This is an alpha release. The interface presented here may still
change. This is especially true for the programming interface. The
shell interface is already rather stable.

=head1 What it does

It's a shell for downloading and installing modules from CPAN. The
prompt is 'cpan> ' in the examples below.

  cpan> h

  command   arguments   description
  a                             authors
  b         string              bundles
  d         or          display distributions
  m         /regex/     info    modules
  i         or          about   anything of above
  r         none                reinstall recommendations
  u                             uninstalled modules

  make      modules,    make
  test      dists or    make test (implies make)
  install   bundles     make install (implies test)

  h                     display this menu
  o         various     set and query options
  !         perl-code   eval a perl command
  q                     quit the shell subroutine

  A regular expression has to be between two slashes.

  cpan> a LWALL
  Author id = LWALL
      EMAIL        larry@wall.org
      FULLNAME     Larry Wall. Author of Perl. Busy man.


  cpan> m /news/
  Module          News::NNTPClient (RVA/NNTPClient-0.26.tar.gz)
  Module          News::NNTPFetchProgress (RVA/NNTPClient-0.26.tar.gz)
  Module          News::Newsrc    (SWMCD/News-Newsrc-1.02.tar.gz)

  cpan> m News::Ne<TAB>
  cpan> m News::Newsrc _< cursor here
  cpan> m News::Newsrc
  Module id = News::Newsrc
      DESCRIPTION  Manage .newsrc files
      CPAN_USERID  SWMCD (Steven McDougall)
      CPAN_VERSION 1.02
      CPAN_FILE    SWMCD/News-Newsrc-1.02.tar.gz
      DSLI_STATUS  adpO (alpha,developer,perl,object-oriented)
      MANPAGE      News::Newsrc - manage newsrc files
      INST_FILE    /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/News/Newsrc.pm
      INST_VERSION 1.02

  cpan> r

  Package namespace         installed    latest  in CPAN file
  Date::GetDate                  1.01      2.00  TOMC/modules/Date-GetDate-2.00.tar.gz
  Devel::DProf               19960302  19960626  DMR/DProf-19960626.tar.gz
  File::Copy                      1.5       2.0  ASHER/File-Tools-2.0.tar.gz
  Filter::decrypt                1.02      1.03  PMQS/Filter-1.10.tar.gz
  Ioctl                             0       0.7  KJALB/Ioctl-0_7.tar.gz
  MIME::Decoder                     0       1.9  ERYQ/MIME-parser-1.13.tar.gz
  Mail::Folder                   0.02      0.03  KJOHNSON/MailFolder-0.03.tar.gz
  Pod::Text                         0         2  BRADAPP/PodParser-1.00.tar.gz
  Tk::FileDialog                    0       1.3  BPOWERS/Tk-FileDialog-1.3.tar.gz
  Tk::WaitBox                       0       1.2  BPOWERS/Tk-WaitBox-1.2.tar.gz

  cpan> in<TAB>
  cpan> install _<cursor here
  cpan> install Po<TAB>
  cpan> install Pod::_<cursor here
  cpan> install Pod::Text
  Running make
  PodParser-0.01/
  PodParser-0.01/Text.pm
  PodParser-0.01/Makefile.PL
  [...]
    /usr/local/bin/make -- OK
  Running make test
  [...]
    /usr/local/bin/make test -- OK
  Running make install
  [...]
    /usr/local/bin/make install UNINST=1 -- OK

  cpan> a /rand/
  Author          JOEHIL (Joe Hildebrand)
  Author          MERLYN (Randal L. Schwartz)
  Author          RJRAY (Randy J Ray)


And so forth.

=head1 Prerequisites

perl5.003_04

Net::FTP

=head1 Recommended

ExtUtils::MakeMaker v5.38

Term::ReadKey

Term::ReadLine::* (0.92)

MD5

LWP




Enjoy,
andreas

