On Sat, 9 Apr 2022 11:16:38 -0500 Nick LeRoy <leroy.nick@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Apr 9, 2022 at 10:42 AM Bill Merriam <lists@billmerriam.com> wrote:

...

When something I am installing requires a list of perl modules I have to figure out how to install them. I first have to search the rpm repositories for the module. If the module is available in rpm repositories I can use zypper to install it. Other times I have to use CPAN to install it.

Does anyone know of a script that will install a list of modules by searching for it and installing from the necessary location?

The solution for perl is: 1) If the perl package is required for some package installed from openSUSE repositories, then they should be installed automatically from openSUSE repositories by installing whatever package required them. If not, then file a bug and meanwhile install from an RPM by all means. 2) Otherwise (and the case I'm thinking of is some external perl program or other third-party-sourced program that uses perl modules, or anything else) then install the packages from CPAN, (or metacpan these days). Do not use system RPMs in this case. perl and the CPAN system is intelligent enough so that the two things will not generally mix. perl is (was?) used for a lot of system packages so version dependencies can be critically important. System packages are installed to a place that system utilities will find them. CPAN packages are installed to a different place and are usually more up-to-date. It won't mess up your system.

I don't know the answer, but I deal with the same question with Python, using RPM vs. pip. I'm hoping that a language agnostic *solution* is available.

There's no universal solution, unfortunately. python has to some extent taken over from perl for system utilities but there are other languages in the mix as well. (Ruby, Haskell etc etc). Python has a different solution that I'm not as familiar with and that doesn't work as well as Perl's solution IMHO. I'll leave it to somebody else to explain it better than I could.

On Sat, 9 Apr 2022 18:28:47 -0500 Nick LeRoy <leroy.nick@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, Apr 9, 2022 at 2:18 PM Dave Howorth <dave@howorth.org.uk> wrote:

...

The solution for perl is:

1) If the perl package is required for some package installed from openSUSE repositories, then they should be installed automatically from openSUSE repositories by installing whatever package required them. If not, then file a bug and meanwhile install from an RPM by all means.

1.5) For me, at least, there's a 1.5. I usually add one or more OBS repositories. For Python, again, start with "devel:languages:python", which usually has a more modern version of Python itself. I suspect that there's one for perl, too. The URI of the Python one, BTW, is: https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/python/15.3/, and I believe that the equivalent for perl is: https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/perl/openSUSE_L...

No, there's no 1.5 for perl. Python maybe, I don't know. This is a case of rule 2. i.e. if you need a more modern perl then get it from CPAN, not openSUSE repositories.

...

2) Otherwise (and the case I'm thinking of is some external perl program or other third-party-sourced program that uses perl modules, or anything else) then install the packages from CPAN, (or metacpan these days). Do not use system RPMs in this case.

-Nick

On Sat, Apr 9, 2022 at 11:51 AM Bill Merriam <lists@billmerriam.com> wrote:

Here are the required XKCD comics on the topic. https://xkcd.com/1654/ https://xkcd.com/927/

LOL. The great thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from!

Here is where I found those links.

https://kdeldycke.github.io/meta-package-manager/index.html

This looks like it the solution to this problem, but it doesn't include CPAN among the package managers. I assume I can add CPAN to the list.

I also don't see zypper (or even RPM) on the list. -Nick