Re: question on installing perl modules

On Sun, 23 Jan 2011, André Warnier wrote:

> Adam Flott wrote:
>> On Sun, 23 Jan 2011, André Warnier wrote:
>> 
>>> My problem : I am trying to install a CPAN module, from CPAN, into a 
>>> "custom" location rather than the system perl locations.
>>> This is a hpux system where I have no root access, and in this case the 
>>> specific module is XML::SAX.
>> 
>> I don't know how to fix your exact problem (may be a bug in
>> ExtUtils::MakeMaker, CPAN, etc), but you could give cpanm a try:
>> 
>> http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?App::cpanminus
>> 
>> It has made my life significantly easier.
>> 
>> There is also local::lib (http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?local::lib) which
>> others are quite fond of, but I don't have any personal experience with it.
>> 
>> 
> Hi.
> Many thanks for the pointers.  In the principle, it does look like what I 
> need.
>
> But I just read the doc of App::cpanminus.
> Do I understand it correctly, that at some point, you need to be root on the 
> machine ?
> (Because on that target machine, that's something I can definitely never be, 
> even for a short moment.)
>

When running as a non-root user:

$ cpanm Cwd 
!
! Can't write to /usr/local/share/perl/5.10.1 and /usr/local/bin: Installing
modules to /home/aflott/perl5
! To turn off this warning, you have to do one of the following:
!   - run me as a root or with --sudo option (to install to
/usr/local/share/perl/5.10.1 and /usr/local/bin)
|   - run me with --local-lib option e.g. cpanm --local-lib=~/perl5
!   - Set PERL_CPANM_OPT="--local-lib=~/perl5" environment variable (in your
shell rc file)
!   - Configure local::lib in your shell to set PERL_MM_OPT etc.
!

Therefore, I usually set PERL_CPANM_OPT. It uses INSTALL_BASE (see
ExtUtils::MakeMaker docs) to make a "cleaner" install.