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

[Michael P. Soulier]

On Wed, Apr 18, 2001 at 03:07:26PM -0400, David F. Skoll wrote:
> 
> 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. :-(

    At work whether or not our products ship often depends on whether or not
our Perl distribution is working. I'm slowly populating our version-control
system with Perl modules to make sure that I can rebuild it if it's ever
deleted accidentally. 
    My big complaint about this is that there is no standard way to build the
distro + all the modules in one make. Since many modules depend on others, you
have to force them to build in a certain order, but you can't do that with the
basic Makefile supplied with Perl. If I want this, I'm going to have to hack
it myself. 

    Mike

-- 
Michael P. Soulier <msoulier at storm.ca> 
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a
good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land, and it could be
dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead." -- RFC 1925