Re^4: Help needed with terminology - different formats of modules

I did read that page and it still didn't explain things to me. It might be obvious to someone who knows what they are doing, but when I read that it wasn't clear to me that some modules just contain perl code which can simply be copied to the appropriate location whereas some contain C code which may need to be compiled. When i read it I didn't understand why it started talking about C compilers. I just assumed that was something to do with linux I didn't understand. I got a lot of help from reading this forum post

http://www.codingforums.com/archive/index.php/t-121250.html
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It's also my fault that I forgot that Perl was interpreted and not compiled because I couldn't work out whether you downloaded source code and compiled byte codes from module repositories. This area of Perl seems to be a bit of a minefield. I was able to read 2 Perl books in a week to get to the stage where I could write object oriented Perl. I'm still fuzzy on the details of this though after 2 days banging my head against the wall :)

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Re^5: Help needed with terminology - different formats of modules by marto (Cardinal) on Oct 28, 2010 at 18:23 UTC
You can start coping pure perl modules to the appropriate places, however this can be a time consuming thing. Say you want to install a fictitious module ACME::Shazam, which you know to be pure perl, you could just copy the files to correct locations, then run some example code which makes use of the module. But, whoops, ACME::Shazam has 10 dependencies, none of which you have two of which are witting in C. It would have been a lot quicker and a much less effort if you used the CPAN client to do this for you. "when I read that it wasn't clear to me that some modules just contain perl code which can simply be copied to the appropriate location whereas some contain C code which may need to be compiled." The tutorial I linked to has a section "Installing Modules that include elements coded in C". I appreciate that there may be a lot to read/learn at first, but stick with it, explain what's confusing you as clearly as possible and people can help. "When i read it I didn't understand why it started talking about C compilers. I just assumed that was something to do with linux I didn't understand" This isn't a linux specific thing, Microsoft Platforms have the same issue.	[reply]

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Re^5: Help needed with terminology - different formats of modules
by marto (Cardinal) on Oct 28, 2010 at 18:23 UTC

You can start coping pure perl modules to the appropriate places, however this can be a time consuming thing. Say you want to install a fictitious module ACME::Shazam, which you know to be pure perl, you could just copy the files to correct locations, then run some example code which makes use of the module. But, whoops, ACME::Shazam has 10 dependencies, none of which you have two of which are witting in C. It would have been a lot quicker and a much less effort if you used the CPAN client to do this for you.

"when I read that it wasn't clear to me that some modules just contain perl code which can simply be copied to the appropriate location whereas some contain C code which may need to be compiled."

The tutorial I linked to has a section "Installing Modules that include elements coded in C". I appreciate that there may be a lot to read/learn at first, but stick with it, explain what's confusing you as clearly as possible and people can help.

"When i read it I didn't understand why it started talking about C compilers. I just assumed that was something to do with linux I didn't understand"

This isn't a linux specific thing, Microsoft Platforms have the same issue.

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