On Thu, Mar 23, 2000 at 10:10:00AM -0800, Brian Lavender wrote > I was taking a look at the perl modules on my debian system, and I > noticed that there are a couple of Debian perl modules. In fact I > once built a newer version of perl on my debian system, and I noticed > that apt, and I believe dpkg stopped working. > > My Question: > Is it possible to build a new version of perl on my debian system and > install these perl modules? Say I have slink I want to upgrade perl to > the latest. Can I add in these perl modules, and where would I get the > source to add them? >
Slink perl uses a different layout for /usr/lib/perl5 to that used for later perls; it changed for Potato, I'm guessing to allow multiple perl versions to co-exist; slink perl has directories like /usr/lib/perl5/i386-linux/5.004/auto/ /usr/lib/perl5/i386-linux/5.004/CORE/ and so on, whereas perl5 from potato uses /usr/lib/perl5/5.005/i386-linux/auto/ I seem to recall that both layouts differ from the default specified in the perl distribution. As a result, slink packages that insert files in /usr/lib/perl5 are not compatible with later perl packages. Your options appear to be: - Stick to slink perl & related packages; - Build the version of perl that you want, but ensure that it uses the 'slink' directory conventions; you may also have to rebuild perl-dependent packages if the changes to perl break them in other ways; - Upgrade to potato (or at least, upgrade perl & related packages) and be happy with the perl versions that provides; - Upgrade at least perl & related packages to potato and then build the perl of your choosing using the potato conventions or installing into /usr/local/, without replacing the potato perl that other packages rely on. If you haven't actually replaced the slink version of perl (i.e., you simply installed the new perl alongside of the old one, either in /usr/local/ or replacing /usr/bin/perl) then you may be able to have the two coexist peacefully by renaming your new perl binary to (e.g.) 'perl-local' and (if necessary) replacing /usr/bin/perl by hand from the slink package; it depends if your new perl clobbered files from the slink perl. HTH, John P. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Oh - I - you know - my job is to fear everything." - Bill Gates in Denmark
