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

There is some real cool software - from my standpoint - that I pulled off CPAN at the advice of a friend. Alas, said friend runs LINUX and I am still on Windows for a brief while longer. The advertised software simply refused to install on my machine -- telling me it couldn't do a mkdir at such and such a line of code buried deep in install.pm. It also told me that it needed version .08 of some OLE module. I installed version 1.4. (The two modules in question had the same author.) My question is what do I do? Write the author? Post queries here? How often does this happen with CPAN code? -- this particular one had passed seven tests and failed one for MSWIN32.... Give up and find another way to solve the problem?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: How to get started with CPAN
by samtregar (Abbot) on Aug 23, 2005 at 22:29 UTC
    Posting questions here is a good way to go. We'll need specifics: what module, what did you type, what was the error message precisely, etc.

    As far as how often this kind of problem comes up, I'd say pretty much constantly. Perl runs great on Windows but few module authors test their modules there. It's not at all uncommon for a module to have an installation bug on Windows.

    -sam

[reply]
      Here are some updated specifics: 1. The module asked for a specific version of another module. There was only a much later version of that on CPAN. I updated the Makefile.pl that came to ask for the later version when I did the manual make. I was unable to install the required module OLE::Storage_Lite as well. But I never got far enough into the install for that to be a problem. 2. Someone pointed me to ppm, which I used. I entered a repository. When I used ppm ppm> install Spreadsheet::ParseExcel I got an error message 'no suitable installation target for module found' This is consistent with the error messages I got when I tried to do the installation manually. These had reported that a mkdir operation failed. I suspect there is a key directory in my perl installation C:\perl\... missing. Oh yeah, almost forgot, I am running ActivePerl on Windows XP. My system has no proxy. We seem to be pulling files off of CPAN OK. Thanks for your attention! maryfran
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Re: How to get started with CPAN
by GrandFather (Saint) on Aug 23, 2005 at 22:21 UTC

    If you are using the ActiveState Perl distribution (you should be) many of the CPAN modules are available using ppm.

    Perl is Huffman encoded by design.
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[reply]
      Hi, Thanks for responding. What is ppm? Thanks again, Mary
[reply]

        ppm is the Perl Package Manager and is part of the ActiveState Perl distribution. It uses various repositories which contain pre-built CPAN modules and provides ways to search, install and manage packages.

        The links in the reply above are to some of the additional ppm repositories that various people have created.

        Perl is Huffman encoded by design.
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Re: How to get started with CPAN
by runrig (Abbot) on Aug 23, 2005 at 22:45 UTC
    If you are using ActiveState perl, use ppm. Recently though, I installed a module that failed all of its tests on Windows (which is why there was no ppd and I could not use ppm), but the module itself worked fine. I emailed the author about the tests, and we're making an effort to get it to pass on Windows. I don't use CPAN.pm or CPANPLUS.pm on Windows though, instead I use nmake.exe, and this works fine (for modules that don't need to be compiled since I don't have a compiler on windows).
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Re: How to get started with CPAN
by Tanktalus (Canon) on Aug 23, 2005 at 23:53 UTC
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      I read holli's 'A Guide to Installing Modules for Win32'. My module doesn't install with ppm. The error message is "no suitable installation target for module Spreadsheet-ParseExcel" 1. I will have to make it manually, anyway, since it explicitly asks for an out of date module and I will have to change the version number of that module 2. This error message is consistent with the error messages I got when I attempted to install it manually. Those messages usually complained about not being able to create a directory. 3. I did install a repository -- created the directory and installed it with the ppm> rep command.
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Re: How to get started with CPAN
by sk (Curate) on Aug 23, 2005 at 22:29 UTC
    I have seen many people posting problems with CPAN installation on PM and there are many able monks here who might be able to answer the questions in their free time.

    The author of the module might have mentioned ways you can reach him/her for specific reasons (bugs,enhancements, installations?) etc. You can try that email address too.

    cheers

    SK

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