Re: installation of Statistics::Test::WilcoxonRankSum


Quoth "ela" <ela@xxxxxxxxxx>:
Installation (by cpan) of Statistics::Test::WilcoxonRankSum failed and then
I tried installing its dependent module Contextual::Return, then I

[Brrrrr. IMHO it's worth staying away from modules like that: they're
cute'n'all, but *so* fragile. I realise you didn't choose, in this
case.]

encountered the following errors:

<snip>
t/args.t ...................... syntax error at t/args.t line 6, near "BOOL
"
syntax error at t/args.t line 8, near "NUM "
Execution of t/args.t aborted due to compilation errors.
t/args.t ...................... Dubious, test returned 255 (wstat 65280,
0xff00)
No subtests run
t/args_RESULT.t ............... Type of arg 1 to Contextual::Return::RESULT
must be block or sub {} (not single ref constructor) at t/args_RESULT.t line
5, near "};"

That looks to me like a prototype not being properly recognised at
compile time, but I can't see why that should happen. [ETA: looking
further, it looks like a bug in the version of perl you're using.]

What's the problem? And what's the reference books for solving this kinda
problems?

When you hit something like this the first step is to find the module on
search.cpan.org. From there you want to follow the link

CPAN Testers ... [Perl/Platform Version Matrix]

and see if other people with your OS and your version of perl have seen
similar problems. (You can click on the red and green bars to get a list
of detailed reports.) If other people in your position have reported
building the module successfully, the problem is probably on your
system; if they haven't, there may be a problem with the module, or with
that version of perl.

The next step is to go back to search.cpan.org and follow the

Links ... [View/Report Bugs]

link. Look through the list of reported bugs (if there are any) and see
if any look like what you're seeing. If they do, read the bug
transcript: someone may have found a fix or a workaround that hasn't
been included in the module yet. You may also want to check the resolved
bugs, in case this is a new example of an old problem that hasn't been
fixed properly.

If there are lots of important-looking bugs that haven't been touched in
several years, you may want to reconsider using the module. Code that's
'stable' is fine if it works, but if it doesn't and noone's fixing it
you want to stay away. (Unless, of course, you want to volunteer to take
on maintenance yourself :).)

In your particular case: are you, by any chance, using perl 5.8.0? If
so, *you need to upgrade*. 5.8.0, like most of the .0 releases, has some
rather important bugs. Even if you only upgrade to 5.8.9 (which is also
unsupported, and has been since 2008), that would be an improvement.
(Even if you only upgrade to 5.8.*1*, that would be an important
improvement.)

It also seems, looking at the reports, that C::R doesn't work at all on
5.8 versions of perl. If you really can't upgrade to 5.10-or-later, you
could try installing v0.2.1 of C::R, which appears to work on all the
5.8s *except* 5.8.0. You would need to either download and install it by
hand, or use

cpan> install DCONWAY/Contextual-Return-v0.2.1.tar.gz

I wouldn't recommend this as a permanent soultion, though.

Ben

.

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