PPM is the package management utility for ActivePerl. It simplifies the task of locating, installing, upgrading and removing Perl packages. The PPM client accesses PPM repositories (collections of packages) on the internet or on a local network. It is also used to update previously installed packages with the latest versions and to remove unused packages from your system.
PPM is installed automatically with ActivePerl.
To use PPM, your computer must be connected to the internet or have access to a PPM repository on a local hard drive or network share.
If you connect to the internet via firewall or proxy, you may need to
set the http_proxy
environment variable. See PPM, Proxies and Firewalls for
more information.
Access to some PPM repositories requires an ActivePerl Business Edition license.
To launch PPM's graphical user interface, run ppm
without any command line arguments:
ppm
The interface should look something like this:
When launched, PPM automatically synchronizes its local database with the installed perl packages (including those installed manually or via the CPAN shell). The interface is temporarily locked while this synchronization takes place.
Hovering the mouse pointer over icons in the toolbar displays tool tips describing what each button does. These buttons are:
Use the Filter text field to limit the packages displayed in the Package List pane to those matching the text entered (case insensitive substring match).
Click the magnifying glass icon to select which package meta-data to match against:
The Package List pane can display the following columns of package information:
The Status tab displays messages about the current status of the PPM client, marked actions, and information about the actions being run.
The Details tab displays package information and, for installed packages, a list of all installed files.
All PPM operations and configuration can also be performed at the command line. See the ppm man page or 'ppm help' for more information.
To find a package in the repository:
As text is entered in the Filter field, the list of packages is automatically updated as the substring match becomes more precise. Click the magnifying glass icon to filter on different meta-data (e.g. Author).
Alternatively, just start typing the name of the package. The Package List will highlight the first package that matches the string you have typed.
To install a package from the repository:
To remove a package from your local perl installation:
To upgrade a package to the most recent version available in the repository:
Installation Areas can be selected and Repositories configured by clicking the PPM Preferences button or selecting Preferences from the Edit menu.
PPM allows for the addition of new install areas, which is useful for
shared ActivePerl installations where the user does not have write
permissions for the site and perl areas. New install
areas are added by simply setting up new library directories for perl to
search, and PPM will set up install areas to match. The easiest way to
add library directories for perl is to specify them in the
PERL5LIB
environment variable, see the perlrun manpage for details. PPM
will create etc, bin, html directories as
needed when installing packages. If the last segment of the library
directory path is lib then the other directories will be
created as siblings of the lib directory, otherwise they will
be subdirectories.
The Repositories tab lists the repositories that PPM is currently configured to use and allows you to add additional ones. Simple PPM repositories are just a directory containing ppm packages. You can create your own by putting packages in an HTTP, FTP directory or a locally accessible mount or filesystem directory.
To add a repository fill out the fields in the Add Repository pane and click Add.
ftp://user:password@server/path.
To remove a repository, click the icon next to it.
Enabled repositories show the icon; disabled ones show the
icon.
Click these icons to toggle between states.
The base URL of the default PPM repository is:
http://ppm4.activestate.com/
The full URL is platform and version-specific, for example:
http://ppm4.activestate.com/MSWin32-x86/5.12/1202/package.xml
http://bioperl.org/DIST A repository of Bioperl packages http://www.bribes.org/perl/ppm/ the "Bribes de Perl" (Scraps of Perl) repository (en Français et Anglais)
On systems where ActivePerl is installed in a directory that is not writable by
users (i.e. owned by root
), a new perl library location can be
defined with the PERL5LIB environment variable. PPM will recognize this library
as an install area.
To create a new, user-writable install area:
Make a directory for the library. For example:
mkdir -p ~/perl/lib
Set or modify the PERL5LIB
environment variable using the
command specific to your shell (e.g. set
or export
).
To make this change persistent, add the command to the appropriate profile file
for the shell. For example, in bash, add a line like the following to your
.bash_profile or .bashrc file:
PERL5LIB=~/perl/lib; export PERL5LIB
Note: On Mac OS X, user-writable install areas called "ActivePerl" are created for all users during installation (in /Users/<username>/Library/ActivePerl).
