I used 'perl -MCPAN -e shell' on both Panther and Fedora Core. Many of the failed compilations failed on both machines. The machines also have different Apaches (1.3/OSX and 2/Fedora) so I doubt it is an Apache version issue. | [reply] |
I can tell you that Mac OS X installs of modules can be a little daunting, but most of the time they are doable. It sounds like you are not very comfortable with compiling and the underlying OS and utilities listed above. you need to consider this, perl is not CPAN. CPAN is a wonderful stash of great modules (perl, XS, inline C, ...) that can be used to save huge amounts of development time, make hard problems seem simple, and generally reduce the amount _YOU_ need to code -- they can come at a cost. The cost to you the programmer is that you must learn more about how your OS, compiler, and perl itself works to use them sometimes. Most module developers that post to CPAN make every effort to make the install of their modules as painless as possible. Considering how many platforms perl runs on and then multiply that by the obscene amount of other variables on the install base of those systems -- they have to offload some of the work to you. Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, C, C++ whatever you end up using to code will only allow you to stay at a low level of expertise in your OS and other utilities for varying short points of time. In my opinion, perl makes up for the offloaded work easily ten fold -- but if you do not want to learn and cope with the speedbumps, there is absolutely nothing holding you back from PHP or Ruby whatever -- is a free world out there, use what you like and are comfortable with. Just do not underestimate the amount of time CPAN and perl can save you (even with the learning curve sometimes required) -- In this world time is the most valuable commodity.
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My problem can be solved by switching to PHP but the broader issue here is how Perl's potential is held back by all this. I've not doubt Perl's decline relative to PHP in the webdev sphere is due, in part, to its relative unusability re module compilation and dependency. This should be of concern to the Perl community.
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