[pgh-pm] Perl packages

[Chris Winters]

On 1/6/06, Weber, Larry A <laweber at switch.com> wrote:
> I am gradually moving my Perl scripts from a Windows PC to a PC running
> Linux, and have a few questions related to package management.
>
> Does anyone know if there is an equivalent to PPM for Linux?

As long as you have make and a compiler for modules with XS, the CPAN
shell works very well -- IIRC modern Perls install a 'cpan' script at
/usr/bin that will startup the shell for you, otherwise you need to
do:

> perl -MCPAN -e shell

> Is there a way to get a list of installed packages or to check for a
> specific package?

Installed packages I'm not so sure about, but searching for specific
packages from the CPAN shell is pretty easy:

cpan> m /LWP/
Module          Babble::Transport::LWP (A/AL/ALGERNON/Babble-0.07.tar.gz)
Module          Gtk::LWP        (L/LU/LUPUS/Gtk-Perl-0.7008.tar.gz)
Module          Gtk::LWP::http  (L/LU/LUPUS/Gtk-Perl-0.7008.tar.gz)
...

cpan> d /LWP/
Distribution    A/AU/AUTRIJUS/LWP-Authen-Wsse-0.05.tar.gz
Distribution    B/BI/BILLH/LWP-LastURI-0.03.tar.gz
Distribution    B/BI/BILLH/LWP-UserAgent-iTMS_Client-0.15.tar.gz
...

cpan> ls CWEST
    2233 2002-09-22 CWEST/ACME-Error-0.03.tar.gz
...

entering a '?' at the shell prompt gives you some more options.

> Major packages, such as LWP, are frequently split up into 10 or more
> packages.  Is there an easy way to get everything at one time.  With PPM3 I
> could stay  s LWP-* and then install [range].

Many times these are packaged in a single Bundle:: module. For
instance, with LWP you can do:

cpan> install Bundle::LWP

and it will install all the referenced modules.

Good luck!

Chris