Is there a good obfuscater for Perl code?

Question

Does anyone know of a good code obsfucator for Perl? I\'m being ask to look into the option of obsfucating code before releasing it to a client. I know obsfucated code can s

Answer 1

The checksum and contract ideas are good for preventing the "problems" you describe, but if the cost to you is the difficulty of rolling-out upgrades and bug-fixes, how are your clients making changes that don't pass the comprehensive test suite? If they are capable of making these changes (or at least, making a change which expresses what they want the code to do), why not simply make it easy/automated for them to open a support ticket and upload the patch? The customer is always right about what the customer wants (they might not have a clue how to do it "the right way", but that's why they are paying you.)

A better reason to want an obfuscator would be for mass-market desktop deployment where you don't have every customer on a standing contract. In that case, something like PAR -- anything which packs the encryption/obfuscation logic into a compiled binary is the way to go.