App::cpanminus(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation App::cpanminus(3)NAMEApp::cpanminus - get, unpack, build and install modules from CPAN
SYNOPSIS
cpanm Module
Run "cpanm -h" for more options.
DESCRIPTION
cpanminus is a script to get, unpack, build and install modules from
CPAN and does nothing else.
It's dependency free (can bootstrap itself), requires zero
configuration, and stands alone. When running, it requires only 10MB of
RAM.
INSTALLATION
There are several ways to install cpanminus to your system.
Package management system
There are Debian packages, RPMs, FreeBSD ports, and packages for other
operation systems available. If you want to use the package management
system, search for cpanminus and use the appropriate command to
install. This makes it easy to install "cpanm" to your system without
thinking about where to install, and later upgrade.
Installing to system perl
You can also use the latest cpanminus to install cpanminus itself:
curl -L http://cpanmin.us | perl - --sudoApp::cpanminus
This will install "cpanm" to your bin directory like "/usr/local/bin"
(unless you configured "INSTALL_BASE" with local::lib), so you probably
need the "--sudo" option.
Installing to local perl (perlbrew)
If you have perl in your home directory, which is the case if you use
tools like perlbrew, you don't need the "--sudo" option, since you're
most likely to have a write permission to the perl's library path. You
can just do:
curl -L http://cpanmin.us | perl - App::cpanminus
to install the "cpanm" executable to the perl's bin path, like
"~/perl5/perlbrew/bin/cpanm".
Downloading the standalone executable
You can also copy the standalone executable to whatever location you'd
like.
cd ~/bin
curl -LO http://xrl.us/cpanm
chmod +x cpanm
# edit shebang if you don't have /usr/bin/env
This just works, but be sure to grab the new version manually when you
upgrade because "--self-upgrade" might not work for this.
DEPENDENCIES
perl 5.8 or later.
· 'tar' executable (bsdtar or GNU tar version 1.22 are rcommended) or
Archive::Tar to unpack files.
· C compiler, if you want to build XS modules.
· make
· Module::Build (core in 5.10)
QUESTIONS
Another CPAN installer?
OK, the first motivation was this: the CPAN shell runs out of memory
(or swaps heavily and gets really slow) on Slicehost/linode's most
affordable plan with only 256MB RAM. Should I pay more to install perl
modules from CPAN? I don't think so.
But why a new client?
First of all, let me be clear that CPAN and CPANPLUS are great tools
I've used for literally years (you know how many modules I have on
CPAN, right?). I really respect their efforts of maintaining the most
important tools in the CPAN toolchain ecosystem.
However, for less experienced users (mostly from outside the Perl
community), or even really experienced Perl developers who know how to
shoot themselves in their feet, setting up the CPAN toolchain often
feels like yak shaving, especially when all they want to do is just
install some modules and start writing code.
Zero-conf? How does this module get/parse/update the CPAN index?
It queries the CPAN Meta DB site running on Google AppEngine at
<http://cpanmetadb.appspot.com/>. The site is updated every hour to
reflect the latest changes from fast syncing mirrors. The script then
also falls back to scrape the site <http://search.cpan.org/>.
Fetched files are unpacked in "~/.cpanm" and automatically cleaned up
periodically. You can configure the location of this with the
"PERL_CPANM_HOME" environment variable.
Where does this install modules to? Do I need root access?
It installs to wherever ExtUtils::MakeMaker and Module::Build are
configured to (via "PERL_MM_OPT" and "PERL_MB_OPT"). So if you're using
local::lib, then it installs to your local perl5 directory. Otherwise
it installs to the site_perl directory that belongs to your perl.
cpanminus at a boot time checks whether you have configured local::lib,
or have the permission to install modules to the site_perl directory.
If neither, it automatically sets up local::lib compatible installation
path in a "perl5" directory under your home directory. To avoid this,
run the script as the root user, with "--sudo" option or with
"--local-lib" option.
cpanminus can't install the module XYZ. Is it a bug?
It is more likely a problem with the distribution itself. cpanminus
doesn't support or is known to have issues with distributions like as
follows:
· Tests that require input from STDIN.
· Tests that might fail when "AUTOMATED_TESTING" is enabled.
· Modules that have invalid numeric values as VERSION (such as
"1.1a")
These failures can be reported back to the author of the module so that
they can fix it accordingly, rather than me.
Does cpanm support the feature XYZ of CPAN and CPANPLUS?
Most likely not. Here are the things that cpanm doesn't do by itself.
And it's a feature - you got that from the name minus, right?
If you need these features, use CPAN, CPANPLUS or the standalone tools
that are mentioned.
· Bundle:: module dependencies
· CPAN testers reporting
· Building RPM packages from CPAN modules
· Listing the outdated modules that needs upgrading. See cpan-
outdated
· Uninstalling modules. See pm-uninstall.
· Showing the changes of the modules you're about to upgrade. See
cpan-listchanges
· Patching CPAN modules with distroprefs.
See cpanm or "cpanm -h" to see what cpanminus can do :)
COPYRIGHT
Copyright 2010- Tatsuhiko Miyagawa
The standalone executable contains the following modules embedded.
CPAN::DistnameInfo Copyright 2003 Graham Barr
Parse::CPAN::Meta Copyright 2006-2009 Adam Kennedy
local::lib Copyright 2007-2009 Matt S Trout
HTTP::Tiny Copyright 2011 Christian Hansen
Module::Metadata Copyright 2001-2006 Ken Williams. 2010 Matt S Trout
version Copyright 2004-2010 John Peacock
LICENSE
Same as Perl.
CREDITS
CONTRIBUTORS
Patches and code improvements were contributed by:
Goro Fuji, Kazuhiro Osawa, Tokuhiro Matsuno, Kenichi Ishigaki, Ian
Wells, Pedro Melo, Masayoshi Sekimura, Matt S Trout, squeeky, horus and
Ingy dot Net.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Bug reports, suggestions and feedbacks were sent by, or general
acknowledgement goes to:
Jesse Vincent, David Golden, Andreas Koenig, Jos Boumans, Chris
Williams, Adam Kennedy, Audrey Tang, J. Shirley, Chris Prather, Jesse
Luehrs, Marcus Ramberg, Shawn M Moore, chocolateboy, Chirs Nehren,
Jonathan Rockway, Leon Brocard, Simon Elliott, Ricardo Signes, AEvar
Arnfjord Bjarmason, Eric Wilhelm, Florian Ragwitz and xaicron.
COMMUNITY
<http://github.com/miyagawa/cpanminus> - source code repository, issue
tracker
<irc://irc.perl.org/#toolchain> - discussions about Perl toolchain. I'm
there.
NO WARRANTY
This software is provided "as-is," without any express or implied
warranty. In no event shall the author be held liable for any damages
arising from the use of the software.
SEE ALSO
CPAN CPANPLUS pip
perl v5.14.1 2011-06-16 App::cpanminus(3)
