We have a server (in active production use) that's running perl 5.005_03. we're having to do some things that require a much newer version of perl, but we also have several hundreds of mission-critical scripts scattered all over the system that may be dependant on 5.005, so I suggested the idea of installing another version of perl in parallel.

our current (old) version of perl is installed in /usr/lib/perl5, and we'd like to not disturb anything in that installation, and in fact having /usr/bin/perl still point to the old one. i'm thinking we install perl 5.8 to /usr/lib/perl58 and put the perl binary as /usr/bin/perl58. then use the perl58 in the shebang of anything new.

are there any potential pitfalls or conflicts that i havent taken into account, or anything else at all to keep in mind? because we pretty much have on shot at this...if we screw up the 5.005 install in any way, our entire system will likely go down.

In reply to install another perl without disturbing the older install? by Anonymous Monk

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