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README
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README
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NAME
CPAN - query, download and build perl modules from CPAN sites
SYNOPSIS
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",
$distro); # same thing
DESCRIPTION
The CPAN module automates or at least simplifies the make and install of
perl modules and extensions. It includes some primitive searching
capabilities and knows how to use Net::FTP or LWP or some external
download clients to fetch the distributions from the net.
These are fetched from one or more of the mirrored CPAN (Comprehensive
Perl Archive Network) sites and unpacked in a dedicated directory.
The CPAN module also supports the concept of named and versioned
*bundles* of modules. Bundles simplify the handling of sets of related
modules. See Bundles below.
The package contains a session manager and a cache manager. The session
manager keeps track of what has been fetched, built and installed in the
current session. The cache manager keeps track of the disk space
occupied by the make processes and deletes excess space according to a
simple FIFO mechanism.
All methods provided are accessible in a programmer style and in an
interactive shell style.
CPAN::shell([$prompt, $command]) Starting Interactive Mode
The interactive mode is entered by running
perl -MCPAN -e shell
or
cpan
which puts you into a readline interface. If "Term::ReadKey" and either
"Term::ReadLine::Perl" or "Term::ReadLine::Gnu" are installed it
supports both history and command completion.
Once you are on the command line, type "h" to get a one page help screen
and the rest should be self-explanatory.
The function call "shell" takes two optional arguments, one is the
prompt, the second is 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 you pass to these commands are either strings exactly
matching the identification string of an object or regular expressions
that are then matched case-insensitively against various attributes of
the objects. The parser recognizes a regular expression only if you
enclose it between two slashes.
The principle is that the number of found objects 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 we find
more than one, we display each object 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. 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".)
"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" are run unconditionally. An
install <distribution_file>
also is run unconditionally. But for
install <module>
CPAN checks if an install is actually needed for it and prints *module
up to date* in the case that the distribution file containing the
module doesn't need to be updated.
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 if 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") and executes the command from scratch
and tries to continue in case of some errors. See the section below on
the "force" and the "fforce" pragma.
The "notest" pragma may be used to skip 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 pod documentation of the module
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 they are stored in the CHECKUMS files distributed on
CPAN. The listing goes recursive into all subdirectories.
The second form allows to limit or expand 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 and may be changed in future versions.
"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 effectively persistence between sessions
is 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 only repeated 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 according "test" was not successful.
In all these cases, the user can override the goatish 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 according 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, per default "~/.cpan/.lock".
Batch jobs can run without a lockfile and do not disturb each other.
The shell offers to run in *degraded 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 a SIGPIPE. If the user sets "inactivity_timeout", a
SIGALRM is used during the run of the "perl Makefile.PL" or "perl
Build.PL" subprocess.
CPAN::Shell
The commands that are available in the shell interface are methods in
the package CPAN::Shell. If you enter the shell command, all your input
is split by the Text::ParseWords::shellwords() routine which acts like
most shells do. The first word is being interpreted as the method to be
called and the rest of the words are treated as arguments to this
method. Continuation lines are supported if a line ends with a literal
backslash.
autobundle
"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. The name of the bundle file is based on the current date
and a counter.
hosts
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, then no stats are provided.
mkmyconfig
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.
recent ***EXPERIMENTAL COMMAND***
The "recent" command downloads a list of recent uploads to CPAN and
displays them *slowly*. While the command is running $SIG{INT} is
defined to mean that the loop shall be left after having displayed 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 stay.
Note: See also smoke
recompile
recompile() is a very special command in that it takes no argument and
runs the make/test/install cycle with brute force over all installed
dynamically loadable extensions (aka 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.
report Bundle|Distribution|Module
The "report" command temporarily turns on the "test_report" config
variable, then runs the "force test" command with the given arguments.
The "force" pragma is used to re-run the tests and repeat every step
that might have failed before.
smoke ***EXPERIMENTAL COMMAND***
*** 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 stay.
Note: See also recent
upgrade [Module|/Regex/]...
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.
The four "CPAN::*" Classes: Author, Bundle, Module, Distribution
Although it may be considered internal, the class hierarchy does matter
for both users and programmer. CPAN.pm deals with above mentioned four
classes, and all those classes share a set of methods. A 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 underbar 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.
Integrating local directories
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,
cares for 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.
Redirection
The usual shell redirection symbols " | " and ">" are recognized by the
cpan shell when surrounded by whitespace. So piping into a pager and
redirecting output into a file works quite similar to any shell.
CONFIGURATION
When the CPAN module is used for the first time, a configuration dialog
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.
The 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
interpreted as a regular expression and only keys matching this
regex 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 according
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.
