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CPAN(3) |
Perl Programmers Reference Guide |
CPAN(3) |
CPAN - query, download and build perl modules from CPAN sites
Interactive mode:
perl -MCPAN -e shell
--or--
cpan
Basic commands:
# Modules:
cpan> install Acme::Meta # in the shell
CPAN::Shell->install("Acme::Meta"); # in perl
# Distributions:
cpan> install NWCLARK/Acme-Meta-0.02.tar.gz # in the shell
CPAN::Shell->
install("NWCLARK/Acme-Meta-0.02.tar.gz"); # in perl
# module objects:
$mo = CPAN::Shell->expandany($mod);
$mo = CPAN::Shell->expand("Module",$mod); # same thing
# distribution objects:
$do = CPAN::Shell->expand("Module",$mod)->distribution;
$do = CPAN::Shell->expandany($distro); # same thing
$do = CPAN::Shell->expand("Distribution",
$distro); # same thing
The CPAN module automates or at least simplifies the make and install of perl
modules and extensions. It includes some primitive searching capabilities and
knows how to use LWP, HTTP::Tiny, Net::FTP and certain external download
clients to fetch distributions from the net.
These are fetched from one or more mirrored CPAN (Comprehensive
Perl Archive Network) sites and unpacked in a dedicated directory.
The CPAN module also supports named and versioned bundles
of modules. Bundles simplify handling of sets of related modules. See
Bundles below.
The package contains a session manager and a cache manager. The
session manager keeps track of what has been fetched, built, and installed
in the current session. The cache manager keeps track of the disk space
occupied by the make processes and deletes excess space using a simple FIFO
mechanism.
All methods provided are accessible in a programmer style and in
an interactive shell style.
Enter interactive mode by running
perl -MCPAN -e shell
or
cpan
which puts you into a readline interface. If
"Term::ReadKey" and either of
"Term::ReadLine::Perl" or
"Term::ReadLine::Gnu" are installed,
history and command completion are supported.
Once at the command line, type
"h" for one-page help screen; the rest
should be self-explanatory.
The function call "shell" takes
two optional arguments: one the prompt, the second the default initial
command line (the latter only works if a real ReadLine interface module is
installed).
The most common uses of the interactive modes are
- Searching for authors, bundles, distribution files and modules
- There are corresponding one-letter commands
"a",
"b",
"d", and
"m" for each of the four categories and
another, "i" for any of the mentioned
four. Each of the four entities is implemented as a class with slightly
differing methods for displaying an object.
Arguments to these commands are either strings exactly
matching the identification string of an object, or regular expressions
matched case-insensitively against various attributes of the objects.
The parser only recognizes a regular expression when you enclose it with
slashes.
The principle is that the number of objects found influences
how an item is displayed. If the search finds one item, the result is
displayed with the rather verbose method
"as_string", but if more than one is
found, each object is displayed with the terse method
"as_glimpse".
Examples:
cpan> m Acme::MetaSyntactic
Module id = Acme::MetaSyntactic
CPAN_USERID BOOK (Philippe Bruhat (BooK) <[...]>)
CPAN_VERSION 0.99
CPAN_FILE B/BO/BOOK/Acme-MetaSyntactic-0.99.tar.gz
UPLOAD_DATE 2006-11-06
MANPAGE Acme::MetaSyntactic - Themed metasyntactic variables names
INST_FILE /usr/local/lib/perl/5.10.0/Acme/MetaSyntactic.pm
INST_VERSION 0.99
cpan> a BOOK
Author id = BOOK
EMAIL [...]
FULLNAME Philippe Bruhat (BooK)
cpan> d BOOK/Acme-MetaSyntactic-0.99.tar.gz
Distribution id = B/BO/BOOK/Acme-MetaSyntactic-0.99.tar.gz
CPAN_USERID BOOK (Philippe Bruhat (BooK) <[...]>)
CONTAINSMODS Acme::MetaSyntactic Acme::MetaSyntactic::Alias [...]
UPLOAD_DATE 2006-11-06
cpan> m /lorem/
Module = Acme::MetaSyntactic::loremipsum (BOOK/Acme-MetaSyntactic-0.99.tar.gz)
Module Text::Lorem (ADEOLA/Text-Lorem-0.3.tar.gz)
Module Text::Lorem::More (RKRIMEN/Text-Lorem-More-0.12.tar.gz)
Module Text::Lorem::More::Source (RKRIMEN/Text-Lorem-More-0.12.tar.gz)
cpan> i /berlin/
Distribution BEATNIK/Filter-NumberLines-0.02.tar.gz
Module = DateTime::TimeZone::Europe::Berlin (DROLSKY/DateTime-TimeZone-0.7904.tar.gz)
Module Filter::NumberLines (BEATNIK/Filter-NumberLines-0.02.tar.gz)
Author [...]
The examples illustrate several aspects: the first three
queries target modules, authors, or distros directly and yield exactly
one result. The last two use regular expressions and yield several
results. The last one targets all of bundles, modules, authors, and
distros simultaneously. When more than one result is available, they are
printed in one-line format.
- "get", "make", "test", "install",
"clean" modules or distributions
- These commands take any number of arguments and investigate what is
necessary to perform the action. Argument processing is as follows:
known module name in format Foo/Bar.pm module
other embedded slash distribution
- with trailing slash dot directory
enclosing slashes regexp
known module name in format Foo::Bar module
If the argument is a distribution file name (recognized by
embedded slashes), it is processed. If it is a module, CPAN determines
the distribution file in which this module is included and processes
that, following any dependencies named in the module's META.yml or
Makefile.PL (this behavior is controlled by the configuration parameter
"prerequisites_policy"). If an
argument is enclosed in slashes it is treated as a regular expression:
it is expanded and if the result is a single object (distribution,
bundle or module), this object is processed.
Example:
install Dummy::Perl # installs the module
install AUXXX/Dummy-Perl-3.14.tar.gz # installs that distribution
install /Dummy-Perl-3.14/ # same if the regexp is unambiguous
"get" downloads a
distribution file and untars or unzips it,
"make" builds it,
"test" runs the test suite, and
"install" installs it.
Any "make" or
"test" is run unconditionally. An
install <distribution_file>
is also run unconditionally. But for
install <module>
CPAN checks whether an install is needed and prints module
up to date if the distribution file containing the module doesn't
need updating.
CPAN also keeps track of what it has done within the current
session and doesn't try to build a package a second time regardless of
whether it succeeded or not. It does not repeat a test run if the test
has been run successfully before. Same for install runs.
The "force" pragma may
precede another command (currently:
"get",
"make",
"test", or
"install") to execute the command from
scratch and attempt to continue past certain errors. See the section
below on the "force" and the
"fforce" pragma.
The "notest" pragma skips
the test part in the build process.
Example:
cpan> notest install Tk
A "clean" command results in
a
make clean
being executed within the distribution file's working
directory.
- "readme", "perldoc", "look" module or
distribution
- "readme" displays the README file of the
associated distribution. "Look" gets and
untars (if not yet done) the distribution file, changes to the appropriate
directory and opens a subshell process in that directory.
"perldoc" displays the module's pod
documentation in html or plain text format.
- "ls" author
- "ls" globbing_expression
- The first form lists all distribution files in and below an author's CPAN
directory as stored in the CHECKSUMS files distributed on CPAN. The
listing recurses into subdirectories.
The second form limits or expands the output with shell
globbing as in the following examples:
ls JV/make*
ls GSAR/*make*
ls */*make*
The last example is very slow and outputs extra progress
indicators that break the alignment of the result.
Note that globbing only lists directories explicitly asked
for, for example FOO/* will not list FOO/bar/Acme-Sthg-n.nn.tar.gz. This
may be regarded as a bug that may be changed in some future version.
- "failed"
- The "failed" command reports all
distributions that failed on one of
"make",
"test" or
"install" for some reason in the
currently running shell session.
- Persistence between sessions
- If the "YAML" or the
"YAML::Syck" module is installed a
record of the internal state of all modules is written to disk after each
step. The files contain a signature of the currently running perl version
for later perusal.
If the configurations variable
"build_dir_reuse" is set to a true
value, then CPAN.pm reads the collected YAML files. If the stored
signature matches the currently running perl, the stored state is loaded
into memory such that persistence between sessions is effectively
established.
- The "force" and the "fforce" pragma
- To speed things up in complex installation scenarios, CPAN.pm keeps track
of what it has already done and refuses to do some things a second time. A
"get", a
"make", and an
"install" are not repeated. A
"test" is repeated only if the previous
test was unsuccessful. The diagnostic message when CPAN.pm refuses to do
something a second time is one of Has already been
"unwrapped|made|tested successfully"
or something similar. Another situation where CPAN refuses to act is an
"install" if the corresponding
"test" was not successful.
In all these cases, the user can override this stubborn
behaviour by prepending the command with the word force, for
example:
cpan> force get Foo
cpan> force make AUTHOR/Bar-3.14.tar.gz
cpan> force test Baz
cpan> force install Acme::Meta
Each forced command is executed with the corresponding
part of its memory erased.
The "fforce" pragma is a
variant that emulates a "force get"
which erases the entire memory followed by the action specified,
effectively restarting the whole get/make/test/install procedure from
scratch.
- Lockfile
- Interactive sessions maintain a lockfile, by default
"~/.cpan/.lock". Batch jobs can run
without a lockfile and not disturb each other.
The shell offers to run in downgraded mode when another
process is holding the lockfile. This is an experimental feature that is
not yet tested very well. This second shell then does not write the
history file, does not use the metadata file, and has a different
prompt.
