From: Mike Stok <mike@...>
Date: 2002-09-06T03:08:35+09:00
Subject: Re: suggestions to the Ruby community

In article <02b301c254f4$c270c900$f51032d2@nosedog>, Gavin Sinclair wrote:
> Allow me to ask one question about this.  Is there a nice client-based access
> to CPAN?  Like a command-line program that just lists available packages and
> installs the ones you want?  I never got into Perl for long enough to find out;
> my CPAN experience was entirely web-based.

Yes,

the CPAN module has a command line shell, and just typing 

  install SOAP::Lite

for example will fetch and build SOAP::LIte and any dependencies which
are missing from your machine.

It also allows you to search for modules and authors so you can look
for any modules containing ruby and examine their readme e.g.

[mike@ratdog mike]$ perl -MCPAN -e shell

cpan shell -- CPAN exploration and modules installation (v1.63)
ReadLine support enabled

cpan> help

Display Information
 command  argument          description
 a,b,d,m  WORD or /REGEXP/  about authors, bundles, distributions, modules
 i        WORD or /REGEXP/  about anything of above
 r        NONE              reinstall recommendations
 ls       AUTHOR            about files in the author's directory

Download, Test, Make, Install...
 get                        download
 make                       make (implies get)
 test      MODULES,         make test (implies make)
 install   DISTS, BUNDLES   make install (implies test)
 clean                      make clean
 look                       open subshell in these dists' directories
 readme                     display these dists' README files

Other
 h,?           display this menu       ! perl-code   eval a perl command
 o conf [opt]  set and query options   q             quit the cpan shell
 reload cpan   load CPAN.pm again      reload index  load newer indices
 autobundle    Snapshot                force cmd     unconditionally do cmd

cpan> m /ruby/

[snip getting up-to-date module list info...]

Module          HTML::ERuby     (I/IK/IKEBE/HTML-ERuby-0.02.tar.gz)
Module          Inline::Ruby    (N/NE/NEILW/Inline-Ruby-0.02.tar.gz)
Module          Ruby            (J/JG/JGOFF/parrot-0.0.8.1.tgz)
3 items found

cpan> readme Inline::Ruby

[ ... displays module's readme file, fetched from repository ...]

Regards,

Mike

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