perl irritations

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Thu, 2007-09-06 at 17:21 -0400, m.roth2006 at rcn.com wrote:
> >Date: Thu, 06 Sep 2007 14:06:57 -0400
> >From: Matthew Saltzman <mjs at CLEMSON.EDU>  
> >
> >On Thu, 2007-09-06 at 07:43 -0500, mark wrote:
> >> Herta Van den Eynde wrote:
> >> > On 06/09/2007, mark <m.roth2006 at rcn.com> wrote:
> >> >> Well, this is irritating.
> >> >>
> >> >> I've got, as I've mentioned, an RH 9 box as a firewall router. I just tried to
> >> >> install CPAN, and it croaks. perl 5.8.1 is installed, as is perl-core. But the
> >> >> install fails, complaining it can't find header files in
> >> >> /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.1/i386-linux-thread-multi/CORE/
> >> >>
> >> >> So, why aren't they there, and what do I need to install to get them there? I
> >> >> don't really think I should be doing things like
> >> >>   cp /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi/CORE/perl.h \
> >> >>      /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.1/i386-linux-thread-multi/CORE/
> >> > 
> >> > perl.h is part of the perl package.  You can easily check with 'rpm
> >> > -qil perl |grep perl.h'.
> >> > So it sounds like your install failed.  What does 'rpm -V perl' return?
> >> 
> >> Better than that - I got perl-5.8.1-0.RC4.3.3.92mdk.i586.rpm and perl-base 
> >> (etc).rpm, and neither has the header files.
> >> 
> >> Back to finding an actual release, instead of a half-a**ed one.
> >
> >Did you install perl-devel?
> >
> >In F7:
> >
> >$ locate perl.h
> >/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/i386-linux-thread-multi/CORE/perl.h
> >/usr/share/doc/db4-devel-4.5.20/ref/ext/perl.html
> >$ rpm -qf /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/i386-linux-thread-multi/CORE/perl.h
> >perl-devel-5.8.8-18.fc7
> >
> >My guess is that the -devel package split goes back as far as your
> >version.
> 
> The problem is that this is my firewall/router. I do NOT WANT a gcc on
> it. Am I going to need to put it on, and take it off, every time I
> need an update from CPAN? And to remove all *-devel rpms?

perl-devel has no dependency on any compiler.  It just contains
libraries, utilities, and header files necessary to build code related
to the package.  So install perl-devel and leave gcc off.

perl-devel does include perlcc, but if that's not needed to use CPAN,
you could just delete it (and remember to delete it again when you
update).
-- 
                Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs