| CPAN - query, download and build perl modules from CPAN sites |
CPAN::* Classes: Author, Bundle, Module, Distributionrequires and build_requires dependency declarationsKwalify
CPAN - query, download and build perl modules from CPAN sites
Interactive mode:
perl -MCPAN -e shell
--or--
cpan
Basic commands:
# Modules:
cpan> install Acme::Meta # in the shell
CPAN::Shell->install("Acme::Meta"); # in perl
# Distributions:
cpan> install NWCLARK/Acme-Meta-0.02.tar.gz # in the shell
CPAN::Shell->
install("NWCLARK/Acme-Meta-0.02.tar.gz"); # in perl
# module objects:
$mo = CPAN::Shell->expandany($mod);
$mo = CPAN::Shell->expand("Module",$mod); # same thing
# distribution objects:
$do = CPAN::Shell->expand("Module",$mod)->distribution;
$do = CPAN::Shell->expandany($distro); # same thing
$do = CPAN::Shell->expand("Distribution",
$distro); # same thing
The CPAN module automates or at least simplifies the make and install of perl modules and extensions. It includes some primitive searching capabilities and knows how to use Net::FTP or LWP or some external download clients to fetch the distributions from the net.
These are fetched from one or more of the mirrored CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network) sites and unpacked in a dedicated directory.
The CPAN module also supports the concept of named and versioned bundles of modules. Bundles simplify the handling of sets of related modules. See Bundles below.
The package contains a session manager and a cache manager. The session manager keeps track of what has been fetched, built and installed in the current session. The cache manager keeps track of the disk space occupied by the make processes and deletes excess space according to a simple FIFO mechanism.
All methods provided are accessible in a programmer style and in an interactive shell style.
The interactive mode is entered by running
perl -MCPAN -e shell
or
cpan
which puts you into a readline interface. If Term::ReadKey and
either Term::ReadLine::Perl or Term::ReadLine::Gnu are installed
it supports both history and command completion.
Once you are on the command line, type h to get a one page help
screen and the rest should be self-explanatory.
The function call shell takes two optional arguments, one is the
prompt, the second is the default initial command line (the latter
only works if a real ReadLine interface module is installed).
The most common uses of the interactive modes are
a, b, d, and m
for each of the four categories and another, i for any of the
mentioned four. Each of the four entities is implemented as a class
with slightly differing methods for displaying an object.
Arguments you pass to these commands are either strings exactly matching the identification string of an object or regular expressions that are then matched case-insensitively against various attributes of the objects. The parser recognizes a regular expression only if you enclose it between two slashes.
The principle is that the number of found objects influences how an
item is displayed. If the search finds one item, the result is
displayed with the rather verbose method as_string, but if we find
more than one, we display each object with the terse method
as_glimpse.
get, make, test, install, clean modules or distributionsprerequisites_policy.)
get downloads a distribution file and untars or unzips it, make
builds it, test runs the test suite, and install installs it.
install <distribution_file>
also is run unconditionally. But for
install <module>
CPAN checks if an install is actually needed for it and prints module up to date in the case that the distribution file containing the module doesn't need to be updated.
CPAN also keeps track of what it has done within the current session and doesn't try to build a package a second time regardless if it succeeded or not. It does not repeat a test run if the test has been run successfully before. Same for install runs.
The force pragma may precede another command (currently: get,
make, test, or install) and executes the command from scratch
and tries to continue in case of some errors. See the section below on
the force and the fforce pragma.
The notest pragma may be used to skip the test part in the build
process.
Example:
cpan> notest install Tk
A clean command results in a
make clean
being executed within the distribution file's working directory.
readme, perldoc, look module or distributionreadme displays the README file of the associated distribution.
Look gets and untars (if not yet done) the distribution file,
changes to the appropriate directory and opens a subshell process in
that directory. perldoc displays the pod documentation of the
module in html or plain text format.
ls authorls globbing_expressionThe second form allows to limit or expand the output with shell globbing as in the following examples:
ls JV/make*
ls GSAR/*make*
ls */*make*
The last example is very slow and outputs extra progress indicators that break the alignment of the result.
Note that globbing only lists directories explicitly asked for, for example FOO/* will not list FOO/bar/Acme-Sthg-n.nn.tar.gz. This may be regarded as a bug and may be changed in future versions.
failedfailed command reports all distributions that failed on one of
make, test or install for some reason in the currently
running shell session.
YAML or the YAML::Syck module is installed a record of
the internal state of all modules is written to disk after each step.
The files contain a signature of the currently running perl version
for later perusal.
If the configurations variable build_dir_reuse is set to a true
value, then CPAN.pm reads the collected YAML files. If the stored
signature matches the currently running perl the stored state is
loaded into memory such that effectively persistence between sessions
is established.
force and the fforce pragmaget, a make, and an install are not repeated.
A test is only repeated if the previous test was unsuccessful. The
diagnostic message when CPAN.pm refuses to do something a second time
is one of Has already been unwrapped|made|tested successfully or
something similar. Another situation where CPAN refuses to act is an
install if the according test was not successful.
In all these cases, the user can override the goatish behaviour by prepending the command with the word force, for example:
cpan> force get Foo cpan> force make AUTHOR/Bar-3.14.tar.gz cpan> force test Baz cpan> force install Acme::Meta
Each forced command is executed with the according part of its memory erased.
The fforce pragma is a variant that emulates a force get which
erases the entire memory followed by the action specified, effectively
restarting the whole get/make/test/install procedure from scratch.
~/.cpan/.lock.
Batch jobs can run without a lockfile and do not disturb each other.
The shell offers to run in degraded mode when another process is holding the lockfile. This is an experimental feature that is not yet tested very well. This second shell then does not write the history file, does not use the metadata file and has a different prompt.
^C anytime and
return to the cpan-shell prompt. A SIGTERM will cause the cpan-shell
to clean up and leave the shell loop. You can emulate the effect of a
SIGTERM by sending two consecutive SIGINTs, which usually means by
pressing ^C twice.
CPAN.pm ignores a SIGPIPE. If the user sets inactivity_timeout, a
SIGALRM is used during the run of the perl Makefile.PL or perl
Build.PL subprocess.
The commands that are available in the shell interface are methods in the package CPAN::Shell. If you enter the shell command, all your input is split by the Text::ParseWords::shellwords() routine which acts like most shells do. The first word is being interpreted as the method to be called and the rest of the words are treated as arguments to this method. Continuation lines are supported if a line ends with a literal backslash.
autobundle writes a bundle file into the
$CPAN::Config->{cpan_home}/Bundle directory. The file contains
a list of all modules that are both available from CPAN and currently
installed within @INC. The name of the bundle file is based on the
current date and a counter.
Note: this feature is still in alpha state and may change in future versions of CPAN.pm
This commands provides a statistical overview over recent download
activities. The data for this is collected in the YAML file
FTPstats.yml in your cpan_home directory. If no YAML module is
configured or YAML not installed, then no stats are provided.
mkmyconfig() writes your own CPAN::MyConfig file into your ~/.cpan/
directory so that you can save your own preferences instead of the
system wide ones.
The recent command downloads a list of recent uploads to CPAN and
displays them slowly. While the command is running $SIG{INT} is
defined to mean that the loop shall be left after having displayed the
current item.
Note: This command requires XML::LibXML installed.
Note: This whole command currently is a bit klunky and will probably change in future versions of CPAN.pm but the general approach will likely stay.
Note: See also smoke
recompile() is a very special command in that it takes no argument and
runs the make/test/install cycle with brute force over all installed
dynamically loadable extensions (aka XS modules) with 'force' in
effect. The primary purpose of this command is to finish a network
installation. Imagine, you have a common source tree for two different
architectures. You decide to do a completely independent fresh
installation. You start on one architecture with the help of a Bundle
file produced earlier. CPAN installs the whole Bundle for you, but
when you try to repeat the job on the second architecture, CPAN
responds with a "Foo up to date" message for all modules. So you
invoke CPAN's recompile on the second architecture and you're done.
Another popular use for recompile is to act as a rescue in case your
perl breaks binary compatibility. If one of the modules that CPAN uses
is in turn depending on binary compatibility (so you cannot run CPAN
commands), then you should try the CPAN::Nox module for recovery.
The report command temporarily turns on the test_report config
variable, then runs the force test command with the given
arguments. The force pragma is used to re-run the tests and repeat
every step that might have failed before.
*** WARNING: this command downloads and executes software from CPAN to your computer of completely unknown status. You should never do this with your normal account and better have a dedicated well separated and secured machine to do this. ***
The smoke command takes the list of recent uploads to CPAN as
provided by the recent command and tests them all. While the
command is running $SIG{INT} is defined to mean that the current item
shall be skipped.
Note: This whole command currently is a bit klunky and will probably change in future versions of CPAN.pm but the general approach will likely stay.
Note: See also recent
The upgrade command first runs an r command with the given
arguments and then installs the newest versions of all modules that
were listed by that.
CPAN::* Classes: Author, Bundle, Module, DistributionAlthough it may be considered internal, the class hierarchy does matter for both users and programmer. CPAN.pm deals with above mentioned four classes, and all those classes share a set of methods. A classical single polymorphism is in effect. A metaclass object registers all objects of all kinds and indexes them with a string. The strings referencing objects have a separated namespace (well, not completely separated):
Namespace Class
words containing a "/" (slash) Distribution
words starting with Bundle:: Bundle
everything else Module or Author
Modules know their associated Distribution objects. They always refer to the most recent official release. Developers may mark their releases as unstable development versions (by inserting an underbar into the module version number which will also be reflected in the distribution name when you run 'make dist'), so the really hottest and newest distribution is not always the default. If a module Foo circulates on CPAN in both version 1.23 and 1.23_90, CPAN.pm offers a convenient way to install version 1.23 by saying
install Foo
This would install the complete distribution file (say BAR/Foo-1.23.tar.gz) with all accompanying material. But if you would like to install version 1.23_90, you need to know where the distribution file resides on CPAN relative to the authors/id/ directory. If the author is BAR, this might be BAR/Foo-1.23_90.tar.gz; so you would have to say
install BAR/Foo-1.23_90.tar.gz
The first example will be driven by an object of the class CPAN::Module, the second by an object of class CPAN::Distribution.
Note: this feature is still in alpha state and may change in future versions of CPAN.pm
Distribution objects are normally distributions from the CPAN, but
there is a slightly degenerate case for Distribution objects, too, of
projects held on the local disk. These distribution objects have the
same name as the local directory and end with a dot. A dot by itself
is also allowed for the current directory at the time CPAN.pm was
used. All actions such as make, test, and install are applied
directly to that directory. This gives the command cpan . an
interesting touch: while the normal mantra of installing a CPAN module
without CPAN.pm is one of
perl Makefile.PL perl Build.PL
( go and get prerequisites )
make ./Build
make test ./Build test
make install ./Build install
the command cpan . does all of this at once. It figures out which
of the two mantras is appropriate, fetches and installs all
prerequisites, cares for them recursively and finally finishes the
installation of the module in the current directory, be it a CPAN
module or not.
The typical usage case is for private modules or working copies of projects from remote repositories on the local disk.
When the CPAN module is used for the first time, a configuration
dialog tries to determine a couple of site specific options. The
result of the dialog is stored in a hash reference $CPAN::Config
in a file CPAN/Config.pm.
The default values defined in the CPAN/Config.pm file can be
overridden in a user specific file: CPAN/MyConfig.pm. Such a file is
best placed in $HOME/.cpan/CPAN/MyConfig.pm, because $HOME/.cpan is
added to the search path of the CPAN module before the use() or
require() statements. The mkmyconfig command writes this file for you.
The o conf command has various bells and whistles:
o conf will offer you completion for the
built-in subcommands and/or config variable names.
value(s) for this config variable. Without KEY
displays all subcommands and config variables.
Example:
o conf shell
If KEY starts and ends with a slash the string in between is interpreted as a regular expression and only keys matching this regex are displayed
Example:
o conf /color/
'' or ""
Example:
o conf wget /usr/bin/wget
list, it is a list. o conf
KEY shift removes the first element of the list, o conf KEY pop
removes the last element of the list. o conf KEYS unshift LIST
prepends a list of values to the list, o conf KEYS push LIST
appends a list of valued to the list.
