V
Veli-Pekka Tätilä
Hi,
I really like PPM because it makes trying out pacages a breeze. I ran Linux
for a while and tend to think of PPM as the Perl equivalent of apt-get. BOth
get the job done with minimal user-involvement which is mostly about choices
which I'd rather leave to someone else.
One aspect of PPM I have just recently gotten into is updating packages with
the upgrade command. But I'm puzzled as to what the -precious switch in ppm3
actually does. Put another way, which packages might get updated that
otherwise are not when you run upgrade -install -precious?
As I have happily downloaded and used a number of PPM packages and things
still work fine, I thought I'd ask before I try the precious swich. I've
noticed that doing something you don't understand can be quite risky in
computing, especially in programming. My reasoning is as follows: if the
precious switch is totally safe or recommended, it would be on by default.
So I'd better leav it alone until I know more.
I've looked at the PPM built-in docs which give a rather circular
definition:
Quote:
There are several modifiers to the upgrade command:
-install
Installs, rather than lists, available upgrades
-precious
Allows upgrading of "precious" packages
<snip>
End of quote.
I've checked various Perl FAQs, Active State's Using PPM page and Googled
the Web and news with words like ppm3 perl and precious. I even had a quick
glance at the ppm3-bin source but still feel I'm no wiser.
If I were to guess, I'd say that some packages are marked as precious and
considered to be part of core Perl. But is this list version dependent and
should I really update these packages, in order to fix bugs, make it faster
or add some new functionality? I wouldn't want to use packages that are
considered to be in testing or unstable to borrow some apt-get terminology.
I reckon the Perl interpreter itself is not updated via ppm at any rate, is
it?
I'm runing Windows XP Pro SP2 and Active State Perl 5.8.6.
Is the only way of updating the Perl interpreter to install the latest
Active State Perl distro over the current one?
On a silly side-note, I guess it is just me, but when-ever I hear the word
precious spoken by my current speech synth, I cannot help thinking of how
Gollum says it in LOTR, oh well. The fact that I'm not a native English
Speaker, like LOTR, and rarely use the word precious myself might affect
matters, though. But this is certainly not the only LOTr reference, though
likely unintentional, that I've seen used about Unix-like things.
I really like PPM because it makes trying out pacages a breeze. I ran Linux
for a while and tend to think of PPM as the Perl equivalent of apt-get. BOth
get the job done with minimal user-involvement which is mostly about choices
which I'd rather leave to someone else.
One aspect of PPM I have just recently gotten into is updating packages with
the upgrade command. But I'm puzzled as to what the -precious switch in ppm3
actually does. Put another way, which packages might get updated that
otherwise are not when you run upgrade -install -precious?
As I have happily downloaded and used a number of PPM packages and things
still work fine, I thought I'd ask before I try the precious swich. I've
noticed that doing something you don't understand can be quite risky in
computing, especially in programming. My reasoning is as follows: if the
precious switch is totally safe or recommended, it would be on by default.
So I'd better leav it alone until I know more.
I've looked at the PPM built-in docs which give a rather circular
definition:
Quote:
There are several modifiers to the upgrade command:
-install
Installs, rather than lists, available upgrades
-precious
Allows upgrading of "precious" packages
<snip>
End of quote.
I've checked various Perl FAQs, Active State's Using PPM page and Googled
the Web and news with words like ppm3 perl and precious. I even had a quick
glance at the ppm3-bin source but still feel I'm no wiser.
If I were to guess, I'd say that some packages are marked as precious and
considered to be part of core Perl. But is this list version dependent and
should I really update these packages, in order to fix bugs, make it faster
or add some new functionality? I wouldn't want to use packages that are
considered to be in testing or unstable to borrow some apt-get terminology.
I reckon the Perl interpreter itself is not updated via ppm at any rate, is
it?
I'm runing Windows XP Pro SP2 and Active State Perl 5.8.6.
Is the only way of updating the Perl interpreter to install the latest
Active State Perl distro over the current one?
On a silly side-note, I guess it is just me, but when-ever I hear the word
precious spoken by my current speech synth, I cannot help thinking of how
Gollum says it in LOTR, oh well. The fact that I'm not a native English
Speaker, like LOTR, and rarely use the word precious myself might affect
matters, though. But this is certainly not the only LOTr reference, though
likely unintentional, that I've seen used about Unix-like things.
