How to bundle modules for an offline server with cpanm

Question

I would like to do cpanm SomeModule to install SomeModule together with about 10 dependencies, but the target server has no internet access. I do have a very similar development machine (same Perl environment, same Perl version) where cpanm is able to download its source modules.

After studying the man page of cpanm, I have the feeling that I can create a tarball on the development machine, transfer that to the server, and use it to install the modules in one go.

Unfortunately, I do not seem to find which exact combination it is. Especially, as on the dev machine the modules are already installed, I need to force it to still add all the dependencies to the tarball (excluding core modules of course).

Can someone give the commands for the dev machine and the target machine?

EDIT: this is specifically about cpanm. Of course, if you can say with authority that it is definitely not possible with cpanm, that would be a valid answer as well...

EDIT: The comments and answers so far suggest using pinto or minicpan to create a bundle of CPAN module sources. This works well (especially pinto is quite trivial to use for this). I used pinto now to solve my current problem, but still, Pinto itself has a lot of prerequisite modules (>100 compared to Perl-Core). My hope with this question was that cpanm, which is a standalone, installation-less script, can do it itself (it has extensive options that kind of sound like they could go into that direction). That would be nice for bootstrapping Perl installations without large overheads.

http://perlmaven.com/pinto-tutorial – mpapec Sep 13 '16 at 15:05 — mpapec, Sep 13 '16 at 15:05
should be useful to use – Gianluca D'Ardia Oct 10 '19 at 09:36 — Gianluca D'Ardia, Oct 10 '19 at 09:36

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 13 '16 at 14:22

4

You can download the tars from CPAN or metacpan for all your dependencies manually, then copy them and install one by one in the right order. That's a bit of work for ten modules, but it's not too bad. You can write a script.

But you can also use minicpan to create a local small CPAN that only contains what you need. Those are great to have a local copy of some or all of CPAN, e.g. on a USB drive when you need to install a module while hacking code on a flight. It's essentially a directory full of more directories and tars. You can just pick the things you need, zip it up, move it to your production server, unpack it there and tell cpanm to install from that local CPAN mirror.

answered Sep 13 '16 at 14:22

simbabque

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I actually created USB drives with a full CPAN mirror on each of them to give them away as sponsoring merchandise on the German Perl Workshop in Berlin in 2013. Those were highly appreciated. Mostly because they were free USB drives (I think...). – simbabque Sep 13 '16 at 14:23
Yes, of course I can download the modules manually or use something else. The question is specifically about `cpanm`. – AnoE Sep 13 '16 at 14:31
@AnoE I see. I'll leave this anyway, might be helpful for people in the future. – simbabque Sep 13 '16 at 14:33
Sure, be my guest. ;) – AnoE Sep 13 '16 at 14:46

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 15 '19 at 14:56

You can use Carton to bundle the dependencies locally (on your machine with internet access) and then use either Carton itself to install the bundled distributions, or use cpanm itself and specify the bundle location.

You'll need carton 1.0.32 (to generate the package index) and cpanm 1.7016 (for the --from option) for this to work.

In the root of your distribution, you can do

$ carton install # will install the dependencies in `local`
$ carton bundle  # will cache the dependencies in `vendor`
$ tree vendor/
vendor/
└── cache
    ├── authors
    │   └── id
    │       └── F
    │           └── FO
    │               └── FOOBAR
    │                   ├── Some-Dist-1.337.tar.gz
    │                   └── Another-Dist-0.001001.tar.gz
    └── modules
        └── 02packages.details.txt.gz

Later, after transferring this to your other airgapped machine, you can either use carton:

$ carton install --cached
$ carton exec scripts/your-script.pl

or install with cpanm directly

# To emulate carton:
$ cpanm -L local --from "$PWD/vendor/cache" --installdeps --notest --quiet .
# Or to install globally:
$ cpanm --from "$PWD/vendor/cache" .

How to bundle modules for an offline server with cpanm

2 Answers2