CPrAN

A plugin manager for Praat

Current implementation

The current implementation is written in Perl and uses GitLab for its server-side code. The interface is modeled after apt and dpkg, but should be relatively familiar for most people who have used a package manager before.

Ideally, a package manager for Praat should be written in Praat, but that would be a daunting task indeed, and likely impossible. Whether Perl remains the best tool for the job or not, will be decided later. But details from the interface should be implementation-independent, which leaves us free to try other alternatives in the future.

This client is still in its testing stages, but it is stable enough to use. You can help by running it on your own machine and sending in any feedback you might have regarding both the design of the interface or (if you are technically oriented), its implementation.

Installation

Install Perl. You will need Perl to run the current version. Skip to the next step if you already have Perl or if you know how to set that up. If you are not sure if you have Perl installed, try running
```
perl -v
```
There are some good guides at the Perl website to install it on Windows, Mac, and GNU/Linux.
Install the Perl module. The Perl client is contained in the “CPrAN” module. At the moment, the module is not available through CPAN (the Perl distribution network) but it can be installed using cpanminus with the following command:
```
 cpanm https://gitlab.com/cpran/CPrAN.git
 # Or alternatively
 cpanm https://gitlab.com/cpran/CPrAN/repository/archive.tar.gz?ref=master
```
(If this doesn’t work, try first updating cpanminus iself with cpanm App::cpanminus).

If not using cpanminus, you can download the module archive manually, extract it, and run the following commands at its root:
```
 perl Makefile.PL
 make
 make test
 make install
```
You can make sure that all is well by running cpran --version from the command line. If that command still fails and you’ve followed all steps so far, go check out the issues page for similar problems, or open a new issue to get help.

You can get some basic usage information by running cpran help or cpran help <command>, where <command> is the name of the command you want help with.

Note: to avoid having to install packages at the system level (ie, with administrator rights), consider using perlbrew (or DWIM Perl or berrybrew if you are on Windows). These are perl version managers that allow you to have multiple user-specific Perl installations.
Install the CPrAN plugin. Once the client is installed, you need to install the Praat plugin so that Praat can interact with it. You should be able to do this using the CPrAN client itself by running
```
cpran init
```
to install the plugin. That’s it!
Profit

Check the documentation for more detailed information about all available commands. The client page is probably a good place to start.

Make sure to get back with reports of any problems or successes you might have on your setup!

Troubleshooting

500 Status read failed: A non-blocking socket operation could not be completed immediately

See here for a fix.

403 Forbidden while running update

See here for details. This has been fixed in 0.0107 and higher (note: what was then called v0.1.7). You might have to upgrade manually to the new version if your update is broken.