Recommendations for perl-to-python interoperation?

Question

We have a sizable code base in Perl. For the forseeable future, our codebase will remain in Perl. However, we\'re looking into adding a GUI-based dashboard utility. We are consi

Answer 1

I'd think the major criterion for any qualified answer would involve the details of the existing codebase. How is this Perl code called and how does it return it's results?

A collection of command line utilities returning results through reasonably good textual output ("good" as in "amenable to further machine parsing" or "pipeline friendly") ... should be reasonably easy to call from any programming language (and Python's excellent subprocess and multiprocessing modules in particular). A collection of web CGI or other modules layered between Apache and some DBMS system could still be accessed with things like urlopen2 or mechanize -- but it might be better to bypass the Perl code and write Python to query the underlying (presumably canonical) model (data store).

If the majority of the codebase is a set of libraries or modules ... and the functionality that your proposed dashboard requires isn't already exposed via some higher level mechanism (some command line interface, networking protocol, etc) ... then it's basically insane to consider interfacing to it through any language other than Perl. (Unless, by some strange and extremely unlikely twist of fate, your existing codebase and your intended implementation target are both already stable under Parrot).

Let's ask a different, broader, question: What interface to you intend to use between your dashboard and your existing code base?

This question is paramount regardless of your choice of implementation language. If you write the dashboard in Perl it still needs to call into your existing code base in some way. You probably need to fix-up your code base to implement support for whatever your going to use for your dashboard. At the point where your codebase supports the necessary API (has command line or IPC protocol calls into the desired functionality which return results over any reasonable IPC mechanism) ... then your choice of dashboard implementation language will be essentially arbitrary.