Hmmm, CPAN is available on my Panther client
As I said, it's not new to Panther. CPAN is available on Jaguar, 10.1, 10.0, 10.0PB, and every 10.0RC release I'm aware of. It has been a standard part of Mac OS X for a very, very long time. Rhapsody was before my time - I was still wasting my time tweaking Linux - so I don't know what Perl it shipped with.
From the ReadMe I see:
perl Makefile.PL make make test make install
which I just did an hour ago for <MIME-Base64-Perl-1.00.tar>. It reported success at each step.
It changed the error messages to:
******************* Software error: Can't locate MIME/QuotedPrint.pm
You need to repeat the install steps for the MIME::QuotedPrint module. Go to <http://www.cpan.org>, download the module tarball, unpack it, and repeat the above. Repeat as necessary until the module you need, and all its prerequisites, are installed.
If finding and downloading the tarballs, unpacking them, and tracking down all the dependencies by hand gets tiresome, then you've found out why the CPAN shell exists. Maybe then you'll give it a try. Or maybe you enjoy doing things the hard way - who knows.
I now see 2 files in </MIME/>, Base64 and QuotedPrint, with no <.pm> extension on either.
Are you looking with Finder? It has an annoying habit of hiding filename extensions. (It thinks it's trying to be helpful, I suppose...)
So you don't know how to do a <Package> install via Terminal?
When you say <Package>, what are you referring to?
Are you referring to pre-packaged bundles that you can install with Apple's installer app? You can install those with the command-line 'installer' tool - it has a man page, see 'man installer' for details. (Not that it will help - there are no such pre-packaged bundles of Perl modules that I know of.)
If you're referring to .tar.gz packages, you are badly mistaken. I know *very* well how to install them. I've been doing so quite successfully for ten years or so, both with and without the CPAN shell tool.
Where did that question come from, anyway? Installing modules via a terminal is *exactly* what lots of people have been explaining to you.
sherm--