- Signals
- CPAN.pm installs signal handlers for SIGINT and SIGTERM. While you are in
the cpan-shell, it is intended that you can press
"^C" anytime and return to the
cpan-shell prompt. A SIGTERM will cause the cpan-shell to clean up and
leave the shell loop. You can emulate the effect of a SIGTERM by sending
two consecutive SIGINTs, which usually means by pressing
"^C" twice.
CPAN.pm ignores SIGPIPE. If the user sets
"inactivity_timeout", a SIGALRM is
used during the run of the "perl
Makefile.PL" or "perl
Build.PL" subprocess. A SIGALRM is also
used during module version parsing, and is controlled by
"version_timeout".
The commands available in the shell interface are methods in the package
CPAN::Shell. If you enter the shell command, your input is split by the
Text::ParseWords::shellwords() routine, which acts like most shells do.
The first word is interpreted as the method to be invoked, and the rest of the
words are treated as the method's arguments. Continuation lines are supported
by ending a line with a literal backslash.
"autobundle" writes a bundle file into the
"$CPAN::Config->{cpan_home}/Bundle"
directory. The file contains a list of all modules that are both available
from CPAN and currently installed within @INC.
Duplicates of each distribution are suppressed. The name of the bundle file is
based on the current date and a counter, e.g.
Bundle/Snapshot_2012_05_21_00.pm. This is installed again by running
"cpan Bundle::Snapshot_2012_05_21_00", or
installing "Bundle::Snapshot_2012_05_21_00"
from the CPAN shell.
Return value: path to the written file.
Note: this feature is still in alpha state and may change in future versions of
CPAN.pm
This commands provides a statistical overview over recent download
activities. The data for this is collected in the YAML file
"FTPstats.yml" in your
"cpan_home" directory. If no YAML module
is configured or YAML not installed, no stats are provided.
- install_tested
- Install all distributions that have been tested successfully but have not
yet been installed. See also
"is_tested".
- is_tested
- List all build directories of distributions that have been tested
successfully but have not yet been installed. See also
"install_tested".
mkmyconfig() writes your own CPAN::MyConfig file into your
"~/.cpan/" directory so that you can save
your own preferences instead of the system-wide ones.
scans current perl installation for modules that have a newer version available
on CPAN and provides a list of them. If called without argument, all potential
upgrades are listed; if called with arguments the list is filtered to the
modules and regexps given as arguments.
The listing looks something like this:
Package namespace installed latest in CPAN file
CPAN 1.94_64 1.9600 ANDK/CPAN-1.9600.tar.gz
CPAN::Reporter 1.1801 1.1902 DAGOLDEN/CPAN-Reporter-1.1902.tar.gz
YAML 0.70 0.73 INGY/YAML-0.73.tar.gz
YAML::Syck 1.14 1.17 AVAR/YAML-Syck-1.17.tar.gz
YAML::Tiny 1.44 1.50 ADAMK/YAML-Tiny-1.50.tar.gz
CGI 3.43 3.55 MARKSTOS/CGI.pm-3.55.tar.gz
Module::Build::YAML 1.40 1.41 DAGOLDEN/Module-Build-0.3800.tar.gz
TAP::Parser::Result::YAML 3.22 3.23 ANDYA/Test-Harness-3.23.tar.gz
YAML::XS 0.34 0.35 INGY/YAML-LibYAML-0.35.tar.gz
It suppresses duplicates in the column "in
CPAN file" such that distributions with many upgradeable modules
are listed only once.
Note that the list is not sorted.
The "recent" command downloads a list of
recent uploads to CPAN and displays them slowly. While the command is
running, a $SIG{INT} exits the loop after displaying
the current item.
Note: This command requires XML::LibXML installed.
Note: This whole command currently is just a hack and will
probably change in future versions of CPAN.pm, but the general approach will
likely remain.
Note: See also smoke
recompile() is a special command that takes no argument and runs the
make/test/install cycle with brute force over all installed dynamically
loadable extensions (a.k.a. XS modules) with 'force' in effect. The primary
purpose of this command is to finish a network installation. Imagine you have
a common source tree for two different architectures. You decide to do a
completely independent fresh installation. You start on one architecture with
the help of a Bundle file produced earlier. CPAN installs the whole Bundle for
you, but when you try to repeat the job on the second architecture, CPAN
responds with a "Foo up to date" message for
all modules. So you invoke CPAN's recompile on the second architecture and
you're done.
Another popular use for
"recompile" is to act as a rescue in case
your perl breaks binary compatibility. If one of the modules that CPAN uses
is in turn depending on binary compatibility (so you cannot run CPAN
commands), then you should try the CPAN::Nox module for recovery.
The "report" command temporarily turns on the
"test_report" config variable, then runs the
"force test" command with the given
arguments. The "force" pragma reruns the
tests and repeats every step that might have failed before.
*** WARNING: this command downloads and executes software from CPAN to
your computer of completely unknown status. You should never do this
with your normal account and better have a dedicated well separated and
secured machine to do this. ***
The "smoke" command takes the
list of recent uploads to CPAN as provided by the
"recent" command and tests them all. While
the command is running $SIG{INT} is defined to mean
that the current item shall be skipped.
Note: This whole command currently is just a hack and will
probably change in future versions of CPAN.pm, but the general approach will
likely remain.
Note: See also recent
The "upgrade" command first runs an
"r" command with the given arguments and
then installs the newest versions of all modules that were listed by that.
Although it may be considered internal, the class hierarchy does matter for both
users and programmer. CPAN.pm deals with the four classes mentioned above, and
those classes all share a set of methods. Classical single polymorphism is in
effect. A metaclass object registers all objects of all kinds and indexes them
with a string. The strings referencing objects have a separated namespace
(well, not completely separated):
Namespace Class
words containing a "/" (slash) Distribution
words starting with Bundle:: Bundle
everything else Module or Author
Modules know their associated Distribution objects. They always
refer to the most recent official release. Developers may mark their
releases as unstable development versions (by inserting an underscore into
the module version number which will also be reflected in the distribution
name when you run 'make dist'), so the really hottest and newest
distribution is not always the default. If a module Foo circulates on CPAN
in both version 1.23 and 1.23_90, CPAN.pm offers a convenient way to install
version 1.23 by saying
install Foo
This would install the complete distribution file (say
BAR/Foo-1.23.tar.gz) with all accompanying material. But if you would like
to install version 1.23_90, you need to know where the distribution file
resides on CPAN relative to the authors/id/ directory. If the author is BAR,
this might be BAR/Foo-1.23_90.tar.gz; so you would have to say
install BAR/Foo-1.23_90.tar.gz
The first example will be driven by an object of the class
CPAN::Module, the second by an object of class CPAN::Distribution.
Note: this feature is still in alpha state and may change in future versions of
CPAN.pm
Distribution objects are normally distributions from the CPAN, but
there is a slightly degenerate case for Distribution objects, too, of
projects held on the local disk. These distribution objects have the same
name as the local directory and end with a dot. A dot by itself is also
allowed for the current directory at the time CPAN.pm was used. All actions
such as "make",
"test", and
"install" are applied directly to that
directory. This gives the command "cpan ."
an interesting touch: while the normal mantra of installing a CPAN module
without CPAN.pm is one of
perl Makefile.PL perl Build.PL
( go and get prerequisites )
make ./Build
make test ./Build test
make install ./Build install
the command "cpan ." does all of
this at once. It figures out which of the two mantras is appropriate,
fetches and installs all prerequisites, takes care of them recursively, and
finally finishes the installation of the module in the current directory, be
it a CPAN module or not.
The typical usage case is for private modules or working copies of
projects from remote repositories on the local disk.
The usual shell redirection symbols " | " and
">" are recognized by the cpan shell
only when surrounded by whitespace. So piping to pager or redirecting
output into a file works somewhat as in a normal shell, with the stipulation
that you must type extra spaces.
Plugins are objects that implement any of currently eight methods:
pre_get
post_get
pre_make
post_make
pre_test
post_test
pre_install
post_install
The "plugin_list" configuration
parameter holds a list of strings of the form
Modulename=arg0,arg1,arg2,arg3,...
eg:
CPAN::Plugin::Flurb=dir,/opt/pkgs/flurb/raw,verbose,1
At run time, each listed plugin is instantiated as a singleton
object by running the equivalent of this pseudo code:
my $plugin = <string representation from config>;
<generate Modulename and arguments from $plugin>;
my $p = $instance{$plugin} ||= Modulename->new($arg0,$arg1,...);
The generated singletons are kept around from instantiation until
the end of the shell session. <plugin_list> can be reconfigured at any
time at run time. While the cpan shell is running, it checks all activated
plugins at each of the 8 reference points listed above and runs the
respective method if it is implemented for that object. The method is called
with the active CPAN::Distribution object passed in as an argument.
When the CPAN module is used for the first time, a configuration dialogue tries
to determine a couple of site specific options. The result of the dialog is
stored in a hash reference $CPAN::Config in a file
CPAN/Config.pm.
Default values defined in the CPAN/Config.pm file can be
overridden in a user specific file: CPAN/MyConfig.pm. Such a file is best
placed in "$HOME/.cpan/CPAN/MyConfig.pm",
because "$HOME/.cpan" is added to the
search path of the CPAN module before the use() or require()
statements. The mkmyconfig command writes this file for you.
The "o conf" command has various
bells and whistles:
- completion support
- If you have a ReadLine module installed, you can hit TAB at any point of
the commandline and "o conf" will offer
you completion for the built-in subcommands and/or config variable
names.
- displaying some help: o conf help
- Displays a short help
- displaying current values: o conf [KEY]
- Displays the current value(s) for this config variable. Without KEY,
displays all subcommands and config variables.
