Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1998 12:31:16 +0200 From: Ollivier Robert <roberto@keltia.freenix.fr> To: committers@FreeBSD.ORG, ports@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: p5-* ports Message-ID: <19980829123116.A29560@keltia.freenix.fr> In-Reply-To: <199808282240.PAA27696@vader.cs.berkeley.edu>; from Satoshi Asami on Fri, Aug 28, 1998 at 03:40:49PM -0700 References: <19980828212756.A26309@keltia.freenix.fr> <199808282240.PAA27696@vader.cs.berkeley.edu>
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According to Satoshi Asami:
> Can someone tell me how this works?
CPAN is a repository for all Perl modules / extentions / docs. There is a
list of all modules, updated regularely. When you start CPAN.pm[1], it will
retrieve the modules file & the authors file and store them.
It can find which modules are outdated on your system and knows how to
translate "Foo::Bar" into "load CPAN/authors/id/BLAH/Foo-Bar-0.0.tar.gz".
You can compile, test and install within CPAN.pm (which has a rather nice
interface).
It won't automatically retrieve all the modules you need although they've
invented a new kind of module, the "bundle". As you imagine it is a virtual
module which has all the ones you need (e.g. bundle-libnet).
One of the inconvenient is that it requires you to be connected when you
use it because you'll need to retrieve files from CPAN. You can run it
offline if you put the packages in the right place but it is cumbersome
IMO.
What would be possible is to more or less merge the ports system with
CPAN.pm by using direct routines inside CPAN.pm. There is an API for this:
...
CPAN::Shell
The commands that are available in the shell interface are
methods in the package CPAN::Shell. If you enter the shell
command, all your input is split by the
Text::ParseWords::shellwords() routine which acts like
most shells do. The first word is being interpreted as the
method to be called and the rest of the words are treated
as arguments to this method. Continuation lines are
supported if a line ends with a literal backslash.
...
Programming Examples
This enables the programmer to do operations that
combine functionalities that are available in the shell.
# install everything that is outdated on my disk:
perl -MCPAN -e 'CPAN::Shell->install(CPAN::Shell->r)'
# install my favorite programs if necessary:
for $mod (qw(Net::FTP MD5 Data::Dumper)){
my $obj = CPAN::Shell->expand('Module',$mod);
$obj->install;
}
# list all modules on my disk that have no VERSION number
for $mod (CPAN::Shell->expand("Module","/./")){
next unless $mod->inst_file;
# MakeMaker convention for undefined $VERSION:
next unless $mod->inst_version eq "undef";
print "No VERSION in ", $mod->id, "\n";
}
...
BUGS
If a Makefile.PL requires special customization of
libraries, prompts the user for special input, etc. then
you may find CPAN is not able to build the distribution.
In that case, you should attempt the traditional method of
building a Perl module package from a shell.
-----
[1] "perl -MCPAN -e shell"
Interactive mode:
1259 [12:14] root@keltia:/etc/ssh2# perl -MCPAN -e shell
cpan shell -- CPAN exploration and modules installation (v1.3901)
ReadLine support enabled
cpan> h
command arguments description
a string authors
b or display bundles
d /regex/ info distributions
m or about modules
i none anything of above
r as reinstall recommendations
u above uninstalled distributions
See manpage for autobundle, recompile, force, look, etc.
make make
test modules, make test (implies make)
install dists, bundles, make install (implies test)
clean "r" or "u" make clean
readme display the README file
reload index|cpan load most recent indices/CPAN.pm
h or ? display this menu
o various set and query options
! perl-code eval a perl command
q quit the shell subroutine
--
Ollivier ROBERT -=- FreeBSD: The Power to Serve! -=- roberto@keltia.freenix.fr
FreeBSD keltia.freenix.fr 3.0-CURRENT #62: Mon Jul 27 20:47:08 CEST 1998
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