[tpm] Upgrading Perl on Debian & Derivatives

[Scott Elcomb]

On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 2:01 PM, Olaf Alders <olaf at vilerichard.com> wrote:
>
> 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.

It's the shebang lines in the various scripts that are killing me -
they all reference /usr/bin/perl.  After working with the CMS (bug
fixes, feature enhancements etc) I'll need to push things back out to
the production servers.  (Maybe I should just automate modifications
to the shebang lines when pulling sources and pushing updates?)

> 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

I did discover perlbrew earlier and have an email out to gugod
(perlbrew's maintainer).  If I could force apache to use a specific
interpreter rather than the one specified in the scripts then I'll be
in a good spot.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions - they're most appreciated!

-- 
  Scott Elcomb
  http://www.psema4.com/   @psema4

  Member of the Pirate Party of Canada
  http://www.pirateparty.ca/