Permissions for gnc-fq-update

[David T.]

Hello,

In my quixotic quest to try and get quote retrieval working again on my Mac, I’ve been looking at ways to remove and reload all the Perl underlying Finance::Quote. (As John noted to me recently, there isn’t any uninstall command in CPAN, unfortunately). In this process, I ran into numerous discussions online that strongly recommend *against* invoking CPAN with root privileges for reasons I don’t quite understand [beyond the generic ‘don’t run things as root’], and with solutions I also don’t quite understand. My level of understanding notwithstanding, the advice is unambiguous.

In the course of this process, I opened up gnc-fq-update, and see immediately that it wants CPAN run with root access. Is this necessary? Given what I’ve read online, is this advised?

I ask out of curiousity, and to learn more.

David