[tpm] Upgrading Perl on Debian & Derivatives

[Olaf Alders]

On 2010-08-30, at 1:48 PM, Stuart Watt wrote:

> If I was you, I'd use the separate Perl. I know that the Debian base Perl is pretty good, but it is installed for a different purpose (to help manage the OS) and cannot be guaranteed to be maintained as you need. It isn't too bad to do this, and most of your modules will probably build OK. If you stick with the OS Perl there is a risk that an OS update breaks something for you, or that you break the OS in some subtle way by upgrading a system module.
> 
> I tend to use PATH hacking rather than a link, though, so that perldoc and the cpan command and its friends relate to your Perl rather than the system one. I just tend to regard the OS Perl is best not touched, or even used, when I can help it.
> 


I would second this.  I learned the hard way as well on an Ubuntu system.  Now I like to install a local perl and then just add that to my path.  Works quite nicely for me.  

Having said that, apparently all the cool kids are using local::lib and perlbrew to manage their Perl installations, so that would probably be worth looking at as well.

http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?local::lib
http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?perlbrew

Best,

Olaf
--
Olaf Alders
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