[Cialug] Tasks for learning shell scripting

[Josh More]

As others have pointed out, using CPAN means choosing between using the native update mechanism and CPAN itself.  It's also a repository full of conflicts, abandoned projects and poorly-tested systems.  

Yes, it can be used with great effect, but the more you use it, the more you tend to pull in other libraries.  At some point in the future an update will invariably cause a problem.  In my experience, you have to spend the time somewhere.  You can spend it writing your own code, verifying third party code, packaging third party code, or resolving unanticipated problems.

What's annoying is that this could be solved by simply having a CPAN-stable that is reviewed by skilled people and verified as stable, secure and packageable by the common systems.  Too bad it doesn't exist.


-Josh More, CISSP, GIAC-GSLC, GIAC-GCIH, RHCE, NCLP
morej at alliancetechnologies.net
515-245-7701

________________________________________
From: cialug-bounces at cialug.org [cialug-bounces at cialug.org] on behalf of Daniel A. Ramaley [daniel.ramaley at drake.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2010 10:46
To: Central Iowa Linux Users Group
Subject: Re: [Cialug] Tasks for learning shell scripting

On 2010-09-29 at 10:34:34, Josh More wrote:
>More seriously, Perl's biggest drawback is CPAN.

Is "drawback" really the word you were looking for?

I think Perl's biggest strength is CPAN, actually. That's what keeps me
programming in Perl and not some other language. For almost anything
that i don't feel like coding myself, there's a module to do it for me.
And for the few modules i want to use that aren't available as a Debian
package, CPAN makes it trivial to install them and keep them updated.

__
Daniel A. Ramaley
Network Engineer 2

Dial Center 118, Drake University
2407 Carpenter Ave / Des Moines IA 50311 USA
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E-mail: daniel.ramaley at drake.edu
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