[CentOS] perl updates always break perl programs, how to fix?

Wed Jan 20 21:26:28 UTC 2010
Kwan Lowe <kwan.lowe at gmail.com>

On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 3:46 PM, James Chase <chase1124 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I realize this is my fault because once upon a time I installed a package
> using CPAN and probably other admins on the system have as well but now
> whenever I update perl I have to jump through hoops to get perl applications
> to work again (usually updating Scalar::Util and another package with CPAN).
> I would love to figure out how to fix this so it's not such a headache to
> keep up to date with perl, but I can't figure out how.
>
> I tried moving my /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl directory out of the way and
> installing perl-Scar-Util using yum but it doesn't let me because the
> perl-5.8.8 rpm owns the man file for that. I'm not sure why the default
> Scalar-Util (isn't it built in to the base install of perl on CentOS)
> doesn't work in the first place?
>
> Also I do add perl packages via the dag/rpmforge repo, not sure if that
> messes up the perl updates too. Sorry I realize this could also be
> classified as a perl question -- but I'm hopeful other centos admins found a
> way to get their centos back into compliance with the yum updates.

A couple things that might help:

You can modify your code so that you can keep local modules. You'd
need to separate the CentOS packaged modules from the ones you
installed separately.

You can also try building packages with cpan2rpm. It won't necessarily
solve version problems, but makes it much each to upgrade.