If you need to install packages on systems without direct access to repositories, you can use PPMX files. These are compressed tarballs containing the PPD file for the package and the blib tree to be installed. You can download PPMX files from http://ppm4.activestate.com/.
Note: Access to ActiveState PPMX archives require a Business Edition license.
To use a PPMX file:
ppm install c:\tmp\Date-Calc-6.3.ppmx
Some modules have dependencies that may cause them to fail to install
if those packages are not available in a repository that PPM is
connected to. You can use the ppm describe
command to see
what dependencies the package has, but those packages may have their own
dependencies. The dependency chain has to be resolved manually by
starting with the lowest common prerequisite package.
Most modules available via PPM are not owned or maintained by ActiveState; we only pre-package those modules available from CPAN that can be built automatically.
Additionally, some packages are not available via PPM because of export restrictions or license incompatibility. Not all PPM packages in the repository are completely up-to-date or available for every platform.
Check package availability and build status on the PPM Index site. If a module that you require is not available via PPM, try building it using the CPAN shell as described below.
Specify the AUTHOR and ABSTRACT parameters in the Makefile.PL. However you should only pass them to WriteMakefile if the version of the perl is greater than 5.005 - older perls do not have these parameters added and do not expect to see them. This is an example Makefile.PL:
use ExtUtils::MakeMaker; # See lib/ExtUtils/MakeMaker.pm for details of how to influence # the contents of the Makefile that is written. WriteMakefile( 'NAME' => 'Term::Control', 'VERSION_FROM' => 'Control.pm', # finds $VERSION ($] ge '5.005') ? ( 'AUTHOR' => 'Johnny Doel (johnny@doel.org)', 'ABSTRACT' => 'Control the IO for terminals', ) : (), );
Then you make the archive with the commands
perl Makefile.PL nmake
The resulting files are placed in the blib directory that is created when you run nmake. These files should be packed into an archive like this:
tar cvf package.tar blib
gzip --best package.tar
You now have an archive called package.tar.gz. Then you generate the PPD file by:
nmake ppd
You have to edit the resulting PPD file and add the location of the package archive into <CODEBASE HREF="" />. The location is relative to the PPD file.
You can get nmake from http://download.microsoft.com/download/vc15/Patch/1.52/W95/EN-US/Nmake15.exe.
If you use a proxy server or firewall, you may need to set the
http_proxy
environment variable in order for PPM to
work.
Set the http_proxy
variable with the hostname or IP
address of the proxy server:
http_proxy=http://proxy.example.org
If the proxy server requires a user name and password, include them in the following form:
http_proxy=http://username:password@proxy.example.org
If the proxy server uses a port other than 80, include the port number:
http_proxy=http://username:password@proxy.example.org:8080
Windows 2012/2008
http_proxy
with the appropriate proxy
information (see examples above).Windows 7/8
http_proxy
with the appropriate proxy
information (see examples above).Mac OS X
The http_proxy
should be set in two places on OS
X:
.bash_profile
(/Users/<name>/.bash_profile):
http_proxy=http://username:password@hostname:port; export http_proxy
This setting applies to PPM when it is launched from or used at the command line.
<key>http_proxy</key> <string>http://username:password@hostname:port</string>
This setting applies to PPM when it is launched by clicking the PPM icon.
Linux, Solaris or HP-UX
Set the http_proxy environment variable using the command specific
to your shell (e.g. set
or export
). To make
this change persistent, add the command to the appropriate profile
file for the shell. For example, in bash
, add a line
like the following to your .bash_profile or .bashrc
file:
http_proxy=http://username:password@hostname:port; export http_proxy
If you require a module that is not available via ppm
,
or you require a more recent version, you can build the module from CPAN sources. The CPAN
shell is a command-line interface for fetching and building modules
directly from CPAN archives. To run it, enter the following command:
cpan
Building modules from source requires the following components:
Windows:
nmake
, which is available from:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q132084,
or dmake
, which is available from
http://search.cpan.org/dist/dmake.Mac OS X:
Linux and Solaris systems will normally have a compiler and a
make
utility installed by default.
See How to install CPAN modules into ActivePerl on the ActiveState blog for more information.