R – Why does CPAN.pm fail to upgrade

cpandebianperl

Clarification: I'm pretty much a
Perl/CPAN noob, don't assume I know
too much.

I have a pretty vanilla CPAN because I just rebuild my entire Lenny 5.0.2 VPS – so I pretty much have the default modules installed.

My eventual goal is to setup foswiki on my Apache 2.x based server.

So far I'm reading this guide and it says the first thing you should do is upgrade CPAN to the latest version. So I did (as su):

# perl -MCPAN -e '$ENV{FTP_PASSIVE} = 1; install CPAN'

Now, it's installing/updating a bunch of stuff, here's an excerpt:

CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/CPAN-Test-Dummy-Perl5-Make-Expect-1.00.tar.gz
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/CPAN-Test-Dummy-Perl5-Make-UnsatPrereq-1.00.tar.gz
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/CHECKSUMS
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/cpantestdummies/
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/cpantestdummies/CPAN-Test-Dummy-Perl5-Make-Features-1.05.tgz
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/cpantestdummies/CHECKSUMS
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/CPAN-Test-Dummy-Perl5-Make-Zip-1.03.zip
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/CHECKSUMS.2nd
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/CPAN-Test-Dummy-Perl5-Make-1.05.tar.gz
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/ANDK/CPAN-Test-Dummy-Perl5-Make-Failearly-1.02.tar.gz
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/AN/CHECKSUMS
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/A/CHECKSUMS
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/id/CHECKSUMS
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/authors/01mailrc.txt
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/CpanTestDummies-1.55.pm
CPAN-1.9402/t/CPAN/TestConfig.pm
CPAN-1.9402/t/51pod.t
CPAN-1.9402/t/02nox.t
CPAN-1.9402/t/50pod.t
CPAN-1.9402/t/10version.t
CPAN-1.9402/t/yaml_code.yml
CPAN-1.9402/t/04clean_load.t
CPAN-1.9402/README
CPAN: File::Temp loaded ok (v0.18)

  CPAN.pm: Going to build A/AN/ANDK/CPAN-1.9402.tar.gz

Importing PAUSE public key into your GnuPG keychain... gpg: new configuration file `/root/.gnupg/gpg.conf' created
gpg: WARNING: options in `/root/.gnupg/gpg.conf' are not yet active during this run
done!
(You may wish to trust it locally with 'gpg --lsign-key 450F89EC')
Checking if your kit is complete...
Looks good
Writing Makefile for CPAN
Could not read '/root/.cpan/build/CPAN-1.9402-fmK7xK/META.yml'. Falling back to other methods to determine prerequisites
  ANDK/CPAN-1.9402.tar.gz
  make -- NOT OK
Warning (usually harmless): 'YAML' not installed, will not store persistent state
Running make test
  Can't test without successful make
Running make install
  Make had returned bad status, install seems impossible
kat:~#

I've searched Google and came across one page that said you should whenever possible install the package from aptitude/apt-get/yum, so I found a package named libyaml-perl, marked it for download, that went through fine.

Then I re-tried my initial command that installs the latest version of CPAN and …

CPAN-1.9402/t/50pod.t
CPAN-1.9402/t/10version.t
CPAN-1.9402/t/yaml_code.yml
CPAN-1.9402/t/04clean_load.t
CPAN-1.9402/README
CPAN: File::Temp loaded ok (v0.18)
CPAN: YAML loaded ok (v0.66)

CPAN.pm: Going to build A/AN/ANDK/CPAN-1.9402.tar.gz

Importing PAUSE public key into your GnuPG keychain... done!
(You may wish to trust it locally with 'gpg --lsign-key 450F89EC')
Checking if your kit is complete...
Looks good
Writing Makefile for CPAN
  ANDK/CPAN-1.9402.tar.gz
  make -- NOT OK
Running make test
  Can't test without successful make
Running make install
  Make had returned bad status, install seems impossible

No clue what I should do now. Is there a way I can reset everything? Maybe I need to kill the file it tried to process so it can try to re-process it or something along those lines? If anyone else has general CPAN tips in addition to figuring out what this is, I'd be grateful.

Did I install the yaml package the right way?
Should I have done it from within CPAN?
What proper steps or modules should I get first?

