test failures during cpan installation

Boris Glawe · *nix forums beginner Joined: 10 Mar 2005 Posts: 36

Hello,

I'd like to install the current version of bestpractical's request
tracker (http://www.bestpractical.com/rt/), which is written in perl.
The installation skript wants me to install a lot of additional perl
modules.

Most of theses modules can be easily installed with the cpan command. In
cpan's command line interface, I enter something like "install Foo::Bar"

The problem is that some modules do not install due to some failing
tests. I get errors like "argument list too long" or "error, no reason
given", etc. I don't know how to solve such problems, since there's no
suitable error message, that tells me the reason for the failure.

I decided to install the modules with "force install Foo::Bar" which
succeeded. Can I expect that every will work?

In addition I have a module that cannot be installed due to linking
problems. It's the GD module. The linker ld says that it "cannot find
-lXpm", though the file libXpm.so.4 exists in /usr/X11R6/lib and the gcc
command has something like -L/usr/X11R6/lib in it's argument list.

rt is a very common request tracker system. I don't understand why the
installation is such a mess (sorry). A peace of software, that requires
C programming knowledge for installation and maintenance is not usable.

Can you help me with the usage of cpan? Is it "normal" that a lot of
modules can only be installed by forcing the installation, what went
wrong with the GD module?

Btw. my os is centos 4.3, which is technically identical to Redhat
Enterprice 4. My compiler is gcc 3.4.5 and the perl version is 5.8.5

thanks in advance

greets Boris

Eric R. Meyers · *nix forums addict Joined: 10 May 2006 Posts: 63

Hi Boris,

No your not crazy (yet), your mostly correct.

Boris Glawe wrote:

Sherm Pendley · *nix forums Guru Joined: 03 Mar 2005 Posts: 527

"Eric R. Meyers" <ermeyers@adelphia.net> writes:

Google