Hello, World! I'm new to this list, so if I'm not doing something 'right' please smack me gently. Here's my problem:
I would like to install Perl 5.8 on my Mac OS X 10.1.5 system, replacing the shipped Perl distro, and do this without any hacks and/or kludgyness. I have definitely looks around for instructions, and tried to learn the OS X flavor of *UNIX standards trashing, but unfortunately this still remains opaque for me. I've seen various conflicting views of exactly how one should install Perl 5.8, and all too many reports of mangling the system afterwards. Does there exist an unambiguous set of instructions which I cna follow to upgrade my existing Perl installation? If not, then what is the best way, and why is it not perfect? Secondly, it seems CPAN doesn't like me too much either. How come when I run `perldoc perllocal` I only see modules that have been installed into /System/Library/Perl, and not even all of them at that? Here's what's in my @INC: /sw/lib/perl5/darwin /sw/lib/perl5 /System/Library/Perl/darwin /System/Library/Perl /Library/Perl/darwin /Library/Perl /Library/Perl /Network/Library/Perl/darwin /Network/Library/Perl /Network/Library/Perl Why are there duplicate entries for both /Library/Perl and /Network/Library/Perl? What exactly sets @INC (besides $PERL5LIB or manually setting it within particular scripts)? If given the requested instructions for installing Perl 5.8, would those instructions need to be modified to make CPAN work properly? I would like to keep all installed modules in one place, namely /Library/Perl, is there any downside to that (considering this is a "home" system)? Thanks for taking the time to read this, and any information returned will be appreciated. I know it's a lot to ask in one thread, but hopefully at least through some back and forth we can come up with a definitive set of steps that will upgrade the default Perl installation (5.6) on Mac OS X 10.1.5 to Perl 5.8 that we can supply to others with the same request as mine. Please note (if you haven't already gathered) that I do *not* want to keep two versions of Perl around, nor do I want to install Perl 5.8 into a standard directory such as /usr/local (for sake of keeping consistent with Apple's crummy setup). On a personal note: I'm really quite dissapointed with Apple's attitude towards *UNIX administrators, developers, open-source junkies, and just "power-users" in general. If they want to provide nifty, new-tech doohikies and innovation and/or simple Apple mind-share along with BSD/Darwin, they don't have to munge up the existing, simple, useful way of doing things along with it. Specifically I'm referring to such things as the directory layout (where stuff goes), HFS+ case-insensitivity, etc. *Sigh*... is Yellow Dog any good? Thanks, -Chris