Likewise, o conf KEY splice LIST passes the LIST to the according
splice command.
Finally, any other list of arguments is taken as a new list value for the KEY variable discarding the previous value.
Examples:
o conf urllist unshift http://cpan.dev.local/CPAN o conf urllist splice 3 1 o conf urllist http://cpan1.local http://cpan2.local ftp://ftp.perl.org
The configuration dialog can be started any time later again by
issuing the command o conf init in the CPAN shell. A subset of
the configuration dialog can be run by issuing o conf init WORD
where WORD is any valid config variable or a regular expression.
Currently the following keys in the hash reference $CPAN::Config are defined:
applypatch path to external prg
auto_commit commit all changes to config variables to disk
build_cache size of cache for directories to build modules
build_dir locally accessible directory to build modules
build_dir_reuse boolean if distros in build_dir are persistent
build_requires_install_policy
to install or not to install when a module is
only needed for building. yes|no|ask/yes|ask/no
bzip2 path to external prg
cache_metadata use serializer to cache metadata
commands_quote prefered character to use for quoting external
commands when running them. Defaults to double
quote on Windows, single tick everywhere else;
can be set to space to disable quoting
check_sigs if signatures should be verified
colorize_debug Term::ANSIColor attributes for debugging output
colorize_output boolean if Term::ANSIColor should colorize output
colorize_print Term::ANSIColor attributes for normal output
colorize_warn Term::ANSIColor attributes for warnings
commandnumber_in_prompt
boolean if you want to see current command number
cpan_home local directory reserved for this package
curl path to external prg
dontload_hash DEPRECATED
dontload_list arrayref: modules in the list will not be
loaded by the CPAN::has_inst() routine
ftp path to external prg
ftp_passive if set, the envariable FTP_PASSIVE is set for downloads
ftp_proxy proxy host for ftp requests
getcwd see below
gpg path to external prg
gzip location of external program gzip
histfile file to maintain history between sessions
histsize maximum number of lines to keep in histfile
http_proxy proxy host for http requests
inactivity_timeout breaks interactive Makefile.PLs or Build.PLs
after this many seconds inactivity. Set to 0 to
never break.
index_expire after this many days refetch index files
inhibit_startup_message
if true, does not print the startup message
keep_source_where directory in which to keep the source (if we do)
load_module_verbosity
report loading of optional modules used by CPAN.pm
lynx path to external prg
make location of external make program
make_arg arguments that should always be passed to 'make'
make_install_make_command
the make command for running 'make install', for
example 'sudo make'
make_install_arg same as make_arg for 'make install'
makepl_arg arguments passed to 'perl Makefile.PL'
mbuild_arg arguments passed to './Build'
mbuild_install_arg arguments passed to './Build install'
mbuild_install_build_command
command to use instead of './Build' when we are
in the install stage, for example 'sudo ./Build'
mbuildpl_arg arguments passed to 'perl Build.PL'
ncftp path to external prg
ncftpget path to external prg
no_proxy don't proxy to these hosts/domains (comma separated list)
pager location of external program more (or any pager)
password your password if you CPAN server wants one
patch path to external prg
prefer_installer legal values are MB and EUMM: if a module comes
with both a Makefile.PL and a Build.PL, use the
former (EUMM) or the latter (MB); if the module
comes with only one of the two, that one will be
used in any case
prerequisites_policy
what to do if you are missing module prerequisites
('follow' automatically, 'ask' me, or 'ignore')
prefs_dir local directory to store per-distro build options
proxy_user username for accessing an authenticating proxy
proxy_pass password for accessing an authenticating proxy
randomize_urllist add some randomness to the sequence of the urllist
scan_cache controls scanning of cache ('atstart' or 'never')
shell your favorite shell
show_unparsable_versions
boolean if r command tells which modules are versionless
show_upload_date boolean if commands should try to determine upload date
show_zero_versions boolean if r command tells for which modules $version==0
tar location of external program tar
tar_verbosity verbosity level for the tar command
term_is_latin deprecated: if true Unicode is translated to ISO-8859-1
(and nonsense for characters outside latin range)
term_ornaments boolean to turn ReadLine ornamenting on/off
test_report email test reports (if CPAN::Reporter is installed)
unzip location of external program unzip
urllist arrayref to nearby CPAN sites (or equivalent locations)
use_sqlite use CPAN::SQLite for metadata storage (fast and lean)
username your username if you CPAN server wants one
wait_list arrayref to a wait server to try (See CPAN::WAIT)
wget path to external prg
yaml_load_code enable YAML code deserialisation
yaml_module which module to use to read/write YAML files
You can set and query each of these options interactively in the cpan
shell with the o conf or the o conf init command as specified below.
o conf <scalar option>o conf <scalar option> <value>o conf <list option>o conf <list option> [shift|pop]o conf <list option> [unshift|push|splice] <list>Examples:
o conf init ftp_passive ftp_proxy o conf init /color/
Note: this method of setting config variables often provides more explanation about the functioning of a variable than the manpage.
CPAN.pm changes the current working directory often and needs to determine its own current working directory. Per default it uses Cwd::cwd but if this doesn't work on your system for some reason, alternatives can be configured according to the following table:
urllist parameters are URLs according to RFC 1738. We do a little
guessing if your URL is not compliant, but if you have problems with
file URLs, please try the correct format. Either:
file://localhost/whatever/ftp/pub/CPAN/
or
file:///home/ftp/pub/CPAN/
The urllist parameter of the configuration table contains a list of
URLs that are to be used for downloading. If the list contains any
file URLs, CPAN always tries to get files from there first. This
feature is disabled for index files. So the recommendation for the
owner of a CD-ROM with CPAN contents is: include your local, possibly
outdated CD-ROM as a file URL at the end of urllist, e.g.
o conf urllist push file://localhost/CDROM/CPAN
CPAN.pm will then fetch the index files from one of the CPAN sites that come at the beginning of urllist. It will later check for each module if there is a local copy of the most recent version.
