LESSON: Don't do all 3 of the following for any core modules (unless you know you want the original version removed from the core install):
a) remove old versions during install (using UNINST=1) while b) installing modules to an alternate location (using PREFIX=.../LIB=...) as c) root (or same user as the owner of the core installation) Any two alone should be safe, but all 3 can be hazardous to your sanity! STORY: I was having problems a couple of weeks ago getting mod_perl make test to run - both the test programs and apache itself were complaining about CGI.pm not being found. I tried modifying Makefile.PL and httpd.conf-dist and adding local.pl to t/conf to make it work again (which it did but wasn't necessary as it turns out). Well, today I found the source of all my problems...Doh! They were self inflicted. Apologies to all on the list for my getting annoyed (privately) that no-one else had had this problem, or had a clue as to how to fix it. I was using cpan to install modules as root, and had UNINST=1 set, which had the (designed) side effect of uninstalling CGI.pm from the core distribution when I installed the latest version into my alternate location. >From now on I'll leave the core install untouched, and install all my add-on modules as a non-root user just to be safe. Once I reinstalled perl (just re-ran last make install from source tree), the mod_perl test suite ran just fine (unmodified version 1.26). I also added PREFIX and LIB to my makepl_args.mod_perl file rather than having to remember to add them to the "perl Makefile.PL" line for future mod_perl builds. The thing that clued me into my problem was that CGI.pm is a core module (which I was reminded of by skimming thru the Programming Perl/camel book today). CGI.pm should therefore ALWAYS be available (safe assumption I suppose), and it wasn't in this case - so I had done something wrong. It didn't take long (about 5 seconds) to figure out WHY is wasn't in the core any longer. I've never seen anything warning against doing things this way (root, UNINST=1 AND PREFIX/LIB) (that I remember at least) so if this is already well-known and documented, please, make me $humble++, and enlighten me. I understand it - now - I'm just hoping it's an "obvious in hindsight only" type of thing. Thanks, Jim
