Obvious Noob Q
Hi all. I'm sure this is mentioned somewhere, but I can't seem to find the exact answer. I came back (today) after a long absence (and not much experience), which included an update to Tiger. I know that there is a default Perl 5.8.6 installation, and separate folders for Apple's use, and for our own. However, I can't tell what's what and think I may have some excess junk. (I've even reinstalled some pm's, and that just made me more confused). I think I have a weird install. There's the /System/Library/Perl/, which is the Apple (??) installation, right. If I update key modules, they will be installed here at various levels. For example, CGI goes into /System/Library/ Perl/5.8.6/, while Cwd gets installed into /System/Library/Perl/5.8.6/ darwin-thread-multi-2level/. Then there's the /Library/Perl/ folder for nonstandard (is there a better term?) modules. I've got folders /Library/Perl/5.8.1 and / Library/Perl/5.8.6. So far so good? Now what seems odd is that my scripts run on stuff that's in 5.8.1. If I move that folder, my stuff won't run. So...I have to assume that the 5.8.1 stuff is in the path. That being said, what happens when I use CPAN to install or update? Is it smart enough to know what to do? Or am I totally hosed now? TIA Mike
VCSs CGIs on localhost
So... I'm having some fun, working on my CGIs and web pages, and naturally making a big mess. I need to have version control like any old programming project. I've been manually copying stuff up to /Library/, but was thinking of using a VCS in my own development folders, and using Interarchy or similar to mirror up to localhost. (This seems to be beyond my skill level, btw) Then it hit me - what do people normally do when they are working on this kind of stuff? Many of them must be developing/testing locally, and then copying their stuff up to their server when appropriate. I don't know that I'll ever be putting anything up on a server for some time, but I'd rather benefit from the experiences of...the, er, experienced. I'm using Subversion; not that that makes a difference. Mike
Re: First CGI Setup
On Mar 9, 2005, at 5:19 PM, Sherm Pendley wrote: On Mar 9, 2005, at 5:03 PM, Mike Lesser wrote: # To use CGI scripts: # #AddHandler cgi-script .cgi That doesn't do much when it's commented out. ;-) That's why I included it - the web article told me to uncomment it, but when I did, all I got were permission errors. So normally this would be uncommented?
Re: First CGI Setup
I thought by default OS X has the cgi setup automatically. I didn't have to do anything, just turned on the web server. And put the perl script in the CGI-EXECUTABLES folder and it works. I've seen comments online to this effect; that's why I think there's some fundamental issue with what I did to httpd. I don't necessarily trust a single article to be correct - or timely. I think that whatever is the contemporary solution is what I want. Is that to make the default solution work, and what do I need to repair? Or is there a reference to how I can make that work? M
Re: First CGI Setup
I thought by default OS X has the cgi setup automatically. I didn't have to do anything, just turned on the web server. And put the perl script in the CGI-EXECUTABLES folder and it works. That works, yes - but it's not what Mike wants to do. On many servers, files with a .cgi extension are run as CGI scripts, regardless of what directory they're in. Mike asked how to enable that behavior. Ted, I don't know exactly -what- I'm trying to do! ;-) I believe that I should have whatever is the most common setup for home development, but I don't know if that is the same as the default Mac setup, or if they conflict in some way. I can't make any assumptions really. If I should be using scripts with a cgi extension in my Sites folder, because that's the easy way to get started, then that's great. It looks like I may have broken that behavior by following the articles, and need to do some repair on httpd.conf. I figured I should post all the stuff I messed with, so see if any of it was stupid. Also Is there any reason why I would want to go in a particular direction with regard to cgi extensions or html /shtml? While I'm sure that this is the kind of stuff I'll eventually be familiar with, I don't want to create extra headaches or compat problems early on. M
First CGI Setup
Hi all. I'm busy setting up to run (okay, play with) CGIs. So for, not so great. According to the Apache error logs, I'm connecting okay, but something seems to be off.i've been reading up on the config issues, and I've worked thru some of them, but frankly I'm out of my element, and concerned about munging up httpd.conf so badly I'll be sent away. The script.. #!/usr/bin/perl -w print Content-type: text/html\n\n; print h2Hello, World!/h2\n; ...shows up in safari with the script text, but with Hello World in the header font style! !/usr/bin/perl -w print Content-type: text/html\n\n; print Hello, World! \n; These are (AFAIK) the relevant httpd parts. Note that I was following a tutorial on the O'reilly site, and one here http://www.cgi101.com/learn/connect/mac.html and made the most progress with using my own home directory (as opposed to /Lib/./CGI-Exe). (I'm not sure what makes the most sense, just for at-home development. I'd imagine the more real-world setup is better) Directory /Users/mike/Sites AllowOverride FileInfo AuthConfig Limit Options MultiViews Indexes SymLinksIfOwnerMatch Includes ExecCGI DirectoryIndex index.html index.cgi Limit GET POST OPTIONS PROPFIND Order allow,deny Allow from all /Limit LimitExcept GET POST OPTIONS PROPFIND Order deny,allow Deny from all /LimitExcept /Directory and... # To use CGI scripts: # #AddHandler cgi-script .cgi # # To use server-parsed HTML files # #AddType text/html .shtml #AddHandler server-parsed .html The log says this (which to my eyes looks better than what I've seen before [Wed Mar 9 16:51:37 2005] [notice] Apache/1.3.33 (Darwin) PHP/4.3.2 configured -- resuming normal operations [Wed Mar 9 16:51:37 2005] [notice] Accept mutex: flock (Default: flock) Yikes! This is long! Mike
Re: could not build a module
I will install the Xcode and see how it goes. You know where to find it? FWIW, you can probably get the XCode CD from an AppleStore. I stopped by the Cambridge store one day and they literally said take it. Saves a long download.. Mike
More Newbie Help
Wow thanks for all the input! I'm slogging along with the Llama book, and I have some MySQL (new to that too) stuff working. I'm concerned, thought, that I'm creating a mess by installing modules and downloading stuff. Likewise I've been using CPAN with no clue as to what I'm doing. Is there a book or site that covers working with CPAN and using modules that is appropriate for Panther? Googling the O'Reily Mac site have turned up lots of fixes for gotchas, but not much for the newbie. That being said, is it normal that a lot of the CPAN stuff (of interest to me) is really old? It seems odd to be using 5 year old stuff! Mike
Re: Newbie, PDF
Thanks Bill and thanks to everyone who responded. An excellent gang! I think the consensus is ... (1) I probably don't want to go directly to PDF; I need to create something else (something easier) and then, if I still want, convert or print to PDF. (2) Interim formats include HTML, XML, and LaTex, and maybe PostScript, in order of increasing complexity/learning curve (3) All of the above can be done with free stuff (super) (4) Perl _is_ probably a good solution for this, as opposed to PHP or another scripting language My output is charts like a collection of lists or tables, not graphs (yet), and it sort of resembles an invoice in some respects. It's essentially data extracted from MySQL, printed out nicely. A bitmap may be thrown in here or there, like a logo. I'm thinking that HTML tables may be the easiest way; LaTex I have to research more. I just had an epiphany: Pages from iWork. Pages apparently will import XML, and AFAIK, XML is the native format. I can do the aesthetic stuff right in pages and either edit or create the documents in XML with Perl. How's that? Thx Mike