Another peculiarity of urllist is that the site that we could successfully fetch the last file from automatically gets a preference token and is tried as the first site for the next request. So if you add a new site at runtime it may happen that the previously preferred site will be tried another time. This means that if you want to disallow a site for the next transfer, it must be explicitly removed from urllist.
If you have YAML.pm (or some other YAML module configured in
yaml_module) installed, CPAN.pm collects a few statistical data
about recent downloads. You can view the statistics with the hosts
command or inspect them directly by looking into the FTPstats.yml
file in your cpan_home directory.
To get some interesting statistics it is recommended to set the
randomize_urllist parameter that introduces some amount of
randomness into the URL selection.
requires and build_requires dependency declarationsSince CPAN.pm version 1.88_51 modules declared as build_requires by
a distribution are treated differently depending on the config
variable build_requires_install_policy. By setting
build_requires_install_policy to no such a module is not being
installed. It is only built and tested and then kept in the list of
tested but uninstalled modules. As such it is available during the
build of the dependent module by integrating the path to the
blib/arch and blib/lib directories in the environment variable
PERL5LIB. If build_requires_install_policy is set ti yes, then
both modules declared as requires and those declared as
build_requires are treated alike. By setting to ask/yes or
ask/no, CPAN.pm asks the user and sets the default accordingly.
(Note: This feature has been introduced in CPAN.pm 1.8854 and is still considered beta quality)
Distributions on the CPAN usually behave according to what we call the CPAN mantra. Or since the event of Module::Build we should talk about two mantras:
perl Makefile.PL perl Build.PL
make ./Build
make test ./Build test
make install ./Build install
But some modules cannot be built with this mantra. They try to get some extra data from the user via the environment, extra arguments or interactively thus disturbing the installation of large bundles like Phalanx100 or modules with many dependencies like Plagger.
The distroprefs system of CPAN.pm addresses this problem by
allowing the user to specify extra informations and recipes in YAML
files to either
CPAN.pm configuration variables
See the YAML and Data::Dumper files that come with the CPAN.pm
distribution in the distroprefs/ directory for examples.
The YAML files themselves must have the .yml extension, all other
files are ignored (for two exceptions see Fallback Data::Dumper and
Storable below). The containing directory can be specified in
CPAN.pm in the prefs_dir config variable. Try o conf init
prefs_dir in the CPAN shell to set and activate the distroprefs
system.
Every YAML file may contain arbitrary documents according to the YAML specification and every single document is treated as an entity that can specify the treatment of a single distribution.
The names of the files can be picked freely, CPAN.pm always reads
all files (in alphabetical order) and takes the key match (see
below in Language Specs) as a hashref containing match criteria
that determine if the current distribution matches the YAML document
or not.
If neither your configured yaml_module nor YAML.pm is installed
CPAN.pm falls back to using Data::Dumper and Storable and looks for
files with the extensions .dd or .st in the prefs_dir
directory. These files are expected to contain one or more hashrefs.
For Data::Dumper generated files, this is expected to be done with by
defining $VAR1, $VAR2, etc. The YAML shell would produce these
with the command
ysh < somefile.yml > somefile.dd
For Storable files the rule is that they must be constructed such that
Storable::retrieve(file) returns an array reference and the array
elements represent one distropref object each. The conversion from
YAML would look like so:
perl -MYAML=LoadFile -MStorable=nstore -e '
@y=LoadFile(shift);
nstore(\@y, shift)' somefile.yml somefile.st
In bootstrapping situations it is usually sufficient to translate only
a few YAML files to Data::Dumper for the crucial modules like
YAML::Syck, YAML.pm and Expect.pm. If you prefer Storable
over Data::Dumper, remember to pull out a Storable version that writes
an older format than all the other Storable versions that will need to
read them.
The following example contains all supported keywords and structures
with the exception of eexpect which can be used instead of
expect.
---
comment: "Demo"
match:
module: "Dancing::Queen"
distribution: "^CHACHACHA/Dancing-"
perl: "/usr/local/cariba-perl/bin/perl"
perlconfig:
archname: "freebsd"
disabled: 1
cpanconfig:
make: gmake
pl:
args:
- "--somearg=specialcase"
env: {}
expect:
- "Which is your favorite fruit"
- "apple\n"
make:
args:
- all
- extra-all
env: {}
expect: []
commendline: "echo SKIPPING make"
test:
args: []
env: {}
expect: []
install:
args: []
env:
WANT_TO_INSTALL: YES
expect:
- "Do you really want to install"
- "y\n"
patches:
- "ABCDE/Fedcba-3.14-ABCDE-01.patch"
depends:
configure_requires:
LWP: 5.8
build_requires:
Test::Exception: 0.25
requires:
Spiffy: 0.30
Every YAML document represents a single hash reference. The valid keys in this hash are as follows:
CPAN.pm configuration variables.
Supported are: build_requires_install_policy, check_sigs,
make, make_install_make_command, prefer_installer,
test_report. Please report as a bug when you need another one
supported.
configure_requires, build_requires, and
requires are supported in the way specified in the META.yml
specification. The current implementation merges the specified
dependencies with those declared by the package maintainer. In a
future implementation this may be changed to override the original
declaration.
make install or ./Build install
phase of the CPAN mantra. See below under Processiong Instructions.
make or ./Build phase of the
CPAN mantra. See below under Processiong Instructions.
distribution, modules,
perl, and perlconfig that specify if a document is targeted at a
specific CPAN distribution or installation.
The corresponding values are interpreted as regular expressions. The
distribution related one will be matched against the canonical
distribution name, e.g. ``AUTHOR/Foo-Bar-3.14.tar.gz''.
The module related one will be matched against all modules
contained in the distribution until one module matches.
The perl related one will be matched against $^X (but with the
absolute path).
The value associated with perlconfig is itself a hashref that is
matched against corresponding values in the %Config::Config hash
living in the Config.pm module.
If more than one restriction of module, distribution, and
perl is specified, the results of the separately computed match
values must all match. If this is the case then the hashref
represented by the YAML document is returned as the preference
structure for the current distribution.
-p
parameter is 0 or 1 is determined by reading the patch
beforehand.
