On Fri, 4 Aug 2000, Lamar Owen wrote:
> > So my question is, what happens if I rpm -e perl, then make, make
> > install the latest 5.6 source? Is my whole world going to fall apart?
>
> Yes. You system will likely die a horrible screaming death. Maybe I
> exaggerate a little, but Perl 5.6 is one reason the next RedHat is 7.0
> and not 6.3. The rpm -e perl is going to die, unless you --force it.
> Then you will have to reconfigure the new perl to be identical to the
> old in setup -- and Perl 5.6 is not going to be identical in any case.
You can still install 5.6 without deleting the old Perl -- just make sure
you answer yes when asked about compatibility with older Perl. It'll
overwrite your binaries under /usr/bin, but maintain the older modules if
you have them installed (the 5.6 modules and the older 5.005 modules are
in separate directory trees under /usr/lib/perl5). I've installed Perl
5.6 (via CPAN) successfully several times over Red Hat, Suse and Debian
without breaking my system. If you want, after you get 5.6 successfully
installed, you can manually remove your older modules and reinstall them
from CPAN. It'd be ridiculous to have to upgrade your operating system
installation just to get the newer version of Perl.
Brett W. McCoy
http://www.chapelperilous.net/~bmccoy/
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