What is CPAN going to do with the modules it downloads, if it can't "make" them? Isn't that why the install failed? So what use is CPAN without "make"? I guess it just came with the standard Perl maybe?

It's not actually CPAN that is using make, but the module distribution that it downloads.

The reason that you need make even for pure perl distributions is that the most common mechanism for packaging up modules ExtUtils::MakeMaker offloads a lot of its work to make.

In hindsight this decision was probably a mistake. One of the reasons its problematic is that several platforms don't come with make installed by default (e.g. Mac OS, Mac OS X, and Windows).

The more modern Module::Build does away with the dependency on make. Unfortunately this doesn't help until more modules support M::B.

In reply to Re^3: OT, sort of: "make" on OSX by adrianh
in thread OT, sort of: "make" on OSX by Cody Pendant

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