Broken cpan

halfcountplus has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

My cpan install has broken, perhaps because of some recent upgrade, or perhaps because I killed it in the middle of an operation when I realized I had typed the wrong parameters.

Catching error: "Can't locate object method \"requirements_for_module\
+" via package \"CPAN::Meta::Requirements\" at /usr/share/perl5/CPAN/D
+istribution.pm line 2802.\cJ" at /usr/share/perl5/CPAN.pm line 392.
        CPAN::shell() called at /usr/share/perl5/App/Cpan.pm line 339
        App::Cpan::_process_options("App::Cpan") called at /usr/share/
+perl5/App/Cpan.pm line 422
        App::Cpan::run("App::Cpan") called at /bin/cpan line 12
[download]

This message is the same regardless of the operation. If I try an install whatever and then force install whatever I get told "whatever" has already been unwrapped into a directory; make in the cpan shell fails with the same error, but I can enter the directory manually and run perl Makefile.PL, make, etc.

cpan --version is 1.61 under perl 5.18.2.

Comment on Broken cpan Select or Download Code

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Re: Broken cpan by tobyink (Canon) on Apr 22, 2014 at 15:46 UTC
The version number 1.61 is not especially helpful. That's the version number of the App::Cpan module, but there have been several releases of the CPAN distribution that include the same version of the App::Cpan module. (The CPAN distribution is quite annoying in that each of its internal modules has its own completely independent version numbering system. With most multi-module distributions, people tend to keep the version numbers for each module synchronized.) You can find out what version of the CPAN distribution you have using: `perl -MCPAN -E'say $CPAN::VERSION'` [download] But anyway, it looks like your CPAN version is new enough for you to need a more recent version of CPAN::Meta::Requirements than the one you have. You can find out what version of CPAN::Meta::Requirements you have like this: `perl -MCPAN::Meta::Requirements -E'say $CPAN::Meta::Requirements::VERS +ION'` [download] I'd recommend installing an up to date copy of CPAN::Meta::Requirements. But how to do that if your CPAN client is broken? Download the archive, then run: `tar zxfv CPAN-Meta-Requirements-2.125.tar.gz cd CPAN-Meta-Requirements-2.125 perl Makefile.PL make all make test && sudo make install` [download] Also, you should clear your build directory. This will solve the "unwrapped" problem. `rm -fr ~/.cpan/build/` [download] Hopefully that will fix everything. `use Moops; class Cow :rw { has name => (default => 'Ermintrude') }; say Cow->new->name`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Broken cpan by halfcountplus (Hermit) on Apr 22, 2014 at 17:11 UTC
This may well have fixed it (but see my comment to marto's answer). I'm suspicious because the version difference was only from 2.120351 to 2.125 -- but OTOH, this was one of the modules with overlap in the two `/usr/local` directories; 2.125 had been installed (presumably by a previous upgrade) but the older one was taking precedence.	[reply]
Re^3: Broken cpan by tobyink (Canon) on Apr 22, 2014 at 18:16 UTC
If I were you, what I'd do, is now that the system Perl is in a reasonable state; use that to install App::perlbrew; use perlbrew to install a fresh copy of Perl in my home directory; and use that fresh copy of Perl for any serious work. There is a popular school of thought that you should touch the version of Perl that was pre-installed with your system as little as possible, because upgrading modules might break your system. (Lots of Linux distributions' admin scripts, package managers, etc are written in Perl.) `use Moops; class Cow :rw { has name => (default => 'Ermintrude') }; say Cow->new->name`	[reply]
Re^2: Broken cpan by bill_mcgonigle (Acolyte) on Jun 11, 2014 at 14:27 UTC
I hit the same breakage but was able to 'look CPAN::Meta::Requirements' and then 'perl Makefile.PL; make; make install' successfully, without having to download manually.	[reply]
Re^3: Broken cpan by Anonymous Monk on Jul 09, 2014 at 22:46 UTC
I ran into this as well on an (otherwise) pretty uncomplicated install of CentOS 6.5, and your solution worked for me as well. But what is the fundamental problem? Why does CPAN insist on hosing itself in this way?	[reply]
Re^3: Broken cpan by Anonymous Monk on Jul 16, 2014 at 20:26 UTC
this solution worked great for me.	[reply]
Re^3: Broken cpan by Anonymous Monk on Oct 06, 2014 at 19:30 UTC
That worked for me. Thanks!	[reply]
Re: Broken cpan by marto (Cardinal) on Apr 22, 2014 at 15:20 UTC
Try this, exit the cpan shell and rename your `.cpan` directory to `.cpan.backup`, then try again.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Broken cpan by halfcountplus (Hermit) on Apr 22, 2014 at 16:55 UTC
Didn't work, but one thing I noticed when doing this is that I have a `/usr/local/lib64/perl5` and a `/usr/local/share/perl5`, and there is (was) some overlap. One or the other was probably created by me as an option when running `cpan` for the first time, although I could not find a reference to it in the old ".cpan.bk". So I merged the two and left a symlink, then tried tobyink's suggestion. Not sure which of those did the trick, but it now works.	[reply] [d/l]