[oak perl] A good read when loading tricky CPAN modules

[David Fetter]

On Wed, Jan 23, 2008 at 12:11:14PM -0800, Steve Kolupaev wrote:
> "Problematic perl prerequisites - O'Reilly Sysadmin" -  Chris Josephes
>    
> http://www.oreillynet.com/sysadmin/blog/2008/01/problematic_perl_prerequisites.html
> 
> This is a good discussion of the difficulties we sometimes have
> when loading a  new CPAN module.   It is well written with
> numerous well-written replies.     
> 
> I would recommend reading it when perl -MCPAN -e'shell', or
> 
>    perl Makefile.PL
>    make
>    make test
>    make install
> 
> sends you out into the jungle with multiple levels of prerequisites.  

As the replies state, in a system with packages, i.e. all the modern
ones, this is precisely the approach you *don't* want to take.
Systems like yum and apt are designed to handle dependency issues, and
if you decide to pry up this cover plate by ignoring the packaging
system, you risk ruining the entire machine.

For those times when you find a Perl module *not* listed in your
favorite package repository, you'll be doing a great service to your
community by packaging them and submitting them to that repository.
Yes, I know it's more work to create a good package, but it's
instantly useful to your whole community, not just to you. :)

Cheers,
David.
-- 
David Fetter <david at fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
Phone: +1 415 235 3778  AIM: dfetter666  Yahoo!: dfetter
Skype: davidfetter      XMPP: david.fetter at gmail.com

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