[Hosting] RPM package for Net::LDAP

[Mike Mueller]

On Wednesday 21 August 2002 11:04, John Franklin wrote:

> Wouldn't using CPAN be a valid mean of installing and managing Perl
> modules?
>
> http://www.cpan.org/misc/cpan-faq.html#How_install_Perl_modules

I am going to put my neck on the block and make some guesses after having 
read a bit about CPAN.

First I checked to see if I had CPAN installed using this script from the 
site shown above:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use ExtUtils::Installed;
my $instmod = ExtUtils::Installed->new();
foreach my $module ($instmod->modules()) {
my $version = $instmod->version($module) || "???";
	print "$module -- $version\n";
}

whose output on my laptop is was:

[root@laptop root]# /home/mike01/temp/lperlmod
Perl -- 5.6.1

I did not have CPAN loaded.  (How about that?  My first Perl script :-)

To answer the question it seems that CPAN is a valid, and arguably preferred 
by some, way to load and manage Perl modules. But there might be a preference 
for an RPM package for the sake of consistency (automating system 
configuration might achieve consistency through use of RPM packages rather 
than a combination of tarballing, CPANing and RPMing).  Maybe CPAN is 
undesireable (meaning that it's one more tool for an unauthorized person to 
muck with) to have on some machines where you wish to only load certain Perl 
modules.  The security of CPAN is admittedly weak (see 
http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/CPAN/perl/CPAN.html).   CPAN seems no worse off 
than Debian's loading from the net.  (Hmmmm.  I'd better learn a bit more 
about that.)

The downside of not using CPAN might be that system of information on which 
it depends might be undermined.  For instance the .packlist files created 
during module installation are important to the script shown above.  On my 
laptop I could find no .packlist files (see above example).

It is probably worthwhile to compare a CPAN installation of Net::LDAP with 
any RPM package installation of the same set of modules.  That will work 
towards answering the question definitely if such an answer is not 
forthcoming sooner.

Good question. Thanks for the link.  I'll look into CPAN further.
-- 
mueller, mike

The larger purpose of the economic order, including Wall Street, is to 
support the material conditions for human existence, not to undermine and 
destabilize them.

-Editorial, The Nation, August 19, 2002