So, I was using tircd, on Ubuntu 9.04, and it worked just fine, I installed the requirements with a simple

cpan Net::Twitter

And all was well.  Now, I’m back on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, (don’t ask, it’s a long story) and this doesn’t install quite so easily.

It was failing because Net::OAuth wasn’t installing, and _that_ was failing with:
Unable to load HMAC_SHA1 plugin at /home/karl/.cpan/build/Net-OAuth-0.19/blib/lib/Net/OAuth/Message.pm line 190.

Ok, but “cpan Digest::HMAC_SHA1”  said that it was already up to date.  I couldn’t for the life of me work out was wrong with this.  Normally cpan just KNOWS, and it KNOWS BEST!  Obviously one of these modules had a bad dependency somewhere.

The solution?

cpan Digest::SHA1

Presto, Net::Twitter installs, and presto, tircd works, and presto, chucky’s alive!