Compiling Perl From Source

Christian Külker

0.1.2

2023-03-21

Introduction

Compiling Perl from source is easier than most people think.

This document uses Perl 5.20 on Debian Jessie as an example of how to compile a custom version of Perl. It is to be expected that versions of Perl that are very different from the distributed versions may not compile.

# Debian Perl Version
8 Jessie 5.20
9 Stretch 5.24
10 Buster 5.28
11 Bullseye 5.32

Compiling Perl From Source

mkdir -p /srv/perl-5.20.0/src
cd /srv/perl-5.20.0/src
echo http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0/perl-5.20.0.tar.gz > url.txt
wget http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0/perl-5.20.0.tar.gz
mkdir ../build
cd ../build/
tar xvzf perl-5.20.0.tar.gz
cd perl-5.20.0
sh Configure -de -Dprefix='/srv/perl-5.20.0'
 #  -d : use defaults for all answers.
 #  -e : go on without questioning past the production of config.sh.

Configuring a Custom Environment

This section introduces a version-specific Perl environment.

mkdir -p /srv/env
vim /srv/env/perl-5-20-2

File content:

#` ENV for perl-5.20.2
DIR=/srv/perl-5.20.2
PL=lib/perl5
PV=lib/i486-linux-gnu-thread-multi
export PERL_MB_OPT="--install_base $DIR"
export PERL_MM_OPT="INSTALL_BASE=$DIR"
export PERL5LIB="$DIR/$PL:$DIR/$PV:$PERL5LIB"
export PATH="$DIR/bin:$PATH"
cd /srv/env
ln -s perl-5-20-2 perl

Using The New Custom Perl

To use a custom version of Perl, some shell variables should be set. This is done using the source shell command.

source /srv/env/perl

perl -v

This is perl 5, version 20, subversion 2 (v5.20.2) built for
x86_64-linux-gnu-thread-multi (with 47 registered patches, see perl -V for
more detail)

Copyright 1987-2015, Larry Wall

Perl may be copied only under the terms of either the Artistic License or
the GNU General Public License, which may be found in the Perl 5 source
kit.

Complete documentation for Perl, including FAQ lists, should be found on
this system using "man perl" or "perldoc perl".  If you have access to the
Internet, point your browser at http://www.perl.org/, the Perl Home Page.

History

Version Date Notes
0.1.2 2023-03-21 Improve writing, add versions of Debian
0.1.1 2022-05-10 Description, typos, history
0.1.0 2016-06-27 Initial release
  • Compiling Perl From Source