I'm working with an application that downloads its own copy of Perl from a 3rd party website as a sort of bootstrap. I'd like to get a different copy from a more trusted source like CPAN, but I can't find any precompiled copies of Perl (only full source distributions) and I don't know how to build from source. Is there anywhere I can get a precompiled copy?
Another problem is that I don't know for sure that this download is just "a compiled copy of Perl". I'm assuming that, but I don't know what it's supposed to look like.
It comes in a .tar.gz which really only has two directories populated:
/bin (contains perl, cpan, perldoc, enc2xs, etc)
/lib/5.16.3 (contains subdirectories for various CPAN modules)
So to summarize: 1) Is this what Perl looks like when it is compiled? 2) Where can I get a pre-compiled version of Perl for my OS (RHEL 7), or if this isn't possible, how can I best generate a compiled version?
PS: For those who are curious, this is the copy of Perl that is downloaded by Miyagawa's Heroku Perl buildpack (https://github.com/miyagawa/heroku-buildpack-perl), which I am using for a project. He downloads copies of Perl stored on a website cache.bulknews.net, which might just be his own hosting, not sure.
I don't know how to build from source
This is documented in INSTALL in the distribution.
It's quite simple on a unix system:
cd /tmp
wget https://cpan.metacpan.org/authors/id/S/SH/SHAY/perl-5.26.1.tar.bz2
tar xvjf perl-5.26.1.tar.bz2
cd perl-5.26.1
sh Configure -des -Dusethreads -Dprefix='/some/dir'
make
make test
make install
You might also want to pass -Duserelocatableinc to make the install relocatable.
You can also use perlbrew or plenv to assist you with installing perl and managing multiple installs of perl.
Related
Because i have a long series of comments with #ikegami, I cleaning up the question, in a hope it will be more understandable. Unfortunately, english isn't my "main" language. :(
Let say, having an environment where:
no development tools are installed (no make, nor gcc or like)
perl is installed with its core packages, nothing more
no outgoing network access is allowed - e.g. the user couldn't use curl nor cpan to download/install perl dependencies
the user even doesn't have admin (root) rights
but want install and evaluate some perl based web-app, let call it as MyApp
The MyApp
doesn't uses any XS-based module. (at least, I hope - in the development me using plenv and cpanm, so never checked the installed dependencies in depth)
it is an pure PSGI app, the simple plackup app.psgi works OK
the app uses some data-files which should be included in the "deployment".
The main question is: how to prepare the MyApp, and the all used CPAN-modules, to be easily installed in such restricted environment?
The goal is:
i don't need save my efforts and my time
but i want save the user's time and want minimize the needed actions on his side, so the installation (deployment) should be simple-as-possible.
E.g. how to get an running web-app to the user's machine with minimum possible (his) steps.
- the simplest thing is could be something as:
- copy one file (zip, or tarbal)
- unpack it
- from the terminal execute some run.pl in the unpacked directory.
To get the above simple installation, my idea was the following:
1.) Create an tarball, and after the unpacking will contain 3 folders and 1 perl-script, let say:
myapp_repo/
myapp_repo/distlib #will contain all MyApp's perl modules also ALL used CPAN modules and their dependecies
myapp_repo/datafiles #will contain app-specific data files and such
myapp_repo/install.pl
myall_repo/lib #will contain modules directly used by the `install.pl`
2.) I will develop an install.pl script, and it will be used as the installer-tool, like
perl install.pl new /path/to/app_root
and it will (should):
create the all needed directories under the /path/to/app_root (especially the lib where the will install the perl modules)
will call "local" cpanm internally (from the myapp_repo/lib) to install the app's perl modules and their CPAN dependencies using only distribution files from the distlib.
will generate and install the needed runtime script and the app.psgi into the /path/to/app_root/bin
will install the needed data-files for the app.
3.) So, after this the user should be able to simply run:
/path/to/app_root/bin/plackup /path/to/app_root/bin/app.psgi
In short, the user should use:
the system-wide perl and the system-wide perl-core modules
and any other
runtime perl-scripts (like plackup)
and the required CPAN-modules
should be installed to an self-contained directory tree using only files (no net-access).
