AS repositories - so many, others missing, why?!

[Fourth Monkey]

I've recently had to reinstall ActiveState Perl on a Win NT 4 PC and
am not able to duplicate the set of packages I had before (ver. 561),
using PPM, for either version 561 or 580! What I specifically noticed
is that for both vers., PPM insists on installing an older ("require
5.001;" -vs- "use 5.004;"), broken version of the XBase.pm package! I
scouted around and found 8 different ActiveState package repositories,
some for 5.6, some for 5.8, some for 5.005(?) along with some non-AS
ones:

http://www.activestate.com/PPMpackages/5.6/
http://ppm.activestate.com/PPMPackages/5.6plus/
http://ppm.activestate.com/PPMPackages/zips/6xx-builds-only/
http://www.activestate.com/ppmpackages/5.8-windows/
http://ppm.activestate.com/PPMPackages/zips/8xx-builds-only/Windows/
http://ppm.ActiveState.com/cgibin/PPM/ppmserver.pl?urn:/PPMServer
http://www.activestate.com/PPMpackages/5.005
http://www.activestate.com/PPMpackages/5.005/x86

http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/ppms/
http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/ppms/x86/
http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/ppmpackages
http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/cgi-bin/ppmserver?urn:/PPMServer
http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/cgi-bin/ppmserver?urn:/PPMServer58

http://www.xmlproj.com/PPM/ (dead)

I think there were more as of late 2002 but I don't seem to have saved
them so I can't be sure.

I realize that A.S. "updated" their PPM system and thus had to change
the "location" of the most recent repository while also allowing
access to older ones so older installations would still work. But that
doesn't answer why I can no longer install all the packages I had
before (even though I'm not using the latest Perl) or why some
packages have degraded in version to ones that don't work as well.

If anyone can add to the above list I would appreciate that, perhaps
that's all I need to make my install work like it did before.

-Monkey

 

[Randy Kobes]

I've recently had to reinstall ActiveState Perl on a Win NT 4 PC and
am not able to duplicate the set of packages I had before (ver. 561),
using PPM, for either version 561 or 580! What I specifically noticed
is that for both vers., PPM insists on installing an older ("require
5.001;" -vs- "use 5.004;"), broken version of the XBase.pm package! I
scouted around and found 8 different ActiveState package repositories,
some for 5.6, some for 5.8, some for 5.005(?) along with some non-AS
ones: [ .. ]
I think there were more as of late 2002 but I don't seem to have saved
them so I can't be sure.

I realize that A.S. "updated" their PPM system and thus had to change
the "location" of the most recent repository while also allowing
access to older ones so older installations would still work. But that
doesn't answer why I can no longer install all the packages I had
before (even though I'm not using the latest Perl) or why some
packages have degraded in version to ones that don't work as well.

In general, ActiveState's automated build system will add
a CPAN ppm package to their repository if the package (and any
dependencies outside of the core ActiveState distribution)
builds OK and all the tests pass. I'm not sure specifically
about the problem with XBase - there is a ppm package for
DBD-XBase (ActivePerl 8xx) that reports version 0.232, which
seems to correspond to the latest CPAN version.

If anyone can add to the above list I would appreciate that, perhaps
that's all I need to make my install work like it did before.

There's a module on CPAN - PPM::Repositories - which contains
a list of known repositories outside of ActiveState.

 

[Fourth Monkey]

In general, ActiveState's automated build system will add
a CPAN ppm package to their repository if the package (and any
dependencies outside of the core ActiveState distribution)
builds OK and all the tests pass. I'm not sure specifically
about the problem with XBase - there is a ppm package for
DBD-XBase (ActivePerl 8xx) that reports version 0.232, which
seems to correspond to the latest CPAN version.

Interesting. In the past all I ever had to do to install the XBase
package was enter "ppm install XBase" and I got the latest ver.
However, I just tried your suggestion, "ppm install DBD-XBase" and it
installed ver. 5.004 which is the right one. What I don't understand
is, the package name is "XBase" so why do I need to enter "DBD-XBase"
to install it? There is no parent DBD package that I can see (yes, I
tried "ppm install DBD" - I'll try anything once ;o) and nothing in
the source file says "DBD::...". So how, unless someone helpful like
yourself tells me, would I know to prepend "DBD" onto the name to get
ppm to install the latest version of the XBase package? Does this sort
of thing (unspoken "parent" namespace names) hold true for other
packages as well?

There's a module on CPAN - PPM::Repositories - which contains
a list of known repositories outside of ActiveState.

Thanks, I set it up on one of our servers and printed out that list,
very good to know those resources.

-Monkey

 

[Randy Kobes]

(e-mail address removed) (Randy Kobes) wrote in
Interesting. In the past all I ever had to do to install the XBase
package was enter "ppm install XBase" and I got the latest ver.
However, I just tried your suggestion, "ppm install DBD-XBase" and it
installed ver. 5.004 which is the right one. What I don't understand
is, the package name is "XBase" so why do I need to enter "DBD-XBase"
to install it? There is no parent DBD package that I can see (yes, I
tried "ppm install DBD" - I'll try anything once ;o) and nothing in
the source file says "DBD::...". So how, unless someone helpful like
yourself tells me, would I know to prepend "DBD" onto the name to get
ppm to install the latest version of the XBase package? Does this sort
of thing (unspoken "parent" namespace names) hold true for other
packages as well?

I don't think it's a problem with unspoken parent name
spaces. Although I'm not sure of the history, what seems to
have happened was that the original XBase.pm module,
under $CPAN/authors/id/P/PR/PRATP/XBase-x.xx, was
transferred to $CPAN/authors/id/J/JA/JANPAZ/DBD-XBase-x.xx.
This latter package has both the DBD::XBase and XBase
modules. When you use ppm to install something, you specify the
CPAN distribution name, not a module name (in most cases
the distribution name is derived from the name of the
major module in the package by a simple s/::/-/g). Since
now DBD::XBase is the recommended interface, the package
was named DBD-XBase, but as a byproduct of installing this,
you also get a more up-to-date version of the older XBase
interface.