cpan

Hi folks,

Please excuse me I'm a serious noob....

I'm running Mandrake 7.2 on Sparc with Perl 5.6.0.

I need at least 5.6.1 to use razor and spamassassin, but I'm having problems
with RPMs - there just doesn't seem to be a precompiled version of 5.6.1 for
Sparc anymore (well, one that works anyway) and compiling isn't going well
either.

However, I've heard of this thing called CPAN, which I'm led to beleive can
be used to up-grade PERL.

Can someone confirm this and perhaps provide some _simple_ instructions for
me?

If this is the wrong NG I apologise but ask that you point me to the right
one.

Thanks all

Stuart

"Stuart Carrison" <stuart--nospam--@carrison.co.uk.nospam> wrote in
message news:clrggv$cgl$1@titan.btinternet.com...
> Please excuse me I'm a serious noob....
>
> I'm running Mandrake 7.2 on Sparc with Perl 5.6.0.
>
> I need at least 5.6.1 to use razor and spamassassin, but I'm having
problems
> with RPMs - there just doesn't seem to be a precompiled version of
5.6.1 for
> Sparc anymore (well, one that works anyway) and compiling isn't going
well
> either.
>
> However, I've heard of this thing called CPAN,

www.cpan.org

> which I'm led to beleive can be used to up-grade PERL.

perl is the program, Perl is the language.  Not 'PERL'.

> Can someone confirm this and perhaps provide some _simple_
instructions for
> me?

CPAN is the "Comprehensive Perl Archive Network".  It is (primarily) a
collection of modules for use in developing Perl programs.  It is not
intended as a means to upgrade your local copy of perl.  It does,
however, maintain a list of known binary and source distributions. I
reccomend reading this: http://www.cpan.org/ports/index.html#linux to
see if one of the pointers or links there is helpful to you.

Paul Lalli

"Stuart Carrison" <stuart--nospam--@carrison.co.uk.nospam> wrote in
news:clrggv$cgl$1@titan.btinternet.com:

> Hi folks,
>
> Please excuse me I'm a serious noob....
>
> I'm running Mandrake 7.2 on Sparc with Perl 5.6.0.
>
> I need at least 5.6.1 to use razor and spamassassin, but I'm having
> problems with RPMs - there just doesn't seem to be a precompiled
> version of 5.6.1 for Sparc anymore (well, one that works anyway) and
> compiling isn't going well either.
>
> However, I've heard of this thing called CPAN, which I'm led to
> beleive can be used to up-grade PERL.

See http://faq.perl.org/perlfaq2.html, especially
http://faq.perl.org/perlfaq2.html#What_modules_and_ext

Sinan

Stuart Carrison <stuart--nospam--@carrison.co.uk.nospam> wrote:
>  I'm running Mandrake 7.2 on Sparc with Perl 5.6.0.
>
>  I need at least 5.6.1 to use razor and spamassassin, but I'm having
>  problems with RPMs - there just doesn't seem to be a precompiled
>  version of 5.6.1 for Sparc anymore (well, one that works anyway) and
>  compiling isn't going well either.

Your Mandrake version seems somewhat old.

Try running OpenBSD ( http://openbsd.org ) instead.  OpenBSD has had
Perl 5.8 since version 3.4 (over a year), has perl pre-installed, and
even has packages for SpamAssassin.

>  However, I've heard of this thing called CPAN, which I'm led to
>  beleive can be used to up-grade PERL.
>
>  Can someone confirm this and perhaps provide some _simple_
>  instructions for me?

Yes, CPAN can be used to upgrade your perl version (and occasionally
decides to upgrade it without being told).  Unfortunately in your case,
it does so by compiling a the new version of perl from source, which
would likely run into the same problem you're already having compiling
perl.

HTH,
Tim Hammerquist