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All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

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ActiveState testing 3 Comments More | Login | Reply /

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  • Seems to be some pretty weird stuff going on there.

    For example, this problem [activestate.com] (warning - very large page) seems to be caused by their program not being able to configure CPAN.pm correctly. And this one [activestate.com] seems to imply that they aren't automatically installing pre-requisites.
    • Makefile.PL has no business running CPAN.pm automatically, especially not when STDIN is not a tty. You would be surprised to see how many broken Makefile.PL scripts assume they are being run interactively. I wish module authors would instead provide complete PREREQ_PM listings.
      • While in most cases I'd agree, there are some modules where an interactive session does aid installation. However, most of those that do interactive sessions properly, account for default values so a return will do the right thing.

        It's the installations that cycle round in endless circles, when the right value hasn't been entered that gets me. There is a HTTP module that sits in a while loop until it gets the right entry. If you don't get the right entry after the second time (the first blank may be accidental), die with an appropriate error message or even better set up reasonable defaults. The HTTP module in question cause my automated smoke testing to run for 2 days (over a weekend) because of that.

        While having a complete PREREQ_PM is good, it's not always possible or appropriate to include everything. Some features might not be required or may even be inappropriate for the user. You shouldn't have to install everything (including the kitchen sink) if you're never going to use certain features.

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