Carl:
This is an issue that I have been dealing with in one form or another for
about 5 years. In my opinion the real issue here is one of configuration
management. In my case we have about 10 FreeBSD boxes all with various perl
scripts running on them. We also have 3 developmental (or testbed) FreeBSD
boxes. Finally many of the perl programmers are running Mac OS X on their
workstations and are developing scripts there. This is a receipt for disaster.
We have different versions of perl (at least 3 or 4) installed all over the
network as well as different modules and in some cases different versions of the
same modules. The only thing that we have come up with is that we need to
maintain list all of the perl modules that any of the perl scripts use and on
which computer they are required on. From that we can make sure that one of the
developmental machines has all of the most current STABLE release of the modules
and perl. If you have CPAN configured and working it is fairly easy to tell
when an update is available. We update the module, test all scripts that use
said module, and then deploy the updated module (or perl) to the rest of the
machines (and sometimes a modified script as well).
Again the key is to know what perl modules all of the programs are using and to
have a developmental system to test everything. This developmental system must
be on a box that will not effect whatever service you provide if something does
not work. In a relatively small organization like ours keeping track of
everything is an extremely difficult task. In a larger environment I can only
imagine that it is much much worse.
Best of luck,
Gary
Carl Rogers wrote:
> Good day;
> I work in an environment where the stuff that goes onto our network is
> tightly regulated. In my time of subscribing to this list, I have found
> there to be a bunch of modules available on CPAN that we don't have access
> to. (Our current baseline is v5.005_03 !!!). I would like to update our
> version of Perl as well as load some CPAN modules.
>
> I'm guessing that I'll need to get ActiveState loaded first of all, then
> worry about how to load the individual modules into our environment as they
> are needed. <feel free to correct me on this>. I *think* that having
> ActiveState will make the module-loading process less painful.
>
> Question:
> To those who have installed Perl on a large network, what 'challenges' are
> out there that I need to be aware of? Are the sysadmins correct in their
> "major" concerns? My guess is that they think that having Perl on the
> network will conflict with other applications being used. <my gut feeling
> is no, but that's without any in-depth research>
>
> Where could I find documentation that might be able to support my goal of
> getting a more up-to-date version of Perl installed as well as the
> possibility of having the capability of getting modules added in the future?
>
> Hope this makes sense. I thank you for your time, in advance.
> Sincerely,
> Carl
>
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Gary Ebert Manager Network Operations
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