Item1590: Installation of Plugins using the Configure-Webinterface don't report missing CPAN packages

If you install the CalendarPlugin using the Configure-Webinterface you get an "Installer ran without error. Installation finished"

But normally the output should say, that two dependencies to CPAN-packages aren't satisfied and that the user should install the Date::Calc Version 1.000 or higher and the HTML::CalendarMonthSimple version 1.23 and higher.

If you visit then the Topic InstalledPlugins you get a huge error-report for CalendarPlugin, that at the beginning says it misses Date/Calc.pm

Then, when you only install Date::Calc you get no error at InstalledPlugins but if you visit a Topic, which triggers the CalendarPlugin, you get:

Foswiki detected an internal error - please check your Foswiki logs and webserver logs for more information.

missing HTML::CalendarMonthSimple

It's no major problem, and the errors are self-explaining. But it don't make such a nice impression to the end-user.

-- StephaniePlatz - 08 May 2009

Nice feature request. At the moment configure and the plugin installers do not know anything about "external" dependencies.

Classifying this as "enhancement" and generalising the subject line.

-- OliverKrueger - 09 May 2009

These dependancies are also not installed (or obviously mentioned) when installing using apt-get.

-- NickRyder - 19 Sep 2009

For those of you wondering what to do about the self-explaining errors when installing using the apt-get route, it seems that Ubuntu doesn't have a package in apt containing HTML::CalendarMonthSimple. Therefore you need to install using CPAN manually. Debian I think might have an old version, but I don't know what the package is called!

-- EdMcDonagh - 13 Oct 2009

As of the new installer in 1.1, Configure will report missing dependencies (or in the case of non-CPAN external deps, warn since it can't check), Changing to No action required.

-- GeorgeClark - 14 Mar 2011