In the process of bundling up a load of perl modules for deployment on a load of production machines, I was reminded of the sheer volume of subdirectories that seem to exist under your install PREFIX: 

devapp2:~/Modules/lib$ find * -type d | egrep -v [A-Z] | fgrep -v libw
+ww-perl | sed -e 's/^.\///'
site_perl
site_perl/5.6.1
site_perl/5.6.1/sun4-solaris
site_perl/5.6.1/sun4-solaris/auto
5.6.1
5.6.1/sun4-solaris
5.6.1/sun4-solaris/auto
perl5
perl5/5.6.1
perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris
perl5/5.6.1/sun4-solaris/auto
perl5/site_perl
perl5/site_perl/5.6.1
perl5/site_perl/5.6.1/sun4-solaris
perl5/site_perl/5.6.1/sun4-solaris/auto

[download]

Now, obviously the $ARCH and $VERSION dirs make sense, as does 'auto'; but why the need for perl5 / site_perl / perl5/site_perl? And why are modules assigned seemingly at random between those 4 directories?

Apologies in advance if this is a FAQ; but it's something I first noticed a long time ago, and have yet to find1 any explanation for.

1: google is rather unhelpful here; searching for things like 'perl module install location perl5 site_perl' gives you lots of info / problems about installing specific perl modules, as one might expect.

In reply to Perl module install sub-directories: perl5, site_perl, perl5/site_perl by kilinrax

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