mst-cpan - install CPAN modules in an alternative Perl root (plus more!)
mst-cpan [options] package package
mst-cpan installs Perl CPAN packages in an alternative Perl module directory hierarchy. More importantly it also encodes local preferences and fixes for various packages so that they will take advantage of local libraries.
Options are specified using a getopt style interface. Long names are
available when preceded with double hyphens --, in which case only
the minimal number of characters are required. Options which take
values may be separated from those values with the = character.
Arguments (i.e. packages) are specified in one of three ways:
As a CPAN Bundle file (ends in .pm)
Local.pm
As a module name:
Data::Dumper
As a local tarball:
MyPackage-1.00.tar.gz
As a CPAN distribution
AUTHOR/Package-1.00.tar.gz
It's possible to confuse the latter two: is AUTHOR a directory name
(indicating a local tarball) or a CPAN author id? To avoid mistakenly
searching CPAN for packages because the user misspelled the tarball
name mst-cpan uses the following heuristics to distinguish the two
cases.
Packages which end in .gz are treated as local tarballs or CPAN
distributions.
If a file of the given name exists, it is a local tarball. (Use the --dist option to override this behavior).
If the path contains leading "directories" all in captial letters, it is a CPAN distribution (Use the --tarball option to override this behavior.)
Fail.
Note that the --dist and --tarball options affect the behavior for all of the packages on the command line.
The root of the directory hierarchy into which Perl modules are installed. Actual modules are typically installed in install_base/lib/perl5.
This defaults to @ALTPERLROOT@/$platform_os_generic'.
If specified, the modules will be installed relative to the given base directory. Embedded sysarch or Perl Config variable names will be interpolated. See Variable Interpolation for more information.
install_base will still be used as a base modules directory to find modules. This allows one to have a private Perl module installation on top of the alternate maintained by mst-cpan.
The --noprereqs option may be useful if one wishes to install a locally produced module into local_install_base but not its CPAN prerequisites. There is no way to install CPAN only modules in install_base and other modules in local_install_base in the same invocation of mst-cpan.
Treat the package as a CPAN distribution, regardless of what the name looks like.
Force the reinstallation of a module even if Perl thinks that it has already been installed. This is useful if the native Perl has had a module installed and you which to reinstall it into the alternative module directory.
Force the installation of a module even if tests have failed. Currently if tests succeeded this will result in a duplicate installation run.
Cause mst-cpan to retrieve the latest CPAN index. It will usually do so automatically, but only after the current index is some few days old.
Some Perl modules require patches to get them to install cleanly.
This directory contains patches entitled module-version-patch.
where module is the module name, version is the module version
id, and patch is the word patch. For some reason some modules'
version ids are only recognized in a rewritten form, where the more
common X.Y.Z is translated as X.yyyzzz where yyy and zzz
are three digit versions of Y and Z with leading padding zeroes.
For example, PDL version 2.4.3 is rewritten as 2.004003
Normally module prerequisites are installed according to the policy
which the user requested when cpan was first run. Setting
--prereqs forces a policy of follow, while
--noprereqs forces the policy to ignore.
Treat the package as a local tarball, regardless of what the name looks like.
Some binary Perl modules may require libraries which are locally compiled and installed (i.e not in the standard system directories). Their location can be specified with the following options:
This is the top element of the path. It defaults to /proj/axaf.
The architecture-dependent path. It defaults to /prefix/platform_os_generic where prefix is provided by the --prefix option and platform_os_generic is a directory specific to the platform that mst-cpan is being run on.
The directory containing the libraries. Embedded sysarch or Perl Config variable names will be interpolated. See Variable Interpolation for more information. It defaults to /exec_prefix/lib where execprefix is provided by the --exec_prefix option.
A directory holding locally installed executables, used to find executables associated with particular libraries. Embedded sysarch or Perl Config variable names will be interpolated. See Variable Interpolation for more information. It defaults to /exec_prefix/bin where execprefix is provided by the --exec_prefix option.
Set the CPAN debug parameter. This takes an optional CPAN debug code.
If not specified it will be set to 65535.
Output a short help messgae and exit.
Output a longer usage messgae and exit.
Output the version and exit.
The values for some of the parameters may contain references to
sysarch or Perl Config variables. A variable reference is
formed either by simply prefixing the variable name with a $
or by enclosing the name in curly braces and prefixing that with a $:
$foo
${foo}
The names of variables provided by sysarch are used as is. Those
provided by the Perl Config module must be prefixed with the string
perl_,
$platform_os_generic $perl_version
The available Perl Config variables may be listed via the following command:
perl -MConfig -MData::Dumper -e 'print Dumper \%Config'
The CPAN module must already be installed. Some Linux distributions package this separately from the core Perl package.
A version of ExtUtils::MakeMaker at least as new as 6.31 must be available. If the installed version is too old, the following installation procedure should be followed:
Download the package from CPAN, decompress it, and change into the resulting directory.
Run the following commands:
perl Makefile.PL make
perl -Iblib Makefile.PL INSTALL_BASE=@ALTPERLROOT@/$platform_os_generic make make test make install
Where $platform_os_generic is the sysarch variable of the same name.
Run mst-cpan with the --setup flag:
mst-cpan --setup [libdir]
where libdir is an optional argument specifying a path in which Perl should search for the CPAN module.
This software is Copyright The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and is released under the GNU General Public License. You may find a copy at: http://www.fsf.org/copyleft/gpl.html
This documents version @VERSION@ of @PACKAGE@.
Diab Jerius <djerius@cfa.harvard.edu>