I have been seeing the following, for the past 18 months, every time I use the cpan utility: 

$ cpan
Terminal does not support AddHistory.

To fix that, maybe try>  install Term::ReadLine::Perl

cpan shell -- CPAN exploration and modules installation (v2.28)
Enter 'h' for help.

cpan[1]>

[download]

I looked into that briefly (and unsuccessfully) several times; in general, whatever I wanted to install via cpan was more important than AddHistory, which I only use infrequently anyway, so it ended up on my TODO list.

I tried with the suggested module, Term::ReadLine::Perl, as well as a variety of others including: Term::ReadLine::Perl5, Term::ReadLine::Gnu, and Term::ReadLine::Tiny. These all failed, the most common problem being the process hanging when the Term::ReadKey dependency was being installed. Actually, installation of Term::ReadLine::Tiny worked fine but it didn't provide AddHistory.

I spent some hours this morning looking into this and eventually came up with a solution. My basic Perl setup is: Win10 - Cygwin - Perlbrew - Perl 5.32.0. If you're experiencing the same problem, this solution may work for you: I can't make any guarantees as I don't have other systems on which to test this.

The only thing that worked was a completely manual installation.

Download https://cpan.metacpan.org/authors/id/J/JS/JSTOWE/TermReadKey-2.38.tar.gz then run the familiar incantation: 

$ tar zxvf TermReadKey-2.38.tar.gz
$ cd TermReadKey-2.38
$ perl Makefile.PL
$ make
$ make test
$ make install

[download]

Download https://cpan.metacpan.org/authors/id/H/HA/HAYASHI/Term-ReadLine-Gnu-1.37.tar.gz then a very similar incantation: 

$ tar zxvf Term-ReadLine-Gnu-1.37.tar.gz
$ cd Term-ReadLine-Gnu-1.37
$ perl Makefile.PL
$ make
$ make test
$ make install

[download]

Now I get: 

$ cpan

cpan shell -- CPAN exploration and modules installation (v2.28)
Enter 'h' for help.

cpan[1]>

[download]

and moving through the command history and editing is now possible.

If you were experiencing similar problems with a different setup to me — and found this worked as is, worked after some modification, or failed abysmally — please leave a note for the next reader.

— Ken

In reply to cpan: Terminal does not support AddHistory. by kcott

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