[lug] (not)Using CPAN (was: Re: can't make this stuff up, folks...)

[Sean Reifschneider]

On 10/19/2009 10:18 AM, Zan Lynx wrote:
> Also, using CPAN (the CPAN module that is) at all has, in my experience, 
> completely destroyed the ability to use Perl on RPM based systems. Its 
> disregard of any packaging structure and its desire to upgrade anything 

CPAN stands for several different things:

   It's a command you can run ("perl -MCPAN -e shell", IIRC) which will
   install things from the next acronym.

   It's a archive of software.

If you use the former directly on a system with a software packaging system
(RPM or deb), you're heading for a world of pain.

But, if you use the latter to create native packages, you're in good shape.
In many cases the more popular libraries are already packaged (mail
parsing, etc).  For example, on my F11 laptop:

   guin:~$ yum search perl | grep '^perl-' | wc
   1391   10809   94426
   guin:~$

Plenty of Perl modules there, most of them from CPAN.  But of particular
interest on some systems is this package:

   perl-RPM-Specfile.noarch : Perl extension for creating RPM specfiles

You can use this to take a CPAN file and turn it into an RPM.  Works very
well.

Sean
-- 
Sean Reifschneider, Member of Technical Staff <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com, ltd. - Linux Consulting since 1995: Ask me about High Availability

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