modules and perl versions

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

Hello. First time here.
I am interested in installing the Geo::Coder module. I am using activestate 5.6.1. The ppm available is for perl 5.8.8. Activestate suggested I use CPAN for my version of Perl. I'd never used the CPAN module before.
I tried it and CPAN created a .cpan/ directory on my C: drive and installed tons of stuff there. However, my c:/perl/lib and c:/perl/site/lib directories appear unchanged.
Geo::Coder also seems to rely on Geo-Fips, Geo-StreetAddress and Geo-TigerLine. All of these are in this new .cpan/ directory
I tried adding push(@INC,"c:\\.cpan\\build\\") ;
prior to my
use Geo::Coder::US;
invocation with no success.
I also manually added c:\perl\lib\geo and copied the relevant modules over from .cpan to it. Again, no success.
Is there hope that I could use the geocoder modules on my existing platform?
Thank you very much.
Twoson

Comment on modules and perl versions

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: modules and perl versions by davorg (Chancellor) on Feb 20, 2007 at 13:31 UTC
Another alternative would be to upgrade to using a more recent version of Perl. 5.6.1 is almost six years old. -- <http://dave.org.uk> "The first rule of Perl club is you do not talk about Perl club." -- Chip Salzenberg	[reply]
Re: modules and perl versions by jfluhmann (Scribe) on Feb 20, 2007 at 13:43 UTC
What commands did you use to try and install it from CPAN? Another alternative for Win32 is strawberry-perl (though it uses Perl 5.8.8). You can read about it on the Win32.perl.org wiki. Jeremy http://www.yapc.org/America	[reply]
Re: modules and perl versions by blogical (Pilgrim) on Feb 20, 2007 at 15:50 UTC
Is it possible this is just the download cache, and that you've yet to make and install these modules? "One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for the myriad instances and applications?" - Henry David Thoreau, Walden	[reply]
Re: modules and perl versions by rkrieger (Friar) on Feb 20, 2007 at 15:55 UTC
> Activestate suggested I use CPAN for my version of Perl. That surprises me somewhat, as their download site for ActivePerl lists version 5.8.8.820 for various architectures including Win32. Do you have specific reasons that make you reluctant to upgrade? If not, Perl 5.8.8 seems to be readily available and have the desired PPM module.	[reply]
Re^2: modules and perl versions by twoson (Initiate) on Feb 20, 2007 at 19:58 UTC
I guess "reluctant to upgrade" describes me quite well. I like the modules, libraries, configuration, etc that I have. I usually "upgrade" when I get a new machine and go through the whole new config when that happens. I just like what I have and am hesitant to upgrade, only to find that other things I may have working might now fail on me. I also have some production code that I could not afford to lose or have stop working. Getting Geo::Coder to work in my existing environment is my preferable choice. Another responder wrote "Is it possible this is just the download cache, and that you've yet to make and install these modules?" If that's the case, then I'm completely up the river as, I've always relied on the ActiveState PPM to do this for me. I've never had to do the make - make-install - make-test stuff. This scares me!	[reply]
Re^3: modules and perl versions by rkrieger (Friar) on Feb 20, 2007 at 22:03 UTC
> I also have some production code that I could not afford to lose or have stop working. That is an understandable reason to delay upgrading. I do recommend you test whether your application will remain to work with an upgraded system. > I've never had to do the make - make-install - make-test stuff. This scares me! I can heartily recommend reading the documentation before venturing into stuff that scares you. That usually alleviates the scariness. CPAN is not that hard to deal with and is a great tool once you get the hang of it. In fact, it caters for an 'install $package' interface. My ActivePerl (v5.6.0, with MS Services for Unix) installation on Win32 is currently broken, so testing whether I can get CPAN going myself is currently somewhat problematic. Fixing it isn't too high a priority either, since I mostly use OpenBSD for my Perl work ;)	[reply]