CPAN, while incredibly useful, can be a pain, if you forget that you need to re-configure it after installing essential tools.
For example, if you make the mistake of setting up a basic, non-development Debian virtual machine, configure CPAN, try to use it, and on seeing ‘make’ errors like (from install Bundle::CPAN of all things) :
Running make test
Can't test without successful make
Running make install
make had returned bad status, install seems impossible
Running install for module Compress::Raw::Zlib
Running make for P/PM/PMQS/Compress-Raw-Zlib-2.012.tar.gz
Is already unwrapped into directory /root/.cpan/build/Compress-Raw-Zlib-2.012
Has already been processed within this session
Running make test
Can't test without successful make
Running make install
make had returned bad status, install seems impossible
Running make for P/PM/PMQS/IO-Compress-Zlib-2.012.tar.gz
Is already unwrapped into directory /root/.cpan/build/IO-Compress-Zlib-2.012
Has already been processed within this session
Running make test
Can't test without successful make
Running make install
make had returned bad status, install seems impossible
cpan>
You install make apt-get update ; apt-get install build-essential…, only to continue to see the same errors wizz past….
CPAN really truly needs to realise that the make settings are mis configured, and tell you.
What you need to do, is to tell your cpan about it by running:
cpan> o conf init
OR, if you’ve not yet messed (configured) up your cpan, install build-essential first.
And while you’re contemplating using cpan, think hard about trying dh-make-perl instead 🙂
Ideally, CPAN should be able to realise that it can’t call make if it does not know where it is – and point this fact out, rather than making it appear as though the package being installed has an issue.