New application proposal - git-core SCM
Brian Dessent
brian@dessent.net
Wed Nov 2 19:52:00 GMT 2005
Yitzchak Scott-Thoennes wrote:
> > Fair enough. I'll add this to the the git post-install script.
>
> Not sure that's a good idea, since "cpan String::ShellQuote" will
> fetch files from the internet (are there other post-installs that do
> this?). Also, if cpan has never been used before, it will go into
> a lengthy configuration dialog to set up CPAN::Config.
Yes, this is a definite no-no as postinstall scripts cannot be
interactive. I believe in times past they had a console allocated, but
now they don't even have that so a user cannot read any output nor
provide input to a running postinstall, and running CPAN the first time
requires answering a slew of questions. Plus, it's not safe to assume
that the computer is connected to the internet when running a
postinstall, since many people do the package download step on one
machine and then install that on a different machine that's not
connected to the net, or connected through a slow connection.
I think it would be sufficient to say in the package README that certain
perl modules are required. If this is a package meant for developers
then I don't think it's too much to ask them to read the docs and run a
cpan command if they don't have a module.
Brian
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