Specifying directories for cpan shell

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

What is the best way to specify for cpan shell the directory/-ies where the files are downloaded, built and installed? Occasionally I want to try out something with cpan, and I don't want my Perl installation to be touched, so I'm thinking of writing a shell/batch script cpan_test which just puts all the files in a different directory than usual.

For instance, are there environment variables which have such an effect? I checked the perldocs, but didn't find anything which would help me here.

--
Ronald Fischer <ynnor@mm.st>

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Re: Specifying directories for cpan shell by jakobi (Pilgrim) on Oct 06, 2009 at 10:14 UTC
one option is to check ~/.cpan or ~/.cpanplus. E.g. ~/.cpan/CPAN/MyConfig.pm: CPAN.pm does manage this file, but I had to manually add e.g. a sudo there a while ago (_one_ of build or install), as I couldn't use CPAN.pm itself to modify that value. In mine there's e.g. an INSTALLDIRS=site option value being set. HTH, Peter	[reply]
Re^2: Specifying directories for cpan shell by rovf (Priest) on Oct 06, 2009 at 10:38 UTC
one option is to check ~/.cpan Thanks a lot. Do you also happen to know what's the path is on Windoze? -- Ronald Fischer <ynnor@mm.st>	[reply] [d/l]
Re^3: Specifying directories for cpan shell by Anonymous Monk on Oct 06, 2009 at 11:06 UTC
CPAN/CPANPLUS both use `File::HomeDir->my_data` which differs from %APPDATA%	[reply]
Re: Specifying directories for cpan shell by Anonymous Monk on Oct 06, 2009 at 10:27 UTC
Config options (and Makefile.PL/Build.PL arguments) control everything, so the best way is to fake MyConfig, example mycpan `#!/usr/bin/perl -- BEGIN { package CPAN::MyConfig; $INC{'CPAN/MyConfig.pm'} = __FILE__; ... }; my $cpan = 'path/to/cpan'; do $cpan;` [download] I got the idea from Re: CPANPLUS custom configurations. See also mkmyconfig, Install a CPAN module at x location, Personal library with CPAN, Installation of modules in home directory, install_base.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Specifying directories for cpan shell by JavaFan (Canon) on Oct 06, 2009 at 10:22 UTC
You could just instruct cpan to build the module you want to test, then do your trying using the directory cpan build it in (typically ~/.cpan/build/Distro-Name-Version.hash/blib).	[reply]