saurabh.hirani has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi, I installed active perl on windows and am installing SOAP-Lite through ppm-shell. Once again the docs on perlmonks proved to be very helpful. I read up http://www.perlmonks.org/?displaytype=print;node_id=434813 and found it very useful.

I noticed during earlier package installations, that after download and upacking, it takes a lot of time to do HTML generation. Specifically, it stays on

Generating HTML for xyz ...

for a long time. I really don't need the docs because I can always look up on the net for them. Is there a command line option during install or any way to skip HTML generation? I searched through the "ppm install" help but could not find any. Thanks.

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Re: skipping html generation while pkg installation using ppm
by syphilis (Archbishop) on Oct 11, 2010 at 08:16 UTC
    Is there a command line option during install or any way to skip HTML generation?

    I don't know of any command line option but in lib/ActivePerl/PPM/Client.pm you'll find: 
    my $install_html = eval { require ActivePerl::DocTools; };
$install_html = $args{install_html} if exists $args{install_html};

    [download]
    Try inserting straight after that: 
    $install_html = 0;

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    Works for me. I, too, *never* consult a modules html documentation, preferring instead to use perldoc, and I agree that it's annoying to be sitting around waiting for something that you don't really want.

    If you poke around in the code you might find that there's a better solution (such as a command line option).

    Cheers,
    Rob
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      Thanks a lot Rob. You made my day. I will see to it that I poke around the code before posting anything on these lines so that I can share my understanding with others. I did try to see any command lines options but didn't find any. </P?

      And as per the snippet, a successfully "require" of the module leads to setting of install_html and returning a conditional true/false from DocTools is not a good idea. I will see if I can find an external way to switch on/off html gen.

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Re: skipping html generation while pkg installation using ppm
by moritz (Cardinal) on Oct 11, 2010 at 07:53 UTC
    I can't answer your questions, sorry for writing a reply nonetheless
    I really don't need the docs because I can always look up on the net for them.

    The advantage of the local HTML documentation is that it always of the same version as the modules you are using on that machine. If you go to search.cpan.org, it will show the newest version of each module by default, which can differ significantly from what you use.

    So if I were you, I wouldn't worry too much about the time the HTML generation takes, since module installation is a relative rare operation. (If you deploy the modules to many machines, this might not be the case anymore; then one could start thinking about synchronizing directory trees instead).

    Perl 6 - links to (nearly) everything that is Perl 6.
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      I agree on the point that module doc should correspond to the version. But I am in the process of exploring Perl on Win32 and will be installing many modules and when the dependencies kick in, HTML gen takes a very long time. Thanks.
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Re: skipping html generation while pkg installation using ppm
by ikegami (Patriarch) on Oct 11, 2010 at 09:22 UTC
    Temporary disabling your real-time anti-virus can speed such things up greatly. I don't remember if it does for this specific item, but it makes a huge difference when compiling code.
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      Most of the time is spent repeatedly scanning directories 
      perl -V:privlib -V:sitelib -V:scriptdir -V:installhtmldir

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Re: skipping html generation while pkg installation using ppm
by Anonymous Monk on Jun 25, 2015 at 01:55 UTC
    looking for an answer here got me digging deeper in the actice state modules and resulted in this command: ppm config install_html 0
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