corporate rules on CPAN installs ( was [ANNOUNCE] [REMINDER] Social this Thursday - PLUS! free beer )

[Aaron Trevena]

On 01/08/07, Pete Sergeant <pete at clueball.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 01, 2007 at 11:03:28AM +0100, Nicholas Clark wrote:
> > I had been thinking recently that I needed to add to my three questions:
> >
> > http://use.perl.org/~nicholas/journal/31695
>
> I also like, for Perl-y jobs, "Say I need a CPAN module installed.
> What's the process for that?"
>
> Answers tend to range from: "Well, obviously, each line of code needs to
> be audited in the Virus Testing Labs", to "Well the production server
> will sit under your desk to, and there's a password on top of it on a
> sticky note", to my favourite: "Put in a systems request, and we'll have
> it done in 24 hours" (normally untrue).

We've just been working to solve that particular thorny problem for $client.

The change control procedure requires all updates to production
servers to be a debian package associated with a change control
ticket.

debianizing CPAN modules varies from trivial to a royal pain in the
arse - fortunately cpan2dist with the deb plugin, and a couple of
wrapper scripts to modify what cpan2dist creates.

So far it's been working pretty well, that combined with having SVN, a
wiki, a forum and a fairly well set up network and clued up domain
experts and interesting problems makes it a nice job, if you don't
mind working for 50 to 60% of the market rate.

A.

-- 
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