Note: if the applypatch program is installed and CPAN::Config
knows about it and a patch is written by the makepatch program,
then CPAN.pm lets applypatch apply the patch. Both makepatch
and applypatch are available from CPAN in the JV/makepatch-*
distribution.
perl Makefile.PL or perl
Build.PL phase of the CPAN mantra. See below under Processiong
Instructions.
make test or ./Build test phase
of the CPAN mantra. See below under Processiong Instructions.
commandline is specified,
the content of args is not used.
expect. This is a hash reference with four allowed keys,
mode, timeout, reuse, and talk.
mode may have the values deterministic for the case where all
questions come in the order written down and anyorder for the case
where the questions may come in any order. The default mode is
deterministic.
timeout denotes a timeout in seconds. Floating point timeouts are
OK. In the case of a mode=deterministic the timeout denotes the
timeout per question, in the case of mode=anyorder it denotes the
timeout per byte received from the stream or questions.
talk is a reference to an array that contains alternating questions
and answers. Questions are regular expressions and answers are literal
strings. The Expect module will then watch the stream coming from the
execution of the external program (perl Makefile.PL, perl
Build.PL, make, etc.).
In the case of mode=deterministic the CPAN.pm will inject the
according answer as soon as the stream matches the regular expression.
In the case of mode=anyorder CPAN.pm will answer a question as soon
as the timeout is reached for the next byte in the input stream. In
this mode you can use the reuse parameter to decide what shall
happen with a question-answer pair after it has been used. In the
default case (reuse=0) it is removed from the array, so it cannot be
used again accidentally. In this case, if you want to answer the
question Do you really want to do that several times, then it must
be included in the array at least as often as you want this answer to
be given. Setting the parameter reuse to 1 makes this repetition
unnecessary.
expect: <array> is a short notation for
eexpect:
mode: deterministic
timeout: 15
talk: <array>
KwalifyIf you have the Kwalify module installed (which is part of the
Bundle::CPANxxl), then all your distroprefs files are checked for
syntactical correctness.
CPAN.pm comes with a collection of example YAML files. Note that these
are really just examples and should not be used without care because
they cannot fit everybody's purpose. After all the authors of the
packages that ask questions had a need to ask, so you should watch
their questions and adjust the examples to your environment and your
needs. You have beend warned:-)
If you do not enter the shell, the available shell commands are both
available as methods (CPAN::Shell->install(...)) and as
functions in the calling package (install(...)). Before calling low-level
commands it makes sense to initialize components of CPAN you need, e.g.:
CPAN::HandleConfig->load; CPAN::Shell::setup_output; CPAN::Index->reload;
High-level commands do such initializations automatically.
There's currently only one class that has a stable interface -
CPAN::Shell. All commands that are available in the CPAN shell are
methods of the class CPAN::Shell. Each of the commands that produce
listings of modules (r, autobundle, u) also return a list of
the IDs of all modules within the list.
expand($type,@things)CPAN::Shell->expand("Module",@things) method. Expand returns a
list of CPAN::Module objects according to the @things arguments
given. In scalar context it only returns the first element of the
list.
expandany(@things)
# install everything that is outdated on my disk:
perl -MCPAN -e 'CPAN::Shell->install(CPAN::Shell->r)'
# install my favorite programs if necessary:
for $mod (qw(Net::FTP Digest::SHA Data::Dumper)) {
CPAN::Shell->install($mod);
}
# list all modules on my disk that have no VERSION number
for $mod (CPAN::Shell->expand("Module","/./")) {
next unless $mod->inst_file;
# MakeMaker convention for undefined $VERSION:
next unless $mod->inst_version eq "undef";
print "No VERSION in ", $mod->id, "\n";
}
# find out which distribution on CPAN contains a module:
print CPAN::Shell->expand("Module","Apache::Constants")->cpan_file
Or if you want to write a cronjob to watch The CPAN, you could list all modules that need updating. First a quick and dirty way:
perl -e 'use CPAN; CPAN::Shell->r;'
If you don't want to get any output in the case that all modules are up to date, you can parse the output of above command for the regular expression //modules are up to date// and decide to mail the output only if it doesn't match. Ick?
If you prefer to do it more in a programmer style in one single process, maybe something like this suits you better:
# list all modules on my disk that have newer versions on CPAN
for $mod (CPAN::Shell->expand("Module","/./")) {
next unless $mod->inst_file;
next if $mod->uptodate;
printf "Module %s is installed as %s, could be updated to %s from CPAN\n",
$mod->id, $mod->inst_version, $mod->cpan_version;
}
If that gives you too much output every day, you maybe only want to watch for three modules. You can write
for $mod (CPAN::Shell->expand("Module","/Apache|LWP|CGI/")) {
as the first line instead. Or you can combine some of the above tricks:
# watch only for a new mod_perl module
$mod = CPAN::Shell->expand("Module","mod_perl");
exit if $mod->uptodate;
# new mod_perl arrived, let me know all update recommendations
CPAN::Shell->r;
clean method on all items contained in the bundle.
force is passed recursively
to all contained objects. See also the section above on the force
and the fforce pragma.
get method on all items contained in the bundle
$CPAN::Config-{cpan_home}>. Note that this is different from
CPAN::Module::inst_file.
install method on all items contained in the bundle
make method on all items contained in the bundle
readme method on all items contained in the bundle
test method on all items contained in the bundle
make clean there.
cvs -d $cvs_root import -m $cvs_log $cvs_dir $userid v$version
there.
force and the fforce pragma.
make install there. If make has not
yet been run, it will be run first. A make test will be issued in
any case and if this fails, the install will be canceled. The
cancellation can be avoided by letting force run the install for
you.
This install method has only the power to install the distribution if there are no dependencies in the way. To install an object and all of its dependencies, use CPAN::Shell->install.
Note that install() gives no meaningful return value. See uptodate().
is_tested.
install_tested.
get method to make sure the distribution is
downloaded and unpacked. Changes to the directory where the
distribution has been unpacked and runs the external commands perl
Makefile.PL or perl Build.PL and make there.
$CPAN::Config-{lynx}>. If lynx
isn't available, it converts it to plain text with external
command html2text and runs it through the pager specified
in $CPAN::Config-{pager}>
prefs_dir/ directory. The first
succeeding match wins. The files in the prefs_dir/ are processed
alphabetically and the canonical distroname (e.g.
