* Weaver <wea...@riseup.net> [22-07/04=Mo 00:43 -0700]: > ... your day going?
Hairier than Gene Heskett's nostrils, because "up"grading Perl from 5.8.8 to 5.34.1 had a fine `make test`, then installed a CPAN that's so broken it abends before it finishes its own Configure, thereby making it impossible to upgrade anything else, and leaving the new Perl unrunnable because compiled modules keep reporting missing symbols and abending, because they need to be recompiled, which is what CPAN is *for*, and of course it can't do that, because it too depends on compiled modules that cause it to abend before it can recompile them. I have the old Perl in /usr/bin with its old CPAN, which might run, but if I try it and *THAT* breaks, suddenly I no longer have any working Perl. So I'm reading source code to try to figure out what needs to be done and how to do it by hand, interleaved with reading stuff like https://perl-begin.org/topics/cpan/life-with-cpan/ that warns me not to follow CPAN's *own* recommendations about what to install ... not sure why not yet ... but it seems like that documentation believes the latest version of CPAN is safe from the bugs it's warning against ... but of course the latest version is the one that abends before it even gets out of bed. Somebody needs to reimplement CPAN in Bash just so we can bootstrap a totally broken Perl without needing to run out and buy a new computer. I mean, how hard can it be (assuming you grok what CPAN actually *does*, which I don't yet, and know Bash, which I know just enough of to make Greg Wooledge hate me)? Never mind reading the Configure hash, just parameterize the script with shell variables the user can hand-edit: an array of mirrors, an array of modules to build, etc. Make that shell script so simple it's its own documentation. Hmm ... make it idempotent, by having it know how to check whether a module is up-to-date and NOP if so. That way, modules can be added to the array until the result has updated enough modules that CPAN itself can run, after which it can get out of bed and go to work. Because this is probably the best solution I will actually probably end up doing it myself unless somebody who has already done it can point me to a published script. It's so obvious that it's probably been done this way a dozen times over the decades, but the reason it's not easily findable (I did Google 'reimplement cpan in bash', finding nothing useful) is the same reason Perl documentation is in a general state of desuetude. I couldn't even find a decent Perl mailing list to lurk on; I'm lurking on perl-beginners, but there's been nothing there since I subscribed but some Mordorsoft stuff. For extra fun, I have to interrupt soon because I *JUST* found out that my physician is retiring EIGHT DAYS from today, I'm ADHD and have already run out of methylphenidate, and that physician has been my only source; the only one I know in the Seattle area who isn't intimidated by a medically-competent client or offended that I consider my own body to be my property and not that of the physicians' guild. So, how's ... -- ... your day going? perl -le"print unpack '%C*',MENGARINI"
