[Catalyst] PPM vs CPAN

Hugh Lampert hlampert at earthlink.net
Wed Jun 28 17:41:41 CEST 2006


Nilson Santos Figueiredo Junior wrote:
> On 6/26/06, Hugh Lampert <hlampert at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> Just to let you know something amusing - I tried the "preconfigured"
>> CPAN.pm that comes with ActiveState Perl 5.8.8.  First, it took about 10
>> minutes to figure out I needed to type "Enter+Space" instead of just
>> Enter to get my commands accepted.  Then, upon trying the "i" command, I
>> was informed there was a newer CPAN bundle available and that it was
>> suggested I upgrade in place.  After typing install Bundle::CPAN the
>> most amazing chain of downloads, dialogs, makes, compiles, test outputs,
>> etc. was initiated.... I was truly in fear for my life that something
>> was going to get severely screwed up when it started downloading and
>> compiling Crypt and PGP modules.  In the end, after the upgrade I was
>> forced to go through the CPAN configuration dialog anyway.  Everything
>> seems to have been successfully installed however and nothing seems to
>> be amiss.  I DO think for my own sanity that I will stick with PPM's
>> where available, as THAT process seems to be mostly just download and
>> copy to the appropriate location.
>
> This is rather weird. You shouldn't need to type "Enter+Space". In
> fact, I'm not even sure if I understood you correctly. The CPAN shell
> is a regular command shell. You type your commands and press Enter as
> in any other shell.
>
It IS weird - but on my Windows XP workstation the CPAN shell command 
interpreter does not accept commands when I hit Enter unless the Enter 
key is followed by a space.  I have no idea what kind of parser is 
involved.  It's not really important though because it DOES work.  It's 
kind of like the Perl debugger not being restartable in ActiveState Perl 
(it gives some kind of POSIX constant not defined error)... it's 
annoying to a minor extent but still workable.
> You didn't really need to upgrade the CPAN shell but when you do it
> when it asks you if you're "ready for manual configuration" all you
> need to do is type "no" and it will auto-configure itself. Now, I know
> *this* is rather counter-intuitive. But the rest seems pretty
> intuitive to me.
>
Coming from the Windows world, I am severely suspicious of allowing 
ANYTHING to configure itself.  I worked through the dialog, it really 
wasn't a problem, just not what I wanted to do with my boss breathing 
down my neck regarding my choice of Catalyst as an application platform.
> The thing about using the CPAN shell is that you're able to use more
> modules and you'll usually have newer versions of the modules. You'll
> be able to see that some modules have optional dependencies and choose
> wether to install them or not (PPM doesn't follow optional
> dependencies). Of course it takes a little bit longer when installing
> through the CPAN shell because it actually runs the test cases on your
> machines so you're even safer when using it (it's perfectly possible
> that a module worked alright at ActiveState's server but doesn't work
> correctly on your machine due to various circumstances).
>
> I think you were a little bit frightened probably because it installed
> *a lot* a modules. This probablu happened because, since you
> previously only used PPM, you had a lot of outdates modules and when
> installing Bundle::* from the CPAN it installs everything in that
> bundle unless you've got the newest version. When installing normal
> modules it will only install a newer version if it's a module
> requirement.
>
> After installing some heavy-weight modules such as Task::Catalyst,
> DBIx::Class, Bundle::CPAN, PAR and POE most of your installs will end
> up being single module installs since you'll already have most of the
> usual dependencies installed.
>
BTW, Why is it Task::Catalyst and not Bundle::Catalyst? I want to 
install this but it does not run, getting an NMAKE fatal error U1077, 
errors looking for GPG, etc.  This is why I like the PPM packages... I'm 
assuming that anything that fails to make does not get installed in the 
perl lib tree, correct?
> -Nilson Santos F. Jr.
>




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