AUTHOR/Foo-Bar-3.14.tar.gz) is matched against the regular expressions
stored in the $root->{match}{distribution} attribute value.
Additionally all module names contained in a distribution are matched
agains the regular expressions in the $root->{match}{module} attribute
value. The two match values are ANDed together. Each of the two
attributes are optional.
requires and build_requires elements. These can be
declared either by the META.yml (if authoritative) or can be
deposited after the run of Build.PL in the file ./_build/prereqs
or after the run of Makfile.PL written as the PREREQ_PM hash in
a comment in the produced Makefile. Note: this method only works
after an attempt has been made to make the distribution. Returns
undef otherwise.
$CPAN::Config-{pager}>.
make the distribution.
Returns undef otherwise. Also returns undef if the content of META.yml
is not authoritative. (The rules about what exactly makes the content
authoritative are still in flux.)
make test there.
$CPAN::Config-{index_expire}> days.
Module, the second column consists
of one character: an equals sign if this module is already installed
and uptodate, a less-than sign if this module is installed but can be
upgraded, and a space if the module is not installed. The third column
is the name of the module and the fourth column gives maintainer or
distribution information.
D,
S, L, I, and <P>, for development status, support level,
language, interface and public licence respectively. The data for the
DSLIP status are collected by pause.perl.org when authors register
their namespaces. The values of the 5 hash elements are one-character
words whose meaning is described in the table below. There are also 5
hash elements DV, SV, LV, IV, and <PV> that carry a more
verbose value of the 5 status variables.
Where the 'DSLIP' characters have the following meanings:
D - Development Stage (Note: *NO IMPLIED TIMESCALES*):
i - Idea, listed to gain consensus or as a placeholder
c - under construction but pre-alpha (not yet released)
a/b - Alpha/Beta testing
R - Released
M - Mature (no rigorous definition)
S - Standard, supplied with Perl 5
S - Support Level:
m - Mailing-list
d - Developer
u - Usenet newsgroup comp.lang.perl.modules
n - None known, try comp.lang.perl.modules
a - abandoned; volunteers welcome to take over maintainance
L - Language Used:
p - Perl-only, no compiler needed, should be platform independent
c - C and perl, a C compiler will be needed
h - Hybrid, written in perl with optional C code, no compiler needed
+ - C++ and perl, a C++ compiler will be needed
o - perl and another language other than C or C++
I - Interface Style
f - plain Functions, no references used
h - hybrid, object and function interfaces available
n - no interface at all (huh?)
r - some use of unblessed References or ties
O - Object oriented using blessed references and/or inheritance
P - Public License
p - Standard-Perl: user may choose between GPL and Artistic
g - GPL: GNU General Public License
l - LGPL: "GNU Lesser General Public License" (previously known as
"GNU Library General Public License")
b - BSD: The BSD License
a - Artistic license alone
2 - Artistic license 2.0 or later
o - open source: appoved by www.opensource.org
d - allows distribution without restrictions
r - restricted distribtion
n - no license at all
force and the fforce pragma.
inst_file is that modules that have been tested but not yet
installed are included because PERL5LIB keeps track of tested modules.
install on the distribution associated with this module.
make on the distribution associated with this module.
perldoc on this module.
readme on the distribution associated with this module.
reports() method on the associated distribution object.
test on the distribution associated with this module.
Currently the cache manager only keeps track of the build directory
($CPAN::Config->{build_dir}). It is a simple FIFO mechanism that
deletes complete directories below build_dir as soon as the size of
all directories there gets bigger than $CPAN::Config->{build_cache}
(in MB). The contents of this cache may be used for later
re-installations that you intend to do manually, but will never be
trusted by CPAN itself. This is due to the fact that the user might
use these directories for building modules on different architectures.
There is another directory ($CPAN::Config->{keep_source_where}) where the original distribution files are kept. This directory is not covered by the cache manager and must be controlled by the user. If you choose to have the same directory as build_dir and as keep_source_where directory, then your sources will be deleted with the same fifo mechanism.
A bundle is just a perl module in the namespace Bundle:: that does not define any functions or methods. It usually only contains documentation.
It starts like a perl module with a package declaration and a $VERSION variable. After that the pod section looks like any other pod with the only difference being that one special pod section exists starting with (verbatim):
=head1 CONTENTS
In this pod section each line obeys the format
Module_Name [Version_String] [- optional text]
The only required part is the first field, the name of a module (e.g. Foo::Bar, ie. not the name of the distribution file). The rest of the line is optional. The comment part is delimited by a dash just as in the man page header.
The distribution of a bundle should follow the same convention as other distributions.
Bundles are treated specially in the CPAN package. If you say 'install
Bundle::Tkkit' (assuming such a bundle exists), CPAN will install all
the modules in the CONTENTS section of the pod. You can install your
own Bundles locally by placing a conformant Bundle file somewhere into
your @INC path. The autobundle() command which is available in the
shell interface does that for you by including all currently installed
modules in a snapshot bundle file.
If you have a local mirror of CPAN and can access all files with
``file:'' URLs, then you only need a perl better than perl5.003 to run
this module. Otherwise Net::FTP is strongly recommended. LWP may be
required for non-UNIX systems or if your nearest CPAN site is
associated with a URL that is not ftp:.
If you have neither Net::FTP nor LWP, there is a fallback mechanism implemented for an external ftp command or for an external lynx command.
This module presumes that all packages on CPAN
perl -MExtUtils::MakeMaker -le \
'print MM->parse_version(shift)' filename
If you are author of a package and wonder if your $VERSION can be parsed, please try the above method.
come as compressed or gzipped tarfiles or as zip files and contain aMakefile.PL or Build.PL (well, we try to handle a bit more, but
without much enthusiasm).
The debugging of this module is a bit complex, because we have interferences of the software producing the indices on CPAN, of the mirroring process on CPAN, of packaging, of configuration, of synchronicity, and of bugs within CPAN.pm.
For debugging the code of CPAN.pm itself in interactive mode some more or less useful debugging aid can be turned on for most packages within CPAN.pm with one of
which sets the debugging packages directly. Note that o debug 0
turns debugging off.
