Force install using CPAN

CPAN is a powerful archive of Perl modules tools. It contains many modules to do just about anything one would want to do in Perl. In order to initiate a CPAN session via the perl comand line you can use the following command:

perl -MCPAN -e shell

Which will allow you to use CPAN in shell mode. Once you configure some settings you will be taken to a prompt. To install a module you can use

cpan> install LWP::Simple

The following will install the LWP::Simple package.

On occasion you may encounter errors in compiling the module. Some could be minor, some major. If you wish to force the installation anyhow you can use the force option

cpan> force install LWP::Simple

There is also a way to force it even further

cpan> fforce install LWP::Simple

Notice the double “ff”.

For a full list of available cpan commands type “help”.

cpan> help

Display Information
 command  argument          description
 a,b,d,m  WORD or /REGEXP/  about authors, bundles, distributions, modules
 i        WORD or /REGEXP/  about anything of above
 r        NONE              reinstall recommendations
 ls       AUTHOR            about files in the author's directory

Download, Test, Make, Install...
 get                        download
 make                       make (implies get)
 test      MODULES,         make test (implies make)
 install   DISTS, BUNDLES   make install (implies test)
 clean                      make clean
 look                       open subshell in these dists' directories
 readme                     display these dists' README files

Other
 h,?           display this menu       ! perl-code   eval a perl command
 o conf [opt]  set and query options   q             quit the cpan shell
 reload cpan   load CPAN.pm again      reload index  load newer indices
 autobundle    Snapshot                force cmd     unconditionally do cmd