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Re: Stop turning CPAN modules into Cygwin packages
On Dec 12, 2007 11:43 AM, Archie Warnock <warnock@awcubed.com> wrote:
> Igor Peshansky wrote:
> > BTW, this problem must have been encountered (and, hopefully, solved) by
> > other distros. How does the Debian git package handle this? I seem to
> > recall that at least Red Hat Linux at some point had packages for some
> > CPAN modules...
>
> I don't know how they solve dependencies, or if it has anything to do with
> dependencies, but I can tell you that Fedora Core 8 (and earlier versions) have
> a _lot_ of CPAN modules packaged as RPMs.
>
> I, too, prefer to get my modules directly from CPAN but I do run into occasional
> compilation problems from time to time. At those times, it's really handy to
> have the packages available. But, as already mentioned, those should be fixes
> that are passed upstream to the CPAN module owner/maintainer anyway.
>
> --
> Archie
>
Fedora (and the other distros) do this because they understand that
for a really good working distro, you need to have everything on the
system managed by the system's package manager. It doesn't really
matter that installing from CPAN is easy, because it always screws up
the dependencies on the system.
The same goes for compiling other packages from tar.gz files and
installing them without first rolling an rpm (for example). Yes,
compiling is not hard, and it might make one feel that they are a more
empowered or advanced Admin, but it cannot be said emphatically enough
that compiling things from .tar.gz files should be the absolute last
resort way to get some software onto a system.
CPAN is sort of a gray area because it's another package manager in
and of itself, and perl modules mostly are not "compiled", but it
creates the same problems.
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