a). What should I read to find the "apple recommends"?
<http://developer.apple.com/internet/macosx/perl.html>
Having said that - Apple's recommended install directory is, IMHO, broken. They recommend installing 5.8.0 into /Library/Perl - but that is also where CPAN modules for 5.6.0 are located. This results in two problems:
If you've previously installed any CPAN modules under 5.6.0, they'll be in the module search path of your new 5.8.0 installation. But, XS modules aren't binary compatible, so 5.8.0 won't be able to use them.
On the other side of the coin, 5.8.0's modules would now be in 5.6.0's search path.
Basically, if you have ever installed any CPAN modules under 5.6.0, or if you ever intend to do so, I *highly* recommend installing 5.8.0 completely out of the way - /opt is a good, traditional choice, or you can tweak hints/darwin.sh so that /usr/local *really* means /usr/local, not /Library/Perl.
Other than the installation location, however, Apple's instructions are very good - they address a couple of obscure issues with locale settings that could give you no end of headaches.
b). What are "appropriate" settings for the configuration?
I figured $HOME/.cpan would be fine for builds, etc. but I wasn't
sure what that would mean for where things get installed, etc. I,
too, am getting the "install Bundle Net" message from cpan when I
try to run it. I presume this means it doesn't know about
/System/Library/Perl/CPAN, indicating the configuration is wrong?
The defaults are fine - core modules are in /System/Library/Perl, and CPAN modules are installed by default into /Library/Perl.
The "install Bundle::Net" message means just that - there are a number of non-core modules that CPAN finds useful, including many in that bundle. The CPAN shell will work without them, but it has to use external utilities to download things, cannot do MD5 checksums on downloads, etc.
c). I presume the correct command to start things is "sudo perl -MCPAN
-shell"?
Yes - I too have been using that one for years, and it still works great. It was pointed out to me recently that there's now a /usr/bin/cpan script that does the same thing - but I still do it the "old-fashioned" way out of nostalgia's sake. ;-)
sherm--
If you listen to a UNIX shell, can you hear the C?
