Problems installing XML::LibXML

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

Firstly, I've seen a similiar thread to what I'm going to ask from back in April 2002, but there was no resolution to the problem: XML::LibXML Failed Test

In my case, I'm trying to install XML::LibXML/1.53, from CPAN on a system that has libxml2/2.4.30, but it fails thus:

t/08findnodes....dubious                                              
+       
        Test returned status 0 (wstat 11, 0xb)
DIED. FAILED tests 6-18
        Failed 13/18 tests, 27.78% okay
[snipped ok results]
Failed Test     Stat Wstat Total Fail  Failed  List of Failed
----------------------------------------------------------------------
+---------
t/08findnodes.t    0    11    18   13  72.22%  6-18
[download]

This is starting to cause me pain, and I was curious to know whether this is a common gotcha, or whether the pixie dust just isn't with me today.

Irrespective of these problems, is XML::LibXML any good? Ultimately, I'm intending to use an XSLT engine to do transformations, and I was under the (misguideed?) impression that XML::LibXSLT is the best choice? I'd appreciate opinions that support this or guide me to a better XSLT engine (the XML files are fairly trivial, size wise)

Many thanks,
--
RatArsed

Comment on Problems installing XML::LibXML Download Code

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Re: Problems installing XML::LibXML by vek (Prior) on Jan 03, 2003 at 15:01 UTC
Is XML::LibXML any good? Yes, it rocks IMHO. Ultimately, I'm intending to use an XSLT engine to do transformations... Then using XML::LibXSLT in conjunction with XML::LibXML would be the way to go. While I don't know the exact answer as to why that test fails, I thought I'd point out another valuable resource for Perl/XML related questions if you're interested. Try checking the perl-xml mailing list archives to see if others have experienced the same problem. If you don't find anything, try posting your question there. -- vek --	[reply]
Re: Problems installing XML::LibXML by Matts (Deacon) on Jan 03, 2003 at 17:47 UTC
Try the beta versions on CPAN (1.54_something) which you have to download and install manually, or alternatively downgrade to 1.52, which is what I still use as it's very stable. I'm a bit biased (I'm the author of XML::LibXSLT and original author of XML::LibXML though it's been taken over by someone else now), but I would say XML::LibXML+LibXSLT is the only serious option for doing XSLT work in perl right now (unless you're on windows, and then possibly calling MSXML via Win32::OLE is a good alternative). It's extremely fast and I think barring very strange corners of the relevant specifications it's 100% compliant to the specs. Hope that helps. As vek suggested - if it doesn't then often the perl-xml list is a better place to ask.	[reply]
FYI: Problems installing XML::LibXML by RatArsed (Monk) on Jan 04, 2003 at 19:51 UTC
Thanks to those replies, I must admit that I cheated a bit, but I do have a working set of modules now -- by bribing jodrell who waved some pixie dust over it. As a side note, from the little I've looked at them, LibXML and LibXSLT look very nice... -- RatArsed	[reply]