Firstly I'd suggest that almost all Linux, Unix, or *BSD variants should be able to install directly from CPAN. However many people dislike that if they have a packaging system in place upon their host.

It can get problematic if you, say, install Perl modules from CPAN but your distribution has a perl upgrade and breaks them all. In that case using the packages provided for your distributions may be the best bet. (That is what I recommend anyway.)

So from that point of view I find using Debian nice and simple. Many modules are packaged as .deb binary files, with a nice naming convention so they are easy to find.

e.g. HTML::Template -> libhtml-template-perl, CGI::Application -> libcgi-application-perl.

For the modules which aren't available as Debian packages you can easily create them - just by using a wrapper tool around CPAN's scripts:

The short version is:

apt-get install dh-make-perl build-essential
dh-make-perl --build --cpan HTML::Template

[download]
Steve
--

In reply to Re^2: What sets Perl back by skx
in thread What sets Perl back by gunzip

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.