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I'm on Strawberry Perl on Windows 7 64-bit. cpanm fails like this for many packages in cpan:

$ cpanm Getopt::Long::Descriptive
Fetching http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS/Getopt-Long-Descriptive-0.097.tar.gz ... OK
Configuring Getopt-Long-Descriptive-0.097 ... N/A
! The distribution doesn't have a proper Makefile.PL/Build.PL See C:\Users\me\.cpanm\work\1399608810.1056\build.log for details.

Yet, cpan -i Getopt::Long::Descriptive succeeds. Any idea why?

EDIT (build.log output)

cpanm (App::cpanminus) 1.7001 on perl 5.018002 built for MSWin32-x64-multi-thread
Work directory is C:\Users\me/.cpanm/work/1399608810.1056
You have make C:\strawberry\c\bin\dmake.exe
You have LWP 6.05
You have C:\dev\tools\UnxUtils\usr\local\wbin\tar.exe, C:\dev\tools\UnxUtils\usr\local\wbin\gzip.exe and C:\dev\tools\UnxUtils\usr\local\wbin\bzip2.exe
You have C:\dev\tools\UnxUtils\usr\local\wbin\unzip.exe
Searching Getopt::Long::Descriptive on cpanmetadb ...
--> Working on Getopt::Long::Descriptive
Fetching http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS/Getopt-Long-Descriptive-0.097.tar.gz
-> OK
Unpacking Getopt-Long-Descriptive-0.097.tar.gz
Entering Getopt-Long-Descriptive-0.097
META.yml/json not found. Creating skeleton for it.
Configuring Getopt-Long-Descriptive-0.097
-> N/A
-> FAIL The distribution doesn't have a proper Makefile.PL/Build.PL See C:\Users\me\.cpanm\work\1399608810.1056\build.log for details.

EDIT (unpacking issue)

Fascinating, it appears that the files are unpacked, but never show up on disk!

C:\Users\me>cpanm -v --look Getopt::Long::Descriptive
cpanm (App::cpanminus) 1.5018 on perl 5.016002 built for MSWin32-x64-multi-thread
Work directory is C:\Users\me/.cpanm/work/1399909160.7264
You have make C:\strawberry\c\bin\dmake.exe
You have LWP 6.04
You have C:\UnxUtils\usr\local\wbin\tar.exe, C:\UnxUtils\usr\local\wbin\gzip.exe and C:\UnxUtils\usr\local\wbin\bzip2.exe
You have C:\UnxUtils\usr\local\wbin\unzip.exe
Searching Getopt::Long::Descriptive on cpanmetadb ...
--> Working on Getopt::Long::Descriptive
Fetching http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/R/RJ/RJBS/Getopt-Long-Descriptive-0.097.tar.gz ... OK
Unpacking Getopt-Long-Descriptive-0.097.tar.gz
Getopt-Long-Descriptive-0.097
README
Changes
LICENSE
dist.ini
META.yml
MANIFEST
META.json
Makefile.PL
t
descriptive.t
shortcircuit.t
release
pod-syntax.t
000-report-versions-tiny.t
Long
Descriptive.pm
changes_has_content.t
Descriptive
Opts.pm
Usage.pm
Entering Getopt-Long-Descriptive-0.097
Entering C:/Users/me/.cpanm/work/1399909160.7264/Getopt-Long-Descriptive-0.097 with C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

C:\Users\me\.cpanm\work\1399909160.7264\Getopt-Long-Descriptive-0.097>dir
 Volume in drive C is OS
 Volume Serial Number is 008E-DBB0

 Directory of C:\Users\me\.cpanm\work\1399909160.7264\Getopt-Long-Descriptive-0.097

05/12/2014  11:39 AM    <DIR>          .
05/12/2014  11:39 AM    <DIR>          ..
               0 File(s)              0 bytes
               2 Dir(s)  48,360,112,128 bytes free

EDIT (found files, up one level)

C:\Users\me\.cpanm\work\1399909160.7264\Getopt-Long-Descriptive-0.097>cd ..

C:\Users\me\.cpanm\work\1399909160.7264>ls
000-report-versions-tiny.t            Makefile.PL
Changes                               Opts.pm
Descriptive                           README
Descriptive.pm                        Usage.pm
Getopt-Long-Descriptive-0.097         changes_has_content.t
Getopt-Long-Descriptive-0.097.tar.gz  descriptive.t
LICENSE                               dist.ini
Long                                  pod-syntax.t
MANIFEST                              release
META.json                             shortcircuit.t
META.yml                              t
Chris Betti
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  • That is weird, because Getopt::Long::Descriptive version 0.097 _does_ contain a [Makefile.PL](https://metacpan.org/source/RJBS/Getopt-Long-Descriptive-0.097/Makefile.PL). Can you inspect the build log pointed to by the error message? – Edward May 09 '14 at 07:06
  • I added the build.log information. Of note: the Getopt-Long-Descriptive-0.097 directory in .cpanm\work\1399608810.1056 is empty. I'm assuming cpanm deleted the contents after an unsuccessful install? The other packages I installed with this run do not have empty directories. – Chris Betti May 09 '14 at 07:22
  • So `build.log` isn't very helpful, either ... It seems like something went wrong unpacking the dist. Did you know you can run `cpanm --look Getopt::Long::Descriptive` to make cpanm unpack the dist for you? It will change to the directory where it unpacked the dist, so you can run `perl Makefile.PL`, `make` and all that stuff manually. – Edward May 12 '14 at 07:18
  • Regarding --look output: when I run wget, gunzip, and tar by hand, the files unpack fine. – Chris Betti May 12 '14 at 15:47
  • I searched my hard disk, and found the files. They weren't unpacked into the subdirectory cpanm expected them to be in. Instead, they were unpacked into the directory above. I wonder if this is a cpan requirement that the package is missing, or if cpanm could be a little better at detecting files in the root of the archive. – Chris Betti May 12 '14 at 16:19
  • I think something else is happening here ... Getopt::Long::Descriptive has a well-defined [directory structure](https://metacpan.org/source/RJBS/Getopt-Long-Descriptive-0.097) but on your machine the contents of the tarball get squashed into a flat list. Now I cannot tell whether that is cpanm's fault or tar's, but this is starting to look like a bug. – Edward May 13 '14 at 05:51

1 Answers1

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It turns out UnxUtils tar was at fault in this case. I'm not sure how the Getopt::Long::Descriptive archive was created, but UnxUtils tar flattens the contents when it is unpacked.

On the other hand, GnuWin32 tar handles the archive just fine.

Chris Betti
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