[Pdx-pm] Custom CentOS RPM of Perl

[Daniel Browning]

On Tuesday 30 March 2010 11:56:02 am Roderick A. Anderson wrote:
> I have seen postings (mostly on the Catalyst list) that the Perl RPM for
> the Redhat based distributions is pretty bad.

I agree. For one, I prefer a non-threaded perl.

> I'd like to build (or find) a Perl RPM that replaces the one provided.
> This is for CentOS systems.  

Here is one that I use and recommend:

http://packages.endpoint.com/

The catch is that it does not replace the system perl, it only supercedes it 
by installing in /usr/local/ (which is generally ahead of /usr/). The RPM 
files are named local-perl-* instead of perl-* to keep them separate.

If part of your motivation for replacing the system perl is due to hard-
coded paths to /usr/bin/perl, I suggest replacing them with this:

 #!/usr/bin/env perl

Then they will automatically use /usr/local/ in a standard environment 
configuration. (Or they can all be switched to something else just by 
changing the environment, and you don't have to modify a host of paths. DRY 
principle and all that.)

> Is this something a mostly sane person :-) should try?

Personally, I wouldn't try to replace the system perl because the other 
software linked to it probably depends on the very things I want to change, 
such as threadiness. Theoretically, if you descend deep enough into the 
dependencies (e.g. Apache, MySQL, etc.), you could resolve all of that, but 
I would predict the loss of at least some sanity.

Hope that helps,
--
DB