Dennis,
I just went through this same pain, for more or less the same reason (CPAN
'helping'), hopefully I can provide some helpful details.
The first thing I did is learn the magic of 'perl -V', so I always knew exactly
what I was dealing with. You probably have already seen the helpfully complete
output that command produces.
Second I found that I can alias perl to point to either executable location.
(Alternatively, I can set up my environment/path so that the perl I want to run
comes first in the list. 'setenv' includes a list of the paths that are
searched for executables.) 'which perl' will tell you which perl you will get
if you just type 'perl' -- this is also helpful. If these unix-isms are new to
you I suggest using a search engine to get a tutorial on setenv and path at
least (I'm actually not very expert in them myself).
I found it helped to have 'which perl' resolve to CPAN's perl when you are
using CPAN. The dependencies (yuk yuk yuk, as you've noted) can sometimes take
forever to resolve, but eventually mine started working, after significant
fear/uncertainty/doubt. I found I had to be superuser a lot when running CPAN
or doing Perl installs, which doesn't feel right, but hey, whatever worked.
Then there are the Perl libraries themselves. These are referenced in two or
three different ways, which are described in the Perl documentation -- there
are variables in the environment ('setenv' again) dedicated to Perl, you can
look at those to make sure they include what you need. They probably are OK,
as long as you're running the right Perl. (For all I know you can set up both
versions of Perl to use all the same libraries, but it just didn't seem like a
good idea to try to do that, and in the end I didn't have to.)
Finally, in the end I ended up installing some Perl modules without using CPAN,
because I was just getting too irritated at all of CPAN's foibles, or couldn't
make it work. I expect this was operator error or something, but the point is
you can search on-line for, e.g., Net::SFTP, you'll find a link to the CPAN
*page* for that module, and can download it directly from the web, then try
installing it following the instructions. This seemed to work better for some
things than CPAN did. Again, make sure 'which perl' says you are using the
version of perl for which you want the module installed.
A tool that helped me sort all that out was Affrus, a Mac tool to run and debug
Perl scripts. It can be configured to run Perl from either environment (you
can choose when you run the software). It's a nice tool but by no means
necessary to fix your problem, I just thought I'd give them a plug since it
helped me with this problem.
Hope some of this helps.
John
At 7:58 AM -0500 12/7/07, Dennis Putnam wrote:
>Hi Michael,
>
>Eureka!
>
>I don't know how this happened but I have 2 versions of perl. Apparently. OS X
>comes wtih 5.8.6 and installs it in /usr/bin. I also have 5.8.8 which is in
>/usr/local/bin.
>
>I obviously have a very confused installation and at this point I guess I need
>to know which should I use and how do I straighten this mess out?
>
>On Dec 7, 2007, at 7:43 AM, Dennis Putnam wrote:
>
>>Hi Michael,
>>
>>Thanks again for the reply. I already had the latest MIME::Base64 but while I
>>was verifying that I made a startling discovery. I now know what the problem
>>is but not how to fix it. I have perl 5.8.8. All my updates via CPAN go into
>>/usr/local/lib/perl5, which I believe is normal. However, when I run perl, it
>>never looks there. Apparently, the path for that is not in Perl's library
>>list. How do I add that and why do I have to? This only happened after I
>>installed (or rather tried) Net::SFTP.
>>
>>On Dec 6, 2007, at 6:23 PM, Michael Houghton wrote:
>>
>>>Howdy!
>>>
>>>On Dec 6, 2007, at 8:16 AM, Dennis Putnam wrote:
>>>
>>>>Hi Michael,
>>>>
>>>>Thanks for the reply. I already have MIME::Base64. However, I decided to
>>>>try to upgrade all the modules to see if that would help. What a mess. I
>>>>have many modules that fail for a host of reason, mostly test failures.
>>>>
>>>So did I. But I went and did the usual incantation on MIME::Base64 by
>>>hand to force an up-to-date install and that seemed to clear up the
>>>problem. I didn't dig for a reason, but the initial error message
>>>pointed to something being awry in MIME::Base64.
>>>
>>>yours,
>>>Michael
>>>--
>>>Michael and MJ Houghton | Herveus d'Ormonde and Megan O'Donnelly
>>>[EMAIL PROTECTED] | White Wolf and the Phoenix narrowwares
>>>Bowie, MD, USA | http://whitewolfandphoenix.com
>>>Proud member of the SCA Internet Whitewash Squad
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>Dennis Putnam
>>Sr. IT Systems Administrator
>>AIM Systems, Inc.
>>11675 Rainwater Dr., Suite 200
>>Alpharetta, GA 30004
>>Phone: 678-240-4112
>>Main Phone: 678-297-0700
>>FAX: 678-297-2666 or 770-576-1000
>>The information contained in this e-mail and any attachments is strictly
>>confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, any use, dissemination,
>>distribution, or duplication of any part of this e-mail or any attachment is
>>prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender
>>by return e-mail and delete all copies, including the attachments.
>>
>
>
>
>Dennis Putnam
>Sr. IT Systems Administrator
>AIM Systems, Inc.
>11675 Rainwater Dr., Suite 200
>Alpharetta, GA 30004
>Phone: 678-240-4112
>Main Phone: 678-297-0700
>FAX: 678-297-2666 or 770-576-1000
>The information contained in this e-mail and any attachments is strictly
>confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, any use, dissemination,
>distribution, or duplication of any part of this e-mail or any attachment is
>prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender by
>return e-mail and delete all copies, including the attachments.
--
----------
John Graybeal <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- 831-775-1956
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Marine Metadata Initiative: http://marinemetadata.org || Shore Side Data
System: http://www.mbari.org/ssds
