Re: New application proposal - git-core SCM

[Brian Dessent <brian at dessent dot net>]

Yitzchak Scott-Thoennes wrote:

> > Fair enough. I'll add this to the the git post-install script.
> 
> Not sure that's a good idea, since "cpan String::ShellQuote" will
> fetch files from the internet (are there other post-installs that do
> this?).  Also, if cpan has never been used before, it will go into
> a lengthy configuration dialog to set up CPAN::Config.

Yes, this is a definite no-no as postinstall scripts cannot be
interactive.  I believe in times past they had a console allocated, but
now they don't even have that so a user cannot read any output nor
provide input to a running postinstall, and running CPAN the first time
requires answering a slew of questions.  Plus, it's not safe to assume
that the computer is connected to the internet when running a
postinstall, since many people do the package download step on one
machine and then install that on a different machine that's not
connected to the net, or connected through a slow connection.

I think it would be sufficient to say in the package README that certain
perl modules are required.  If this is a package meant for developers
then I don't think it's too much to ask them to read the docs and run a
cpan command if they don't have a module.

Brian