REQUIREMENTS

Stunnix Perl-Obfus is a suite of Perl applications. It requires a working Perl version 5.8.0 or greater installed somewhere in your system (a so-called ``interpreter for backend''). It needn't be the default perl interpreter in your system - you can install this version of perl into non-standard location for it to coexist with your system perl. Of course the perl version 5.8.0 or greater is required by Stunnix Perl-obfus itself only, obfuscated version of the code won't require any particular perl version if it didn't require one before.

No additional Perl modules are required for running Stunnix Perl-Obfus. In case ``interpreter for backend'' is different from the system perl, no modules required by the program being obfuscated need to be installed for ``interpreter for backend''.


INSTALLATION STEPS

Since Stunnix Perl-Obfus is a pure Perl application, it is as portable as Perl itself (i.e. it will run on most Unix OSes, Windows, and MacOS). It is distributed as a .tar.gz (gzip'ed tar archive) that should be extracted to any directory you like. On Windows platforms, tar.gz files can be extracted using trial version of WinZIP or RAR archiver from http://www.rarlabs.com

For Windows users it's highly recommended to unpack Stunnix Perl-Obfus to the directory with name not containing any spaces.

If you are not upgrading the previous version of the Stunnix Perl-Obfus, you have to invoke the setup.pl script from the lib/perl-obfus/ directory, like this.

    perl setup.pl

On Windows platforms it's enough to open folder lib/perl-obfus/ in Explorer and double-click on file setup.pl.

That script will display the license, upon accepting it it will ask for registration code you've received when purchasing Stunnix Perl-Obfus and a commandline for ``perl interpreter for the backend'' ; it will write a special file with default configuration to lib/perl-obfus/perl-obfus-settings.pl that will be read by perl-obfus on each invokation. On Windows platforms it will also create a folder Stunnix Perl-Obfus in the Programs folder of the Start menu. At the end of installation on Windows platforms, you will be presented with ability to immediately start Project Manager - an advanced User Interface for Stunnix Perl-Obfus.

It's not recommended to run the setup.pl script if you are upgrading from the previous version of Stunnix Perl-Obfus, unless otherwise is stated in the release notes for new version of this product.

After these steps Stunnix Perl-Obfus is ready for use.

For users of Windows platforms: when upgrading from a version of Stunnix Perl-Obfus that didn't contain Project Manager, you have to open lib/perl-obfus/utils/ folder in Explorer and execute setupwin32.pl by double-clicking on it in order to add folder for Stunnix Perl-Obfus to Programs menu.

Stunnix Project Manager can be started at any moment on any platform by executing bin/startui.pl (Windows users may just use menu items in Programs menu or visit bin/ folder with Explorer and double-click on startui.pl).


NOTES

In case you'll let the setup.pl script to overwrite lib/perl-obfus/perl-obfus-settings.pl during installation of new version of Stunnix Perl-Obfus, you'll have to ship all Perl code of software obfuscated entirely by the new version of Perl-Obfus to your customers once you need to distribute an update to them (instead of just sending the files corresponding to ones that were modified).