CONTENTS

• NAME
• SYNOPSIS
• DESCRIPTION
  • Options
  • Examples
• ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
• EXIT VALUES
• TO DO
• BUGS
• SEE ALSO
• SOURCE AVAILABILITY
• CREDITS
• AUTHOR
• COPYRIGHT

#NAME

cpan - easily interact with CPAN from the command line

#SYNOPSIS

# with arguments and no switches, installs specified modules
cpan module_name [ module_name ... ]

# with switches, installs modules with extra behavior
cpan [-cfgimtTw] module_name [ module_name ... ]

# with just the dot, install from the distribution in the
# current directory
cpan .

# without arguments, starts CPAN.pm shell
cpan

# force install modules (usually those that fail tests)
cpan -f module_name [ module_name ... ]

# install modules but without testing them
cpan -T module_name [ module_name ... ]

# dump the configuration
cpan -J

# load a different configuration to install Module::Foo
cpan -j some/other/file Module::Foo

# without arguments, but some switches
cpan [-ahrvACDlLO]

#DESCRIPTION

This script provides a command interface (not a shell) to CPAN. At the moment it uses CPAN.pm to do the work, but it is not a one-shot command runner for CPAN.pm.

#Options

#-a

Creates a CPAN.pm autobundle with CPAN::Shell->autobundle.

#-A module [ module ... ]

Shows the primary maintainers for the specified modules.

#-c module

Runs a `make clean` in the specified module's directories.

#-C module [ module ... ]

Show the Changes files for the specified modules

#-D module [ module ... ]

Show the module details.

#-f

Force the specified action, when it normally would have failed. Use this to install a module even if its tests fail. When you use this option, -i is not optional for installing a module when you need to force it:

% cpan -f -i Module::Foo

#-F

Turn off CPAN.pm's attempts to lock anything. You should be careful with this since you might end up with multiple scripts trying to muck in the same directory. This isn't so much of a concern if you're loading a special config with -j, and that config sets up its own work directories.

#-g module [ module ... ]

Downloads to the current directory the latest distribution of the module.

#-G module [ module ... ]

UNIMPLEMENTED

Download to the current directory the latest distribution of the modules, unpack each distribution, and create a git repository for each distribution.

If you want this feature, check out Yanick Champoux's Git::CPAN::Patch distribution.

#-h

Print a help message and exit. When you specify -h, it ignores all of the other options and arguments.

#-i

Install the specified modules.

#-I

Load local::lib (think like -I for loading lib paths).

#-j Config.pm

Load the file that has the CPAN configuration data. This should have the same format as the standard CPAN/Config.pm file, which defines $CPAN::Config as an anonymous hash.

#-J

Dump the configuration in the same format that CPAN.pm uses. This is useful for checking the configuration as well as using the dump as a starting point for a new, custom configuration.

#-l

List all installed modules with their versions

#