I suppose with the onboard-perl from my linux-distribution I don’t have to care about updates. What is the right way of doing updates when I have build my perl from sourcefiles?
2 Answers
Your first sentence seems to be contradicted by the second. Do you maintain your Perl via your linux distribution's package manager, or do you build it from source?
If you build from source, simply download the new distribution, build it and install it like you did the first time. It will overwrite old versions of executables and libraries with new ones as needed, but won't delete anything you have installed via CPAN.
There's no trick to it really.
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So there is no need to bother about updates until I hear from a new perl version. ( not like some multimedia applications, where I get nearly every second day an update ).– sid_comFeb 5, 2010 at 19:11
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Correct; if you're on 5.10.1 (the latest "stable" release), you should be set for quite some time (5.11 was just released in the fall, but that's a beta for 5.12, not expected for a year or two still.– EtherFeb 6, 2010 at 0:16
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@sid_com: actually, perl5.12.0 was just released this month, so I was off a little with my estimate :)– EtherApr 21, 2010 at 17:01
You need to re-build from source. Since you can run any number of parallel builds (just install it in a different directory, and point your code to it in the header), this actually offers a few advantages over using a package manager. You don't have to update code if you don't want to, you don't break compatibility when you want to try out something new.
The one thing you really need to NOT do is mix package manager and building from source. Pick one, and stick with it. If you don't you're going to have significant issues.
answered Feb 5, 2010 at 5:49