Example:
o conf shell
If KEY starts and ends with a slash, the string in between is
treated as a regular expression and only keys matching this regexp are
displayed
Example:
o conf /color/
- changing of scalar values: o conf KEY VALUE
- Sets the config variable KEY to VALUE. The empty string can be specified
as usual in shells, with '' or
""
Example:
o conf wget /usr/bin/wget
- changing of list values: o conf KEY
SHIFT|UNSHIFT|PUSH|POP|SPLICE|LIST
- If a config variable name ends with
"list", it is a list.
"o conf KEY
shift" removes the first element of the list,
"o conf KEY pop" removes the last
element of the list. "o conf KEYS unshift
LIST" prepends a list of values to the list,
"o conf KEYS push LIST" appends a list
of valued to the list.
Likewise, "o conf KEY splice
LIST" passes the LIST to the corresponding splice
command.
Finally, any other list of arguments is taken as a new list
value for the KEY variable discarding the previous value.
Examples:
o conf urllist unshift http://cpan.dev.local/CPAN
o conf urllist splice 3 1
o conf urllist http://cpan1.local http://cpan2.local ftp://ftp.perl.org
- reverting to saved: o conf defaults
- Reverts all config variables to the state in the saved config file.
- saving the config: o conf commit
- Saves all config variables to the current config file (CPAN/Config.pm or
CPAN/MyConfig.pm that was loaded at start).
The configuration dialog can be started any time later again by
issuing the command " o conf init " in the
CPAN shell. A subset of the configuration dialog can be run by issuing
"o conf init WORD" where WORD is any valid
config variable or a regular expression.
The following keys in the hash reference $CPAN::Config
are currently defined:
allow_installing_module_downgrades
allow or disallow installing module downgrades
allow_installing_outdated_dists
allow or disallow installing modules that are
indexed in the cpan index pointing to a distro
with a higher distro-version number
applypatch path to external prg
auto_commit commit all changes to config variables to disk
build_cache size of cache for directories to build modules
build_dir locally accessible directory to build modules
build_dir_reuse boolean if distros in build_dir are persistent
build_requires_install_policy
to install or not to install when a module is
only needed for building. yes|no|ask/yes|ask/no
bzip2 path to external prg
cache_metadata use serializer to cache metadata
check_sigs if signatures should be verified
cleanup_after_install
remove build directory immediately after a
successful install and remember that for the
duration of the session
colorize_debug Term::ANSIColor attributes for debugging output
colorize_output boolean if Term::ANSIColor should colorize output
colorize_print Term::ANSIColor attributes for normal output
colorize_warn Term::ANSIColor attributes for warnings
commandnumber_in_prompt
boolean if you want to see current command number
commands_quote preferred character to use for quoting external
commands when running them. Defaults to double
quote on Windows, single tick everywhere else;
can be set to space to disable quoting
connect_to_internet_ok
whether to ask if opening a connection is ok before
urllist is specified
cpan_home local directory reserved for this package
curl path to external prg
dontload_hash DEPRECATED
dontload_list arrayref: modules in the list will not be
loaded by the CPAN::has_inst() routine
ftp path to external prg
ftp_passive if set, the environment variable FTP_PASSIVE is set
for downloads
ftp_proxy proxy host for ftp requests
ftpstats_period max number of days to keep download statistics
ftpstats_size max number of items to keep in the download statistics
getcwd see below
gpg path to external prg
gzip location of external program gzip
halt_on_failure stop processing after the first failure of queued
items or dependencies
histfile file to maintain history between sessions
histsize maximum number of lines to keep in histfile
http_proxy proxy host for http requests
inactivity_timeout breaks interactive Makefile.PLs or Build.PLs
after this many seconds inactivity. Set to 0 to
disable timeouts.
index_expire refetch index files after this many days
inhibit_startup_message
if true, suppress the startup message
keep_source_where directory in which to keep the source (if we do)
load_module_verbosity
report loading of optional modules used by CPAN.pm
lynx path to external prg
make location of external make program
make_arg arguments that should always be passed to 'make'
make_install_make_command
the make command for running 'make install', for
example 'sudo make'
make_install_arg same as make_arg for 'make install'
makepl_arg arguments passed to 'perl Makefile.PL'
mbuild_arg arguments passed to './Build'
mbuild_install_arg arguments passed to './Build install'
mbuild_install_build_command
command to use instead of './Build' when we are
in the install stage, for example 'sudo ./Build'
mbuildpl_arg arguments passed to 'perl Build.PL'
ncftp path to external prg
ncftpget path to external prg
no_proxy don't proxy to these hosts/domains (comma separated list)
pager location of external program more (or any pager)
password your password if you CPAN server wants one
patch path to external prg
patches_dir local directory containing patch files
perl5lib_verbosity verbosity level for PERL5LIB additions
plugin_list list of active hooks (see Plugin support above
and the CPAN::Plugin module)
prefer_external_tar
per default all untar operations are done with
Archive::Tar; by setting this variable to true
the external tar command is used if available
prefer_installer legal values are MB and EUMM: if a module comes
with both a Makefile.PL and a Build.PL, use the
former (EUMM) or the latter (MB); if the module
comes with only one of the two, that one will be
used no matter the setting
prerequisites_policy
what to do if you are missing module prerequisites
('follow' automatically, 'ask' me, or 'ignore')
For 'follow', also sets PERL_AUTOINSTALL and
PERL_EXTUTILS_AUTOINSTALL for "--defaultdeps" if
not already set
prefs_dir local directory to store per-distro build options
proxy_user username for accessing an authenticating proxy
proxy_pass password for accessing an authenticating proxy
randomize_urllist add some randomness to the sequence of the urllist
recommends_policy whether recommended prerequisites should be included
scan_cache controls scanning of cache ('atstart', 'atexit' or 'never')
shell your favorite shell
show_unparsable_versions
boolean if r command tells which modules are versionless
show_upload_date boolean if commands should try to determine upload date
show_zero_versions boolean if r command tells for which modules $version==0
suggests_policy whether suggested prerequisites should be included
tar location of external program tar
tar_verbosity verbosity level for the tar command
term_is_latin deprecated: if true Unicode is translated to ISO-8859-1
(and nonsense for characters outside latin range)
term_ornaments boolean to turn ReadLine ornamenting on/off
test_report email test reports (if CPAN::Reporter is installed)
trust_test_report_history
skip testing when previously tested ok (according to
CPAN::Reporter history)
unzip location of external program unzip
urllist arrayref to nearby CPAN sites (or equivalent locations)
urllist_ping_external
use external ping command when autoselecting mirrors
urllist_ping_verbose
increase verbosity when autoselecting mirrors
use_prompt_default set PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT for configure/make/test/install
use_sqlite use CPAN::SQLite for metadata storage (fast and lean)
username your username if you CPAN server wants one
version_timeout stops version parsing after this many seconds.
Default is 15 secs. Set to 0 to disable.
wait_list arrayref to a wait server to try (See CPAN::WAIT)
wget path to external prg
yaml_load_code enable YAML code deserialisation via CPAN::DeferredCode
yaml_module which module to use to read/write YAML files
You can set and query each of these options interactively in the
cpan shell with the "o conf" or the
"o conf init" command as specified
below.
- "o conf <scalar option>"
- prints the current value of the scalar option
- "o conf <scalar option> <value>"
- Sets the value of the scalar option to value
- "o conf <list option>"
- prints the current value of the list option in MakeMaker's
neatvalue format.
- "o conf <list option> [shift|pop]"
- shifts or pops the array in the list option variable
- "o conf <list option> [unshift|push|splice]
<list>"
- works like the corresponding perl commands.
- interactive editing: o conf init [MATCH|LIST]
- Runs an interactive configuration dialog for matching variables. Without
argument runs the dialog over all supported config variables. To specify a
MATCH the argument must be enclosed by slashes.
Examples:
o conf init ftp_passive ftp_proxy
o conf init /color/
Note: this method of setting config variables often provides
more explanation about the functioning of a variable than the
manpage.
CPAN.pm changes the current working directory often and needs to determine its
own current working directory. By default it uses Cwd::cwd, but if for some
reason this doesn't work on your system, configure alternatives according to
the following table:
- cwd
- Calls Cwd::cwd
- getcwd
- Calls Cwd::getcwd
- fastcwd
- Calls Cwd::fastcwd
- getdcwd
- Calls Cwd::getdcwd
- backtickcwd
- Calls the external command cwd.
urllist parameters are URLs according to RFC 1738. We do a little guessing if
your URL is not compliant, but if you have problems with
"file" URLs, please try the correct format.
Either:
file://localhost/whatever/ftp/pub/CPAN/
or
file:///home/ftp/pub/CPAN/
The "urllist" parameter of the configuration
table contains a list of URLs used for downloading. If the list contains any
"file" URLs, CPAN always tries there first.
This feature is disabled for index files. So the recommendation for the owner
of a CD-ROM with CPAN contents is: include your local, possibly outdated
CD-ROM as a "file" URL at the end of
urllist, e.g.
o conf urllist push file://localhost/CDROM/CPAN
CPAN.pm will then fetch the index files from one of the CPAN sites
that come at the beginning of urllist. It will later check for each module
to see whether there is a local copy of the most recent version.
Another peculiarity of urllist is that the site that we could
successfully fetch the last file from automatically gets a preference token
and is tried as the first site for the next request. So if you add a new
site at runtime it may happen that the previously preferred site will be
tried another time. This means that if you want to disallow a site for the
next transfer, it must be explicitly removed from urllist.
