On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 12:59:22PM +0100, Lyle wrote: > > I'm sure I've missed important things out, or even some of the following > information is wrong. If you'd be kind enough to help me fill in the > blanks it'd be much appreciated. Bits I'm really not sure on are > generally marked with ?? > > ... > > CPAN testers or CPANTS for short
CPANTS is something else entirely: http://cpants.perl.org/ http://cpantesters.perl.org/ Unfortunately the T in CPANTS stands for Testing, which is terribly confusing, but it is static tests without actually running any of a module's code. > are people who test uploaded modules, > trying to install them on their copy of Perl and upload a build report > for others to see. (what is there motivation? Are a lot of them working > for different distros?) My motivation is that it's a really easy way to give back to the community. > CPAN.pm is a module used to install modules from CPAN, downloading their > archive and building. Any required XS C libraries are compiled at this > stage, generally using gcc and make. Make, yes. gcc, no. The build tools (such as ExtUtils::MakeMaker) will use the same compiler as was used to build perl. This will normally be gcc on Linux and *BSD, but could be icc (Intel's compiler) and on other platforms is more likely to be one supplied by the vendor. eg on Irix it'll be the MIPSpro compiler, and on Windows it'll normally be MS C but could be Borland. > 'perl -mCPAN -e shell;' or 'cpan' installing to a local directory, > although they'll need to amend all their Perl scripts to include this > folder, or there is an environment variable they can set? PERL5LIB. See perldoc perlrun. And you mean -MCPAN, not -mCPAN. The difference is that using -m doesn't call the module's import() subroutine, and so the shell() function won't be available. > Would the > environment variable work for CGI scripts? Of course, provided that it is actually set by the web server. > Their account may not have > access to gcc and make? That's very rare. If make and a compiler are installed, they're normally available to everyone who is authorised to install software. > I've heard that if you build the module on a similar > system, you can just upload the Perl modules and c libraries, with a bit > of tweeking it'll work? Can someone verify this? Yes, it'll work, provided that you set any paths that need encoding into the binaries correctly for the target system, and you build against the right ABI. The easiest way to ensure this is to replicate the target environment on your own machine - build perl with all the same options (ie the same Config.pm or perl -V), same compiler, same word length etc. -- David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david I think the most difficult moment that anyone could face is seeing their domestic servants, whether maid or drivers, run away -- Abdul Rahman Al-Sheikh, writing at http://www.arabnews.com/?article=38558 _______________________________________________ BristolBathPM mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.bristolbath.org/mailman/listinfo/bristolbathpm
