Re: telling users how to get CPAN modules

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

Comment on Re: telling users how to get CPAN modules

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Re: Re: telling users how to get CPAN modules by biosysadmin (Deacon) on Mar 21, 2004 at 17:05 UTC
Uhm, really? CPAN.pm comes with perl. The Linux user most likely meant that he had never configured CPAN, highlighting the inexperience of some users. A previously unmentioned option for getting around this would be to link to a tutorial on configuring/using CPAN. However, some users simply don't want to configure CPAN, no matter that it should take any person with half a brain about 5 minutes to do. If you were to require that users correctly configure CPAN in order to use your program, you would be losing part of your potential user base. Shielding your users from advanced configuration issues can be a slippery slope, but I think that in this case it makes sense. The target audience for a Perl/Tk grading program is not necessarily interested in learning how to configure CPAN, and providing them with a very easy means of installing and using your program is a good thing. There are definitely lots of ways to do this, such as PAR or cpan2rpm, and I think that making installation easy on your users is part of marketing your application, something that bcrowell2 seems to be interested in. Also, I think PAR is very cool. :D	[reply]

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Re: Re: telling users how to get CPAN modules
by biosysadmin (Deacon) on Mar 21, 2004 at 17:05 UTC

Uhm, really? CPAN.pm comes with perl.

The Linux user most likely meant that he had never configured CPAN, highlighting the inexperience of some users. A previously unmentioned option for getting around this would be to link to a tutorial on configuring/using CPAN. However, some users simply don't want to configure CPAN, no matter that it should take any person with half a brain about 5 minutes to do. If you were to require that users correctly configure CPAN in order to use your program, you would be losing part of your potential user base. Shielding your users from advanced configuration issues can be a slippery slope, but I think that in this case it makes sense. The target audience for a Perl/Tk grading program is not necessarily interested in learning how to configure CPAN, and providing them with a very easy means of installing and using your program is a good thing.

There are definitely lots of ways to do this, such as PAR or cpan2rpm, and I think that making installation easy on your users is part of marketing your application, something that bcrowell2 seems to be interested in.

Also, I think PAR is very cool. :D

[reply]