clarifying facts on cpan modules

[poolboi]

hi guys,

just wanted to find out something about cpan modules 'cos i'm still not sure what they are all about

right...hm..first of all
i did something like typing ppm on the command prompt

and a ppm GUI opens up and i see a chunk of modules
so does it mean the modules that are seen are already installed?

[numberwhun]

hi guys,

just wanted to find out something about cpan modules 'cos i'm still not sure what they are all about

right...hm..first of all
i did something like typing ppm on the command prompt

and a ppm GUI opens up and i see a chunk of modules
so does it mean the modules that are seen are already installed?

No, ppm is Active State's "perl package manager". It is how you install modules on your system. The modules that are already installed will be designated there by being different from the rest (sorry, I don't use Active State so I can't tell you how).

One bit of advice though. Active State is limiting in the modules it has ported over from CPAN and not only that, it can be difficult to find the module(s) you are looking for. My recomendation is that you look at Strawberry Perl instead. It is the other WIndows version of Perl and in my opinion, MUCH better. You install modules using the CPAN interface, like the rest of the Unix based Perl community, instead of the proprietary PPM POS that Active State uses (yes, the POS part is my personal opinion).

Anywho, for information on installing modules, you will want to read this . It will get you on your way.

As for what modules are, they are bits of reusable code. If you want to do something in Perl, anything, check for a module first. If there isn't one, you may have an idea for one.

Regards,

Jeff

[poolboi]

yeah indeed
activeperl is rather complex when installing its module
u have to download the tgarz file i think
then type some commands in the command prompt, and have to test it out to make sure it's completely installed

so if i've type programs using activeperl
is it going to work if i use what u call strawberry perl?

[KevinADC]

active perl is very easy to install modules:

c:\>ppm

then once ppm starts:

install modulename

the problem though is as Jeff said, there are less modules available in PPM repositories than there are on CPAN.

Besides that, activeperl comes with lots of extras that strawberry perl does not, like many Win32 modules, wperl, Tk and now Tkx with perl 5.10. ActivePerl comes with very easy to read documentation and it's easy to see all the installed modules in the activeperl documentation folder. Activeperl has a support forum, strawberry perl has no support of any kind.

Strawberry perl comes with an html port of the standard perl documentation but it is not well laid out, and in fact was unreadable on my Windows computer because it is so freaking long.

Strawberryperl and activeperl both performed the same as far as I could tell.

[KevinADC]

hi guys,

just wanted to find out something about cpan modules 'cos i'm still not sure what they are all about

right...hm..first of all
i did something like typing ppm on the command prompt

and a ppm GUI opens up and i see a chunk of modules
so does it mean the modules that are seen are already installed?

Modules extend the functionality of perl. They are basically mini programs (some not so mini) that you can reuse by learning the interface of the module. Some modules perform one or two functions, some perform dozens of functions/methods. Not all modules are created equal. This is one thing I do not care for about CPAN, anyone can register and upload a module, there is really no standard or quality control testing. CPAN is full of modules that are poorly documented, do not work, are sorely out of date, buggy and possibly even insecure. You should always check bug reports and tests performed by other CPAN members before using an unknown module. Do not blindly think because there is a module on CPAN it has passed some sort of test to issure it works or is suited for any particular task.

[poolboi]

hm..okok thanks for the helpful information
so i guess modules that are not found in ppm have to downloaded from cpan and installed yeah?

[poolboi]

hm..ok tried install the module SpreadSheet::WrteExcel

using nmake makefile
then i type nmake makefile install

but end of the day i got this error :

'pls2bat.bat' is not recognise as an internal or external command, operable command or batch file
'NMAKE: fatal error U1077: 'c:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe': return code'0x1'
Stop.

what does this mean?

[poolboi]

alright the need to elaborate
the above comment is when i use nmake to instlal i got the error

but using ppm...
they can't connect to the repository package list and say timeout error
so i've tried this a lot of times and still dun work
wonder why

[poolboi]

anyone pls help?
is it cos i'm behind a firewall or something of that sort?

[KevinADC]

anyone pls help?
is it cos i'm behind a firewall or something of that sort?

Maybe, turn off the firewall and try again. If you can't turn off the firewall ask tech support to allow PPM internet access.

[poolboi]

hm...i dunno if it's the version problem
i'm using perl 5.10
and i've done a lot of searching it seem there seems to be some repository problem with version 5.10 but not 5.8
so i dunno if this could be the problem as well anot

[nithinpes]

hm...i dunno if it's the version problem
i'm using perl 5.10
and i've done a lot of searching it seem there seems to be some repository problem with version 5.10 but not 5.8
so i dunno if this could be the problem as well anot

If your IE is configured to use proxy server, try ppm after adding the following three environment variables under system variables(System Properties>Advanced tab>Environment variables).

name: http_proxy
value: your proxy server(e.g http://internet:8085)

name: http_proxy_user
value: your username(Windows login)

name: http_proxy_pass
value: user password

[poolboi]

thanks for the help
i'm indeed behind a proxy, guess that's why i can't download all the packages from the repository
i will try that when i can..cos this is the company's network stuff
i can't change it any oh how
right i will keep this thread in mind ..once i can start to download then i'll see if it works

[poolboi]

alright i've got it connected
it's done..the proxy firewall was indeed blocking my connection
hm..i realise something
spreadsheet::writeExcel module doesn't seem to be in the list, is it cos i'm using perl version 5.10?