DBD::mysql on Panther, and other joys at 4am
Posted on November 5, 2003
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 107 views |
Installing Panther from scratch has meant getting intimately re-acquainted with certain components of OS X’s Unix underpinnings, namely the remarkably Rube Goldbergian Perl module installation process and the ability to take down the web server with but an errant keystroke.
For those who don’t know, Perl modules can be complicated little beasts, often having layer upon layer of dependencies that need to be installed with them. In some cases it’s practically impossible to install certain modules manually. For that there’s the CPAN.pm module, invoked from the command line via
perl -MCPAN -e shell
which is an incredibly useful, absolutely obtuse gem of a thing. Type
cpan> install DBI
and off it goes installing the database interface, connecting to ftp servers, queueing dependencies, scrolling reams of text across the screen like a stenographer on speed, doing a thousand different things, only a few of which contain any vague sense of familiarity.
But magically it works and does so awesomely well. At least, it did until I hit DBD::mysql and then it all came to a grinding halt.
Read Forwarding Address: OS X for the gory details.