in reply to Re^2: Sysadmin questions on efficient installation of new Perl versions
in thread Sysadmin questions on efficient installation of new Perl versions

AFAIK, you only need one distribution of perl. I never keep old distros. I am not aware of the logic behind the directory structures for each new release, but I understand your distress.

I don't think it is a matter of it being inherently unsafe to install to the same directory as much as it is that it prevents you from doing something really stupid, like maybe overwriting perl5 directory with perl4. Shrug. God only knows how that would accidentally happen, but in a short time on this planet I have seen a lot of crap that mathematically shouldn't have happened but did anyway.

Anyway, I always move my modules, but I imagine that I have a significantly smaller number installed than you do, which is why making a bundle is such a good alternative to remembering each one installed. I don't see why it would be a problem.

Anyone with a clearer explanation out there?

/renz.
"I often wonder if I really need all of these bones." --Sean Stolon.
  • Comment on Re^3: Sysadmin questions on efficient installation of new Perl versions

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Re^4: Sysadmin questions on efficient installation of new Perl versions
by mpeters (Chaplain) on Jan 21, 2005 at 22:38 UTC
    There may be some reasons to keep older versions of perl lying around (older code that uses it, other libs compiled against it, etc).

    But I can definitely think of one reason to have more than one instance of perl on the same system even if they are of the same version. If you are trying to run mod_perl 1.x and mod_perl 2.x on the same machine I would almost emphatically recommend using two different instances of perl since you will have some modules with the same name (Apache::Request for example) that are completely different versions (meaning A::R 1.x will not work with mod_perl 2.x and vice versa).
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