If you have YAML.pm (or some other YAML module configured in
"yaml_module") installed, CPAN.pm collects a
few statistical data about recent downloads. You can view the statistics with
the "hosts" command or inspect them directly
by looking into the "FTPstats.yml" file in
your "cpan_home" directory.
To get some interesting statistics, it is recommended that
"randomize_urllist" be set; this
introduces some amount of randomness into the URL selection.
Since CPAN.pm version 1.88_51 modules declared as
"build_requires" by a distribution are
treated differently depending on the config variable
"build_requires_install_policy". By setting
"build_requires_install_policy" to
"no", such a module is not installed. It is
only built and tested, and then kept in the list of tested but uninstalled
modules. As such, it is available during the build of the dependent module by
integrating the path to the "blib/arch" and
"blib/lib" directories in the environment
variable PERL5LIB. If
"build_requires_install_policy" is set to
"yes", then both modules declared as
"requires" and those declared as
"build_requires" are treated alike. By
setting to "ask/yes" or
"ask/no", CPAN.pm asks the user and sets the
default accordingly.
The "allow_installing_*" parameters are
evaluated during the "make" phase. If set to
"yes", they allow the testing and the
installation of the current distro and otherwise have no effect. If set to
"no", they may abort the build (preventing
testing and installing), depending on the contents of the
"blib/" directory. The
"blib/" directory is the directory that
holds all the files that would usually be installed in the
"install" phase.
"allow_installing_outdated_dists"
compares the "blib/" directory with the
CPAN index. If it finds something there that belongs, according to the
index, to a different dist, it aborts the current build.
"allow_installing_module_downgrades"
compares the "blib/" directory with
already installed modules, actually their version numbers, as determined by
ExtUtils::MakeMaker or equivalent. If a to-be-installed module would
downgrade an already installed module, the current build is aborted.
An interesting twist occurs when a distroprefs document demands
the installation of an outdated dist via goto while
"allow_installing_outdated_dists" forbids
it. Without additional provisions, this would let the
"allow_installing_outdated_dists" win and
the distroprefs lose. So the proper arrangement in such a case is to write a
second distroprefs document for the distro that
"goto" points to and overrule the
"cpanconfig" there. E.g.:
---
match:
distribution: "^MAUKE/Keyword-Simple-0.04.tar.gz"
goto: "MAUKE/Keyword-Simple-0.03.tar.gz"
---
match:
distribution: "^MAUKE/Keyword-Simple-0.03.tar.gz"
cpanconfig:
allow_installing_outdated_dists: yes
(Note: This feature has been introduced in CPAN.pm 1.8854)
Distributions on CPAN usually behave according to what we call the
CPAN mantra. Or since the advent of Module::Build we should talk about two
mantras:
perl Makefile.PL perl Build.PL
make ./Build
make test ./Build test
make install ./Build install
But some modules cannot be built with this mantra. They try to get
some extra data from the user via the environment, extra arguments, or
interactively--thus disturbing the installation of large bundles like
Phalanx100 or modules with many dependencies like Plagger.
The distroprefs system of
"CPAN.pm" addresses this problem by
allowing the user to specify extra informations and recipes in YAML files to
either
- pass additional arguments to one of the four commands,
- set environment variables
- instantiate an Expect object that reads from the console, waits for some
regular expressions and enters some answers
- temporarily override assorted "CPAN.pm"
configuration variables
- specify dependencies the original maintainer forgot
- disable the installation of an object altogether
See the YAML and Data::Dumper files that come with the
"CPAN.pm" distribution in the
"distroprefs/" directory for examples.
The YAML files themselves must have the ".yml"
extension; all other files are ignored (for two exceptions see Fallback
Data::Dumper and Storable below). The containing directory can be
specified in "CPAN.pm" in the
"prefs_dir" config variable. Try
"o conf init
prefs_dir" in the CPAN shell to set and activate
the distroprefs system.
Every YAML file may contain arbitrary documents according to the
YAML specification, and every document is treated as an entity that can
specify the treatment of a single distribution.
Filenames can be picked arbitrarily;
"CPAN.pm" always reads all files (in
alphabetical order) and takes the key
"match" (see below in Language
Specs) as a hashref containing match criteria that determine if the
current distribution matches the YAML document or not.
If neither your configured "yaml_module" nor
YAML.pm is installed, CPAN.pm falls back to using Data::Dumper and Storable
and looks for files with the extensions
".dd" or
".st" in the
"prefs_dir" directory. These files are
expected to contain one or more hashrefs. For Data::Dumper generated files,
this is expected to be done with by defining $VAR1,
$VAR2, etc. The YAML shell would produce these with
the command
ysh < somefile.yml > somefile.dd
For Storable files the rule is that they must be constructed such
that "Storable::retrieve(file)" returns an
array reference and the array elements represent one distropref object each.
The conversion from YAML would look like so:
perl -MYAML=LoadFile -MStorable=nstore -e '
@y=LoadFile(shift);
nstore(\@y, shift)' somefile.yml somefile.st
In bootstrapping situations it is usually sufficient to translate
only a few YAML files to Data::Dumper for crucial modules like
"YAML::Syck",
"YAML.pm" and
"Expect.pm". If you prefer Storable over
Data::Dumper, remember to pull out a Storable version that writes an older
format than all the other Storable versions that will need to read them.
The following example contains all supported keywords and structures with the
exception of "eexpect" which can be used
instead of "expect".
---
comment: "Demo"
match:
module: "Dancing::Queen"
distribution: "^CHACHACHA/Dancing-"
not_distribution: "\.zip$"
perl: "/usr/local/cariba-perl/bin/perl"
perlconfig:
archname: "freebsd"
not_cc: "gcc"
env:
DANCING_FLOOR: "Shubiduh"
disabled: 1
cpanconfig:
make: gmake
pl:
args:
- "--somearg=specialcase"
env: {}
expect:
- "Which is your favorite fruit"
- "apple\n"
make:
args:
- all
- extra-all
env: {}
expect: []
commandline: "echo SKIPPING make"
test:
args: []
env: {}
expect: []
install:
args: []
env:
WANT_TO_INSTALL: YES
expect:
- "Do you really want to install"
- "y\n"
patches:
- "ABCDE/Fedcba-3.14-ABCDE-01.patch"
depends:
configure_requires:
LWP: 5.8
build_requires:
Test::Exception: 0.25
requires:
Spiffy: 0.30
Every YAML document represents a single hash reference. The valid keys in this
hash are as follows:
- comment [scalar]
- A comment
- cpanconfig [hash]
- Temporarily override assorted "CPAN.pm"
configuration variables.
Supported are:
"build_requires_install_policy",
"check_sigs",
"make",
"make_install_make_command",
"prefer_installer",
"test_report". Please report as a bug
when you need another one supported.
- depends [hash] *** EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE ***
- All three types, namely
"configure_requires",
"build_requires", and
"requires" are supported in the way
specified in the META.yml specification. The current implementation
merges the specified dependencies with those declared by the
package maintainer. In a future implementation this may be changed to
override the original declaration.
- disabled [boolean]
- Specifies that this distribution shall not be processed at all.
- features [array] *** EXPERIMENTAL FEATURE ***
- Experimental implementation to deal with optional_features from META.yml.
Still needs coordination with installer software and currently works only
for META.yml declaring
"dynamic_config=0". Use with
caution.
- goto [string]
- The canonical name of a delegate distribution to install instead. Useful
when a new version, although it tests OK itself, breaks something else or
a developer release or a fork is already uploaded that is better than the
last released version.
- install [hash]
- Processing instructions for the "make
install" or "./Build
install" phase of the CPAN mantra. See below under
Processing Instructions.
- make [hash]
- Processing instructions for the "make"
or "./Build" phase of the CPAN mantra.
See below under Processing Instructions.
- match [hash]
- A hashref with one or more of the keys
"distribution",
"module",
"perl",
"perlconfig", and
"env" that specify whether a document is
targeted at a specific CPAN distribution or installation. Keys prefixed
with "not_" negates the corresponding
match.
The corresponding values are interpreted as regular
expressions. The "distribution"
related one will be matched against the canonical distribution name,
e.g. "AUTHOR/Foo-Bar-3.14.tar.gz".
The "module" related one
will be matched against all modules contained in the distribution
until one module matches.
The "perl" related one will
be matched against $^X (but with the absolute
path).
The value associated with
"perlconfig" is itself a hashref that
is matched against corresponding values in the
%Config::Config hash living in the
"Config.pm" module. Keys prefixed with
"not_" negates the corresponding
match.
The value associated with
"env" is itself a hashref that is
matched against corresponding values in the %ENV
hash. Keys prefixed with "not_"
negates the corresponding match.
If more than one restriction of
"module",
"distribution", etc. is specified, the
results of the separately computed match values must all match. If so,
the hashref represented by the YAML document is returned as the
preference structure for the current distribution.
- patches [array]
- An array of patches on CPAN or on the local disk to be applied in order
via an external patch program. If the value for the
"-p" parameter is
0 or 1 is determined by
reading the patch beforehand. The path to each patch is either an absolute
path on the local filesystem or relative to a patch directory specified in
the "patches_dir" configuration variable
or in the format of a canonical distro name. For examples please consult
the distroprefs/ directory in the CPAN.pm distribution (these examples are
not installed by default).
Note: if the "applypatch"
program is installed and
"CPAN::Config" knows about it
and a patch is written by the
"makepatch" program, then
"CPAN.pm" lets
"applypatch" apply the patch. Both
"makepatch" and
"applypatch" are available from CPAN
in the "JV/makepatch-*"
distribution.
