Upgrading perl from 5.02 to 5.8?

[Mike Dross]

Hi,

I have Mandrake 7.1 which installed Perl 5.02.

I have a number of perl scripts running on this system and specific appliations
that run stable on this version of OS. Now in order install an anti virus
software mandated by IT (F-Prot), I need Perl 5.8 installed. I have ftp'd
a perl 5.8 rpm for Red Hat. If I install this will it work or will it break
the perl?

Is there anyway to upgrade perl 5.02 to 5.8 without installing a new OS?

Thanks for your help.

Mike

 

[Sherm Pendley]

I have Mandrake 7.1 which installed Perl 5.02.

Are you certain? 5.002 is from 1996 - 7.1 is old, but I don't think it's
*that* old. What version number does 'perl -v' report?

have ftp'd a perl 5.8 rpm for Red Hat. If I install this will it work or
will it break the perl?

I wouldn't expect it to work. You'd probably need a Mandrake RPM. I'm not a
Linux expert, though.

Is there anyway to upgrade perl 5.02 to 5.8 without installing a new OS?

If the app you want to run can be told to use a different perl - i.e. if it
isn't stuck on /usr/bin/perl - you can keep as many different versions as
you want, simply by installing them under different prefixes. You'd have to
build and install it yourself though, which might be more trouble than
you're willing to go through.

sherm--

 

[Tad McClellan]

Is there anyway to upgrade perl 5.02 to 5.8 without installing a new OS?

Yes. That is in fact the _normal_ situation.

What makes you think that a new OS is involved?

I see a "new perl" but what does that have to do with chaning the OS?

 

[Chris Mattern]

Yes. That is in fact the _normal_ situation.

What makes you think that a new OS is involved?

I see a "new perl" but what does that have to do with chaning the OS?

Many (most, really) Unix installations use Perl to run some of their
scripts; as a result, doing a hand upgrade of Perl has the possibility
of causing parts of the OS to break. The normal answer, if you can't
get the upgrade you want via your OS's upgrade/packaging system, is
to do a parallel installation of the upgraded Perl somewhere else,
usually /usr/local (or maybe /opt, if you have Solaris), and leave
the OS's installed Perl alone.
--
Christopher Mattern

"Which one you figure tracked us?"
"The ugly one, sir."
"...Could you be more specific?"

 

[Mike Dross]

Are you certain? 5.002 is from 1996 - 7.1 is old, but I don't think it's
*that* old. What version number does 'perl -v' report?

[wxp@wxserver4 wxp]$ perl -v

This is perl, version 5.005_03 built for i386-linux

I wouldn't expect it to work. You'd probably need a Mandrake RPM. I'm not a
Linux expert, though.

I have searched and have not been able to find a Mandrake Perl RPM.

Thanks for your help.

Mike

 

[Mike Dross]

Yes. That is in fact the _normal_ situation.

What makes you think that a new OS is involved?

I see a "new perl" but what does that have to do with chaning the OS?

The thing is I don't know how to upgrade the perl, without an RPM. I am sure
there is a way, but I don't know how. Can you point me to some instructions?

Thanks for your help.

Mike

 

[Martien Verbruggen]

The thing is I don't know how to upgrade the perl, without an RPM. I am sure
there is a way, but I don't know how. Can you point me to some instructions?

Don't upgrade. Leave that Perl as-is, and install another one
somewhere else.

Download the sources for Perl (www.cpan.org), unpack the archive, open
up the INSTALL file, and do something like:

$ sh Configure -Dprefix=/opt/perl-5.8.3 -Uinstallusrbinperl -des
[wait for a while]
$ make
[wait again]
$ make test
[wait, and check it all went ok]

Then become root, and:

# make install

Then add /opt/perl-5.8.3/bin to people's paths, or install some
appropriate symlinks.

Alternatively, you install the whole of perl in /usr/local, for which
the appropriate bits maybe are alreay in your user's path.

If you are sure you want to replace /usr/bin/perl with the new one,
then you might need to leave off the -Uinstallusrbinperl.

If you don't know how to do any of this, your ONLY chance is to find a
OS package that upgrades your Perl package. You can't just get a
package for another OS and expect it to be all hunky-dory. If your
current OS version doesn't have up-to-date packages, either upgrade
the OS to a version that has newer versions of Perl packaged up for
you. rpmfind.net seems to have Perl 5.8.2 packages for Mandrake (that
was what you were using, right?) Whether they install on your version
of the OS I can't tell you.

Martien