[rt-users] Slightly OT: Perl Modules question

[John Arends]

This is slightly off topic, but since I think this is a problem nearly 
all RT administrators face I am looking for advice/suggestions.

I like to use kickstart to build RHEL systems and I'm sure other people 
use automated build processes as well.

What is incredibly difficult is satisfying all the perl module 
dependencies. Right now I build RPMs for all the perl modules using 
cpan2rpm or pull down some RPMs from the Dag Wieers repo. This takes a 
long time and with each RT version upgrade, I need even more perl modules.

I'm hesitant to install from CPAN as part of the automated build process 
because versions change, and if a server goes down or something else 
changes I don't want to have it affect my automated server build. Plus I 
want consistant versions. If I rebuild the machine today, or a year from 
now, I want the same version of various modules working.

So what do you all do? I want to build the machine in a reproducible 
way, so just installing the modules using cpan today isn't going to work.

Thanks

-John