On Fri, May 04, 2001 at 10:41:40PM +0100, Oliver Puddick wrote:
> How does one go about installing modules from CPAN under Risc OS?
>
> I am currently developing PERL scripts at work using Solaris and I want
> to work on them at home but this requires me to install certain modules
> such as PDF-Create amongst others...
"With difficulty" is the short answer I'm afraid.
I think the most recent release I made had a mostly working MakeMaker,
so you ought to be able to download the module from CPAN into a directory,
type
perl Makefile.PL
and get a Makefile which pmake (Nick Ing-Simmon's make written in perl, which
should be with that version) will build but I don't know if
"make install" will work.
MakeMaker was working well enough to build the extensions supplied in the
core, but three problems usually present themselves
1: If the extension has XS code then you're going to need a C compiler to
compile that
2: Assuming you're on a RiscPC you then need to like that code back into the
perl core and I didn't upload the object files because
(a) they make the archive probably 25% bigger
(b) I wasn't confident that it even works
3: If the XS code wraps round and links to an external library requires that
that library has also been ported, which may not be trivial.
[hence to build the perl module to interface to GD one needs to find or port
the underlying C library]
I've just downloaded PDF-Create and *it* would appear to be pure perl, so
those problems don't occur with it. [I can't test that right now, as I'm
running arm linux] Hopefully "perl Makefile.pl" "pmake" "pmake install" will
work, but it's probably easier just to copy the files in the lib directory to
the correct positions in the !perl lib directory.
However, you're implying that there are other modules you would need. They
may not be simple.
Nicholas Clark
