Tagged with 'perl'
Me vs. perl, stupid perl
The issue here is long since been resolved. This is a rant, not really a plea for help.
I recently decided that I've been using mbox for too long, it was time to switch to maildir. It looks like mb2md, written in perl, is the tool for the job.
It tells me (in red letters!) that it requires the TimeDate perl library.
"No problem," I says. "That link goes to CPAN, supposedly perl's greatest strength, the reason we should all rally 'round the VM. I can do this!"
Ha. Ha ha ha, ha ha, ha-ha-ha-ha, hahahahahaha.
Ahem.
I found various, completely useless instructions for installing CPAN modules. None of them worked. ("Mirror CPAN? Why the @#$% would I want to do that? I just want to install the @#$%ing module!") You might think "How do I use this thing?" might be a frequently asked quesiton, but it's apparently not.
Maybe I should be more clear: the instructions I found typically assume that I have the module and just need to install it. Not the case. This was typical:
$ perl -MCPAN -e 'install TimeDate'
[...]
Warning: Cannot install TimeDate, don't know what it is.
Try the command
i /TimeDate/
to find objects with matching identifiers.
Okay, let's try that...
$ sudo perl -MCPAN -e 'i /TimeDate/'
syntax error at -e line 1, at EOF
Execution of -e aborted due to compilation errors.
Hrmmm. Let's try that shell thing:
cpan> i /TimeDate/
[...]
Distribution id = G/GB/GBARR/TimeDate-1.16.tar.gz...
Er? So, it can find it, it just doesn't want to?
I said at the outset that this was resolved, but only the immediate issue is settled (I found an Ubuntu package that provided the perl modules as dependencies) but not the underlying issue: I still have zero confidence that I'd be able to install a perl module in the future. Stupid perl.
You know how easy it is to install (most) Ruby gems (the Ruby equivalent of CPAN) ?
sudo gem install NAME
Done.
Stupid perl.