E.g. the install.pl should somewhat call internally the cpanm to achieve (as equivalent) for the following cpanm command
cpanm --mirror file://path/to/myapp_repo/distlib --mirror-only My::App
which, should install My::App and all dependencies without network access using only the files from the myapp_repo/distlib
Some questions:
Is possible to use cpanm (called as an locally installed module) without the make?
For creating the myapp_repo/distlib, me thinking about using Pinto. Is it the right tool for achieve the above?
forgot me something? or with other words:
Is the above an viable (read: working) way?
are are any other tools, which i could/should to use for simplifying the creation of such distribution tarball?
#ikegami suggesting some method:
- "install everything" in one fresh-directory on my machine
- transfer this self-contained directory to the target machine
It sound very good, because this directory could contain all the needed app-specific data-files too, unfortunately, I don't understand the details how his solution should be done.
The FatPacked solution looks interesting too - need learn about it.
Don't write your own make or installer. Just copy it make from a different machine (which is basically what apt/yum/etc do anyway, and which you'd have to do even if you wrote your own). You'd be able to use cpan in 5 minutes!
Also, that should allow you to install gcc if you need it (e.g. to install an XS module), although it doesn't sound like you do. If you do install gcc, I'd install my own perl to avoid having to deal with PERL5LIB.
Tools such as minicpan will allow you to install any module from CPAN without internet access. Of course, you can keep using the command you are already using it if mirrors the packages you need.
The above explains how to simply and quickly setup a machine so it can use cpan and thus install any module easily.
If you just want to install a specific module and its dependencies, you can completely avoid using cpan on the target machine. First, you need a fresh install of Perl (preferable of the same version as the one on the target system). Then, simply install the module to a fresh dir on your machine, and transfer that dir to the target machine. That's it; nothing else needs to be done. This even works for XS modules if the two machine are similar enough.
This is what ppm (ActiveState's Perl package manager) does.
Unfortunately, while this solution is almost as simple as the one above, it's not nearly as flexible, it doesn't run the test suite of the modules being installed, etc. It does have the advantage of not requiring the transfer of any binary (if you're not installing any XS modules).
I have my own personal perl instance, using perlbrew and a local cpan instance. I put in a bit of effort to get cpan to work for my local install. I've configured code and tested it using this perl.
I now want to ensure anyone on the computer can use the perl code I wrote, meaning ensuring that the cpan modules I used are available to all, even those that can't access my home directory.
Unfortunately, I can't configure and use cpan as root user. There are a few reasons why this would be difficult, but the biggest is that I am using my personal cert to authenticate myself as part of connecting to the CPAN repo (needed due to the configuration of the system). I don't want to make my cert available to everyone for connecting to CPAN.
I'm wondering if, instead of fixing the root cpan instance and trying to hunt down all the modules I'm using with cpan, I can simply copy the modules I already have. I'm running with the same perl version and on the same architecture, so the modules in my personal home directory should be the right ones.
The problem is that perllocal.pod seems to hard code locations relative to where my instal was done, so a simply copy paste is not enough. Is there another easy way, possible a perl utility, to copy my local CPAN modules and perl lib directory over to the root perl lib directory?
Probably, but why don't you just give them permission to your perlbrew-installed perl. Then just continue to use #!/home/ikegami/usr/perlbrew/perls/5.22.0t/bin/perl or whatever.
If you don't know exactly what you have installed, you could have a look at Dist::Surveyor
If you already know what all of your deps are, you can list them in a cpanfile and then take a snapshot with Carton and use the generated cpanfile.snapshot to install the correct versions in the new location
you can clone the whole CPAN to your server for everyone to install
minicpan -l ~/CPAN -r http://ppm.activestate.com/CPAN/ [-f]
I've already read related threads like these, but they do not fully capture our situation.
This is on a firewalled machine. No net access. We can ftp files to folders and install modules from there.
We have CHMOD 777 for our users on some folders. We can install Perl modules if we locally build them by downloading the relevant .pm files. But when these files cannot install, we do not have any cpan or cpanm.
I'd like to install, for example, HTML::Restrict. If I do the download + install thing, the Restrict.pm gives me this error:
/lib/HTML/Restrict.PM:328: Unknown command paragraph "=encoding UTF-8"
Reading a bit online suggests that this could be an old Perl problem. We use 5.8.x. Our own dev machines have the luxury of 5.16.x and internet access so installing module is a cinch. Anyway, one of my older machines also has 5.8.x, and installing the module via cpanminus worked there (with internet).
