As usual, what I thought was a simple problem has suddenly seemed to balloon into a long dim einebahnstrasse that I can't back out from easily.
Let me see if I understand... On Monday, September 23, 2002, at 12:08 AM, I, Puneet Kishor wrote: > 2. cpan did something strange -- I fired up cpan and it promptly > reminded me that I should upgrade cpan itself as well as libnet. I > dutifully upgraded cpan to 1.63 and reloaded, and then asked it to > upgrade libnet. Lo and behold... I see cpan is trying to download 11 > Mb of Perl 5.8.0, not something I asked for. I ctr-c-ed out and it > seems to have installed libnet ok. Could anyone please reassure me > that cpan didn't try to go in and screw around with my stock Apple > Perl 5.6.0 install... that is not something I want at all. To which Robin replied on Monday, September 23, 2002, at 01:14 AM: > Have you looked on the CPAN web site to see if you can get an older > copy of CPAN bundle? > shucks... I *had* an older copy (1.52) and at cpan's urging, I upgraded to 1.63. Funnily, I remember upgrading to 1.63 in OS X 10.1.5 as well, but of course, there was no Perl 5.8.0 at that time to be merrily downloaded... does this mean now that Perl 5.8.0 is out, cpan 1.63 will continue bothering me with Perl 5.8.0 unless I go back to cpan 1.52? In which case, how on earth do I go back to cpan 1.52? I remember a flurry of download, check, make, build, test statements uselessly flying past me in the terminal... there is no way I could go back and weed them all out! Then Michael Maibaum wrote on Monday, September 23, 2002, at 01:41 AM: > This was a but in the older versions of CPAN, upgrade to a recent > version of CPAN (*NOT* Bundle::CPAN, just CPAN) and you should then be > able to to install stuff happily, at least that is what I recall, the > first thing I did with jaguar was build Perl5.8 so... > hmmm... I did upgrade to a recent version of... BUT WAIT!.... I upgraded Bundle::CPAN... I didn't realize that CPAN was a different beast from Bundle::CPAN :-(. In fact, it was cpan that told me that upgrading would be as easy as 'install Bundle::CPAN' and then 'reload'ing. Don't tell me I've done got the steamroller when all I needed was a tiny framing hammer (metaphorically speaking). And then finally, Dan Sugalski told me on Monday, September 23, 2002, at 08:14 AM, that: > If you install just the newest CPAN this will work properly *unless* > you come across a module that lives only in the core. In which case > CPAN will go and download the whole thing and go from there. which seems to both reinforce and contradict what Michael Maibaum said above... from Dan Sugalski's reply I infer that if I install only the newest CPAN things will work properly (sounds like what Michael said... mentioned only CPAN, not Bundle::CPAN), *unless* I come across a module that lives only in the core (from which I infer that I am screwed no matter what... whether it is CPAN or Bundle::CPAN... I got to be always vigilant while installing from cpan and not get hypnotized by all the make build incantations scrolling past my eyes otherwise it might sneak behind me and install Perl 5.8.0). I hope the cpan manufacturer's change it so it doesn't ever install the motherlode unless explicitly asked. pk/ A funny thought comes to mind... in a recent, long, but very interesting thread, some of us complained how Apple can't get it right, and with every upgrade of the OS things change and break. If anything, perl is an even bigger culprit at this... I mean, from what I have learned vicariously, perl 5.8.0 is not even binary compatible with perl 5.6.x and everything breaks on upgrading unless cautious vigilance and voodoo are practiced. And I am sure that perl is only a fraction as complex as the operating system is...
