How do you install modules in OS X?

[Vic Norton]

Hello all,

I got a new iMac a few of weeks ago. I've been using MacPerl on a Power
Computing tower until now. I'm a bit stymied by Perl on the iMac. My
primary problem is that I don't know how to install Perl modules. This was
easy in MacPerl. I just dropped the module on Chris Nandor's "installme"
droplet. (A future question: How do you make droplets in OS X?)

I have tried to install CPAN-1.63 by running "cpan". I wasn't ready for
a manual configuration. I let cpan decide what to do.

The first thing cpan told me was that I didn't have "unzip", "make",
"lynx", "ncftpget", "ncftp" in PATH. Where can I get these? Are they
necessary? Larry Wall (Programming Perl, 3rd ed, p 553) seems to think
that "make" is quite important.

After writing "/Users/vicnorton/.cpan/CPAN/MyConfig.pm" cpan tried to
"install Bundle::CPAN". First it asked me to "install Net::FTP as soon as
possible". It continued by connecting to "ftp.cpan.ddns.develooper.com".
Apparently it "GOT /Users/vicnorton/.cpan/sources/authors/01mailrc.txt.gz",
but after this the process broke down. Cpan could no longer connect.

...
226-File [01mailrc.txt.gz] successfully transferred
226 1.556 seconds (measured here), 35.53 Kbytes per second
56634 bytes received in 00:01 (30.04 KB/s)
221-Goodbye. You uploaded 0 and downloaded 56 kbytes.
221 Logout - CPU time spent: 0.000 seconds.
GOT /Users/vicnorton/.cpan/sources/authors/01mailrc.txt.gz
Going to read /Users/vicnorton/.cpan/sources/authors/01mailrc.txt.gz
Issuing "/usr/bin/ftp -n"
/usr/bin/ftp: No address associated with nodename
Not connected.
Local directory now /Users/vicnorton/.cpan/sources/modules
Not connected.
Not connected.
Not connected.
Not connected.
Not connected.
Not connected.
Bad luck... Still failed!
Can't access URL ftp://ftp.perl.org/pub/CPAN/modules/02packages.details.txt.gz.


Please, install Net::FTP as soon as possible. CPAN.pm installs it for you
if you just type
install Bundle::libnet

Please check, if the URLs I found in your configuration file () are valid.
The urllist can be edited. E.g. with ``o conf urllist push ftp://myurl/''

Cannot fetch modules/02packages.details.txt.gz

Issuing "/usr/bin/ftp -n"
/usr/bin/ftp: No address associated with nodename
Not connected.
Local directory now /Users/vicnorton/.cpan/sources/modules
Not connected.
Not connected.
Not connected.
Not connected.
Not connected.
Not connected.
Bad luck... Still failed!
Can't access URL ftp://ftp.perl.org/pub/CPAN/modules/03modlist.data.gz.


Please, install Net::FTP as soon as possible. CPAN.pm installs it for you
if you just type
install Bundle::libnet

Please check, if the URLs I found in your configuration file () are valid.
The urllist can be edited. E.g. with ``o conf urllist push ftp://myurl/''

Cannot fetch modules/03modlist.data.gz

Can't install Bundle::CPAN, don't have an associated bundle file. :-(
at /System/Library/Perl/CPAN.pm line 1806

cpan>


So where do I go from here? I would have no problems downloading the files
that cpan couldn't, namely "02packages.details.txt.gz" and
"03modlist.data.gz", and uncompress them, but I wouldn't know what to do
with them after that.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Appropriate references would also
be nice. The URL <http:www.cpan.org/modules/INSTALL.html> doesn't seem to
know that Mac OS X exists, and, of course, it assumes you have "make" if
you are on a UNIX system.

Sorry for the length of this (my first) posting. I'm a bit frustrated.


Regards,

Vic

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| Victor Thane Norton, Jr.
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