- pl [hash]
- Processing instructions for the "perl
Makefile.PL" or "perl
Build.PL" phase of the CPAN mantra. See below
under Processing Instructions.
- test [hash]
- Processing instructions for the "make
test" or "./Build test"
phase of the CPAN mantra. See below under Processing
Instructions.
- args [array]
- Arguments to be added to the command line
- commandline
- A full commandline to run via
"system()". During execution, the
environment variable PERL is set to $^X (but with an absolute path). If
"commandline" is specified,
"args" is not used.
- eexpect [hash]
- Extended "expect". This is a hash
reference with four allowed keys,
"mode",
"timeout",
"reuse", and
"talk".
You must install the
"Expect" module to use
"eexpect". CPAN.pm does not install it
for you.
"mode" may have the values
"deterministic" for the case where all
questions come in the order written down and
"anyorder" for the case where the
questions may come in any order. The default mode is
"deterministic".
"timeout" denotes a timeout
in seconds. Floating-point timeouts are OK. With
"mode=deterministic", the timeout
denotes the timeout per question; with
"mode=anyorder" it denotes the timeout
per byte received from the stream or questions.
"talk" is a reference to an
array that contains alternating questions and answers. Questions are
regular expressions and answers are literal strings. The Expect module
watches the stream from the execution of the external program
("perl Makefile.PL",
"perl
Build.PL",
"make", etc.).
For "mode=deterministic",
the CPAN.pm injects the corresponding answer as soon as the stream
matches the regular expression.
For "mode=anyorder" CPAN.pm
answers a question as soon as the timeout is reached for the next byte
in the input stream. In this mode you can use the
"reuse" parameter to decide what will
happen with a question-answer pair after it has been used. In the
default case (reuse=0) it is removed from the array, avoiding being used
again accidentally. If you want to answer the question
"Do you really want to do that"
several times, then it must be included in the array at least as often
as you want this answer to be given. Setting the parameter
"reuse" to 1 makes this repetition
unnecessary.
- env [hash]
- Environment variables to be set during the command
- expect [array]
- You must install the "Expect" module to
use "expect". CPAN.pm does not install
it for you.
"expect: <array>" is a
short notation for this "eexpect":
eexpect:
mode: deterministic
timeout: 15
talk: <array>
If you have the "Kwalify" module installed
(which is part of the Bundle::CPANxxl), then all your distroprefs files are
checked for syntactic correctness.
"CPAN.pm" comes with a collection of example
YAML files. Note that these are really just examples and should not be used
without care because they cannot fit everybody's purpose. After all, the
authors of the packages that ask questions had a need to ask, so you should
watch their questions and adjust the examples to your environment and your
needs. You have been warned:-)
If you do not enter the shell, shell commands are available both as methods
("CPAN::Shell->install(...)") and as
functions in the calling package
("install(...)"). Before calling low-level
commands, it makes sense to initialize components of CPAN you need, e.g.:
CPAN::HandleConfig->load;
CPAN::Shell::setup_output;
CPAN::Index->reload;
High-level commands do such initializations automatically.
There's currently only one class that has a stable interface -
CPAN::Shell. All commands that are available in the CPAN shell are methods
of the class CPAN::Shell. The arguments on the commandline are passed as
arguments to the method.
So if you take for example the shell command
notest install A B C
the actually executed command is
CPAN::Shell->notest("install","A","B","C");
Each of the commands that produce listings of modules
("r",
"autobundle",
"u") also return a list of the IDs of all
modules within the list.
- expand($type,@things)
- The IDs of all objects available within a program are strings that can be
expanded to the corresponding real objects with the
"CPAN::Shell->expand("Module",@things)"
method. Expand returns a list of CPAN::Module objects according to the
@things arguments given. In scalar context, it
returns only the first element of the list.
- expandany(@things)
- Like expand, but returns objects of the appropriate type, i.e.
CPAN::Bundle objects for bundles, CPAN::Module objects for modules, and
CPAN::Distribution objects for distributions. Note: it does not expand to
CPAN::Author objects.
- Programming Examples
- This enables the programmer to do operations that combine functionalities
that are available in the shell.
# install everything that is outdated on my disk:
perl -MCPAN -e 'CPAN::Shell->install(CPAN::Shell->r)'
# install my favorite programs if necessary:
for $mod (qw(Net::FTP Digest::SHA Data::Dumper)) {
CPAN::Shell->install($mod);
}
# list all modules on my disk that have no VERSION number
for $mod (CPAN::Shell->expand("Module","/./")) {
next unless $mod->inst_file;
# MakeMaker convention for undefined $VERSION:
next unless $mod->inst_version eq "undef";
print "No VERSION in ", $mod->id, "\n";
}
# find out which distribution on CPAN contains a module:
print CPAN::Shell->expand("Module","Apache::Constants")->cpan_file
Or if you want to schedule a cron job to watch CPAN,
you could list all modules that need updating. First a quick and dirty
way:
perl -e 'use CPAN; CPAN::Shell->r;'
If you don't want any output should all modules be up to date,
parse the output of above command for the regular expression
"/modules are up to date/" and decide
to mail the output only if it doesn't match.
If you prefer to do it more in a programmerish style in one
single process, something like this may better suit you:
# list all modules on my disk that have newer versions on CPAN
for $mod (CPAN::Shell->expand("Module","/./")) {
next unless $mod->inst_file;
next if $mod->uptodate;
printf "Module %s is installed as %s, could be updated to %s from CPAN\n",
$mod->id, $mod->inst_version, $mod->cpan_version;
}
If that gives too much output every day, you may want to watch
only for three modules. You can write
for $mod (CPAN::Shell->expand("Module","/Apache|LWP|CGI/")) {
as the first line instead. Or you can combine some of the
above tricks:
# watch only for a new mod_perl module
$mod = CPAN::Shell->expand("Module","mod_perl");
exit if $mod->uptodate;
# new mod_perl arrived, let me know all update recommendations
CPAN::Shell->r;
- CPAN::Author::as_glimpse()
- Returns a one-line description of the author
- CPAN::Author::as_string()
- Returns a multi-line description of the author
- CPAN::Author::email()
- Returns the author's email address
- CPAN::Author::fullname()
- Returns the author's name
- CPAN::Author::name()
- An alias for fullname
- CPAN::Bundle::as_glimpse()
- Returns a one-line description of the bundle
- CPAN::Bundle::as_string()
- Returns a multi-line description of the bundle
- CPAN::Bundle::clean()
- Recursively runs the "clean" method on
all items contained in the bundle.
- CPAN::Bundle::contains()
- Returns a list of objects' IDs contained in a bundle. The associated
objects may be bundles, modules or distributions.
- CPAN::Bundle::force($method,@args)
- Forces CPAN to perform a task that it normally would have refused to do.
Force takes as arguments a method name to be called and any number of
additional arguments that should be passed to the called method. The
internals of the object get the needed changes so that CPAN.pm does not
refuse to take the action. The "force"
is passed recursively to all contained objects. See also the section above
on the "force" and the
"fforce" pragma.
- CPAN::Bundle::get()
- Recursively runs the "get" method on all
items contained in the bundle
- CPAN::Bundle::inst_file()
- Returns the highest installed version of the bundle in either
@INC or
"$CPAN::Config->{cpan_home}". Note
that this is different from CPAN::Module::inst_file.
- CPAN::Bundle::inst_version()
- Like CPAN::Bundle::inst_file, but returns the
$VERSION
- CPAN::Bundle::uptodate()
- Returns 1 if the bundle itself and all its members are up-to-date.
- CPAN::Bundle::install()
- Recursively runs the "install" method on
all items contained in the bundle
- CPAN::Bundle::make()
- Recursively runs the "make" method on
all items contained in the bundle
- CPAN::Bundle::readme()
- Recursively runs the "readme" method on
all items contained in the bundle
- CPAN::Bundle::test()
- Recursively runs the "test" method on
all items contained in the bundle
- CPAN::Distribution::as_glimpse()
- Returns a one-line description of the distribution
- CPAN::Distribution::as_string()
- Returns a multi-line description of the distribution
- CPAN::Distribution::author
- Returns the CPAN::Author object of the maintainer who uploaded this
distribution
- CPAN::Distribution::pretty_id()
- Returns a string of the form "AUTHORID/TARBALL", where AUTHORID
is the author's PAUSE ID and TARBALL is the distribution filename.
- CPAN::Distribution::base_id()
- Returns the distribution filename without any archive suffix. E.g
"Foo-Bar-0.01"
- CPAN::Distribution::clean()
- Changes to the directory where the distribution has been unpacked and runs
"make clean" there.
- CPAN::Distribution::containsmods()
- Returns a list of IDs of modules contained in a distribution file. Works
only for distributions listed in the 02packages.details.txt.gz file. This
typically means that just most recent version of a distribution is
covered.
- CPAN::Distribution::cvs_import()
- Changes to the directory where the distribution has been unpacked and runs
something like
cvs -d $cvs_root import -m $cvs_log $cvs_dir $userid v$version
there.
- CPAN::Distribution::dir()
- Returns the directory into which this distribution has been unpacked.
- CPAN::Distribution::force($method,@args)
- Forces CPAN to perform a task that it normally would have refused to do.
Force takes as arguments a method name to be called and any number of
additional arguments that should be passed to the called method. The
internals of the object get the needed changes so that CPAN.pm does not
refuse to take the action. See also the section above on the
"force" and the
"fforce" pragma.
- CPAN::Distribution::get()
- Downloads the distribution from CPAN and unpacks it. Does nothing if the
distribution has already been downloaded and unpacked within the current
session.
