[oclug] UNIX philosophy (was Re: vim rulez...)

[David F. Skoll]

On Wed, 18 Apr 2001, Dave O'Neill wrote:

> Well, you can usually avoid this by downloading the modules you need (or
> just the ones that want to upgrade Perl itself) directly from CPAN via
> FTP, and installing them with "make && make test && make install" or
> equivalent.

That's what I did... the second time around.  Actually, what I do now
is keep all of the downloaded modules in a safe place.  CPAN is a
seething, roiling mass of ever-tinkered-with software, and when I get
a set of modules which works, I keep them, because I just *know* that
the next time I go to CPAN, something will change which breaks my
setup.  I was really bitten by the MIME::tools module, whose API
changed radically, breaking a bunch of software. :-(

> Occasionally, though, something will depend on a new base package or
> feature that's been added to the main Perl distribution, in which case
> you'll have to upgrade to use it.

I find that most Perl module authors are a tad aggressive in their
dependency declarations.  I've encountered many modules which claim
to require Perl 5.6, but which in fact work just fine with 5.005.

--
David.