On Jun 4, 2004, at 11:40 PM, Timothy Bailey wrote:
To provide closure on the issue, I did install 1.76 (replaced /System/Library/Perl/CPAN.pm and the /System/Library/Perl/CPAN folder with the corresponding files out of the archive)
Doubleplusungood. That is *not* the correct way to install Perl modules. Nor is that the procedure outlined in *any* of the relevant documentation, or in any book I'm aware of. What's more, it is incomplete - there is more to the CPAN module than the single CPAN.pm file, not to mention the fact that you copied it into the wrong location for a user-installed module.
In a nutshell, you should have unpacked the archive, and then run the following commands:
perl Makefile.PL make make test sudo make install
Complete instructions are in 'perldoc perlmodinstall'. Please, read and follow the instructions - and keep in mind that you are working with vanilla Perl on UNIX, *not* MacPerl on MacOS.
Fair enough, however I will note that CPAN 1.76 =has= no install instructions (for itself, that is) in it. Nor is there such on CPAN.org, whose install instructions in general seem to be "type 'install modulename' in CPAN", which of course does not work in this circumstance, as we have discussed. If I would have found the instructions, I would have used them. It's entirely possible I missed them on CPAN.org, but I looked at all of the pages I could find related to the CPAN 1.76 version, and I didn't see anything relevant.
http://search.cpan.org/~andk/CPAN-1.76/lib/CPAN.pm
OK, technically, I did find this page:
http://www.cpan.org/modules/INSTALL.html
I unfortunately had to decide to ignore this, since the whole "make" sequence was =not= working for me; I had tried to run some manual installs of modules I had downloaded with the old version of CPAN, and the "perl Makefile.PL" command was failing. (The copious errors are about missing semicolons and operators.) I deduce now that it may be something in the way CPAN.pm downloads modules, since while "perl Makefile.PL" is still failing for those modules in the ~/.cpan directory, it is working for the CPAN.pm I downloaded manually.
So, since the documentation was not helping, I had to improvise with replacing the few files that seemed to correspond.
The main reason I didn't check perlmodinstall is I didn't think of it; I would have thought that CPAN.org would give that information. In any case, now that I look at it, I see that perlmodinstall is subtitled "Perl modules: how to install from CPAN", which is of course not relevant, since I'm not using CPAN to install something, I'm doing it manually. Of course, it doesn't seem to actually give information about installing CPAN modules specifically (that is, using the CPAN module). Since it gives information about installing generic modules (like the second URL above), it ironically turns out to be relevant.
Why is /System/Library/Perl not the right place for CPAN 1.76? It apparently is the right place for CPAN 1.52. Did Apple put it in the wrong place? (Yes, I'm technically a user installing 1.76, but Apple isn't the purveyor of Perl either. They're sort of a user as well.) I would still need to get the old version out of there, right?
I'll put the old version back in and try this the right way when I get a chance later this week.
(As in painfully obvious, while I =have= programmed Perl under UNIX before (a while back), I have not had to install anything under UNIX. It's certainly a new experience.)
--
Tim Bailey |\/ "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the
[EMAIL PROTECTED] |\/ good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | It may be better to live under robber barons
http://www.moonrise.org than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
--'--,--<@ The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep,
his cupidity may at some point be satiated;
but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end,
for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
-- C.S. Lewis