So, question: is it possible to install "cpanminus" (cpanm) through FTP, then upload specific module files to the server through FTP too, and then go into shell and install modules via cpanm by pointing it to respective .pm files?
Thank you for any pointers.
You should take a look at perldoc perlmodinstall which goes into detail about how to install a module from its distribution. It follows what should be a familiar incantation
Decompress
Unpack
Build
Test
Install
Assuming you're on a Linux system, this commonly takes take the form of
gzip -d My-Module-Distribution.tar.gz
tar -xof My-Module-Distribution.tar
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install
But after the Unpack stage you will often find a README file or other text file that will describe any unusual steps to be taken
Clearly some of these steps can be combined. For instance, most people will probably want to use
tar -xvfz My-Module-Distribution.tar.gz
to avoid having to invoke gzip separately. Likewise, the make system will force a build phase as a prerequisite if you use just
make test
without the preceding make
The linked document has a lot to say about how to install on other platforms, should you not be running a Linux variant
I still don't really understand your thinking, but you can get a stand-alone version of cpanm using curl. For instance
curl -sS --location https://cpanmin.us/ --output cpanm
then you should be able to just copy it to your target machine, put it on your PATH, and do
cpanm HTML-Restrict-2.2.2.tar.gz
but I doubt if you will find any change to the specific errors you are getting
Correct me if i'm wrong, but XS and Dynaloader based modules are those who use C/C++ shared objects (.so) and which are not PP (Pure Perl)?
Now assuming I have a machine, which does not have web-connectivity whatsoever (Solaris 10) and I want, for instance, to install Crypt::OpenSSL::AES (XS based module), copying the AES.pm file to the relevant path in #INC wont do any good since my system does not have libssl installed.
My second and most important question is, how do I install such modules when I don't have CPAN?
my approach is:
first get libssl for my platform, compile it, but where should I put that shard object file so that perl can find it?
when I have libssl installed and compiled and located where it should be, is it enough now to just copy the AES.pm to the relevant path in #INC, or do I need to configure / make it?
CPAN itself is part of the base perl install. It will always be available.
If you can't use the cpan shell to talk to the internet and fetch modules, you can at least grab the tarball from the CPAN website, put it on the target machine, untar it, then run
$ cpan .
from inside the unpacked directory. This will run the CPAN installer for that distribution. Of course if it finds missing dependencies, you'll have to fetch those yourself recursively using the same technique.
If you don't have root access I would install in ${HOME}/lib. Just make sure that the linker can find it, either the directory should be in you LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable, or better point EU::MM to the library and include files.
No, the module also have a part in C which has to be compiled.
To install
Download the distribution tarball: http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/T/TT/TTAR/Crypt-OpenSSL-AES-0.02.tar.gz
Then follow the steps in the README file under INSTALLATION
perl Makefile.PL INC="-I $HOME/include" LIBS="-L $HOME/lib"
make
make test
make install
This will make sure that the module is correctly build, tested and installed.
I would like to install several different versions of perl in my home directory. I tried using App::perlbrew, but XS modules from one version were causing segfaults in the other version. Is there any way to install multiple versions of perl and have them automatically keep their XS modules separate?
You can install each perl completely separate from any other perl installation. It's binaries and modules will be completely separate from each other. Essentially, when you install each perl you give it its own prefix:
$ ./Configure -des -Dprefix=/usr/local/perls/perl-5.12.1
Everything is installed under that prefix, and all of the programs in the bin/ will use that particular perl. I go into this in more depth in Effective Perl Programming.
From there, I make symlinks in my ~/bin to each of those programs and attach the version number to it, so I have ~/perl5.12.1, perldoc5.12.1, and so on. I don't ever have to choose to have a version in the way that perlbrew wants you to. I write more about this in Make links to per-version tools. in the Effective Perler blog.
You might be able to use local::lib for this, but it's really designed for you to work with one version of Perl and use one personal library directory. You can tell it to use another directory, but at that point it's really not saving you anything over the traditional way.