mikeps has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I am working on setting up a linux box with many different software packages, many of which have much newer versions. I'm trying to install Net-FTP-Common right now. I am extremely new to perl and linux, so if I'm doing something completely wrong it won't be a surprise. This is what I receive when I attempt to "make test". There are a few other errors besides the one below, so if you want them I can put them up later. What exactly is this error telling me? And, what steps do I need to take to resolve it?
[root@kirby34 Net-FTP-Common-4.0a]# make test PERL_DL_NONLAZY=1 /usr/local/bin/perl -Iblib/arch -Iblib/lib -I/usr/lo +cal/lib/perl5/5.00503/i686-linux -I/usr/local/lib/perl5/5.00503 -e 'u +se Test::Harness qw(&runtests $verbose); $verbose=0; runtests @ARGV;' + t/*.t t/0-login...........Use of reserved word "our" is deprecated at blib/l +ib/TestConfig.pm line 3. Unquoted string "our" may clash with future reserved word at blib/lib/ +TestConfig.pm line 3. Operator or semicolon missing before %netftp_cfg at blib/lib/TestConfi +g.pm line 3. Ambiguous use of % resolved as operator % at blib/lib/TestConfig.pm li +ne 3. Argument "netftp_cfg" isn't numeric in modulo at blib/lib/TestConfig.p +m line 3. Argument "our" isn't numeric in modulo at blib/lib/TestConfig.pm line +3. Illegal modulus zero at blib/lib/TestConfig.pm line 3. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at t/0-login.t line 9. dubious Test returned status 255 (wstat 65280, 0xff00) DIED. FAILED test 1
Thanks, mikeps

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: compiling perl modules - Net-FTP-Common
by vek (Prior) on Apr 12, 2004 at 22:19 UTC

    Your version of Perl is extremely old. It's no surprise that you're getting the warning about our. our wasn't introduced until version 5.6.0. Try upgrading Perl to a newer version and let us know if you are still having problems.

    -- vek --
Re: compiling perl modules - Net-FTP-Common
by tagg (Acolyte) on Apr 12, 2004 at 22:22 UTC
    You are running an ancient Perl, version 5.005_03. You want to upgrade that to version 5.8.3 before anything else.
Re: compiling perl modules - Net-FTP-Common
by mikeps (Initiate) on Apr 12, 2004 at 22:58 UTC
    thanks everyone, that's kind of what I expected. I asked a guy at work about this and he said that it is because we are using eperl in our application, and that is the latest version of perl that it can work with. I know we have 2 versions of perl on this machine. If I compile this module with the new version, I could probably get it installed, but I assume it will crash when we use the web app and the old version, correct? Also, does anyone have any suggestions about an updated version of eperl, or something that could replace it?