in reply to Perl and OSX

First off, you ought to investigate the excellent CPAN.pm to help automate module installation. It really does take a lot of the drudgery out of the whole process.

Mac OS X indeed comes installed with Perl 5.6... your problem may be related to a flaw in your main Perl installation, or it could simply be that you aren't installing as root. If you are relatively new to UNIX-think, generally you have to be logged in as root (aka the "superuser") in order to compile and install new programs. One way to do this is to simply type "su root". The system will ask for your root user password, and then you should be able to compile and install to your heart's delight.

It's possible that the "root" user account on your machine hasn't been enabled yet... if so you can enable it through the NetInfo program in the utilities folder in applications IIRC. (I didn't have to enable it, but then I had previously installed the Public Beta.)

If you're still having trouble let us know and we'll see what the deal is.

Gary Blackburn
Trained Killer

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Re: Re: Perl and OSX
by TrinityInfinity (Scribe) on Apr 06, 2001 at 01:58 UTC
    Update
    Turns out the basic OSX install is actually incomplete... its only with the addition of the developer cd that extra binaries are added (autoconf, make, about 100+), and the extra perl headers, libraries and extra whatnot are added in. Its fixed ALL my problems, so if anyone else has problems w/OSX.. just install the developer's kit!
    Thanks to everyone who offered advice, I appreciate it =)


    The status of things so far...

    Running it as root gives the same error message. However, I did actually take the time to go check the /System/Library/Perl/darwin/CORE/perl.h path... and there is no Perl directory under the /System/Library directory.

    In between checking responses here, I'm combing through Apple's help forums to see if there's any info about the Perl installation there. I went to perl.com, but looking for any files there took me to that same ports page on CPAN telling me that OSX has the latest perl on it.

    So all I've got so far is its not a module issue (I learned all about modules when I first signed up to this site....), nor a permissions situation, but something with the perl files itself. Bah, humbug! =)
[reply]
      Well, if you don't have a /System/Library/Perl directory then you've got big problems. I just checked my installation and I've got one... you may need to do a recompile of Perl from source, as it is extremely unlikely that you'll be able to find a binary anywhere. The good news is that the BSD layer may take Perl without a hitch... the bad news is that you may learn a alot about compiling in the process. :-P

      Gary Blackburn
      Trained Killer

[reply]
        Sadly, this is where my knowledge ends, and the learning shall begin.
        To get the perl source, I've downloaded the file from http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/stable.tar.gz. Will this be what I need to recompile from? I've been reading the README so far, but I don't want to force a square peg in a round hole by mistake...

        Thanks again for the help so far. Its been an experience, but I'm getting to know my system better by the keystroke =)
[reply]

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