Chuck wrote:
> Once I build a system and bring it to our defined baseline, I rarely use rpm
> from that point forward...I custom roll almost everything -- especially
> apache. (red hat's layout makes my skin crawl) When did CPAN become so bad?
> It was the defacto standard and source of truth for perl modules 10 years
> ago. I trust CPAN over any rpm provided by red hat. Maybe things have
> changed, it has been several years since I got down and dirty with perl
> modules...
It isn't that CPAN is bad - after all, that's where the packaged
verisions originate too. It is that module features and dependencies
change over time and you need a consistent snapshot to work together.
When you install an RPM package it keeps the version and dependencies in
the RPM database and won't make changes that break any dependencies.
When you install via CPAN it sort-of figures things out during the
install but only for the perl portions and doesn't update your RPM
database so a subsequent 'yum update' will happily overwrite your CPAN
installed modules with something much older (just newer than the
previous RPM). If some other module needed the newer features, things
are now mysteriously broken. The fact that you can get away with this
at all indicates how compatible how backwards-compatible they try to
keep things in perl, but once in a while - ikely in the long lifespan of
Centos - there are some changes that will break things.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com