Quick Scripts

Forget about trying to configure cpan as a non-root user. The easiest solution is just to use cpanm to install your packages and forget about the whole thing.

So do yourself a favour and click that link. Now.

Ok, for some rather bizarre reason you are still reading. I guess you really want to configure cpan as non-root so, well, let’s do that.

First, to set up the PERL5LIB environment variable, add the following to your ~/.bash_profile or equivalent:

PERL5LIB=~/perl5lib/lib/:$PERL5LIB
PERL5LIB=~/perl5lib/share/perl/5.8.8:$PERL5LIB
PERL5LIB=~/perl5lib/share/perl/5.8:$PERL5LIB
PERL5LIB=~/perl5lib/lib/perl/5.8.8:$PERL5LIB
PERL5LIB=~/perl5lib/lib/perl/5.8:$PERL5LIB
export PERL5LIB

Reboot or source the file. Then, specially if you are having troubles, you might want to make sure that you are starting with a clean user instalation.

$ cd ~
$ rm -rf .cpan
$ rm -rf perl5lib

Create a folder to hold the modules, and start CPAN

$ mkdir perl5lib
$ cpan

Manual configuration should start, follow the instructions on screen, until at some point the script asks you for any extra arguments for Makefile.PL. You should then supply

PREFIX=~/perl5lib

When the configuration finishes, make sure CPAN tells you it has writen the updated configuration file. If everything seems fine, type quit.

To install a package now type

$ cpan 'Some::Module'

If things keep failing, you should probably consider doing a manual package install.

Note: if for some reason your script will run in an environment where PERL5LIB is not (or cannot) be set, then your script should also include

use lib '~/perl5lib/lib/';
use lib '~/perl5lib/share/perl/5.8.8';
use lib '~/perl5lib/share/perl/5.8';
use lib '~/perl5lib/lib/perl/5.8.8';
use lib '~/perl5lib/lib/perl/5.8';

But then, if you need this, you might also need to expand all those ~’s into their actual absolute paths.