On Thu, 21 Dec 2000, you wrote:
> <Bull>
> Think of it as proof of evolution, once you've spent some time on Win
> boxes
> you begin to need something like perl. And then you either learn perl
> and do
> pretty much everything with it or end up learning lots of different
> little niche
> technologies. After a few months of perling you end up with this
> burning desire
> to find out what this fork thing does and you install Linux/FreeBSD
> (I've not yet
> met a netBSD user.) and then you find that your amazingly simple
> package
> system has stopped working.
I would suggest that anyone capable of installing Linux will have no
bother at all typing
$perl -MCPAN - e shell
and then
$install DBI
how simple can it be?
> Also I've had mods fail under -MCPAN due to test errors but I've never
> had a
> ppm refuse to install for any reason. Active State used to require all
> modules to pass
> certain tests before they'd package them, don't know if this has
> anything to do with
> what they support under corporate contracts but it might be another
> reason.
> <Sensible>
I have to disagree most strongly there .. i spent a good while bashing my
head because they'd ported DBI::Proxy to the new 5.6 version of ppm ..
but had not ported RPC::something that was a dependency. various
fragments became available as ppm and promptly didnt work .. ISTR it
being a major headache at the time.
at the end of the day even if yer -MCPAN fails typing perl
Makefile.PL/make/make install is not THAT hard .. this is programmers we
are talking about here .. easy peasy n'est pas?
so .. OK .. I'll grant you its useful (infact it rocks) as a windows port
of perl .. the ppm thing is sorta OK .. I prefer to compile it myself if
I can .. I have a copy of nmake and a suitaible compiler and it all
seems to happen usually .. but for *nix I see it as a dangerous
splintering .. theres already the defacto standard for *unix and you hope
that it still works under ActiveState/Win32.. but are prepared to be
disappointed (mainly because the OS is missing several major features) ...
but I can't see any strong advantage to running it on *nix .. infact
since every major *nix distro comes with Perl as standard the level of
cluefulness required to install it is much greater than the level of
cluefulness required to do the cpan thing, so I cant see the ease of ppm
(which is no easier than the MCPAN thing imho) being a factor .
just my 2 penneth. now .. how can I get it onto my lapto tha has no
cdrom or network card? ... I see a very long 9600 baud call to demon ...
:)
--
Robin Szemeti
The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!
