Local CPAN search engine

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

Hello Monks,

we're doing a rsync on a CPAN mirror each night, so it's pretty nice to have all the current and up-to-date modules on the local network. However, I'm missing a decent frontend to search through that local mirror.(Webfrontend preffered)

I tried to ask the guys from seach.cpan.org. Unfortunatedly their Mailinglist (as noted in their FAQ) is not available:

From: Majordomo@chaos.wustl.edu
Subject: Majordomo results: subscribe
Reply-To: Majordomo@chaos.wustl.edu

--

>>>> subscribe tucs
**** subscribe: unknown list 'tucs'.
>>>>
>>>> --
END OF COMMANDS

Does anybody know how to locally harness the mighty CPAN?

Bye
PetaMem

Comment on Local CPAN search engine

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Local CPAN search engine by mojotoad (Monsignor) on May 03, 2002 at 16:54 UTC
I'm presuming that simply accessing search.cpan.org is not an option? If so, perhaps you could check out the CPANPLUS module. Though still under development, it provides an API for the backend, assuming the regular shell is not sufficient for your purposes (this would require, of course, that you configure the module for querying your local mirror). Matt	[reply]
Re: Re: Local CPAN search engine by audreyt (Hermit) on May 03, 2002 at 18:02 UTC
Yes. Please refer to the CPANPLUS::FAQ manpage, which contains this snippet: `my $cb = new CPANPLUS::Backend; my $conf = $cb->configure_object; $conf->_set_ftp(urilist => [ { path => '/mnt/cdrom', scheme => 'file', host => '//server', }, @{ $conf->_get_ftp('urilist') } ]);` [download] You can also set the same 'urilist' in the installed CPANPLUS/Config.pm to achieve the same effect. As for the web-based search interface, I think you can write to gbarr@pobox.com to ask a copy of the front-end code. I think a local search.cpan.org would indeed be cool.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Local CPAN search engine by samtregar (Abbot) on May 03, 2002 at 19:22 UTC
I like to use find and grep on my local repository. If I got in the mood for indexing I think I would use Glimpse since I've used it before. There are web-interfaces to Glimpse available, I think. -sam	[reply]
Re: Local CPAN search engine by Anonymous Monk on May 04, 2002 at 05:26 UTC
CPAN is organized farily well, and the format is known, so It'd be fairly trivial to write a simple one using File::Find Archive::Tar or Archive::Zip and you can slap on caching using Cache::Cache or File::Cache	[reply]
Re: Local CPAN search engine by mattr (Curate) on May 04, 2002 at 13:56 UTC
It would be nice if perlmonks.org had a local cpan archive and search engine since search.cpan.org is not accessible from all places. Like this cafe where I am, which is on the biggest provider in Tokyo, which is totally blackholed by search.cpan.org because some kiddie once ran a bot on them. It would be cool if monks could define the cpan search engine they want to use for cpan:// .	[reply]