cpan2rpm - A Perl module packager
cpan2rpm [options] <module>
This script generates an RPM package from a Perl module. It uses the standard RPM file structure and creates a spec file, a source RPM, and a binary, leaving these in their respective directories.
The script can operate on local files, urls and CPAN module names. Install this package if you want to create RPMs out of Perl modules.
The syntax for cpan2rpm requires a single module name, which can take one of three different forms: 1) a CPAN module name (e.g. XML::Simple), 2) a URL (both http:// and ftp:// style locators will work), and 3) a local filename reference to a tarball (e.g. /tmp/XML-Simple-1.05.tar.gz). The module name may be preceded by a number of optional arguments which modify the behaviour of the script.
By default, the search.cpan.org website is "walked" to determine the latest tarball for the specified module. If an exact match is not found, the CPAN module is used to determine and download the module.
If you have not configured CPAN (CPAN.pm or CPAN/MyConfig.pm) you can configure it with the following:
perl -MCPAN -eshell
If the <module> passed is either a CPAN module name or a URL the script automatically does a download (when CPAN module names are specified, the latest distribution is used), putting it in the SOURCES directory. If <module> is given as a local filename, the tarball gets copied to the SOURCES directory. NOTE: at present the script will handle .tar.gz, .tgz, .bz2 and .zip tarballs but these require the appropriate decompression programs installed on the system.
The spec file generated will generally assume header values as configured in the RPM macro files which are evaluated in the following order: /usr/lib/rpm/macros, /etc/rpm/macros and ~/.rpmmacros. Most of these headers can, however, be overridden through options. Whenever a header is neither configured in the RPM macro files nor is passed at the command line, the script will seek to calculate a proper value and supplies a default as stated for each option below. It is thus typically sufficient to provide only the <module> name.
The options available are as follows:
options
This group allows control over the contents of the generated specification file for the package.
string-value
The RPM package name. This is the Name header in the RPM's spec file. Please note that the string perl- will be prepended to any value passed here. If no value is supplied, the script will use the NAME field found in the module's Makefile.PL
Name
perl-
Even though this script is meant to build RPM packages from CPAN modules, it may be used on a more generic basis, thus the perl- prefix in a package may be undesirable. As an example, cpan2rpm generates itself but is not called perl-cpan2rpm. This option suppresses the aforementioned prefix in the package name.
perl-cpan2rpm
float-value
The script determines the version number of the module by parsing the tarball name. If you're looking to get the version of cpan2rpm itself, see the -V option.
integer-value
The package release number. Defaults to 1.
A one-line description of the package. If left unspecified the script will use the module name, appending an abstract whenever available.
This text describes the package/module. This value is picked up from the POD's Synopsis section in the module. Defaults to None..
None.
The home url for the package. Defaults to http://www.cpan.org.
This is the RPM group. For further information on available groups please see your RPM documentation. Defaults to Applications/CPAN.
Applications/CPAN
This is the name and address of the person who authored the module. Typically it should be in the format: Name <e-mail-address>. If left unspecified, the script will attempt to extract it from the tarball's MakeMaker file, failing to build the package otherwise. There is no default for this option.
This is you (if you're packaging someone else's module). The string should be in the same format as for --author and defaults to: Arix International <cpan2rpm@arix.com> unless the RPM macro files provide a value.
Arix International <cpan2rpm@arix.com>
The license header specified in the spec file. This field is also sometimes referred to as Copyright, but License is a more suitable name and has become more common. Defaults to Artistic, Perl's own license.
Artistic
This key overrides the %{distribution} tag as defined in the macros files. There is no default for this tag and will be left out unless specified.
Allows specification of an architecture for building the RPM. Currently defaults to _arch macro from rpm.
Allows specifying a directory to use as a BuildRoot. Don't mess with this is you don't know what it is. Defaults to: %{_tmppath}/%{name}-%{version}.
%{_tmppath}/%{name}-%{version}
This option may be used to ADD values to the %doc line in the spec's %files section. By default, cpan2rpm examines the contents of a tarball, using a regular expression to pick up files it recognises as belonging to the /usr/share/doc directory. If your module contains files cpan2rpm does not recognise, they may be added with this option. It takes a space-delimited list of files or directories.
This option allows specifying patch files to be inserted into the spec file and applied when building the source. Please note the option may be used multiple times to specify multiple patches.
Indicates that a package should be provided by the module being built. RPM will generate an appropriate list of provided dependencies and any passed here will be in addition to those calculated.
Indicates packages that should be required for installation. This option works precisely as --requires above.
Suppresses generation of a given required dependency. Sometimes authors create dependencies on modules the packager can't find, sometimes RPM generates spurious dependencies. This option allows the packager to arbitrarily supress a given requirement. The value may be a comma-separated list.
