[Purdue-pm] a one question survey

[Mark Daniel Ward]

Dear Joe,
     That is very helpful.  Thank you so much!
Mark


On 4/19/10 11:51 AM, Joe Kline wrote:
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> Mark Daniel Ward wrote:
>    
>> Dear Purdue PM friends,
>>      Did anyone install Perl 5.12 on their Mac last week?  I've installed
>> Perl by hand on my Mac in the past (for instance, when Perl 5.10 was
>> released), but I wanted to check and see if anybody had tried it yet.
>>      I'm always cautious about such things, because I don't want to break
>> the Apple pre-installed Perl, which is 5.10.0 in Mac OS X 10.6.3.
>>      Any suggestions/advice or lessons learned?  Tips?
>>      
>
> Mark,
>
> here are a couple of posts from brian d foy and a book excerpt that look
> to be useful for non-os Perl installs:
>
>
> - From the upcoming Effective Perl Programming 2nd Edition
> ====================================================================
> (the formatting sucks a bit because it's from a pdf brian gave us a
> Frozen Perl).
>
> Item 110. Compile and install your own perls.
>
> Sometimes Perl suffers from its own success. It comes with just about
> every version of operating systems with Unix or Linux heritages,
> including Mac OS X. Many of these systems use Perl as part of their
> normal operation or provide perl as packages. Even then, you can find
> pre-compiled perls for most platforms.
>
> Perl on Windows commonly uses precompiled binaries from ActiveState
> (http://www.activestate.com), cygwin, or Strawberry Perl
> (http://www.strawberryperl.com). People don’t have to compile their own
> perl anymore.
>
> There are many advantages to compiling and using your own perl, though.
> Since many operating systems rely on perl for normal maintenance tasks,
> you want to avoid anything that will break that perl. If you upgrade a
> core module, for instance, an important part of the system may stop
> working. You probably want to pretend that the system perl is not even
> there.
>
> Also, as a Perl developer, you should install several versions of perl
> so you can test against each of them. It’s easy to install and maintain
> distinct versions. This Item covers the basics, but your system may have
> additional requirements. The perl distribution has several README files
> that give instructions for particular operating systems.
>
> Compiling your perl
>
> To compile perl, you’ll need a C compiler and the build tools that
> typically come with it. You’ll also need make or one of its variants.
> You don’t need any special privileges, and you can install
> perl in your own user directory. This Item assumes you have all of that
> already worked out.
>
> To start, download the version of perl that you want to test. You can
> find all of the perl releases on CPAN (http://www.cpan.org/src/README.html).
>
> Once you unpack your distribution, change into its directory. It’s time
> to choose an installation location. For this example, you’ll put all of
> your perls under /usr/local/perls, and each new installation will get
> its own subdirectory under that.
>
> The Configure script examines your system and prepares the perl sources
> for compilation. The -des switches accept all of the default answers and
> gives you terse output. The -D switch
> overrides one of the answers, in this case for prefix which sets the
> installation location.
>
> % ./Configure -des -Dprefix=/usr/local/perls/perl-5.10.1
>
> In this case, you’ve configured the build to install everything under
> /usr/local/perls/perl-5.10.1. By accepting the defaults, you won’t move
> the perl into /usr/bin, so don’t be afraid of messing up anything. You
> should probably do this from an unprivileged account anyway, so your
> system will stop you from doing anything too bad.
>
> If you want to see everything that you can configure, don’t accept any
> of the defaults and go through the entire process yourself (try it once
> in life):
>
> % ./Configure
>
> After you run the Configure, no matter which options you used, you’re
> ready to build the source. Depending on your system, you’ll need a make
> variant:
>
> % make all
>
> When the build completes, you can test it, which might take a while:
>
> % make test
>
> And finally, you install it. You should see it copy files into the
> directory you specified in prefix:
>
> % make install
>
> After you finish installing that perl, try installing another one. You
> can enable different features, such as threads. You can change the
> prefix to note the interesting feature of this perl:
>
> % ./Configure -des -Dusethreads \
> - -Dprefix=/usr/local/perls/perl-5.10.1-threaded
>
> Using your perl
>
> Once you install perl there’s nothing left for you to configure to use
> it, although you have to use the path to the perl you want to use. You
> can see the default module search path, for instance:
>
> % /usr/local/perls/perl-5.10.1/bin/perl -V
>
> All of the tools, extra programs, and modules for your new perl show up
> under your prefix directory. If you want cpan to install modules for
> this perl, you call the cpan for that perl. It’s in the bin directory
> under your prefix:
>
> % /usr/local/perls/perl-5.10.1/bin/cpan LWP::Simple
>
> Any modules that you install in this fashion go into the library
> directories just for that perl and do not disturb any other
> installation. Indeed, that’s the point. Remember that when you switch to
> using another perl: you might have to reinstall the modules for that
> perl too.
>
> If you want to read the documentation, you use the right path to perldoc
> so it searches the correct module path:
>
> % /usr/local/perls/perl-5.10.1/bin/perldoc↵
> LWP::Simple
>
> If you want to use this perl and its tools as your main perl, you can
> add its path to your PATH environment variable. That leaves the system
> perl in place, too. If you want to switch your default perl, you just
> update your path so the shell finds the new default first. Everything
> else, including the module paths, take care of themselves.
>
> You might have some trouble with CPAN.pm or CPANPLUS, since they store
> their configuration in your home directory (Item 65). Their
> configurations are per-user instead of per-perl. Ensure that you update
> their configuration for the perl that you want to use.
>
> Things to remember
> ◾ Install your own perl so you don’t disturb the system perl.
> ◾ You can install multiple perls with different configurations.
> ◾ Add your preferred Perl’s location to your PATH to make it the default.
> ====================================================================
>
> Manager Perl modules with git
> http://www.effectiveperlprogramming.com/blog/60
>
> Links for per-version tools
> http://www.effectiveperlprogramming.com/blog/92
>
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