July 2010 Archives

Perl 12

Many people are saying that Perl 5 should be renamed. I disagree. Perl is Perl. That's what makes it great. However, I agree that the 5.x version naming is a burden for people who want to advocate the modern relevance of Perl. So, why don't we just drop the "5."?

Perl 12. The current version of Perl is 12.1. That looks right to me. It just fits. Perl 12.x (and 14.x, etc...) just makes more sense because it conveys that Perl is mature (it is) and it has a healthy schedule of stable major releases (it does.)

This idea is not unprecedented.

Is it Solaris 5 or 1…

cpanm --makepl_args ?

As a follow-up to one of issues I raised in Installing Deviant OpenSSL XS Modules, I sought out to determine how difficult it would be pass makepl_args (arguments for Makefile.PL) to cpanminus.

Here is what I came up with.

--- bin/cpanm.orig	2010-07-08 11:33:53.000000000 -0500
+++ bin/cpanm	2010-07-08 12:24:27.000000000 -0500
@@ -357,6 +357,7…

Installing Deviant OpenSSL XS Modules

Installing XS modules that link to OpenSSL can be tricky if you don't have OpenSSL installed in the normal place. I'm using Solaris 10, and I have OpenSSL installed in /usr/sfw.

I was having a problem getting Crypt::OpenSSL::Random, Crypt::OpenSSL::RSA, Crypt::OpenSSL::DSA and Crypt::OpenSSL::Bignum to install.

~> /usr/bin/perl Makefile.PL
Checking if your kit is complete...
Looks good
Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lssl
Note (probably harmless): No library found for -lcrypto
Writing …

Using App::cpanminus and PerlGcc to Install CPAN Modules on Solaris 10

If you have had the [dis]pleasure of deploying perl applications on Solaris, you probably have scores of tricks up your sleeve for installing pesky Perl modules. I find it necessary that application installations be scripted so I try to avoid anything that requires manual intervention.

Some modules on the CPAN will only install if you use gcc. Building CPAN Perl modules on Solaris 10 tells you how to use perlgcc to accomplish this. Pretty neat. I, admittedly, didn't know about perlgcc until today…

About Jesse Thompson

user-pic I blog about Perl.