- CPAN::Distribution::install()
- Changes to the directory where the distribution has been unpacked and runs
the external command "make install"
there. If "make" has not yet been run,
it will be run first. A "make test" is
issued in any case and if this fails, the install is cancelled. The
cancellation can be avoided by letting
"force" run the
"install" for you.
This install method only has the power to install the
distribution if there are no dependencies in the way. To install an
object along with all its dependencies, use CPAN::Shell->install.
Note that install() gives no meaningful return value.
See uptodate().
- CPAN::Distribution::isa_perl()
- Returns 1 if this distribution file seems to be a perl distribution.
Normally this is derived from the file name only, but the index from CPAN
can contain a hint to achieve a return value of true for other filenames
too.
- CPAN::Distribution::look()
- Changes to the directory where the distribution has been unpacked and
opens a subshell there. Exiting the subshell returns.
- CPAN::Distribution::make()
- First runs the "get" method to make sure
the distribution is downloaded and unpacked. Changes to the directory
where the distribution has been unpacked and runs the external commands
"perl
Makefile.PL" or "perl
Build.PL" and "make"
there.
- CPAN::Distribution::perldoc()
- Downloads the pod documentation of the file associated with a distribution
(in HTML format) and runs it through the external command lynx
specified in "$CPAN::Config->{lynx}".
If lynx isn't available, it converts it to plain text with the
external command html2text and runs it through the pager specified
in "$CPAN::Config->{pager}".
- CPAN::Distribution::prefs()
- Returns the hash reference from the first matching YAML file that the user
has deposited in the "prefs_dir/"
directory. The first succeeding match wins. The files in the
"prefs_dir/" are processed
alphabetically, and the canonical distro name (e.g.
AUTHOR/Foo-Bar-3.14.tar.gz) is matched against the regular expressions
stored in the $root->{match}{distribution}
attribute value. Additionally all module names contained in a distribution
are matched against the regular expressions in the
$root->{match}{module} attribute value. The two
match values are ANDed together. Each of the two attributes are
optional.
- CPAN::Distribution::prereq_pm()
- Returns the hash reference that has been announced by a distribution as
the "requires" and
"build_requires" elements. These can be
declared either by the "META.yml" (if
authoritative) or can be deposited after the run of
"Build.PL" in the file
"./_build/prereqs" or after the run of
"Makfile.PL" written as the
"PREREQ_PM" hash in a comment in the
produced "Makefile". Note: this
method only works after an attempt has been made to
"make" the distribution. Returns undef
otherwise.
- CPAN::Distribution::readme()
- Downloads the README file associated with a distribution and runs it
through the pager specified in
"$CPAN::Config->{pager}".
- CPAN::Distribution::reports()
- Downloads report data for this distribution from www.cpantesters.org and
displays a subset of them.
- CPAN::Distribution::read_yaml()
- Returns the content of the META.yml of this distro as a hashref. Note:
works only after an attempt has been made to
"make" the distribution. Returns undef
otherwise. Also returns undef if the content of META.yml is not
authoritative. (The rules about what exactly makes the content
authoritative are still in flux.)
- CPAN::Distribution::test()
- Changes to the directory where the distribution has been unpacked and runs
"make test" there.
- CPAN::Distribution::uptodate()
- Returns 1 if all the modules contained in the distribution are up-to-date.
Relies on containsmods.
- CPAN::Index::force_reload()
- Forces a reload of all indices.
- CPAN::Index::reload()
- Reloads all indices if they have not been read for more than
"$CPAN::Config->{index_expire}"
days.
- CPAN::InfoObj::dump()
- CPAN::Author, CPAN::Bundle, CPAN::Module, and CPAN::Distribution inherit
this method. It prints the data structure associated with an object.
Useful for debugging. Note: the data structure is considered internal and
thus subject to change without notice.
- CPAN::Module::as_glimpse()
- Returns a one-line description of the module in four columns: The first
column contains the word "Module", the
second column consists of one character: an equals sign if this module is
already installed and up-to-date, a less-than sign if this module is
installed but can be upgraded, and a space if the module is not installed.
The third column is the name of the module and the fourth column gives
maintainer or distribution information.
- CPAN::Module::as_string()
- Returns a multi-line description of the module
- CPAN::Module::clean()
- Runs a clean on the distribution associated with this module.
- CPAN::Module::cpan_file()
- Returns the filename on CPAN that is associated with the module.
- CPAN::Module::cpan_version()
- Returns the latest version of this module available on CPAN.
- CPAN::Module::cvs_import()
- Runs a cvs_import on the distribution associated with this module.
- CPAN::Module::description()
- Returns a 44 character description of this module. Only available for
modules listed in The Module List (CPAN/modules/00modlist.long.html or
00modlist.long.txt.gz)
- CPAN::Module::distribution()
- Returns the CPAN::Distribution object that contains the current version of
this module.
- CPAN::Module::dslip_status()
- Returns a hash reference. The keys of the hash are the letters
"D",
"S",
"L",
"I", and <P>, for development
status, support level, language, interface and public licence
respectively. The data for the DSLIP status are collected by
pause.perl.org when authors register their namespaces. The values of the 5
hash elements are one-character words whose meaning is described in the
table below. There are also 5 hash elements
"DV",
"SV",
"LV",
"IV", and <PV> that carry a more
verbose value of the 5 status variables.
Where the 'DSLIP' characters have the following meanings:
D - Development Stage (Note: *NO IMPLIED TIMESCALES*):
i - Idea, listed to gain consensus or as a placeholder
c - under construction but pre-alpha (not yet released)
a/b - Alpha/Beta testing
R - Released
M - Mature (no rigorous definition)
S - Standard, supplied with Perl 5
S - Support Level:
m - Mailing-list
d - Developer
u - Usenet newsgroup comp.lang.perl.modules
n - None known, try comp.lang.perl.modules
a - abandoned; volunteers welcome to take over maintenance
L - Language Used:
p - Perl-only, no compiler needed, should be platform independent
c - C and perl, a C compiler will be needed
h - Hybrid, written in perl with optional C code, no compiler needed
+ - C++ and perl, a C++ compiler will be needed
o - perl and another language other than C or C++
I - Interface Style
f - plain Functions, no references used
h - hybrid, object and function interfaces available
n - no interface at all (huh?)
r - some use of unblessed References or ties
O - Object oriented using blessed references and/or inheritance
P - Public License
p - Standard-Perl: user may choose between GPL and Artistic
g - GPL: GNU General Public License
l - LGPL: "GNU Lesser General Public License" (previously known as
"GNU Library General Public License")
b - BSD: The BSD License
a - Artistic license alone
2 - Artistic license 2.0 or later
o - open source: approved by www.opensource.org
d - allows distribution without restrictions
r - restricted distribution
n - no license at all
- CPAN::Module::force($method,@args)
- Forces CPAN to perform a task it would normally refuse to do. Force takes
as arguments a method name to be invoked and any number of additional
arguments to pass that method. The internals of the object get the needed
changes so that CPAN.pm does not refuse to take the action. See also the
section above on the "force" and the
"fforce" pragma.
- CPAN::Module::get()
- Runs a get on the distribution associated with this module.
- CPAN::Module::inst_file()
- Returns the filename of the module found in @INC.
The first file found is reported, just as perl itself stops searching
@INC once it finds a module.
- CPAN::Module::available_file()
- Returns the filename of the module found in PERL5LIB or
@INC. The first file found is reported. The
advantage of this method over
"inst_file" is that modules that have
been tested but not yet installed are included because PERL5LIB keeps
track of tested modules.
- CPAN::Module::inst_version()
- Returns the version number of the installed module in readable
format.
- CPAN::Module::available_version()
- Returns the version number of the available module in readable
format.
- CPAN::Module::install()
- Runs an "install" on the distribution
associated with this module.
- CPAN::Module::look()
- Changes to the directory where the distribution associated with this
module has been unpacked and opens a subshell there. Exiting the subshell
returns.
- CPAN::Module::make()
- Runs a "make" on the distribution
associated with this module.
- CPAN::Module::manpage_headline()
- If module is installed, peeks into the module's manpage, reads the
headline, and returns it. Moreover, if the module has been downloaded
within this session, does the equivalent on the downloaded module even if
it hasn't been installed yet.
- CPAN::Module::perldoc()
- Runs a "perldoc" on this module.
- CPAN::Module::readme()
- Runs a "readme" on the distribution
associated with this module.
- CPAN::Module::reports()
- Calls the reports() method on the associated distribution
object.
- CPAN::Module::test()
- Runs a "test" on the distribution
associated with this module.
- CPAN::Module::uptodate()
- Returns 1 if the module is installed and up-to-date.
- CPAN::Module::userid()
- Returns the author's ID of the module.
Currently the cache manager only keeps track of the build directory
($CPAN::Config->{build_dir}). It is a simple FIFO mechanism that deletes
complete directories below "build_dir" as
soon as the size of all directories there gets bigger than
$CPAN::Config->{build_cache} (in MB). The contents
of this cache may be used for later re-installations that you intend to do
manually, but will never be trusted by CPAN itself. This is due to the fact
that the user might use these directories for building modules on different
architectures.
There is another directory ($CPAN::Config->{keep_source_where})
where the original distribution files are kept. This directory is not
covered by the cache manager and must be controlled by the user. If you
choose to have the same directory as build_dir and as keep_source_where
directory, then your sources will be deleted with the same fifo
mechanism.
A bundle is just a perl module in the namespace Bundle:: that does not define
any functions or methods. It usually only contains documentation.
