Re: Offtopic: I hate perl installs!

["Robert G. Werner" <robert inreachtech net>]

Joe Smith wrote:
> Sorry, just ranting.
[snip]
Hey,  if it helps,  this is a good place for it.  Especially if you 
can plunge back in and get a handle on the stuff that is bugging you.

> Am I the only one that finds installing perl 'stuff' a complete PITA? 
>  From navigating CPAN, to installing, to maintaining; and upgrading perl 
> simply repeats the nightmare all over again, as locally installed stuff 
> (always?) remains tied to the old version.  <primal_scream>
[snip]
Actually,  I rather like it.  I like that CPAN is pretty much able to 
figure out what it needs to operate and even can make do with what 
you've got until such time as it can install the code it needs to 
operate in its prefered mode.

After using perl -MCPAN -e shell for four years,  I can not say that 
I've ever had it screw my system up in any way.  CPAN is really a 
distributed archive of Perl code that makes life easier.  The CPAN 
tool really lives up to the idea that Perl should do what I mean 
without me having to explicily state it.

If you are uncomfortable with installing all this stuff blindly,  you 
can make CPAN as you every time it finds a depnendancy you don't 
already have installed.  Usually it asks you when you run it for the 
first time,  but muck about in the CPAN/config.pm file and you should 
be able to find the atribute and set it manually.

Frankly,  I'm rather impressed that CPAN will install the newest 
stable Perl on a machine that doesn't have it if you allow it,  and 
that this actually works pretty well (I experienced this when running 
CPAN on a RH 7.* box after 5.8 came out).

BTW,  the reason CPAN installs Archive::tar is so that it can use 
native perl code to decode the tar archives rather than relying on a 
binary that may or may not be installed on the current platform.

All in all,  I can't imagine how you would get as many standard 
packages as you get with perl easily installed and kept up to date 
without something like CPAN.

Anyway, hopefully,  your experience will help us make Gtk2-perl-xs be 
a good perl citizen.

--
In Reach Technology:    http://inreachtech.net/

Robert G. Werner
robert inreachtech net

Tel: 559.304.5122
2001/9/11

It's not broken, you silly boy.

        - Linus Torvalds offending people on the gcc mailing list