cpanminus - get, unpack, build and install modules from CPAN

What is this?

cpanminus is a tiny script to get, unpack, build and install modules from CPAN. It's a single perl script with no dependencies.

Should I use this?

No. Use CPAN or CPANPLUS.

WTF? Why did you make this?

CPAN shell gets OOM on Slicehost/linode's most affordable plan with only 256MB RAM.

Yes, I know CPAN::SQLite can fix it but installing it and its 14 non-core dependencies without CPAN shell (because CPAN shell doesn't work) feels like yak shaving.

So, imagine you don't have CPAN or CPANPLUS. What you're going to do is to search the module on the CPAN search site, download a tarball, unpack it and then run perl Makefile.PL (or perl Build.PL) and then make install. If the module has dependencies you probably have to recurively resolve those dependencies by hand before doing so.

This script just automates that.

How does this module get the CPAN index?

It scrapes http://search.cpan.org/. Yes, it's horrible and fragile. Fetched files are unpacked in ~/.cpanm

What do you need to run this?

perl 5.8 or later (Actually I believe it works with pre 5.8 too but haven't tested).

• LWP or 'wget' to get files over HTTP.
• 'tar' executable or Archive::Tar to unpack files.
• make (Ugh!)
• C compiler, if you want to build XS modules.

Does this work with local::lib?

Yes.

Does this really work?

I tested installing Moose, Catalyst, Jifty and Plack using cpanminus and the installation was all successful.

There are some distributions that fail, because of edge cases (META.yml formats, circular dependencies etc.) while CPAN and CPANPLUS can install them correctly.

Quick Install?

Oh, you mean env PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT=1 cpanm --notest Module

Don't do that. It's too useful.

So you're ignoring the CPAN toolchain ecosystem with this?

No, that's not my intention. As a developer with 190 modules on CPAN, I appreciate and respect the CPAN toolchain developers for their great effort. However I've learned that in some rare cases, especially for less experienced users (or really experienced users who knows how to shoot their feet), setting up a CPAN toolchain "in the right way" feels like just another yak to shave, and this tool is a super tiny shaver to eliminate the yak in that particular case.

Should I use this?

No. Use CPAN or CPANPLUS.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2010- Tatsuhiko Miyagawa

AUTHORS

Tatsuhiko Miyagawa, Goro Fuji, Kazuhiro Osawa, Tokuhiro Matsuno