Using Mojolicious commands in system CLI - perl

My app, Alambic, uses The Great Mojolicious framework, and defines commands that can be executed with e.g. $ script/alambic alambic init.
Now when I look at Joel Berger's Galileo and other great pieces of work, I find they have a system command that can be directly invoked in a shell, e.g. $ galileo init. I looked into the mojolicious doc but found nothing to do that for my app. Now I'm not even sure if it's Mojolicious or the Perl CPAN Build process that makes it possible.. Any hint would be greatly appreciated.

I'll provide the complete answer here as a complement to #simbabque 's comment.
So for a Mojolicious application, one has to make it installable (i.e. cpan-aware) in order to have the binaries copied to a directory in the path. More specifically for Alambic I had to:
Setup InstallablePaths (I decided to go for Module::Build), see the documentation for the module
Create a Build.PL file
Run the Module::Build sequence to build the module:
perl Build.PL
./Build manifest
./Build
./Build test
./Build install
During the install step, binaries are copied to a Perl-managed directory that is in the $PATH. After that step the alambic command was available as a command in my shell.
Note: For one to have her/his own commands available on the CLI, the Mojolicious application has to define one or more commands of course.

Related

Installing cpan or cpanm modules on a behind-firewall machine with no Internet connection

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

Is it possible to install perl prerequisites before distribution testing and how?

I try to build a Perl distribution for a home-made module, from the Module::Starter base. Every test pass on my machine, but when I upload it to CPAN to get some more universal tests from cpantesters.org, some test failed on other architectures or OS, but I can't understand why. I can see in test reports that some of my prerequisites are not installed before testing but I would like it to.
I've tried to list these dependencies into the Makefile.PL PREREQ_PM hash and then in the TEST_REQUIRES hash, but it didn't changed a lot of results.
Then, when I've removed the dependencies from my local machine and tried to install my module using Cpanm, it downloads dependencies first, test passed and install has been a success.
This is my first try for a module, so I think I am missing something, maybe I am too used of the Cpanm magic. Thanks for any help.
The problem is something different. Andreas' smoker very probably built the dependency App::Ack (which looks in the fail reports like being absent) successfully. But here come at least two problems:
When a distribution gets tested, then its dependencies may or may not be installed already. However, it's guaranteed that all dependent modules are made available through the PERL5LIB environment variable, so make test usually works (To be more specific, if the install Module command is used in the CPAN shell, then all dependencies are installed immediately. If the test Module command is used, then dependencies are only built, but not installed. The CPAN user can do the installation later using install_tested). So it may be that App::Ack is not installed here, just built. Especially this means that the ack script is not installed in the final location.
Even if it is installed, many smoke testers or users who have multiple perls installed in parallel use a non-standard directory for this perl. So ack wouldn't be installed in /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin, but in the bin directory belonging to this perl. This directory may or may not be in the user's PATH at all. So you cannot assume that can_run("ack") works here. A workaround here is to add $Config{scriptdir} temporarily to $ENV{PATH}. Another solution would be to use the App module instead of the script, if it's possible. Unfortunately it looks like ack can only be called as a script.
If you look at a sample fail report, then you can see that App::Ack was installed (it appears in the PREREQUISITES section both under requires and build_requires, you can also see which App::Ack version is installed in the "HAVE" column). You can also see the user's PATH (in the ENVIRONMENT section). And you may guess about the scriptdir for this perl, it's usually the same directory where the perl binary itself is installed, and the path to current perl is visible in $^X (under "Perl special variables").
If you want to reproduce the behavior, then you need to deinstall ack from your machine, build a custom perl using ./configure.gnu --prefix=/path/to/custom/perl-5.X.Y, and use this perl for tests.

How to make an installable Perl program with makefile/autoconf?

I have software written in Perl, now I want to release it and I want it to be an installation package like the other GNU software, which can be installed by typing:
./configure; make; make install
I noticed that in autoconf's package, most of the code is written in Perl and the Perl scripts are generated by running "make". That's exactly what I want to do. How would I go about doing that?
===
Added
Thank you for your nice answer! But what I wrote is not a module, it's actually a set of scripts which will do something in a pipe, the only thing I need to setup is the locations of some program I used in the Perl scripts. Is there any suggestion on this?
The process used by ExtUtils::MakeMaker and Module::Install is very similar.
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install
If you're set on using the specific command chain you posted, you can place the following in file configure:
#!/bin/sh
perl Makefile.PL
If you're not set on using the specific command chain you posted, there's also Module::Build.
perl Build.PL
./Build
./Build test
./Build install
I use Module::Build personally.
In the Makefile.am that's where your perl scripts reside, add the line
dist_bin_SCRIPTS = your_perl_program

How do I install a module and its dependencies in ActivePerl on Windows?

