Using Archive::Tar with cpanminus to circumvent tar failures on AIX

[yulivee]

Hi,

trying to use cpanm to install packages on AIX failes with:

cpanm -v Pinto
cpanm (App::cpanminus) 1.7044 on perl 5.020001 built for aix-thread-multi
Work directory is /home/perl_ss/.cpanm/work/1558075090.14549382
You have make /usr/bin/make
You have LWP 6.15
You have /usr/bin/tar: 
You have /usr/bin/unzip
Searching Pinto () on cpanmetadb ...
--> Working on Pinto
Fetching http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/T/TH/THALJEF/Pinto-0.14.tar.gz ... OK
Unpacking Pinto-0.14.tar.gz
Usage: tar -{c|r|t|u|x} [ -BdDEFhilmopRUsvwZ ] [ -Number ] [ -f TarFil e ]
           [ -b Blocks ] [ -S [ Feet ] | [ Feet@Density ] | [ Blocksb ] ]
           [ -L InputList ] [-X ExcludeFile] [ -N Blocks ] [ -C Directory ] File ...
Usage: tar {c|r|t|u|x} [ bBdDEfFhilLXmNopRsSUvwZ[0-9] ] ]
           [ Blocks ] [ TarFile ] [ InputList ] [ ExcludeFile ] 
           [ [ Feet ] | [ Feet@Density ] | [ Blocksb ] ] [-C Directory ] File ...
! Failed to unpack Pinto-0.14.tar.gz: no directory
! Failed to fetch distribution Pinto-0.14

that seems to make sense to me, because AIX doesn't have gnu-tar. Its actually hard to tell which version of tar it makes use of, because the tar on AIX does not have a --version switch.

I can install packages using the standard cpan client, so this seems to be cpanm specific.

So I thought I might be able to circumvent this by making use of Archive::Tar like the pod suggests. Install Archive::Tar, but the error-message did not change. Are there any additional steps required to make cpanm use Archive::Tar?

Update
Apparently there exists another tar in /opt/freeware/bin:

 /opt/freeware/bin/tar --version            
tar (GNU tar) 1.32
Copyright (C) 2019 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
Written by John Gilmore and Jay Fenlason.

Is there a way to tell cpanm where to locate the tar-command?

Kind Regards,
Sandra Schuhmacher

[yulivee]

Putting /opt/freeware/bin as first directory into PATH solved it for me