how to build Spamassassin

[Nick Tonkin]

On Tue, 09 Dec 2003 17:11:10 -0800, Tony Jones <tony at tonyjones.com> wrote:

>
> Hi Nick.
>
> Thanks for the reply.
>
> I already knew of the FreeBSD stock perl issues and was aware that
> under no circumstances should I try to upgrade the stock Perl, but
> I appreciate the reminded nontheless!!
>
> I gave up on trying to install the SpamAssassin I obtained manually
> from spamassassin.org after it bitched that my Bundle::Net (or similar, 
> sorry,
> forget the exact package) was out of date. Trying to install it via CPAM
> crapped out bigtime and seems to have left my stock FreeBSD perl setup 
> in a
> goofy state.  Perl would spit out nasty method tracebacks.

[ snip ]

I did suggest a very quick, easy and effective fix. It would have taken 
you less than two hours to download, build and configure perl and multiple 
CPAN modules [1] and been on your way.

> I'm reminded of Greg Lemis's chastisement of me for previously not using
> the FreeBSD Ports system.  It isn't making my life much easier here :-)))

Right: it's just not true (in FreeBSD < 5.1) that using ports makes your 
life easier with perl. The p5-* ports are great but the base perl 
installation is messed up; that's the problem. The FreeBSD developers 
acknowledge as much, in 
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.1R/early-adopter.html (section 6.3 - 
Common Notes):
   "Perl has been removed from the base system, and should be installed 
either from a pre-built package or from the Ports Collection. Building 
Perl as a part of the base system created a number of difficulties which 
made updates problematic."

Note that it _is_ true that the ports make your life easier with perl in 
FreeBSD > 5.1.x, since, as the same document continues:
     "sysinstall(8) will now install the Perl package as a part of most 
distribution sets, so most users will not notice this change."

So in other words, the entire perl package is a port. Or a package :) This 
is a generally a good thing, though it is sad to see that the port is of 
5.6.1. This version of perl was superceded by 5.8 more than two years ago 
and stable perl version is now 5.8.2 ... [2]

Anyways, you still have two good choices, IMHO: build a new sandbox perl 
by hand (~ 2hrs) or build a new 5.1 system (~ 2 weeks? :)

Best,
-- nick

[1] CPAN's ability to install multiple related modules by groups via 
Bundle::* can save you a lot of time versus FreeBSD's ports of the p5-* 
modules. But that's another argument :)

[2] I don't know what you do with your server, but I do a lot of 
internet-related stuff and it's an arena of dynamic development. I've 
never found the ports able to keep up with the software I need. I build 
perl, apache and their various components (mod_perl, mod_ssl etc) by hand, 
and rely on the ports for other stuff. OTOH, as someone pointed out, the 
ports-installed perl _does_ play nice with CPAN, so you can use CPAN to 
get perl modules as well as use the p5-* ports.

-- 
___________________
Nick Tonkin   {|8^)>