What seems quite a successful strategy is the combination of reload
cpan and the debugging switches. Add a new debug statement while
running in the shell and then issue a reload cpan and see the new
debugging messages immediately without losing the current context.
o debug without an argument lists the valid package names and the
current set of packages in debugging mode. o debug has built-in
completion support.
For debugging of CPAN data there is the dump command which takes
the same arguments as make/test/install and outputs each object's
Data::Dumper dump. If an argument looks like a perl variable and
contains one of $, @ or %, it is eval()ed and fed to
Data::Dumper directly.
CPAN.pm works nicely without network too. If you maintain machines that are not networked at all, you should consider working with file: URLs. Of course, you have to collect your modules somewhere first. So you might use CPAN.pm to put together all you need on a networked machine. Then copy the $CPAN::Config->{keep_source_where} (but not $CPAN::Config->{build_dir}) directory on a floppy. This floppy is kind of a personal CPAN. CPAN.pm on the non-networked machines works nicely with this floppy. See also below the paragraph about CD-ROM support.
has_inst($module)dontload_list can be used to intercept the has_inst() call such
that an optional module is not loaded despite being available. For
example the following command will prevent that YAML.pm is being
loaded:
cpan> o conf dontload_list push YAML
See the source for details.
has_usable($module)instance($module)
There's no strong security layer in CPAN.pm. CPAN.pm helps you to install foreign, unmasked, unsigned code on your machine. We compare to a checksum that comes from the net just as the distribution file itself. But we try to make it easy to add security on demand:
Since release 1.77 CPAN.pm has been able to verify cryptographically signed module distributions using Module::Signature. The CPAN modules can be signed by their authors, thus giving more security. The simple unsigned MD5 checksums that were used before by CPAN protect mainly against accidental file corruption.
You will need to have Module::Signature installed, which in turn requires that you have at least one of Crypt::OpenPGP module or the command-line gpg tool installed.
You will also need to be able to connect over the Internet to the public keyservers, like pgp.mit.edu, and their port 11731 (the HKP protocol).
The configuration parameter check_sigs is there to turn signature checking on or off.
Most functions in package CPAN are exported per default. The reason for this is that the primary use is intended for the cpan shell or for one-liners.
When the CPAN shell enters a subshell via the look command, it sets the environment CPAN_SHELL_LEVEL to 1 or increments it if it is already set.
When CPAN runs, it sets the environment variable PERL5_CPAN_IS_RUNNING to the ID of the running process. It also sets PERL5_CPANPLUS_IS_RUNNING to prevent runaway processes which could happen with older versions of Module::Install.
When running perl Makefile.PL, the environment variable
PERL5_CPAN_IS_EXECUTING is set to the full path of the
Makefile.PL that is being executed. This prevents runaway processes
with newer versions of Module::Install.
When the config variable ftp_passive is set, all downloads will be run with the environment variable FTP_PASSIVE set to this value. This is in general a good idea as it influences both Net::FTP and LWP based connections. The same effect can be achieved by starting the cpan shell with this environment variable set. For Net::FTP alone, one can also always set passive mode by running libnetcfg.
Populating a freshly installed perl with my favorite modules is pretty easy if you maintain a private bundle definition file. To get a useful blueprint of a bundle definition file, the command autobundle can be used on the CPAN shell command line. This command writes a bundle definition file for all modules that are installed for the currently running perl interpreter. It's recommended to run this command only once and from then on maintain the file manually under a private name, say Bundle/my_bundle.pm. With a clever bundle file you can then simply say
cpan> install Bundle::my_bundle
then answer a few questions and then go out for a coffee.
Maintaining a bundle definition file means keeping track of two things: dependencies and interactivity. CPAN.pm sometimes fails on calculating dependencies because not all modules define all MakeMaker attributes correctly, so a bundle definition file should specify prerequisites as early as possible. On the other hand, it's a bit annoying that many distributions need some interactive configuring. So what I try to accomplish in my private bundle file is to have the packages that need to be configured early in the file and the gentle ones later, so I can go out after a few minutes and leave CPAN.pm untended.
Thanks to Graham Barr for contributing the following paragraphs about the interaction between perl, and various firewall configurations. For further information on firewalls, it is recommended to consult the documentation that comes with the ncftp program. If you are unable to go through the firewall with a simple Perl setup, it is very likely that you can configure ncftp so that it works for your firewall.
Firewalls can be categorized into three basic types.
To access servers outside these types of firewalls with perl (even for ftp) you will need to use LWP.
To access servers outside these type of firewalls with perl you will need to use Net::FTP.
There are two that I can think off.
For accessing ftp servers behind such firewalls you usually need to
set the environment variable FTP_PASSIVE or the config variable
ftp_passive to a true value.
If you can go through your firewall with e.g. lynx, presumably with a command such as
/usr/local/bin/lynx -pscott:tiger
then you would configure CPAN.pm with the command
o conf lynx "/usr/local/bin/lynx -pscott:tiger"
That's all. Similarly for ncftp or ftp, you would configure something like
o conf ncftp "/usr/bin/ncftp -f /home/scott/ncftplogin.cfg"
Your mileage may vary...
Most probably you do have the old version installed. This can
happen if a module installs itself into a different directory in the
@INC path than it was previously installed. This is not really a
CPAN.pm problem, you would have the same problem when installing the
module manually. The easiest way to prevent this behaviour is to add
the argument UNINST=1 to the make install call, and that is why
many people add this argument permanently by configuring
o conf make_install_arg UNINST=1
Because there are people who have their precise expectations about who
may install where in the @INC path and who uses which @INC array. In
fine tuned environments UNINST=1 can cause damage.
Run the autobundle command for your old perl and optionally rename the resulting bundle file (e.g. Bundle/mybundle.pm), install the new perl with the Configure option prefix, e.g.
./Configure -Dprefix=/usr/local/perl-5.6.78.9
Install the bundle file you produced in the first step with something like
cpan> install Bundle::mybundle
and you're done.
You may want to configure something like
o conf make_arg "| tee -ai /root/.cpan/logs/make.out" o conf make_install_arg "| tee -ai /root/.cpan/logs/make_install.out"
so that STDOUT is captured in a file for later inspection.
