1 |
On 21 May 2009, at 22:23, Tim Jones wrote: |
2 |
> ... |
3 |
> I was a little confused to learn of the existence of the g-cpan |
4 |
> module, even at the presence of perl modules in Portage itself. |
5 |
|
6 |
I don't know how other distros handle this. I'd imagine that most |
7 |
package managers allow the installation of some Perl modules, but not |
8 |
the entire range offered by cpan. (??) |
9 |
|
10 |
> g-cpan is supposed to be a Portage wrapper for plain cpan? |
11 |
|
12 |
Yes. |
13 |
|
14 |
> If I use g-cpan to install a module, will it use the ebuild, if one |
15 |
> exists? |
16 |
|
17 |
I think you use Portage - e.g. `emerge dev-perl/libwww-perl` if the |
18 |
package exists, otherwise g-cpan. |
19 |
|
20 |
> Is there anything wrong with using plain cpan? (It would bother me |
21 |
> if there was not agreement between my local Portage tree and what is |
22 |
> actually installed on my system.) |
23 |
|
24 |
That's exactly why you'd use g-cpan - Portage doesn't know the module |
25 |
is installed on your system, otherwise, and can't apply updates to it. |
26 |
|
27 |
> I guess I am just feeling that someone tried to fix something that |
28 |
> wasn't broken. |
29 |
|
30 |
The thing is that a package in Portage might depend on cpan modules. |
31 |
Portage isn't able to itself automatically get stuff from cpan's |
32 |
archive and so it's unable to fullfill the dependencies for that. |
33 |
That's why Perl library packages exist within the portage tree. |
34 |
|
35 |
I suspect the ideal situation would be for ANY Perl dependency to call |
36 |
g-cpan, but g-cpan is relatively new, and probably not ready for that. |
37 |
I would guess that most of the major Perl packages are already in the |
38 |
main Portage tree, and g-cpan isn't much of a development priority. |
39 |
|
40 |
I wouldn't use the standalone cpan tools myself, because they might |
41 |
install things in non-Gentoo places, or Portage might delete them |
42 |
without warning you. The whole point of the g-cpan wrapper is to avoid |
43 |
this happening. |
44 |
|
45 |
I hope this makes sense. I have to say that I've used g-cpan a couple |
46 |
of times myself, but don't have a complete understanding of it. I |
47 |
didn't know what cpan was before needing to use g-cpan. |
48 |
|
49 |
Stroller. |