I'm a windows guy slowly learning linux from a putty terminal dialed into my web hoster. Right now I've got a nice shared server hosting package from python-hosting.com. Mainly I like P-H because you get trac wiki and svn, all in one, friendly, and not too expensive. Problem is, I want to do catalyst web development there. And catalyst is a little tricky to install without root. (So, I do have shell, just not root.)

Running Catalyst on Dreamhost suggests using cpanplus to install Catalyst without root. But I can't install cpanplus, because my hosters are on perl 5.8.0 and you need at least 5.8.1 for cpanplus. P-H are python guys, I guess, and maybe don't put a high priority on keeping the latest version of perl installed.

Now, I don't know, maybe I can install Catalyst with just CPAN rather than CPANPLUS. Or maybe there's some other way to install catalyst locally. I'm messing around with that now.

But this all got me thinking about the deeper issue, that it would be nice to control what version of perl I'm on. So, before I bug my hoster and ask them to upgrade their perl, can/should I upgrade to a perl running locally myself?

That would be the first option (since I usually prefer doing things myself.) Option 2 is, ask my hosters to upgrade. Option 3 is, switch hosters. This would make sense if the word on the street is that perl 5.8.0 is such an outdated version of perl that it's a warning sign that I should get a better hoster. Curious what the perlmonks think about that :)

Little historical note: by looking at perl history, we have 5.8.0 coming July 2002, 5.8.1 was September 2003, and the latest "official" version, I think, was 5.8.7 in May 2005. (Just for some perspective.) Another article I found helpful with regards to installing something on a shared server was Installing mod perl without superuser priviliges

In reply to Can/should I run an upgraded version of perl locally, on a shared web server where I don't have root? by tphyahoo

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