SPUG: Packaging Applications Using CPAN Modules

Asim Jalis ajalis at cobaltgroup.com
Wed Oct 25 20:36:03 CDT 2000


Here is the problem. I am writing an application in Perl which uses
several CPAN modules. I want the application to be easy to install on
different machines. I don't want to force people to first download and
install the modules from CPAN that my application requires.  How can I
do this?

So essentially I want to ship a application.tar.gz file. The end-user
uncompresses/untars it and then runs "make" and then "make install"
and at that point the application should be fully usable.

The build/install should work even if the machine is NOT on-line and if
the user has no root privileges. The required CPAN module files will be
shipped with the application.tar.gz.

The make and make install steps need to somehow do the following 
things:

(1) Figure out if the correct versions of the required CPAN modules 
    are already installed on the machine.
(2) If they are not then unzip and build and install the versions
    shipped in the tarball. If the user is not root then the installation
    of these packages should be to the directory where the application
    is going to live.
(3) Finally to build and install the application.

My question is this: Is there a module on CPAN that already does this?

CPAN.pm does not appear to fit the bill. The initial configuration
dialog it engages the user in totally violates the idea of automated
installation.

Asim

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