It starts like a perl module with a package declaration and a
$VERSION variable. After that the pod section looks
like any other pod with the only difference being that one special pod
section exists starting with (verbatim):
=head1 CONTENTS
In this pod section each line obeys the format
Module_Name [Version_String] [- optional text]
The only required part is the first field, the name of a module
(e.g. Foo::Bar, i.e. not the name of the distribution file). The rest
of the line is optional. The comment part is delimited by a dash just as in
the man page header.
The distribution of a bundle should follow the same convention as
other distributions.
Bundles are treated specially in the CPAN package. If you say
'install Bundle::Tkkit' (assuming such a bundle exists), CPAN will install
all the modules in the CONTENTS section of the pod. You can install your own
Bundles locally by placing a conformant Bundle file somewhere into your
@INC path. The autobundle() command which is
available in the shell interface does that for you by including all
currently installed modules in a snapshot bundle file.
The CPAN program is trying to depend on as little as possible so the user can
use it in hostile environment. It works better the more goodies the
environment provides. For example if you try in the CPAN shell
install Bundle::CPAN
or
install Bundle::CPANxxl
you will find the shell more convenient than the bare shell
before.
If you have a local mirror of CPAN and can access all files with
"file:" URLs, then you only need a perl later than perl5.003 to
run this module. Otherwise Net::FTP is strongly recommended. LWP may be
required for non-UNIX systems, or if your nearest CPAN site is associated
with a URL that is not "ftp:".
If you have neither Net::FTP nor LWP, there is a fallback
mechanism implemented for an external ftp command or for an external lynx
command.
This module presumes that all packages on CPAN
- declare their $VERSION variable in an easy to
parse manner. This prerequisite can hardly be relaxed because it consumes
far too much memory to load all packages into the running program just to
determine the $VERSION variable. Currently all
programs that are dealing with version use something like this
perl -MExtUtils::MakeMaker -le \
'print MM->parse_version(shift)' filename
If you are author of a package and wonder if your
$VERSION can be parsed, please try the above
method.
- come as compressed or gzipped tarfiles or as zip files and contain a
"Makefile.PL" or
"Build.PL" (well, we try to handle a bit
more, but with little enthusiasm).
Debugging this module is more than a bit complex due to interference from the
software producing the indices on CPAN, the mirroring process on CPAN,
packaging, configuration, synchronicity, and even (gasp!) due to bugs within
the CPAN.pm module itself.
For debugging the code of CPAN.pm itself in interactive mode, some
debugging aid can be turned on for most packages within CPAN.pm with one
of
- o debug package...
- sets debug mode for packages.
- o debug -package...
- unsets debug mode for packages.
- o debug all
- turns debugging on for all packages.
- o debug number
which sets the debugging packages directly. Note that
"o debug 0" turns debugging off.
What seems a successful strategy is the combination of
"reload cpan" and
the debugging switches. Add a new debug statement while running in the shell
and then issue a "reload cpan" and see the
new debugging messages immediately without losing the current context.
"o debug" without an argument
lists the valid package names and the current set of packages in debugging
mode. "o debug" has built-in completion
support.
For debugging of CPAN data there is the
"dump" command which takes the same
arguments as make/test/install and outputs each object's Data::Dumper dump.
If an argument looks like a perl variable and contains one of
"$", "@"
or "%", it is eval()ed and fed to
Data::Dumper directly.
CPAN.pm works nicely without network access, too. If you maintain machines that
are not networked at all, you should consider working with
"file:" URLs. You'll have to collect your
modules somewhere first. So you might use CPAN.pm to put together all you need
on a networked machine. Then copy the
$CPAN::Config->{keep_source_where} (but not
$CPAN::Config->{build_dir}) directory on a floppy.
This floppy is kind of a personal CPAN. CPAN.pm on the non-networked machines
works nicely with this floppy. See also below the paragraph about CD-ROM
support.
- has_inst($module)
- Returns true if the module is installed. Used to load all modules into the
running CPAN.pm that are considered optional. The config variable
"dontload_list" intercepts the
"has_inst()" call such that an optional
module is not loaded despite being available. For example, the following
command will prevent "YAML.pm" from
being loaded:
cpan> o conf dontload_list push YAML
See the source for details.
- use_inst($module)
- Similary to has_inst() tries to load optional library but also dies
if library is not available
- has_usable($module)
- Returns true if the module is installed and in a usable state. Only useful
for a handful of modules that are used internally. See the source for
details.
- instance($module)
- The constructor for all the singletons used to represent modules,
distributions, authors, and bundles. If the object already exists, this
method returns the object; otherwise, it calls the constructor.
- frontend()
- frontend($new_frontend)
- Getter/setter for frontend object. Method just allows to subclass
CPAN.pm.
There's no strong security layer in CPAN.pm. CPAN.pm helps you to install
foreign, unmasked, unsigned code on your machine. We compare to a checksum
that comes from the net just as the distribution file itself. But we try to
make it easy to add security on demand:
Since release 1.77, CPAN.pm has been able to verify cryptographically signed
module distributions using Module::Signature. The CPAN modules can be signed
by their authors, thus giving more security. The simple unsigned MD5 checksums
that were used before by CPAN protect mainly against accidental file
corruption.
You will need to have Module::Signature installed, which in turn
requires that you have at least one of Crypt::OpenPGP module or the
command-line gpg tool installed.
You will also need to be able to connect over the Internet to the
public key servers, like pgp.mit.edu, and their port 11731 (the HKP
protocol).
The configuration parameter check_sigs is there to turn signature
checking on or off.
Most functions in package CPAN are exported by default. The reason for this is
that the primary use is intended for the cpan shell or for one-liners.
When the CPAN shell enters a subshell via the look command, it sets the
environment CPAN_SHELL_LEVEL to 1, or increments that variable if it is
already set.
When CPAN runs, it sets the environment variable
PERL5_CPAN_IS_RUNNING to the ID of the running process. It also sets
PERL5_CPANPLUS_IS_RUNNING to prevent runaway processes which could happen
with older versions of Module::Install.
When running "perl Makefile.PL",
the environment variable
"PERL5_CPAN_IS_EXECUTING" is set to the
full path of the "Makefile.PL" that is
being executed. This prevents runaway processes with newer versions of
Module::Install.
When the config variable ftp_passive is set, all downloads will be
run with the environment variable FTP_PASSIVE set to this value. This is in
general a good idea as it influences both Net::FTP and LWP based
connections. The same effect can be achieved by starting the cpan shell with
this environment variable set. For Net::FTP alone, one can also always set
passive mode by running libnetcfg.
Populating a freshly installed perl with one's favorite modules is pretty easy
if you maintain a private bundle definition file. To get a useful blueprint of
a bundle definition file, the command autobundle can be used on the CPAN shell
command line. This command writes a bundle definition file for all modules
installed for the current perl interpreter. It's recommended to run this
command once only, and from then on maintain the file manually under a private
name, say Bundle/my_bundle.pm. With a clever bundle file you can then simply
say
cpan> install Bundle::my_bundle
then answer a few questions and go out for coffee (possibly even
in a different city).
Maintaining a bundle definition file means keeping track of two
things: dependencies and interactivity. CPAN.pm sometimes fails on
calculating dependencies because not all modules define all MakeMaker
attributes correctly, so a bundle definition file should specify
prerequisites as early as possible. On the other hand, it's annoying that so
many distributions need some interactive configuring. So what you can try to
accomplish in your private bundle file is to have the packages that need to
be configured early in the file and the gentle ones later, so you can go out
for coffee after a few minutes and leave CPAN.pm to churn away
unattended.
Thanks to Graham Barr for contributing the following paragraphs about the
interaction between perl, and various firewall configurations. For further
information on firewalls, it is recommended to consult the documentation that
comes with the ncftp program. If you are unable to go through the
firewall with a simple Perl setup, it is likely that you can configure
ncftp so that it works through your firewall.
Firewalls can be categorized into three basic types.
- http firewall
- This is when the firewall machine runs a web server, and to access the
outside world, you must do so via that web server. If you set environment
variables like http_proxy or ftp_proxy to values beginning with http://,
or in your web browser you've proxy information set, then you know you are
running behind an http firewall.
To access servers outside these types of firewalls with perl
(even for ftp), you need LWP or HTTP::Tiny.
- ftp firewall
- This where the firewall machine runs an ftp server. This kind of firewall
will only let you access ftp servers outside the firewall. This is usually
done by connecting to the firewall with ftp, then entering a username like
"user@outside.host.com".
To access servers outside these type of firewalls with perl,
you need Net::FTP.
- One-way visibility
- One-way visibility means these firewalls try to make themselves invisible
to users inside the firewall. An FTP data connection is normally created
by sending your IP address to the remote server and then listening for the
return connection. But the remote server will not be able to connect to
you because of the firewall. For these types of firewall, FTP connections
need to be done in a passive mode.
There are two that I can think off.
- SOCKS
- If you are using a SOCKS firewall, you will need to compile perl and link
it with the SOCKS library. This is what is normally called a 'socksified'
perl. With this executable you will be able to connect to servers outside
the firewall as if it were not there.
- IP Masquerade
- This is when the firewall implemented in the kernel (via NAT, or
networking address translation), it allows you to hide a complete network
behind one IP address. With this firewall no special compiling is needed
as you can access hosts directly.
For accessing ftp servers behind such firewalls you usually
need to set the environment variable
"FTP_PASSIVE" or the config variable
ftp_passive to a true value.
If you can go through your firewall with e.g. lynx, presumably with a command
such as
/usr/local/bin/lynx -pscott:tiger
then you would configure CPAN.pm with the command
o conf lynx "/usr/local/bin/lynx -pscott:tiger"
That's all. Similarly for ncftp or ftp, you would configure
something like
o conf ncftp "/usr/bin/ncftp -f /home/scott/ncftplogin.cfg"
Your mileage may vary...
