pacman and CPAN, CTAN and CRAN

dp · 2004-11-21 16:02:40

for perl, latex and R, there are native package-"managers" around (the cpan, ctan and cran repositories)

we have now some perl modules in the pacman repos that are as well available over cpan

for now i used only 1 latex enhancement (the DIN letter) and 4 R modules --- but i never liked having files in my system, that are not known to pacman

what is possible now is making pkgs for any R or latex-module and this way make pacman know about the files

as i needed some modules for R that had a _[censored]_ dependency chain, i did not make pacman pkgs but used the R builtin feature to install the additional modules

for e.g. using mplay (the mplayer frontend for the console), i as well used cpan to install the needed dependences

thinking about it, i was asking me, if it is possible to make somehow an integration of CPAN, CTAN and CRAN repositories and pacman ... so that there is no need to make separate pkgs for perl-, latex and R-modules but use directly the native repos in pacman

what do you think?

ravster · 2004-11-21 18:36:38

I think its a good idea(but since I don't even know how to code anything, don't mind me ). This way it might be possible to uninstall perl modules, since the only reason I don't use CPAN already is since it doesn't seem to have uninstall capabilities.

dp · 2004-11-21 19:37:46

ravster wrote:

I think its a good idea(but since I don't even know how to code anything, don't mind me ). This way it might be possible to uninstall perl modules, since the only reason I don't use CPAN already is since it doesn't seem to have uninstall capabilities.

yes, this is another advantage that would come with it ... pacman would add very usefull options to C?AN systems, so that maybe other distros would have to reconsider their systems as well ;-)

about the coding i myself never did something big in C (i'm mainly java coder), but had some thoughts about the architecture

one way:
---------
- write some script that would fetch the whole C?AN modules, pack them and make somewhere a repository of it ... generating the correct info-files on the way

second way:
--------------
- pacman itself would know how to use C?AN systems and would then work as a wrapper to them

there are for sure other alternatives that are better, but i'm too tired atm to think about them ;-)

BlueRaven · 2004-11-23 13:27:34

Gentoo provides a perl script, called g-cpan.pl, allowing to install Perl modules from CPAN and generating the proper ebuild on the fly, thus making the installed files known to Portage.
Could it be a starting point?

dp · 2004-11-25 20:23:55

BlueRaven wrote:

Gentoo provides a perl script, called g-cpan.pl, allowing to install Perl modules from CPAN and generating the proper ebuild on the fly, thus making the installed files known to Portage.
Could it be a starting point?

yes, something like this would be cool ... only addition to gentoo: pacman should know what files belong to what pkg

neotuli · 2004-12-06 03:43:55

Actually, I was thinking about this recently too, and somehow I think making pacman a wrapper would be easiest, or actually, doesn't cpan just depcheck, download, then run make, make test, make install? If my thinking is correct, then why even bother with CPAN, let's just make a massive amount of PKGBUILDS and packages.

EDIT: for that matter, I just checked, its really really simple to do this

here's a generic-ized example, just plug in a module name, deps, md5's, version, oh and a proper url of course

pkgname=
pkgver=
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc=""
url="http://cpan.org"
license=""
depends=('perl')
makedepends=()
conflicts=()
replaces=()
backup=()
install=
source=(http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/A/AS/ASCOPE/$pkgname-$pkgver.tar.gz)
md5sums=()

build() {
  cd $startdir/src/$pkgname-$pkgver
  perl Makefile.PL
  make || return 1
#  make test || return 1    #uncomment if you want it to be EXACTLY like CPAN
  make DESTDIR=$startdir/pkg install
}

:idea: EDIT AGAIN: why dont we rip apart cpan, figure out how it gets deps, the create a script that generates just such pkgbuilds for everything based on this info, builds them in the correct order, and installs them!! Basically make a CPAN replacement for our own purposes.

Xyne · 2009-01-06 17:55:45

I'm bringing this thread back from oblivion because it's a good idea. It would be nice if we could get some people together to create packaging tools for the C?ANs.

*note to self: investigate how to do this for CPAN*

edit
I'm working on a CPAN dependency parser right now.

Last edited by Xyne (2009-01-06 18:43:29)

Xyne · 2009-01-07 11:04:17

Ok, I ended up writing a CPAN packager: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=62500

Arch Linux

#1 2004-11-21 16:02:40

pacman and CPAN, CTAN and CRAN

#2 2004-11-21 18:36:38

Re: pacman and CPAN, CTAN and CRAN

#3 2004-11-21 19:37:46

Re: pacman and CPAN, CTAN and CRAN

#4 2004-11-23 13:27:34

Re: pacman and CPAN, CTAN and CRAN

#5 2004-11-25 20:23:55

Re: pacman and CPAN, CTAN and CRAN

#6 2004-12-06 03:43:55

Re: pacman and CPAN, CTAN and CRAN

#7 2009-01-06 17:55:45

Re: pacman and CPAN, CTAN and CRAN

#8 2009-01-07 11:04:17

Re: pacman and CPAN, CTAN and CRAN

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