Re: [PLUG] perl and CPAN (was Re: Upcoming December talk)

[Rich Freeman <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net>]

On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 2:22 PM,  <brainbuz@brainbuz.org> wrote:
> I'm a professional system administrator and author of several cpan
> modules, so I could easily give a good talk on managing your CPAN modules.

I can't speak to how to maintain the modules from the perspective of a
module author.  However, I highly recommend using tools provided by
your distro to make CPAN behave in a sane manner.  I use g-cpan when
there is a need to install some random cpan module.  Then I know the
module will be maintained when perl is updated, or removed cleanly
when I want to get rid of it, and so on.

I have nothing against secondary package managers, but they're not a
substitute for clearly documenting your dependencies/etc.  Anybody
with a decent distribution won't be using the secondary package
manager anyway, and the distro maintainers lives are much easier when
dependencies are clear and not automagical.

Sure, tools like CPAN and other secondary package managers can make
things easier for users up-front.  The problem comes 5 years later
when there are still random files lying around or causing problems
because they were placed outside of /usr/local and yet they aren't
properly registered with the package manager.

All that said, I wouldn't mind hearing a CPAN talk - especially one
that focused on how not to have all the issues I described.  Maybe I'm
just using it wrong.  :)

Rich
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