Re: /usr/local and @INC

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Adeodato Simó <dato@net.com.org.es> writes:

> If somebody could enlighten me about perl's search path (@INC), I'd be
> grateful. The value of @INC in Debian seems to be:
>
>   /etc/perl
>
>   /usr/local/lib/perl/5.8.8
>   /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.8
>
>   /usr/lib/perl5
>   /usr/share/perl5
>
>   /usr/lib/perl/5.8
>   /usr/share/perl/5.8
>
>   /usr/local/lib/site_perl
>   .
>
> I don't understand why the paths under /usr/local have to be so
> version-specific, whereas the /usr counterparts are more general.

You'll find that if you have other versioned directories in /usr/local,
they will also be added to the module path, but at the end.  The set of
directories is discovered dynamically at runtime.  This offers the best
handling of the case where you install a newer version of a core module in
/usr/local, but then the next point release of Perl updates the same
module.  The assumption is that a new point release of Perl will include a
newer version of such modules.

If you just always use the MakeMaker defaults, the right thing usually
happens.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>