the git repository, learning how to make parrot from source, etc)?

If so, what further preparation is required to actually start using the tools without errors?

Answer 1

It probably fails because you tried to create that mylang/ directory in /usr/lib/parrot/2.6.0. You may try:

cd
perl /usr/lib/parrot/2.6.0/tools/dev/mk_language_shell.pl mylang

If that fails please let the Parrot folks know about it. IRC #parrot irc://irc.perl.org/parrot