I want to send emails using gmail's smtp servers and perl. I am trying to install Email::Send::Gmail, but it is not clear to me what are the steps to install it. It seems that it depends on other modules that I do not have installed.
This is partially dependent on which distribution of Perl you're using.
ActivePerl includes a utility called PPM (Perl Package Manager) for installing modules. It handles dependency resolution automatically. PPM is particularly nice for installing XS modules on Windows where a compiler isn't typically available. The downside to PPM is that it some CPAN modules aren't available (probably because they fail ActiveState's automated build process). You can run PPM from either the start menu or by typing ppm at a command prompt.
A more general option is to use the interactive CPAN shell. Note that you must have a compiler to install XS modules using this method. You can access the cpan shell by typing cpan at a command prompt.
The brute-force approach of last resort is to download tarballs from CPAN and manually install them one at a time. When an install aborts due to unsatisfied dependencies download and install them then go back to the first module and try again.
Type:
cpan Email::Send::Gmail
… at the command prompt.
It's probably a good idea to set up local::lib first.
Or see the Perl Foundation Wiki on installing CPAN modules or the same but without root access.
Or see the CPAN guide to installing modules.
If you are using ActivePerl, try the PPM (Perl Package Manager) tool that comes with ActivePerl first. When you tell it to install a module, it should handle all of the dependencies for you.
Note the dependency tree for Email::Send::Gmail. Some of those modules require additional installation of third party software, most notably OpenSSL, which cpan won't do for you.
You can probably install it with:
perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Email-Send-Gmail
Hope it helps,
/Klaus
If you can, CPAN. (ha! It rhymes ... what a crime. Oops, did it again! When will this end... :p) It's essentially the way to install modules for your system. It automatically detects dependencies, downloads, installs, and tests them all for you, and backs out if ever a build or test fails. It's a fantastic and reliable way of installing modules. This works great if you're using essentially any Perl distribution besides ActiveState's distribution, including Strawberry Perl. Generally, this is done with
cpan Module::Name
or, in an interactive mode,
$ cpan
cpan > install Module::Name
If you're using ActiveState Perl, then you probably want to use ActiveState's PPM (Perl Package Manager). It's similar to CPAN, except everything comes prebuilt for ActiveState Perl. ActiveState has a document on how to use their Perl Package Manager on their website, including a graphical example.
If the easy options fail, you are not out of luck. There's some more complex, but manual methods you can do to still install the module.
Most modules that you can download will have within them a bit of metadata in a .yaml file; this will help you figure out whether or not you have all your dependencies. CPAN and PPM automatically resolve and install all your dependencies, but doing it manually will not, leaving that task up to you.
Assuming you have all your dependencies, and you need to install it manually, look for one of two files: Makefile.PL or Build.PL. If you have a Makefile.PL, cd to the directory you extraced the module within a command prompt, and type:
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install
You will need a 'make' program on your system. If it's ActiveState Perl, you may need to install the module manually (see a paragraph or two down.)
If it happens to have a Build.PL, then you need to do a slightly different set of steps:
perl Build.PL
Build
Build test
Build install
(Of course, you may want to consider not installing if make/Build test fails, but that's up to you.)
As a final alternative, if your module has no xs files (ie, code that needs to be compiled on install), and all dependencies are met, you can simply move the files in the lib folder to your perl installation's site\lib folder. If you're interested in just using it for one project, you can add a PERL5LIB environmental variable, pointing to a new, custom library directory (eg, /my/project/lib) and then before running your tool, make sure the environment is set up.
As a followup, see PerlFaq8 - How do I install a module from CPAN.
Also, see PerlFaq8 - How do I keep my own module/library directory?.
Mixing installation methods is asking for heartache and headaches you don't need.
Don't use CPAN with Active Perl. Use PPM.*
PPM download sources can be found at Randy Kobes' site.
If you can't find a PPM of a module you need, you can build your own PPMs easily with Mr. Kobes make_ppm.
You can download a distribution and simply run make_ppm to build a PPM, but I prefer to do the a more "normal" build process:
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make_ppm
*If you install your files outside of c:/perl/site/* then it's OK to use CPAN. Just don't co-mingle CPAN shell modules with PPM modules.

What is a quick way to run a single script to automatically install missing modules using only Perl core?

I inherited a project which is supposed to be able to be deployed to other servers. This project has a number of simple module dependencies which however might not be present on all target machines.
As such I'd like to be able to run a single command line script that checks which Perl modules are installed and tries to automatically install missing ones via CPAN.
Since this should be very basic (i.e. needing to install stuff to run the module installer would defeat the point) said script should only use Perl 5.8.8 core modules.
Does something like that exist already or would i need to write it myself?
Creating a Bundle package is one possible answer.
You can then look at something like CPAN::Shell (see CPAN module) to automate the process.
/I3az/
Update re: brian's comment about Task:: - Here are some pertinent links:
Writing a CPAN Task (using Module::Install)
"Task:: or Bundle::"? (Perlmonks)
Use Module::Install, it will be bundled with your module/program. You can use "auto_install" command to automatically install dependencies.