Perl in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Module Installation

If you’re running the standard distribution of Perl, on either a Unix or Win32 system, and you want to install a module, this section explains how to do it. If you are running the ActiveState Win32 port, you can follow the instructions covered in this section, unless you’re running on a system without a development toolkit; if this is the case, see the next section.

Before installing modules, you should understand at least a little about make. make is a command designed to automate compilations; it guarantees that programs are compiled with the correct options and are linked to the current version of program modules and libraries. But it’s not just for programmers—make is useful for any situation in which there are dependencies among a group of related files.

make uses a file known as a Makefile, which is a text file that describes the dependencies and contains instructions that tell make what to do. A Perl programmer who writes a module creates a file called Makefile.PL that comes with the module when you download it. Makefile.PL is a Perl script that uses another module, ExtUtils::MakeMaker (generally referred to as simply MakeMaker), to generate a Makefile specific to that module on your system.

Before you can actually install the module, you need to decide where it should go. Modules can be installed either globally, for everyone to use, or locally, for your own use. Most system administrators install popular software, including Perl modules, to be globally ...