Config Variables
Currently the following keys in the hash reference $CPAN::Config are
defined:
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
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 prefered 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
if we shall 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 envariable 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
never break.
index_expire after this many days refetch index files
inhibit_startup_message
if true, does not print 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
perl5lib_verbosity verbosity level for PERL5LIB additions
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 in any case
prerequisites_policy
what to do if you are missing module prerequisites
('follow' automatically, 'ask' me, or 'ignore')
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
scan_cache controls scanning of cache ('atstart' 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 $version==0
tar location of external program tar
tar_verbosity verbosity level for the tar command
term_is_latin deprecated: if true Unicode is translated to ISO-8859-1
(and nonsense for characters outside latin range)
term_ornaments boolean to turn ReadLine ornamenting on/off
test_report email test reports (if CPAN::Reporter is installed)
trust_test_report_history
skip testing when previously tested ok (according to
CPAN::Reporter history)
unzip location of external program unzip
urllist arrayref to nearby CPAN sites (or equivalent locations)
use_sqlite use CPAN::SQLite for metadata storage (fast and lean)
username your username if you CPAN server wants one
wait_list arrayref to a wait server to try (See CPAN::WAIT)
wget path to external prg
yaml_load_code enable YAML code deserialisation via CPAN::DeferedCode
yaml_module which module to use to read/write YAML files
You can set and query each of these options interactively in the cpan
shell with the "o conf" or the "o conf init" command as specified below.
"o conf <scalar option>"
prints the current value of the *scalar option*
"o conf <scalar option> <value>"
Sets the value of the *scalar option* to *value*
"o conf <list option>"
prints the current value of the *list option* in MakeMaker's neatvalue
format.
"o conf <list option> [shift|pop]"
shifts or pops the array in the *list option* variable
"o conf <list option> [unshift|push|splice] <list>"
works like the corresponding perl commands.
interactive editing: o conf init [MATCH|LIST]
Runs an interactive configuration dialog for matching variables.
Without argument runs the dialog over all supported config variables.
To specify a MATCH the argument must be enclosed by slashes.
Examples:
o conf init ftp_passive ftp_proxy
o conf init /color/
Note: this method of setting config variables often provides more
explanation about the functioning of a variable than the manpage.
CPAN::anycwd($path): Note on config variable getcwd
CPAN.pm changes the current working directory often and needs to
determine its own current working directory. Per default it uses
Cwd::cwd but if this doesn't work on your system for some reason,
alternatives can be configured according to the following table:
cwd Calls Cwd::cwd
getcwd
Calls Cwd::getcwd
fastcwd
Calls Cwd::fastcwd
backtickcwd
Calls the external command cwd.
Note on the format of the urllist parameter
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 has CD-ROM support
The "urllist" parameter of the configuration table contains a list of
URLs that are to be used for downloading. If the list contains any
"file" URLs, CPAN always tries to get files from 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 if
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.
Maintaining the urllist parameter
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 to set the
"randomize_urllist" parameter that introduces some amount of randomness
into the URL selection.
The "requires" and "build_requires" dependency declarations
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 being
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 ti "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.
Configuration for individual distributions (*Distroprefs*)
(Note: This feature has been introduced in CPAN.pm 1.8854 and is still
considered beta quality)
Distributions on the CPAN usually behave according to what we call the
CPAN mantra. Or since the event 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 that the original maintainer forgot to specify
* 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.
Filenames
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 single document is treated as an entity that can
specify the treatment of a single distribution.
The names of the files can be picked freely, "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.
Fallback Data::Dumper and Storable
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 the 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.
Blueprint
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-"
perl: "/usr/local/cariba-perl/bin/perl"
perlconfig:
archname: "freebsd"
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: []
commendline: "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
Language Specs
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 only works for META.yml declaring "dynamic_config=0". Use
with caution.
goto [string]
The canonical name of a delegate distribution that shall be
installed 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", "modules",
"perl", "perlconfig", and "env" that specify if a document is
targeted at a specific CPAN distribution or installation.
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.
The value associated with "env" is itself a hashref that is matched
against corresponding values in the %ENV hash.
If more than one restriction of "module", "distribution", etc. is
specified, the results of the separately computed match values must
all match. If this is the case then 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 the external patch program. If the value for the "-p"
parameter is 0 or 1 is determined by reading the patch beforehand.
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*.
Processing Instructions
args [array]
Arguments to be added to the command line
commandline
A full commandline that will be executed as it stands by a system
call. During the execution the environment variable PERL will is set
to $^X (but with an absolute path). If "commandline" is specified,
the content of "args" is not used.
eexpect [hash]
Extended "expect". This is a hash reference with four allowed keys,
"mode", "timeout", "reuse", and "talk".
"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. In the case of a "mode=deterministic" the timeout denotes the
timeout per question, in the case of "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 will then watch the stream
coming from the execution of the external program ("perl
Makefile.PL", "perl Build.PL", "make", etc.).