First of all, you will want to use your own configuration, not the one that your root user installed. If you do not have permission to write in the cpan directory that root has configured, you will be asked if you want to create your own config. Answering ``yes'' will bring you into CPAN's configuration stage, using the system config for all defaults except things that have to do with CPAN's work directory, saving your choices to your MyConfig.pm file.
You can also manually initiate this process with the following command:
% perl -MCPAN -e 'mkmyconfig'
or by running
mkmyconfig
from the CPAN shell.
You will most probably also want to configure something like this:
o conf makepl_arg "LIB=~/myperl/lib \
INSTALLMAN1DIR=~/myperl/man/man1 \
INSTALLMAN3DIR=~/myperl/man/man3 \
INSTALLSCRIPT=~/myperl/bin \
INSTALLBIN=~/myperl/bin"
and then (oh joy) the equivalent command for Module::Build. That would be
o conf mbuildpl_arg "--lib=~/myperl/lib \
--installman1dir=~/myperl/man/man1 \
--installman3dir=~/myperl/man/man3 \
--installscript=~/myperl/bin \
--installbin=~/myperl/bin"
You can make this setting permanent like all o conf settings with
o conf commit or by setting auto_commit beforehand.
You will have to add ~/myperl/man to the MANPATH environment variable and also tell your perl programs to look into ~/myperl/lib, e.g. by including
use lib "$ENV{HOME}/myperl/lib";
or setting the PERL5LIB environment variable.
While we're speaking about $ENV{HOME}, it might be worth mentioning, that for Windows we use the File::HomeDir module that provides an equivalent to the concept of the home directory on Unix.
Another thing you should bear in mind is that the UNINST parameter can be dangerous when you are installing into a private area because you might accidentally remove modules that other people depend on that are not using the private area.
Have a look at the look (!) command.
The reason for this is that CPAN does not know the dependencies of all
modules when it starts out. To decide about the additional items to
install, it just uses data found in the META.yml file or the generated
Makefile. An undetected missing piece breaks the process. But it may
well be that your Bundle installs some prerequisite later than some
depending item and thus your second try is able to resolve everything.
Please note, CPAN.pm does not know the dependency tree in advance and
cannot sort the queue of things to install in a topologically correct
order. It resolves perfectly well IF all modules declare the
prerequisites correctly with the PREREQ_PM attribute to MakeMaker or
the requires stanza of Module::Build. For bundles which fail and
you need to install often, it is recommended to sort the Bundle
definition file manually.
Have a look at the CPAN::Site module.
These are readline issues and can only be fixed by studying readline configuration on your architecture and adjusting the referenced file accordingly. Please make a backup of the /etc/inputrc or ~/.inputrc and edit them. Quite often harmless changes like uppercasing or lowercasing some arguments solves the problem.
Internally CPAN.pm uses the UTF-8 charset. If your terminal is expecting ISO-8859-1 charset, a converter can be activated by setting term_is_latin to a true value in your config file. One way of doing so would be
cpan> o conf term_is_latin 1
If other charset support is needed, please file a bugreport against CPAN.pm at rt.cpan.org and describe your needs. Maybe we can extend the support or maybe UTF-8 terminals become widely available.
Note: this config variable is deprecated and will be removed in a future version of CPAN.pm. It will be replaced with the conventions around the family of $LANG and $LC_* environment variables.
Already tried without success.
Use the force pragma like so
force install Foo::Bar
Or you can use
look Foo::Bar
and then 'make install' directly in the subshell.
By default, CPAN will install the latest non-developer release of a module. If you want to install a dev release, you have to specify the partial path starting with the author id to the tarball you wish to install, like so:
cpan> install KWILLIAMS/Module-Build-0.27_07.tar.gz
Note that you can use the ls command to get this path listed.
CPAN uses ExtUtils::MakeMaker's prompt() function to ask its questions, so
if you set the PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT environment variable, you shouldn't be
asked any questions at all (assuming the modules you are installing are
nice about obeying that variable as well):
% PERL_MM_USE_DEFAULT=1 perl -MCPAN -e 'install My::Module'
http://search.cpan.org/search?query=Module::Build::Convert
http://www.refcnt.org/papers/module-build-convert
The urllist config parameter is yours. You can add and remove sites at will. You should find out which sites have the best uptodateness, bandwidth, reliability, etc. and are topologically close to you. Some people prefer fast downloads, others uptodateness, others reliability. You decide which to try in which order.
Henk P. Penning maintains a site that collects data about CPAN sites:
http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/henkp/mirmon/cpan.html
You can make your configuration changes permanent by calling the
command o conf commit. Alternatively set the auto_commit
variable to true by running o conf init auto_commit and answering
the following question with yes.
CPAN.pm is regularly tested to run under 5.004, 5.005, and assorted newer versions. It is getting more and more difficult to get the minimal prerequisites working on older perls. It is close to impossible to get the whole Bundle::CPAN working there. If you're in the position to have only these old versions, be advised that CPAN is designed to work fine without the Bundle::CPAN installed.
To get things going, note that GBARR/Scalar-List-Utils-1.18.tar.gz is compatible with ancient perls and that File::Temp is listed as a prerequisite but CPAN has reasonable workarounds if it is missing.
This module and its competitor, the CPANPLUS module, are both much cooler than the other. CPAN.pm is older. CPANPLUS was designed to be more modular but it was never tried to make it compatible with CPAN.pm.
This software enables you to upgrade software on your computer and so is inherently dangerous because the newly installed software may contain bugs and may alter the way your computer works or even make it unusable. Please consider backing up your data before every upgrade.
Please report bugs via http://rt.cpan.org/
Before submitting a bug, please make sure that the traditional method of building a Perl module package from a shell by following the installation instructions of that package still works in your environment.
Andreas Koenig <andk@cpan.org>
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
See http://www.perl.com/perl/misc/Artistic.html
Kawai,Takanori provides a Japanese translation of this manpage at http://homepage3.nifty.com/hippo2000/perltips/CPAN.htm
the cpan manpage, the CPAN::Nox manpage, the CPAN::Version manpage
| CPAN - query, download and build perl modules from CPAN sites |