Arch Linux

Ionized

Member

Registered: 2019-01-13

Posts: 5

Perl and perlbrew

Hello,
I hope I'm posting in the correct area - I figured since I'm dealing directly with a programming language, post it here.

I have decided to teach myself Perl and I am currently following Learning Perl 6th ed. from O'Reilly press. They reccomend using Perlbrew in order to use multiple revs of Perl and although its not necessary it seemed like a smart idea. I have two questions regarding Perl itself and Perlbrew.

Firstly, I'm wondering which version(s) are most likely encountered in the wild, based on your experience.

Second, I am running into repeated build failures after my initial success installing perl-5.29.7. I installed 5.29 as a test to see if Perlbrew worked, but I intended to actually learn on 5.14/5.18. Should I be concerned enough to hunt down these errors before digging in - as in is version 5.29 too modern to be practical to learn on or is that the way to go? I did note that my own build of Arch is using 5.28.1 and I happen to also have a copy of Modern Perl but only up to 5.22 .

This is the log output summary of my latest shot at installing 5.18 (I thought my VPN was potentially corrupting packages so I attempted without it):

https://pastebin.com/hexzp6Mw

Being an Arch novice it will take me some time to research these so I'm just looking for a little advice. I do realize there are easier languages to begin with but I thought Perl might be the most versatile/useful/elegant and I am a driven person. Correct me if I am wrong - NOT trying to start a flame war, just thinking of Perl being used from web architecture to data analytics and scripting/general use and I know many companies use it.

Thank you

-Ian

Last edited by Ionized (2019-02-01 04:07:39)

Ionized

Member

Registered: 2019-01-13

Posts: 5

Re: Perl and perlbrew

Had some time today to chase down some of these errors. They don't appear to be very common and it was hard to find relevant information.

I also want to specify I do have patchperl installed in Perlbrew already.

This was the first post I found that had something relevant - checking my gcc rev. I did not have gcc installed. https://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=1204426

This dropped my errors down to only 2 gdbm errors on tests 7-8 down as far as version 5.22.4 (as far as I've checked).
This post (https://rt.perl.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=133295) references a bug as far back as 1.15 and I have version 1.18.1-2 installed.

This was the only reference to pearl installation with gdbm I had time to find.
Will try again soon.

-Ian

Last edited by Ionized (2019-02-02 03:12:39)

boban_dj

Member

Registered: 2015-03-17

Posts: 150

Re: Perl and perlbrew

I assume you installed prelbrew with pacman

pacman -S perlbrew

All users must do this

perlbrew init

add the path given from perlbrew to your ~/.bash_profile:

source /home/YOUR_USER/perl5/perlbrew/etc/bashrc

check available perl versions installable by perlbrew

perlbrew available

install some version

perlbrew install perl-5.16.3

check progress/issues in log

tail -f ~/perl5/perlbrew/build.perl-5.16.3.log

see Perl versions installed in your local machine

perlbrew list

check current Perl version (-V more vebose)

perl -v

switch or use other installed Perl version with perlbrew

perlbrew switch perl-5.16.3
perl -v