Re: question on installing perl modules

André Warnier <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.apache.mod-perl
Message-ID <[email protected]>
[email protected] wrote:
> Hi André ,
> 
> use local::lib:
> 
> http://search.cpan.org/~apeiron/local-lib-1.008001/
> 
> it nicely handles your issue.
> 
By the way, I tried to use local::lib "out of the box", and could not install it.
I think it is because the Makefile relies on a GNU make, and the HPUX host I was trying 
this on, has another version of make.
That version chokes on the last 2 lines of the Makefile generated by local::lib's 
Makefile.pl, and which look like this :

PERL  += -Ietc...
FULLPERL += -Ietc....

The error is something like :
missing separator on line 838
missing separator on line 839

(Apologies for not being more precise, but I do not have access to that system right now)

Not being a great specialist of make (or in fact of anything), I figured that the HPUX 
version of make does not like these "+=" operators, but I did not know how to correct 
these 2 lines.  Of course not being root, I cannot easily install a GNU make on that 
system either.

Anyway, in fits and starts, by trying things derived from what I understood of the docs of 
local::lib about what local::lib does, I did in the end manage to get CPAN configured in 
such a way that it does install perl modules under my own chosen directory, while not root.

The gist of the matter is : if you do not have access to the target system as root *at any 
time*, it is quite tricky to get this done.

For example, on another system which I was using to "practice" this first, I could simply 
not run "perl -MCPAN ..", because there was a lockfile /root/.cpan/.lock, leftover I 
suppose from an aborted root session with CPAN, and when I tried to run CPAN with another 
user (to do a "o conf init"), it threw me out each time, because it was still trying to 
use the default CPAN parameters (from the /root/.cpan directory), and choking on this 
leftover .lock file, which could not be removed of course because it was owned by root.
Fortunately, on that particular system I did have root access, so I could go and remove 
that .lock file.  Had I been on the real target system, I would have been stuck right there.
lmpx.com only provides a reader for public news (NNTP) servers. It is not affiliated with the servers or forums shown here and is not responsible for the content of articles, which is written by their respective authors.