Setting up perlbrew for Linux and Solaris

bergbrains has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I am building new versions of Perl for two environments; Linux and Solaris. We still have just a few jobs that run on Solaris otherwise I'd bail on Solaris in a huge way, but for now, I need both, so I chose perlbrew to facilitate the builds.

What's the best way to set up perlbrew for this? After a bunch of playing around and testing, I arrived at the approach in which I install a single instance of perlbrew in the default location (~/perl5/perlbrew) and then set PERLBREW_HOME to directories that differ only in the final path element, which is derived from `uname -p`, but that doesn't seem to provide the separation that I really need. Additionally, the docs suggest that, on the related topic of building for two different hosts, I set both PERLBREW_HOME and PERLBREW_ROOT, though there is no indication as to whether in this case, PERLBREW_ROOT should be set prior to installation of perlbrew.

The problem I'm having is that it's not clear what the PERLBREW_HOME and PERLBREW_ROOT actually do in the context of installing perls and using different ones on different platforms.

So, the options appear to be 1) installing perlbrew into the default location and then setting PERLBREW_HOME for subsequent Perl installs; or 2) installing perlbrew into separate locations on each platform, setting PERLBREW_ROOT on each platform prior to installation, and then setting PERLBREW_HOME appropriately on each platform.

Can anyone provide guidance or clarity here? Thanks.

Comment on Setting up perlbrew for Linux and Solaris

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Re: Setting up perlbrew for Linux and Solaris
by Anonymous Monk on Nov 01, 2011 at 19:36 UTC

I don't understand the question :)

I think the answer is either-or, pick-one :)

It is based on reading

http://search.cpan.org/grep?cpanid=GUGOD&release=App-perlbrew-0.30&string=PERLBREW_ROOT&i=1&n=1&C=0

our $PERLBREW_ROOT = $ENV{PERLBREW_ROOT} || "$ENV{HOME}/perl5/perlbrew
[download]

139:    setenv PERLBREW_ROOT "$HOME/perl5/perlbrew"
149:    setenv PERLBREW_PATH "$PERLBREW_ROOT/bin"
[download]

perlbrew

If latter on you need to change $PERLBREW_ROOT, you (and all other users who share the same $PERLBREW_ROOT will have to run this again to make it affective.

PERLBREW_ROOT

By default, perlbrew builds and installs perls into $ENV{HOME}/perl5/perlbrew directory. To use a different directory, set this environment variable in your bashrc to the directory before running perlbrew.

App::perlbrew

By default, perlbrew looks for the intialization file that exports PERLBREW_ROOT in ~/.perlbrew/init. In some cases (for instance, if your home directory is shared across multiple machines), you may wish to have several different perlbrew setting per-machine. If so, you can use the PERLBREW_HOME environment variable to tell perlbrew where to look for the initialization file

 # on machine a
 $ PERLBREW_HOME=~/.perlbrew-a PERLBREW_ROOT=~/perl5/perlbrew-a ./perl
+brew install

 # on machine b
 $ PERLBREW_HOME=~/.perlbrew-b PERLBREW_ROOT=~/perl5/perlbrew-b ./perl
+brew install
[download]

If you specify PERLBREW_HOME, you will also need to specify both PERLBREW_HOME and PERLBREW_ROOT when you first install perlbrew. After that, you'll need to make sure PERLBREW_HOME is exported when you log in, before you source $PERLBREW_ROOT/etc/bashrc (or cshrc). Example .bashrc:

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]


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