By default, the rpm-build requirements script scans all files in a tarball for requirements information. As this may on occasion generate requirements on the produced rpm that belong only to sample programs or other files not critical to the module being installed, we provide a patch the user may apply (included in this distribution as perl.req.patch) which causes dependencies to be harvested from only .pm files. When this patch is installed, this switch reverses the behaviour, causing cpan2rpm to scan all files as originally intended.
The following options control the package making process.
This option instructs the script to only generate a spec file and not build the RPM package.
This options allows the user to specify the full-path of the spec file to produce. By default, the specfile is placed in the SPECS directory and is named after the module with a .spec extension. Please note that cpan2rpm will overwrite existing files, so if you care about your current spec file, save it!
This option allows passing a string to the MakeMaker process (i.e. perl Makefile.PL <your-arguments-here>)
Arguments supplied here get passed directly to the make process.
Use this option to suppress running a module's test suite during build.
Allows user to supply arguments to the make install process.
By default, the system passes --clean to rpmbuild, thus removing the unpacked sources from the BUILD directory. This option suppresses that functionality.
Forces installation under installarchlib even if the module is pure perl. This is significant because it is first in the @INC search for module determination. This will not do any good for modules with XS code or those that are already installed into an architecture dependent path. This is most useful for those pure perl modules that come stock with the perl rpm itself (i.e. Test::Harness) but you wish to try another version without having to be forced to use "rpm --replacefiles" and destroying the old files. Using this option will allow both versions of the module to be installed, but the new version will just mask the old version later in the @INC. Additionally, the new man pages will mask the old man pages even though the man pages for both version will be installed. This option should only be used as a last resort to install a module when "conflicts" errors occur on rpm installation such as the following: file from install of perl-Module-1.11-1 conflicts with file from package perl-5.x.x User may be required to use --force (see below) in conjuction with this option to build a fresh rpm before attempting to --install again.
file from install of perl-Module-1.11-1 conflicts with file from package perl-5.x.x
By default the script will do as little work as possible i.e. if it has already previously retrieved a module from CPAN, it will not retrieve it again. If it has already generated a spec file it will not generate it again. This option allows the packager to force all actions, starting from scratch.
Install the RPM after building it. If non-root user, you must have "sudo rpm" privileges to use this option.
The options below perform functions not closely related to the quotidien process of building a package.
This option allows the non-root user to easily set up his account for building packages. The option requires a directory path where the RPMS, SPECS, etc. subdirectories will be created. These directories will contain the spec files, binaries and the source packages generated. Additionally the %_topdir macro will be defined in the ~/.rpmmacros file. If this file doesn't exist it will be created, if it does but does not contain a definition for this macro, it will be appended to it. Suggested value is ~/redhat but it's up to user.
This option produces debugging output. An optional integer increases the level of verbosity for this output. If no integer is given, 1 is assumed.
Displays a terse syntax message.
This option displays the version number of cpan2rpm itself.
This script requires that RPM be installed. Both the rpm and rpm-build packages must be installed on the local machine. Please see the RPM documentation (man rpm) for further information.
Additionally, the Perl package will be needed :) and the CPAN module (which is bundled with the Perl distribution) will need to be configured. For further information please refer to the CPAN manpage.
At present, cpan2rpm has been tested and is known to work under the following environments:
The script has been tested with Linux RedHat 7.0, 7.2, 7.3 and 8.0. Rumour has it it's been tested on Solaris as well but I don't know for sure.
The script is known to work with Perl versions 5.005_03, 5.6.0, 5.6.1 and 5.8.0.
This module is used for making and installing the CPAN modules. However many of MakeMaker's versions are broken and incompatible with other versions. For that reason, cpan2rpm works well with versions < 5.91 and > 6.05 but in between it requires an upgrade.
The RPM system has undergone a lot of change. At present, cpan2rpm runs on version 4.0.4-7x but requires certain special attention (see README for more information). Earlier versions of RPM are borked in various ways and are not currently supported.
If you are running on a platform not listed above, do drop us a note and let us know!
For now, we have no other ideas to work on or reported bugs. If you have something to say, I'm happy to listen :)
Erick Calder <ecalder@cpan.org>
The script was inspired by cpanflute which is distributed with the rpm-build package from RedHat. Many thanks to Robert Brown <bbb@cpan.org> for all his cool tricks, advice and patient support.
For help, comments or suggestions pleawe e-mail the author. To subscribe to an announcements mailing list address a blank message to the above address with subject header "subscribe" (or "unsubscribe" as need dictates).
The latest version of the tarball, RPM and SRPM may always be found at:
http://perl.arix.com/
This utility is free and distributed under GPL, the Gnu Public License.
$Id: cpan2rpm,v 2.66 2003/01/02 21:09:38 bbb Exp $
To install cpan2rpm, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm
cpanm cpan2rpm
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell install cpan2rpm
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.