Eventually I'll need to install these for foswiki:

CGI::Session – Needed for Foswiki's session feature which is really a must have
Error – Needed if you later want to develop plugins. It is also distributed with Foswiki but the author has experienced lots of trouble with the build script that builds plugins which sometimes cannot find this library. By adding it to the site Perl library you avoid this kind of trouble.
FreezeThaw – an indirectly needed module used by other modules.
GD – Used by the pluging that can produce graphics such as Foswiki:Plugins.ChartPlugin. It requires that lib gd is installed. If your choice of installation does not include you simply need to install the rpms gd and gd-devel. They are both on the CDs or DVD.
HTML::Tree – Needed by some popular plugins
Time-modules (Time::CTime, Time::DaysInMonth, Time::JulianDay, Time::ParseDate, Time::Timezone) also needed by some popular plugins.

Best Answer

Use debian's package management facilities to install: See instructions on the foswiki web site.

Stick with the platform-specific package management tools 99% of the time. Otherwise, configure CPAN to install in a separate directory (which you can add to $PERL5LIB).

Related Solutions

Linux – How do YOU manage Perl modules when using a package manager

For development, I install my own Perl and leave the system Perl alone. If I want to upgrade the system Perl, I use the system package manager. For my development Perl, I use the cpan tool.

Since I keep those separate, I should never mess up the Perl that the system needs for its maintenance tasks and so on, but I don't have to rely on the system's decisions for development.

It's very easy to install separate Perls. When you run Configure from the source distribution, it will ask you where you want to install everything. Give it any path that you like. I have many Perls installed in /usr/local/perls, for instance, and everything for each installation lives separately. I then make symlinks in /usr/local/bin for them (e.g. perl5.8.9, perl.5.10.0, perl5.10.0-threaded). When I want a particular version, I just use the one I want:

$ perl5.10.0 program.pl

The particular binary ensures that the program picks up the right module search path and so on (it's the same stuff in the Config.pm module for that binary).

Here's a script I use to create the symlinks. It looks in the bin directory, figures out the Perl version, and makes links like cpan5.10.1 and so on. Each program already knows the right perl to call:

#!perl

use 5.010;

use strict;
use warnings;

use File::Basename;
use File::Spec::Functions;

my $perls_directory = catfile(
    $ARGV[0] // '/usr/local/perls', 
    'perl*'
);
die "$perls_directory does not exist!\n" 
    unless -d dirname $perls_directory;

my $links_directory = $ARGV[1] // catfile( $ENV{HOME}, 'bin' ); #/
die "$links_directory does not exist!\n" unless -d $links_directory;

foreach my $directory ( glob( $perls_directory ) )
{
    say "Processing $directory...";

    unless( -e catfile( $directory, 'bin' ) )
    {
        say "\tNo bin/ directory. Skipping!";
        next;
    }

    my @perls = glob( catfile( $directory, qw( bin perl5* ) ) );    

    my( $perl_version ) = $perls[0] =~ m/(5\.\d+\.\d+)\z/;
    say "\tperl version is $perl_version";

    foreach my $bin ( glob( catfile( $directory, 'bin', '*' ) ) )
    {
        say "\tFound $bin";
        my $basename = basename( $bin );

        my $link_basename = do {
            if( $basename =~ m/5\.\d+\.\d+\z/) { $basename }
            else                               { "$basename$perl_version" }
        };

        my $link = catfile( $links_directory, $link_basename );
        next if -e $link;
        say "\t\tlinking $bin => $link";
        symlink $bin => $link or
            warn "\t\tCould not create symlink [$!]: $bin => $link!";
    }
}

Everything gets install in the right place for that particular Perl.

I've also been thinking that I should put those Perl directories under some sort of source control. If I add a module I don't like, I just back out to an earlier revision. I'm only starting to do that though and haven't played with it much.

I've written more about this sort of thing in the Effective Perler blog:

Powershell – piping get-childitem into select-string in powershell

PowerShell is object-oriented, not pure text like cmd. If you want to get fileobjects(lines) that were modified in 2012, use:

Get-ChildItem | Where-Object { $_.LastWriteTime.Year -eq 2012 }

If you want to get fileobjects with "2012" in the filename, try:

Get-ChildItem *2012*

When you use

ls | select-string 2012

you're actually searching for lines with "2012" INSIDE every file that ls / get-childitem listed.

If you really need to use select-string on the output from get-childitem, try converting it to strings, then splitting up into lines and then search it. Like this:

(Get-ChildItem | Out-String) -split "`n" | Select-String 2012

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Linux – How do YOU manage Perl modules when using a package manager

Powershell – piping get-childitem into select-string in powershell

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