Nowadays, almost every time I use the cpan shell to install modules, I get prompted to upgrade to the latest version of Bundle::CPAN. I'm told that it should be a "seamless upgrade during the current session."

It never is.

Today's problem deals more with the aftermath of using Bundle::CPAN. While Bundle::CPAN was going through its paces, I noticed that many tests were being skipped because I didn't have Test::Pod or Test::Pod::Coverage installed. Now, I don't have very much use for either of those modules, but, for the sake of fewer warning messages, I decided to install them. Test::Pod installed without problem.

Test::Pod::Coverage was a different story. It depended upon Pod::Coverage v0.17. So cpan tried to install that module. It immediately got this warning: 

Warning: this distribution contains XS files, but Module::Build is not
+ configured with C_support at /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.7/Mo
+dule/Build/Base.pm line 1125.
Checking prerequisites...
 - ERROR: Devel::Symdump is not installed

[download]

cpan handled the lack of Devel::Symdump by installing it in the normal manner. But it couldn't figure out what to do with the warning about Module::Build, which is particularly aggravating given that, just minutes before, cpan had installed the latest version of Module::Build as part of Bundle::CPAN's operation! Without that particular feature of Module::Build, Pod::Coverage failed its tests and Test::Pod::Coverage did so as well.

In the hope that I would be prompted for the C_support option, I next tried to reinstall Module::Build. I got this message: 

cpan> install Module::Build
Module::Build is up to date.

[download]

So cpan was not about to permit me to reinstall Module::Build in such a way as to get the C_support option needed for Pod::Coverage.

(I should note that when, during Bundle::CPAN's operation, I came to the prompt about PGP, I consistently chose the default option: 'skip all this cryptographic stuff'. As the alternative was installing 20 modules, more dependency hell lurked in that direction.)

So my questions are:

1. Should I try to (re-)install Module::Build manually so as to be presented with the C_support option?

2. Have other people faced this problem with Bundle::CPAN?

3. Could Bundle::CPAN be patched so as to avoid this problem?

Thank you very much.

Jim Keenan

In reply to Dependency hell: Bundle::CPAN, Pod::Coverage and Module::Build by jkeenan1

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