Bug#688842: CPAN modules no longer installed to /usr/local by default

[Niko Tyni]

tag 688842 patch
thanks

On Wed, Oct 03, 2012 at 11:41:30AM +0300, Niko Tyni wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 09:12:00AM +0300, Niko Tyni wrote:

> > When the site dirs don't exist, the CPAN shell interactive configuration states
> >   Warning: You do not have write permission for Perl library directories.
> > and proceeds to suggest local::lib for installation, which is not the
> > optimal suggestion for root users.

> My current thinking is that a minimally invasive fix would be a loop
> that tests the first existing directory up the tree for writability.
> This way we can leave the mkdir part (along with umask settings,
> see debian/patches/debian/writable_site_dirs.diff) for later.

Looking at the issue, I realized that we don't want to test the
writability of the core dirs (install*lib) on Debian at all. We're
configuring CPAN to pass INSTALLDIRS=site precisely to keep it from
touching the core directories.

This way root and non-root users who have write access to /usr/local
will get the right default (system-wide install), and the rest will be
prompted about using local::lib or sudo.

Here's my first take on a patch. It seems to work, but eyeballs
and testing would be welcome.

While I've marked the patch as Debian specific, I tried to keep the
directory name handling portable in the hope at least part of it can go
upstream at some point.
-- 
Niko Tyni   ntyni at debian.org
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