perl, compilers, and debian configuration

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

i seem to have worked myself into an interesting corner, and wearing an expression of appropriate humility i shuffle forth to seek the counsel of the illustrious denizens of this most hallowed virtual space.

the platform in question at this point runs the debian unstable distribution, which i upgraded to the most current packages earlier this week. (what can i say, i'm a risk-taker (grin)). yesterday i began working to install mod_perl, and ran into difficulty building the mod_perl enabled httpd. after doing some searches here and elsewhere i surmised that the problem was attributable to a perl interpreter compiled with an earlier version of gcc, so i downloaded the 5.6.1 source and recompiled. configuration and compilation of mod_perl and apache went smoothly as a result.

as you might suspect, given that i'm posting this, there's a fly in the ointment. the debian configuration tool debconf is itself perl-based, and now i seem to have the same problem in reverse ... i get version error messages when i try to configure any debian packages. this currently includes the postgresql and mysql dbd drivers, as i've always found it much smoother to configure those from debian. while i might be able to get around that problem by messing around with the make process (their installation bombs out when trying from the MCPAN -e shell interactive tool) i have more concern about the state of the debian configuration. i've searched at the debian site and have been unable to find the source modules debian.pm and debconf.pm to try re-installing with the newer compiler, which by the way is gcc v.2.95.4.

so at this point my inclination is to uninstall the later perl interpreter, given that i have a working httpd that includes mod_perl, and revert to the earlier 5.6 installed by debian, if i can get that done in a way that doesn't involve debconf. (right off the top of my head i can't remember if dpkg uses debconf).

in the spirit of "look before you leap" i thought i should seek the wisdom of those whose awareness extends to the very harmony of the modules. getting pretty deep, ain't it? i should just stop.

any ideas?

Comment on perl, compilers, and debian configuration

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Re: perl, compilers, and debian configuration by rob_au (Abbot) on Sep 27, 2001 at 08:54 UTC
This is a simple problem to fix ... You need to move the DebianNet.pm file and the Debian and Dpkg directories from under the Perl 5.005_03 library tree (eg. `/usr/lib/perl5/`) to that of the new Perl 5.6.1 library tree (eg. `/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.1`). To check your relative `@INC` paths (and help fathom what is going on with the Debian tools and their errors), the following code is useful: `perl5.00503 -e 'print join("\n", @INC), "\n"' perl5.6.1 -e 'print join("\n", @INC), "\n"'` [download] Unfortunately I moved my Debian packages a long time ago, else I could give you the exact `mv` command ... Oh well grin Ooohhh, Rob no beer function well without!	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: perl, compilers, and debian configuration by Masem (Monsignor) on Sep 27, 2001 at 00:28 UTC
There is a mod_perl deb package in the standard (stable and unstable) distribution, lib_mod_perl, I believe. I've been using that with all other standard perl/apache/dbi driver packages in unstable without problems. (Typically, lib_mod_perl will be updated a day or so after a new upstream apache, and there's a dependancy problem in the lib_mod_perl package that allows apache to be updated without updating lib_mod_perl, so I sometimes have problems with that). ----------------------------------------------------- Dr. Michael K. Neylon - mneylon-pm@masemware.com \|\| "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain It's not what you know, but knowing how to find it if you don't know that's important	[reply]