Installation on Mac OS X

This page tells you how to install and run the Generic Perl Version on Apple Mac OS X. To install and run the Generic Perl Version on Linux and similar systems as well as on web servers, read the Installation guide.

INTRODUCTION

The prsslist program is written in the Perl computer language. In order to run, it requires a copy of the Perl language system which is usually installed on computers running Mac OS X. This page tells you how to run it as a normal Perl program under OS X. You run it using the Terminal program that gives access to a Unix “shell” window. This method of operation is oriented towards users with technical experience who are comfortable downloading a program file and running programs from the command line in the Terminal program. It only requires minimal experience with Unix.

Once started, you interact with the program through a web browser.

The system requirements are:

• Mac OS X version 10.3 or greater.
  • It has been tested and is compatible with Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard
• Apple Safari web browser or equivalent
• Internet connection if uploading by FTP
• 200KB+ disk space
• Perl language system that includes the library modules:
  • LWP::UserAgent
  • Net::FTP
  • Time::Local
    (see below for installing the packages).

USING IT ON YOUR SYSTEM

Installation

Follow these instructions to install and run prsslist:

• Make sure that you have Perl and that you have the correct packages installed. If you want specific instructions, you can follow the Software Garden Inc. Mac OS X 10.3 Setup page for step-by-step instructions.
• Once you have Perl installed, then you can run Perl programs from the command line in a Terminal program window by executing “perl programname” (or just by executing the “.pl” program directly if the file permissions include “execute”). You can check that Perl is installed and see the version information by executing the command perl -v.
• Read the License Agreement to make sure that you understand the restrictions and rights that apply to this program. The source code is covered by the GNU GPLv2. The Generic Perl Version is available for free and comes with no warranty of any kind.
• If you do not agree to the above license, do not download or use the program. You may not use or copy the program except under terms of the license.
• Download the Local Generic Perl Version from the Downloads page, or use git to clone the latest version by following these steps in a Terminal window.
  

  
  
  
  git clone git://github.com/lantrix/prsslist.git
  
  
  

• You run the program locally by extracting the download and executing the commands:
  

  
  
  
  cd prsslist
  perl prsslist.pl option values
  
  
  

• You can get a list of options by using the “-h” option. When executing the program, you can exit before it’s finished by pressing Ctrl-C.

Using the program

After you start the program running, you interact with it by accessing the URL it lists. By default, you need to open the following local URL with Safari or a similar browser:

http://127.0.0.1:6555
You normally quit by using the “Quit” command in the user interface.

Only the following files are needed for local execution. All others may be deleted.

• prsslist.pl
• prsslist.pm
• prsslistLicense.pm

prsslist maintains one or more files locally to save all the feed information. By default, those files are stored in the current directory. The files are named “prefix.feed.name.txt”, where “prefix” is “listdata” by default and “name” is a name you give to each feed when you create it (for example, “listdata.feed.dblog.txt”). The -d string option can be used to set a different datafile prefix than the default “listdata”. The prefix may include path information to use a different directory, e.g., “~/prsslist/data/feeddata”.

Troubleshooting

If the program displays an error message in the Terminal window when run complaining about a missing module, such as LWP, or LWP::UserAgent, you can seek further help or re-read the Software Garden Inc. Mac OS X 10.3 Setup page for documentation about getting the correct Perl packages.

Uninstall

Delete the directory created when you cloned the git repository.