Re: [MacPerl] libwww-perl-5.41 now available

[Chris Nandor <pudge@pobox.com>]

At 21.05 -0500 1998.12.21, Vicki Brown wrote:
>> The two acceptable formats on PAUSE are gzip and zip,
>
>and both of these are readily unpackable on a Mac if one has StuffIt
>Expander enhanced with DropStuff w/ EE or Stuffit Deluxe.

Both are pay products (DropStuff w/ EE is shareware).  There are free ones,
but they are not as easy to use.  Well, MacGzip is not bad, but still a bit
more complicated and more dangerous.  suntar is significantly less nice to
use.

My personal opinion is that by making modules everyone is recommended to
have and distributing it in only .tar.gz format, it forces them to get used
to tar and gzip (and newline issues, since they are stored in the tar files
with Unix newlines), which helps alleviate the problem in the long run.  >:)


>> 4) My ISP has good connectivity and doesn't have much downtime.  So
>> the stuff is easily available.  There's no real advantage.
>
>But not easily findable.  The centralized aspect of the CPAN is what's
>important. That and the fact that it is mirrored world-wide, so someone in
>Germany gets a German mirror.  Pobox is one ISP, in the States, and not
>part of the CPAN.  I personally see a real advantage to MacPerl
>module/script writers/porters getting their stuff into the CPAN.

  [Note: pobox is not an ISP, in the common sense.]


>Possibly no one else will agree with me, but then, I'm not unused to that
>:-)

No, I agree with you and Paul.  CPAN has inherent problems for Mac users.
But it does good things, like giving us one central place with lots of
mirrors, that everyone knows about, and makes things searchable, too (to a
limited and hopefully expanding sense).  And CPAN uploads get on TPI News
every day, too, so there is that.

We do need better ways of doing things, and I think Paul realizes his way
is not optimum, but I think you'll agree that CPAN is not, either (for Mac
users).

One thing I want to do is put out Compress::Zlib for MacPerl, and write a
droplet to automatically unpack tar.gz archives with it and Archive::Tar
(which I believe Paul did some work on).  I have it working here locally
pretty well, and the only tests Compress::Zlib fails are weird ones (from
what I can tell).

We also need a nice PerlInstall program, and Matthias has started one that
I use regularly.

So maybe we using Compress::Zlib and Archive::Tar and PerlInstall, we can
have a nice, automated install process for Mac users.  Maybe even combine
it with LWP and download stuff right from CPAN.  No need for CPAN.pm: bring
up a dialog box, type in the module name, and let MacPerl do the work.  I
have most of the pieces of code needed to do this now (but not all -- the
biggest problem is the makefile stuff, which is really a pain in the neck).

Once we have something like this working, anyway, then maybe Paul's
aversion to CPAN will be lessened.  :)

--
Chris Nandor          mailto:pudge@pobox.com         http://pudge.net/
%PGPKey = ('B76E72AD', [1024, '0824090B CE73CA10  1FF77F13 8180B6B6'])