Installing Perl 5.6.1 from source on Debian

[Wesley Darlington]

On Mon, Jan 14, 2002 at 06:53:48PM +0000, Russell Matbouli wrote:
> I've just installed Debian on my new laptop and all was good until I
> installed Perl 5.6.1 from source. I thought I hit "n" when it asked if I
> wanted /usr/local/bin/perl to be overwritten, but evidently I pressed
> enter without the key registering.
> 
> The main problem seems to be that there are some Debian:: modules that
> aren't installed under 5.6.1 obviously.
> 
> So the question is - what is the best way to make Debian use 5.6.1? I
> know I can overwrite /u/l/b/p with the old version, but that's a bit
> kludgy. Is there a 5.6.1 package hiding away somewhere?

AFAIK, Debian keeps its perl in /usr/bin/perl. If you put yours in
/usr/local/bin/perl then you only have a path ordering issue...

    export PATH=/usr/bin:$PATH
    # Do debian perl stuff here... 

I usually keep "my" perl in something like /usr/local/perl-5.6.1-ahem
which is symlinked from /usr/local/perl. Then, /usr/local/perl/bin is
put in all users' paths via /etc/profile (slightly convolutedly), and
manpaths too. Root's perl is then /usr/bin/perl. Not ideal, but workable.

Suggestions for alternative layouts welcome...

Wesley.

[0] Past participle of symlink (v.t.)