chromatic/modern_perl_book — Issue #172: Two questions about the Cpan section
Author: tomeliaz
Created: 2011-10-29 01:22:27+00:00
State: open

In the cpan section (I clipped a bit below) I have two questions.

1- You say "A newer alternative is also available…". I think you are talking about cpanm, which you then talk about in 2.5.1. That reads oddly to me. Could you simply name it in that sentence: "A newer alternative, cpanm, is also available".

2- I think the cpan example is a little confusing because you show people how to enter the client, and how to install a module, but both from the command line. I was expecting you to show install Modern::Perl once you entered the client (though I can understand why you showed the 1-liner for installing with cpan from the $.

Perhaps it would be clearer to add one more example:

$ cpan

To install a distribution:

cpan> install Modern::Perl

And to install a distribution directly from the command line:

$ cpan Modern::Perl:

[snip of the paragraph in the original text]
"Modern Perl installations include two clients to connect to, search, download, build, test, and install CPAN distributions, CPAN.pm and CPANPLUS. A newer alternative is also available, though it is not part of the core distribution. For the most part, each of these clients is equivalent for basic installation. This book recommends the use of CPAN.pm solely due to its ubiquity. With a recent version (as of this writing, 1.9800 is the latest stable release), module installation is reasonably easy. Start the client with:
$ cpan
To install a distribution:
$ cpan Modern::Perl"