sg has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:
After installing the latest ActivePerl 5.12.x, I tried the command cpan -h This immediately started the process of installing MinGW and dmake. This unexpected action was unnerving, and I killed the attempt. I do plan to install MinGW on my own, and tried to find out what MinGW cpan wanted to install, and about potential conflicts, duplication, etc. I might run into when I installed the regular MinGW.
The commands ppm search mingw and ppm search dmake provides links http://search.cpan.org/dist/MinGW-5.1.4.1/ and http://search.cpan.org/dist/dmake-4.11.20080107/ but both links are broken.
I found two documentations for cpan (cpan - easily interact with CPAN from the command line and CPAN - query, download and build perl modules from CPAN sites) but neither documentation mentions MinGW and dmake and why a request for help immediately starts a download and install process.
Anyway,
- What is the MinGW-5.1.4.1 and dmake that cpan wants to install?
- Since I plan to install MinGW on my own, should I do so before running cpan or are the two MinGWs different?
- The MinGW I install will have make; will cpan still want to install dmake?
- Regarding the broken links provided by ppm, what is the proper links?
Thanks