I recently installed a perl module from CPAN that harmed my perl installation. I always always used the manual method of installing a module, which involves: I had an installation of perl5.6.0 with many modules installed. Perl5.6.1 was friendly enough to peacefully coexist with perl5.6.0, so I installed new modules with 5.6.1 but I could still use the old modules built under 5.6.0.

Then I needed an updated version of Test::Harness for a new module I wanted to try. When I built Test-Harness-2.26 and installed it, it caused the 5.6.1 installation to be overwritten with built-in modules from the 5.6.0 installation. This broke my 5.6.1 install, and I have not been able to repair it without resorting to backups.

The moral of the story is that now that 5.8.0 has been out for a while, updating modules in 5.6.1 has become risky. Make sure you make a backup of your perl tree before installing new modules!

This incident has triggered my migration to 5.8.0. So far 5.8.0 is working fairly well, except that several of the older, lesser maintained CPAN modules are now failing their tests.

My experience has left me with an uneasy feeling. My perception is that CPAN now has more cruft that won't work in 5.8.0, and that CPAN has at least one dangerous module that will kill a 5.6.0/5.6.1 install. Protecting myself would involve backing up 270MB of already-installed perl before each module install.

Email to the module author has gone unanswered for over a week, so I don't have much hope there.

It should work perfectly the first time! - toma

In reply to Module installation can be harmful by toma

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.