4. What/Where is</a> <a name="CPAN">CPAN?

4. What/Where is CPAN?

"CPAN" = Comprehensive Perl Archive Network a worldwide collection of anonymous ftp sites for Perl et al (not to be confused with CTAN which is for TeX). The files of particular interest to a perl/Tk programmer include:

The latest Tk-b# release should be in the authors/id/NI-S/ directory at any CPAN ftp site (listed below).
The latest official Perl release should be in the src/ directory in a file called latest.tar.gz at any CPAN ftp site (listed below).
If you need something older or newer than the latest supported release try the src/5.0/ directory (for perl5.002_*.tar.gz e.g.) at any CPAN ftp site (listed below).
(Also, if you need something really new try the incoming/ directory at any site listed below.)
Alan Scheinine's SelFile.pm is in the authors/id/ALSCH/ directory at any CPAN ftp site (listed below).
Guy Decoux's BLT_Table geometry manager is in the authors/id/GUYDX/ directory at any CPAN ftp site (listed below).
Ilya Zakharevich's eText plug in replacement for the Text widget is in the authors/id/ILYAZ/etext/ directory at any CPAN ftp site (listed below).
The latest version of MakeMaker (the perl equivalent to imake/xmkmf) is available from the authors/id/ANDK/ directory at any CPAN ftp site (listed below).
To run the ptknews script you will need Mail/RFC822.pm from the Mailtools module kit, available from the authors/id/GBARR/ directory at any CPAN ftp site (listed below).
The build of Tk-b10(++) requires URI::URL and HTML::Parse these are part of the libwww-perl-*.tar.gz kit, available from the authors/id/GAAS/ directory at any site listed below. libwww-perl-*.tar.gz in turn requires NET-FTP-*.tar.gz, available from the authors/id/GBARR/ directory at any CPAN ftp site (listed below).
Assorted documentation is in the doc/ directory at any CPAN ftp site (listed below).
Fairly up-to-date versions of all sorts of documentation (including this FAQ in various formats) is in the doc/, directory tree (you may have to go down one or more directories) at any CPAN ftp site (listed below).
Most things perl/Tk (exclusive of external documentation such as this FAQ) are also linked to a modules/by-module/Tk/ directory at any CPAN ftp site (listed below).

Here are the 40 CPAN sites/directories (with dotted quads [IP numbers] given on the right for those without name-servers):

Updated: Thu May 16 01:13:37 EDT 1996

Africa
  South Africa     
    ftp://ftp.is.co.za/programming/perl/CPAN/           196.4.160.8
Asia
  Hong Kong        
    ftp://ftp.hkstar.com/pub/CPAN/                      202.82.0.80
  Japan            
    ftp://ftp.lab.kdd.co.jp/lang/perl/CPAN/             192.26.91.3
  Taiwan           
    ftp://dongpo.math.ncu.edu.tw/perl/CPAN/             140.115.25.3
Australasia
  Australia        
    ftp://coombs.anu.edu.au/pub/perl/CPAN/              150.203.76.2
    ftp://ftp.mame.mu.oz.au/pub/perl/CPAN/              128.250.209.2
  New Zealand      
    ftp://ftp.tekotago.ac.nz/pub/perl/CPAN/             202.49.6.24
Europe
  Austria          
    ftp://ftp.tuwien.ac.at/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/     128.130.66.11
  Czech Republic   
    ftp://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/MIRRORS/ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/  194.50.16.66
  Denmark          
    ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/       130.225.51.30
  Finland          
    ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/perl/CPAN/         128.214.248.6
  France           
    ftp://ftp.ibp.fr/pub/perl/CPAN/                     132.227.77.2
    ftp://ftp.pasteur.fr/pub/computing/unix/perl/CPAN/  157.99.64.12
  Germany          
    ftp://ftp.leo.org/pub/comp/programming/languages/perl/CPAN/  131.159.0.252
    ftp://ftp.rz.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/pub/CPAN/           134.147.32.42
  Greece           
    ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/lang/perl/                    147.102.222.210
  Hungary          
    ftp://ftp.kfki.hu/pub/packages/perl/CPAN/           148.6.0.5
  the Netherlands  
    ftp://ftp.cs.ruu.nl/pub/PERL/CPAN/                  131.211.80.17
  Poland           
    ftp://ftp.pk.edu.pl/pub/lang/perl/CPAN/             149.156.132.152
    ftp://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/CPAN/                  148.81.209.2
  Portugal         
    ftp://ftp.ci.uminho.pt/pub/lang/perl/               193.136.16.247
  Slovenia         
    ftp://ftp.arnes.si/software/perl/CPAN/              193.2.1.72
  Spain            
    ftp://ftp.rediris.es/mirror/CPAN/                   130.206.1.2
  Sweden           
    ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/lang/perl/CPAN/              130.238.127.3
  Switzerland      
    ftp://ftp.switch.ch/mirror/CPAN/                    130.59.1.40
  UK               
    ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/mirrors/perl/CPAN/        158.152.1.44
    ftp://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/packages/CPAN/           146.169.17.5
    ftp://unix.hensa.ac.uk/mirrors/perl-CPAN/           129.12.200.129
North America
  British Columbia 
    ftp://mango.pinc.com/pub/mirrors/CPAN/              204.174.113.53
  California       
    ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/plan/perl/CPAN/           204.123.2.4
    ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/perl/CPAN/                  165.113.58.253
  Colorado         
    ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/perl/CPAN/            128.138.243.20
  Florida          
    ftp://ftp.cis.ufl.edu/pub/perl/CPAN/                128.227.162.34
  Illinois         
    ftp://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/lang/perl/CPAN/    128.174.5.14
  Massachusetts    
    ftp://ftp.iguide.com/pub/mirrors/packages/perl/CPAN/  206.15.105.99
  Oklahoma         
    ftp://ftp.uoknor.edu/mirrors/CPAN/                  129.15.2.40
  Texas            
    ftp://ftp.sedl.org/pub/mirrors/CPAN/                198.213.9.194
    ftp://ftp.metronet.com/pub/perl/                    192.245.137.6
    ftp://ftp.sterling.com/CPAN/                        198.4.58.3
South America
  Chile            
    ftp://sunsite.dcc.uchile.cl/pub/Lang/perl/CPAN/     146.83.4.11

For those equipped with multi-protocol browsers you might pay a visit to Tom Christiansen's CPAN multiplexer whose relevant Tk URLs are:

    http://perl.com/cgi-bin/cpan_mod?module=Tk
    http://perl.com/cgi-bin/cpan_mod?module=Tk&readme=1

According to Stephen P. Potter some of the CPAN sites have decompression on the fly for people who do not have programs like gunzip. For example, at the ufl site (Florida USA) type this into your ftp session to download a gunzipped version of Tk:

    ftp> get Tk-b11.02.tar.gz Tk-b11.02.tar

If you have the appropriate CPAN and FTP modules already installed you can retrieve a module from CPAN and carry out a complete installation with a perl one-liner like this:

    perl -MCPAN -e 'install "Tk"'

For more information on CPAN you can send e-mail to the CPAN administrators, <cpan-adm@ftp.funet.fi>. If you know of some Perl resources that seem not to be in the CPAN (you did check the contents listings in indices/, didn't you?) please tell the CPAN administrators. If you have some modules/scripts/documentation yourself that you would like to contribute to CPAN, please read the file authors/00upload.howto and let the CPAN administrators know about it.

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