installing a module without a ppd file

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

I've read the tutorial "A guide to installing modules for Win32" and decided to try installing Math::Random::MT from a local repository. The first two steps are as follows:

1. Create a local repository. I did this.

2. Download the ppd file of the module and save it to your repository.

I got into trouble with step 2; it seems that there is no ppd file for this module. I assume that this means that I cannot install from a local repository. Is that correct?

Comment on installing a module without a ppd file

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Re: installing a module without a ppd file by syphilis (Archbishop) on Oct 02, 2006 at 00:35 UTC
Hi, The packages listed at http://ppm.activestate.com/PPMPackages/zips/8xx-builds-only/Windows/ will contain both a ppd file and a tarball of the blib. If you grab http://ppm.activestate.com/PPMPackages/zips/8xx-builds-only/Windows/Math-Random-MT-1.04.zip you should find it contains all you need. (It's not a difficult task to write your own ppd file if need be.) You should also be able to access the ppd file that gets used to install the module when you do a 'ppm install Math-Random-MT'. But I couldn't quickly determine how to do that - and gave up. (ActiveState like to make things opaque, especially wrt to the ppm utility ... and they're getting very good at doing that :-) Cheers, Rob	[reply]
installing without Internet connection or local repository by pfeldman (Initiate) on Oct 03, 2006 at 05:30 UTC
I downloaded the .zip archive, transferred it to the computer that doesn't have a network connection, expanded the archive, and successfully installed the package after tweaking the .ppd file to make it point to the correct location. I hadn't realized that it was possible to install a Perl package in this way. That's great. I'm very grateful for the help!!	[reply]
Re: installing a module without a ppd file by Smaug (Pilgrim) on Oct 02, 2006 at 13:29 UTC
Otherwise if you are running ActiveState Perl you can do the following: 1. Open a command prompt and set a http_proxy variable to http://username:password@proxyserver 2. Then run ppm install Math-Random-MT in the same command prompt That should install the module without needing anything else. Smaug	[reply]
Re: installing a module without a ppd file by jbert (Priest) on Oct 02, 2006 at 18:59 UTC
Another option - it may not be suitable for you, but I've had good luck with "strawberry perl", its basically a bundle of appropriately-configured-perl, gcc, make, other tools and modules with the goal of providing a unix-like perl/CPAN experience on Win32. i.e. you simply avoid the whole ppd thing and use CPAN directly on Win32. Its labelled as experimental, but is working nicely for me at the moment.	[reply]