[Raleigh-talk] creating a backdated CPAN repo from an autobundle

[Shawn Hood]

Hey folks,

First of all, I'm Shawn -- a newcomer to Perl (by virtue of needing to
manage a sizable infastructure that uses it extensively).  I'm a NC
living in Arlington, VA.  I was a member of this list for a bit some
years ago when I was contemplating building some perl apps.

Some of you may have heard me moaning in #trilug about a little
project I've been working on.  I've heard some excellent suggestions,
however feel that I've been asking the wrong question.

I have a machine whose bundle I'd like to use as the reference for
other machines.  I would like to use the autobundle from this machine
to create a cpan repo so that my other machines can install identical
modules -- however many of these are backdated versions.  I need to
preserve these versions, however, because it's a very sensitive
production environment that I must keep homogenous, and I cannot
update modules without performing regression tests on our application
first.

That said, is there any way to create a CPAN repository from an
autobundle, and subsequently use that autobundle on other machines.
The tough part here is getting the appropriate versions of the modules
into the repository, many of which will have to come from backpan.
I've tried creating scripts to parse the autobundle and then find the
appropriate backpan module.  I've encountered some trouble with this.
Also, I could rsync the modules dirs but worry about dependency
problems.

Ideas?!

Shawn