For instance, I got an e-mail today from a Linux user (he didn't specify what distribution) who tried running the installer script, and had a problem because he'd never installed CPAN.pm.
Uhm, really? CPAN.pm comes with perl.
It's nice that CPAN is cross-platform, but getting CPAN set up in the first place is nontrivial for many users. (The number of configuration questions it asks is just astounding, and it's not necessarily true that you can give the default answer to every single one.)
Well, if the defaults would always work, there wouldn't be a reason to ask the questions, would there? The number of configuration questions is astouding, because there is an astouding number of ways things could be set up at the user.
My software is open-source, so I have no way of knowing what percentage of users are actually having problems, but I'd like to make it easier for them.
Easier than CPAN or CPANPLUS? If you find a way (that is, a way that doesn't comprimise by not working in cases where CPAN or CPANPLUS works), please to feed your results back into CPAN/CPANPLUS.

I use FreeBSD myself, and it's not practical for me to create and test separate versions for every Linux distribution.
Yup. And it's unpractical for thousands of other maintainers as well. That's why we have CPAN and CPANPLUS. That's why it's smart to set up your installation that it makes use of CPAN or CPANPLUS (and guess what will happen if you start with h2xs?)

Abigail

In reply to Re: telling users how to get CPAN modules by Abigail-II
in thread telling users how to get CPAN modules by bcrowell2

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.