[Brisbane-pm] Still no Success in Installing Perl Modules on Mac OS X

Stephen Steneker stephen at sydney.pm.org
Sat Oct 6 07:26:00 PDT 2007


> But I am getting the same error messages, which end up follows...
>
> Running make test
> Can't test without successful make
> Running make install
> make had returned bad status, install seems impossible
>
>
> This is a complete show-stopper, as far as my particular  
> application is concerned, and I don't want to get to the point  
> where I am regretting using Perl in the first place. I thought it  
> would work as a cross platform open source coding language - have I  
> made the wrong decision? If I have made the wrong decision, then I  
> will have to consign about 10 months of work to the trash.
>
> Surely, there must be someone out there who has successfully  
> installed Perl modules on a Mac (OS X 10.4.10)?

Hi Martin,

Did you confirm that you do, in fact, have the Developer Tools  
installed from
the OS X DVD?  Surely there is a more informative error than the  
above...
but from Terminal I would suggest doing:

   gcc --version
   make --version

.. both should return a version number, if installed (and would be  
installed
in /usr/bin, which should be in your path).

Installation of some modules from CPAN will indeed be impossible  
without a
C compiler ;-).

If you definitely have the above utilities, you can also explicitly  
tell CPAN
the location of make since this seems related to your issue, so:
  sudo perl -MCPAN -e shell
  o conf make /usr/bin/make
  o conf commit
  exit

Lastly I would run the install manually to see what the detailed  
errors are :
   sudo perl -MCPAN -e shell
   look DateTime
   perl Makefile.PL
   make test

> I really need to hear how it is done, from someone who has actually  
> done it. The adage 'there's no reason why
> it should not work' simply will not do.

Unfortunately the installation should be about this simple:
  - install OS X
  - install Developer Tools
  - install extra desired modules using CPAN shell

If this seems too esoteric for your requirements, I would suggest either
revisiting the ActivePerl route (which also didn't seem to work out  
for you)
or possibly switching to a different cross-platform toolset which is  
better
suited for your purposes.  You might find something like PHP easier to
install .. you would lose out on the richness of modules available from
CPAN, but haven't figured out how to install these yet in any case ;-).

There are plenty of folks using perl on OS X, but in general with
developer tools there is some presumption that you will be able
to work out how to drill down to the specific error that is preventing
your successful install.  Getting perl set up should not be a difficult
challenge, but your other attempts with ActivePerl and mucking
about with file permissions may also have introduced problems.

Pretty hard to guess what else might have gone wrong at this point,
but I think since you've spent almost three weeks trying to sort out
your install it might be time to move on to something that will let
you get on with your project :-D.

You did mention 10 months spent developing your application ..
without benefit of CPAN, you might find there is a fair bit of
functionality you've reinvented.  CPAN is definitely one of the
main reasons I would recommend using perl .. and essential
for any significant applications.

Cheers,
Stephen



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