Re: Perl 5.6

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

On Tue, Aug 07, 2001 at 12:11:13PM -0400, Jason Price wrote:
> I am currently running a stable distribution of debian, but want to get 
> Perl 5.6 installed.  I noticed it is not in the stable distribution.  
> What would be the safest/best/easiest way to get it installed?  I'm a 
> pretty new linux user, so be gentle.  :)

Compile it up yourself, or get a precompiled binary, and install it
manually (not with dpkg) in /usr/local. That way, you can have your own
scripts use Perl 5.6 and Debian packages use Perl 5.005. Don't try to
crowbar Perl 5.6 into Debian stable directly, as that way lies confusion
and probable disaster - a lot of stuff depends on perl.

You can use the stow package to handle the installation in /usr/local if
you want to make sure it uninstalls cleanly, although using stow on perl
correctly might be challenging.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                  [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]