Perl Programming Best Practices 2011 (part 3 - new versions of Perl and modules)

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Experimenting with new versions of Perl and modules

Many developers have a chicken-and-egg problem when it comes to upgrading their version of Perl. On one hand, the system version of Perl cannot be upgraded because it might break existing scripts, on the the other hand it has been difficult to install your own version of Perl to see whether an upgrade is safe. The same happens with modules.

Pick your Perl version with App::perlbrew

Use App::perlbrew to install and switch between multiple versions of Perl. perlbrew is easy to install, even if you don't have system administration privileges, and very easy to use. Once you've installed and initialised it, you can install whichever version of Perl you wish to use.

        perlbrew install perl-5.12.2
        perlbrew install perl-5.10.1

perlbrew will then fetch, compile and install that version of Perl in your home directory (or other nominated location) and you then you can just start using that version (perlbrew will do all the path magic required to make this your default version of Perl).

If you have more than one version of Perl installed by perlbrew you can list the verions out:

        perlbrew list

and switch between them:

        perlbrew switch perl-5.12.2

You can also ask perlbrew to switch itself off so that you can go back to using the system Perl.

        perlbrew off

Work with local modules via local::lib

local::lib helps solve the problem when a Perl package on your machine isn't the version you need it to be. It allows you to create your own directory of Perl packages into your own, or your team's directory.

        use local::lib;

        # or

        use local::lib '/path/to/team/directory';

local::lib also sets up some useful shell commands which add our preferred include directories to PERL5LIB in our environment. If our code is not running under taint, we don't even need to add the use line to our code to use these newly installed modules.

Installing new modules with App::cpanminus

App::cpanminus makes installing modules a breeze. In combination with local::lib it makes installing modules locally simple and easy.

        cpanm --local-lib Test::Most

or, if you're using local::lib's environment variables:

        cpanm Test::Most

Note that each cpanm install is specific to the version of Perl you were using when you installed it. While this is generally not a problem, if you locally installed cpanm while using Perl 5.8.8 then attempting to install a module that requires a minimum of Perl 5.10.1, then cpanm will object even if you are now using Perl 5.12.1.

Maintain your own CPAN with CPAN::Mini

If you wish to have a portable, off-line CPAN mirror, or wish to maintain the state of CPAN exactly as it was at a particular date, then CPAN::Mini is the way to go:

        cpanmini -l ~/local-cpan                  -r http://search.cpan.org/CPAN

We can even use this with cpanm:

        cpanm --mirror ~/local-cpan --mirror-only Test::Most

cpanmini only includes the most recent versions of the CPAN modules (rather than their whole history) and as a consequence is only a few Gigabytes.

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