Every time I use perl I feel mildly positive about it right up until I encounter CPAN. I've never managed to make CPAN work, despite the multitude of systems I've tried it on over the years. Is there some secret I don't know?



To install one module ("install Google::Chart") there's a hilarious chain of literally almost a hundred dependencies that CPAN auto-infers. That's fine enough. But it eventually gets back to Class::C3, which wants Algorithm::C3, which it happily installs (eventually printing "*** Algorithm::C3 successfully installed.") and then fails all its test cases:

# Failed test 'use Class::C3;'

# at t/00_load.t line 9.

# Tried to use 'Class::C3'.

# Error: Can't locate Algorithm/C3.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /home/martine/.cpan/build/Class-C3-0.19/i nc /home/martine/.cpan/build/Class-C3-0.19/b lib/lib /home/martine/.cpan/build/Class-C3-0.19/b lib/arch /home/martine/.cpan/build/Test-Simple-0.8 0/blib/arch /home/martine/.cpan/build/Test-Simple-0.8 0/blib/lib /etc/perl /usr/local/lib/perl/5.8.8 /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.8 /usr/lib/perl5 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/lib/perl/5.8 /usr/share/perl/5.8 /usr/local/lib/site_perl .) at /home/martine/.cpan/build/Class-C3-0.19/b lib/lib/Class/C3.pm line 25.



If I run it again, it again claims Algorithm::C3 isn't installed, while if I run "install Algorithm::C3", it claims it's not installed.





The thing that really gets me here is that though this is different in the details than the other problems I've had with CPAN, in practice this is effectively exactly the problem I had before the last time I tried Perl out (I guess that was mid-2006, because I think I was in Japan). Is CPAN just perpetually screwed?



Here's some guesses after spending five minutes poking around: maybe they were lying when they said I could set the PREFIX? I notice that include path doesn't include the prefix I'd specified. Maybe this AutoInstall module doesn't work with it?