coolmichael has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm trying to install Net::FTP and some other modules on a Linux Machine with Perl 5.005_03. Everytime I try to use CPAN.pm it wants to update Perl to 5.6.1. I only want to install specific modules, not upgrade perl.

Is there any way to do this?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: How to prevent CPAN from updating Perl
by merlyn (Sage) on Sep 21, 2001 at 12:24 UTC
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      Do you happen to know which version and above don't try to update Perl? Thanks.
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        The most recent version avilable on CPAN is 1.59. I wouldn't recommend doing a piecewise upgrade: just get the most recent version available.

        HTH

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      Thank you merlin. I tried that, but installing the new CPAN.pm also tried to install the new perl. Does this mean I'll have to do that by hand?

      Michael

[reply]
        Try hitting Ctrl-c when it begins to download the new perl. You might get an error message or two, but it should continue on with the module install (w/o upgrading perl itself).

        -Blake

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Re: How to prevent CPAN from updating Perl
by alien_life_form (Pilgrim) on Sep 21, 2001 at 21:06 UTC
    Greetings.

    The way I have gone about this is getting the package that's provoking the update to 5.6.1 (which may be IO::Socket, as I recall) and do a manual upgrade - then rerun CPAN - that should do the trick.

    Getting the latest CPAN is sound advice as it stops the former braindead "reinstall perl Yay!" default, but it won't fetch the "last known good" depended upon package for you...

    Cheers,
    alf

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Re: How to prevent CPAN from updating Perl
by strredwolf (Chaplain) on Sep 21, 2001 at 20:53 UTC
    In addition to merlin's suggestion, I would update Perl because of some bugs and lack of Unicode support in 5.0xx. Also, alot of modules require 5.6.0 or greater. The third camel book also is 5.6.x specific.

    Update Perl first.

    --
    $Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.keenspace.com";

[reply]

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