Thanks, fellow monks, for all your valuable suggestions!

In the meantime one of my colleagues also found her way to a GDBM_File for 5.8.8: On the distribution page for perl-5.10.1 the dropdown menu "Other Releases" allows to select version 5.8.8 and from that distribution's page you only have to follow the corresponding link to version 1.08 of GDBM_File.

This, of course, raises (at least) three further questions:

  1. Why doesn't CPAN offer any way to navigate directly from the latest to earlier versions of GDBM_File?
  2. Why is a CPAN shell started in a 5.8.8 environment (i.e. where the version of the Perl interpreter running the shell is 5.8.8) not automatically referred to the latest version of GDBM_File which is still compatible with 5.8.8 but instead tries to install the globally latest version which requires (by resolution of dependencies) an update of Perl itself?
  3. Is GDBM_File supposed to be a core module at the end of the day? - At least the link "Dependencies" on the left margin of the module's documentation page leads to a result page that says so. (But then how did our sysops manage to in install a Perl 5.8.8 without one of the core modules???)
Curious regards
Locutus

In reply to Re: How to install a CPAN module which is only available as part of a comprehensive Perl distribution? by Locutus
in thread How to install a CPAN module which is only available as part of a comprehensive Perl distribution? by Locutus

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.