FastCGi on IIS... The tale of Microsoft and my new Perl Module...

[David Cantrell]

On Wed, Oct 24, 2007 at 07:29:23PM -0500, Ken Williams wrote:

> Modern versions of CPAN (Jan. 2006) and CPANPLUS (Jan. 2003) both  
> know how to deal with installing M::B properly for distributions that  
> use it.  It thus becomes no more of a burden than any other module  
> dependency.

Unfortunately there's an awful lot of people who still have old versions
of CPAN.pm.  There will be for as long as they use perl 5.8.8, because
CPAN.pm doesn't get upgraded.  This is because it Just Works and it's
only weirdoes like me that need any of the new features.

$ head /usr/share/perl/5.8.8/CPAN.pm
...
$VERSION = '1.76_02';
...
# $Id: CPAN.pm,v 1.412 2003/07/31 14:53:04 k Exp $
...

> Also it is of course a new core module in the upcoming 5.10, and  
> we're working on a new self-bundling mechanism similar to (but better  
> than, i.e. giving the user more control) M::I's mechanism, so it will  
> be even *less* of a burden than now.

That will help a *lot*.  Yes, it does mean that you'll be bundling stuff
that has unknown bugs that get fixed later, but that's still a lot
better than nothing.

> Adam Kennedy (M::I author) has also suggested creating a new  
> configure_requires flag for the META.yml which would advise CPAN and  
> CPANPLUS to install M::B (or whatever installer the author uses) even  
> earlier in the process.  We're adopting that mechanism too.

Again, a nice feature, but of very limited utility until the old CPAN.pm
installations have gone away.

> In any case, the whole point of install_base (which never would have  
> happened if it weren't for M::B, I might add) is to guarantee a  
> predictable install location.

FWIW, I gave up on getting both MakeMaker and Module::Build to install
stuff to the same non-standard place.  In the end, the only method I
could find that would work was to build my own perl and set *its*
prefix appropriately.

> If you're still seeing "the problem randomly popping up" I think that  
> just means you have old versions of M::B installed.

Or his users do.

-- 
David Cantrell | Reality Engineer, Ministry of Information

PERL: Politely Expressed Racoon Love