- 1)
- I installed a new version of module X but CPAN keeps saying, I have the
old version installed
Probably you do have the old version installed. This
can happen if a module installs itself into a different directory in the
@INC path than it was previously installed. This
is not really a CPAN.pm problem, you would have the same problem when
installing the module manually. The easiest way to prevent this
behaviour is to add the argument
"UNINST=1" to the
"make install" call, and that is why
many people add this argument permanently by configuring
o conf make_install_arg UNINST=1
- 2)
- So why is UNINST=1 not the default?
Because there are people who have their precise expectations
about who may install where in the @INC path and
who uses which @INC array. In fine tuned
environments "UNINST=1" can cause
damage.
- 3)
- I want to clean up my mess, and install a new perl along with all modules
I have. How do I go about it?
Run the autobundle command for your old perl and optionally
rename the resulting bundle file (e.g. Bundle/mybundle.pm), install the
new perl with the Configure option prefix, e.g.
./Configure -Dprefix=/usr/local/perl-5.6.78.9
Install the bundle file you produced in the first step with
something like
cpan> install Bundle::mybundle
and you're done.
- 4)
- When I install bundles or multiple modules with one command there is too
much output to keep track of.
You may want to configure something like
o conf make_arg "| tee -ai /root/.cpan/logs/make.out"
o conf make_install_arg "| tee -ai /root/.cpan/logs/make_install.out"
so that STDOUT is captured in a file for later inspection.
- 5)
- I am not root, how can I install a module in a personal directory?
As of CPAN 1.9463, if you do not have permission to write the
default perl library directories, CPAN's configuration process will ask
you whether you want to bootstrap <local::lib>, which makes
keeping a personal perl library directory easy.
Another thing you should bear in mind is that the UNINST
parameter can be dangerous when you are installing into a private area
because you might accidentally remove modules that other people depend
on that are not using the private area.
- 6)
- How to get a package, unwrap it, and make a change before building it?
Have a look at the "look"
(!) command.
- 7)
- I installed a Bundle and had a couple of fails. When I retried, everything
resolved nicely. Can this be fixed to work on first try?
The reason for this is that CPAN does not know the
dependencies of all modules when it starts out. To decide about the
additional items to install, it just uses data found in the META.yml
file or the generated Makefile. An undetected missing piece breaks the
process. But it may well be that your Bundle installs some prerequisite
later than some depending item and thus your second try is able to
resolve everything. Please note, CPAN.pm does not know the dependency
tree in advance and cannot sort the queue of things to install in a
topologically correct order. It resolves perfectly well if all
modules declare the prerequisites correctly with the PREREQ_PM attribute
to MakeMaker or the "requires" stanza
of Module::Build. For bundles which fail and you need to install often,
it is recommended to sort the Bundle definition file manually.
- 8)
- In our intranet, we have many modules for internal use. How can I
integrate these modules with CPAN.pm but without uploading the modules to
CPAN?
Have a look at the CPAN::Site module.
- 9)
- When I run CPAN's shell, I get an error message about things in my
"/etc/inputrc" (or
"~/.inputrc") file.
These are readline issues and can only be fixed by studying
readline configuration on your architecture and adjusting the referenced
file accordingly. Please make a backup of the
"/etc/inputrc" or
"~/.inputrc" and edit them. Quite
often harmless changes like uppercasing or lowercasing some arguments
solves the problem.
- 10)
- Some authors have strange characters in their names.
Internally CPAN.pm uses the UTF-8 charset. If your terminal is
expecting ISO-8859-1 charset, a converter can be activated by setting
term_is_latin to a true value in your config file. One way of doing so
would be
cpan> o conf term_is_latin 1
If other charset support is needed, please file a bug report
against CPAN.pm at rt.cpan.org and describe your needs. Maybe we can
extend the support or maybe UTF-8 terminals become widely available.
Note: this config variable is deprecated and will be removed
in a future version of CPAN.pm. It will be replaced with the conventions
around the family of $LANG and
$LC_* environment variables.
- 11)
- When an install fails for some reason and then I correct the error
condition and retry, CPAN.pm refuses to install the module, saying
"Already tried without success".
Use the force pragma like so
force install Foo::Bar
Or you can use
look Foo::Bar
and then "make install"
directly in the subshell.
- 12)
- How do I install a "DEVELOPER RELEASE" of a module?
By default, CPAN will install the latest non-developer release
of a module. If you want to install a dev release, you have to specify
the partial path starting with the author id to the tarball you wish to
install, like so:
cpan> install KWILLIAMS/Module-Build-0.27_07.tar.gz
Note that you can use the
"ls" command to get this path
listed.
- 13)
- How do I install a module and all its dependencies from the commandline,
without being prompted for anything, despite my CPAN configuration (or
lack thereof)?
CPAN uses ExtUtils::MakeMaker's prompt() function to
ask its questions, so if you set the PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT environment
variable, you shouldn't be asked any questions at all (assuming the
modules you are installing are nice about obeying that variable as
well):
% PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT=1 perl -MCPAN -e 'install My::Module'
- 14)
- How do I create a Module::Build based Build.PL derived from an
ExtUtils::MakeMaker focused Makefile.PL?
http://search.cpan.org/dist/Module-Build-Convert/
- 15)
- I'm frequently irritated with the CPAN shell's inability to help me select
a good mirror.
CPAN can now help you select a "good" mirror, based
on which ones have the lowest 'ping' round-trip times. From the shell,
use the command 'o conf init urllist' and allow CPAN to automatically
select mirrors for you.
Beyond that help, the urllist config parameter is yours. You
can add and remove sites at will. You should find out which sites have
the best up-to-dateness, bandwidth, reliability, etc. and are
topologically close to you. Some people prefer fast downloads, others
up-to-dateness, others reliability. You decide which to try in which
order.
Henk P. Penning maintains a site that collects data about CPAN
sites:
http://mirrors.cpan.org/
Also, feel free to play with experimental features. Run
o conf init randomize_urllist ftpstats_period ftpstats_size
and choose your favorite parameters. After a few downloads
running the "hosts" command will
probably assist you in choosing the best mirror sites.
- 16)
- Why do I get asked the same questions every time I start the shell?
You can make your configuration changes permanent by calling
the command "o conf commit".
Alternatively set the "auto_commit"
variable to true by running "o conf init
auto_commit" and answering the following question with
yes.
- 17)
- Older versions of CPAN.pm had the original root directory of all tarballs
in the build directory. Now there are always random characters appended to
these directory names. Why was this done?
The random characters are provided by File::Temp and ensure
that each module's individual build directory is unique. This makes
running CPAN.pm in concurrent processes simultaneously safe.
- 18)
- Speaking of the build directory. Do I have to clean it up myself?
You have the choice to set the config variable
"scan_cache" to
"never". Then you must clean it up
yourself. The other possible values,
"atstart" and
"atexit" clean up the build directory
when you start (or more precisely, after the first extraction into the
build directory) or exit the CPAN shell, respectively. If you never
start up the CPAN shell, you probably also have to clean up the build
directory yourself.
- 19)
- How can I switch to sudo instead of local::lib?
The following 5 environment veriables need to be reset to the
previous values: PATH, PERL5LIB, PERL_LOCAL_LIB_ROOT, PERL_MB_OPT,
PERL_MM_OPT; and these two CPAN.pm config variables must be
reconfigured: make_install_make_command and
mbuild_install_build_command. The five env variables have probably been
overwritten in your $HOME/.bashrc or some
equivalent. You either find them there and delete their traces and
logout/login or you override them temporarily, depending on your exact
desire. The two cpanpm config variables can be set with:
o conf init /install_.*_command/
probably followed by
o conf commit
CPAN.pm is regularly tested to run under 5.005 and assorted newer versions. It
is getting more and more difficult to get the minimal prerequisites working on
older perls. It is close to impossible to get the whole Bundle::CPAN working
there. If you're in the position to have only these old versions, be advised
that CPAN is designed to work fine without the Bundle::CPAN installed.
To get things going, note that GBARR/Scalar-List-Utils-1.18.tar.gz
is compatible with ancient perls and that File::Temp is listed as a
prerequisite but CPAN has reasonable workarounds if it is missing.
This module and its competitor, the CPANPLUS module, are both much cooler than
the other. CPAN.pm is older. CPANPLUS was designed to be more modular, but it
was never intended to be compatible with CPAN.pm.
In the year 2010 App::cpanminus was launched as a new approach to a cpan shell
with a considerably smaller footprint. Very cool stuff.
This software enables you to upgrade software on your computer and so is
inherently dangerous because the newly installed software may contain bugs and
may alter the way your computer works or even make it unusable. Please
consider backing up your data before every upgrade.
Please report bugs via <http://rt.cpan.org/>
Before submitting a bug, please make sure that the traditional
method of building a Perl module package from a shell by following the
installation instructions of that package still works in your
environment.
Andreas Koenig "<andk@cpan.org>"
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the same terms as Perl itself.
See <http://www.perl.com/perl/misc/Artistic.html>
Kawai,Takanori provides a Japanese translation of a very old version of this
manpage at <http://homepage3.nifty.com/hippo2000/perltips/CPAN.htm>
Many people enter the CPAN shell by running the cpan utility program which is
installed in the same directory as perl itself. So if you have this directory
in your PATH variable (or some equivalent in your operating system) then
typing "cpan" in a console window will work
for you as well. Above that the utility provides several commandline
shortcuts.
melezhik (Alexey) sent me a link where he published a chef recipe
to work with CPAN.pm: http://community.opscode.com/cookbooks/cpan.
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