A very common way of managing versions with linux is to use symbolic links to choose the current installed version. So for example you could keep however many old versions you want in /usr/src and do:

ln -s /usr/src/perl-5.8.7 /usr/local/lib/perl5
[download]

to select v5.8.7 as the active one

Update: In response to reply, I am suggesting keeping installations separate in their own directory and using /usr/local/lib/perl5 merely to link to the particular version to be activated. I am not saying you have to keep more versions, but some people like to keep old versions for old code which then has to specifically access the old version under /usr/src/perl-whatever-version-number. Further, although this works with any posix, the technique has become particularly popular with distributed linux applications.

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