Re: Modern Perl: The Book: The Draft

[Anonymous Monk]

Hi chromatic. Thanks for the great work.

I think the book also needs an early chapter covering:

• installing your own perl into someplace like /usr/local/perl-5.x.y (that is, into a tree all to itself) since the OS tends to use its own system Perl for its own business, and new users should have their own Perl that they can play with
• installing cpan packages into your own /usr/local Perl but using your OS's package manager for installing packages into the system Perl.
• installing and using cpanm
• local::lib -- though this is less important if they've installed their own Perl into /usr/local

New users need that stuff before they can feel comfortable with their setup and dig into more language details.

I'd also like to see a brief "cpan module recommendations" chapter.

This book looks great. Looking forward to making time to read it. Thanks again.

[Your Mother]

I agree with these points pretty strongly. Being able to run your own perl installation is important in the scheme of "Modern Perl." A huge amount of what ends up being recommended/used is not core. Being stuck with a core installation makes following the advice an exercise in pain and confusion unless there is help for getting the pieces together.

I am extremely happy with cpanm so far.

[chromatic]

Thanks for the suggestion. I've added a preface which will cover these topics in brief. (I'd most rather link to a section on the Perl 5 wiki with full installation instructions.)