how to handle "unknown error" in perl module compilation

Question

when I try to use a "third part module" in my perl script, I got some error message like "unknown error, compilation failed in require at ... line xxx" nothing else and the line mentioned in the error message is exact the same line I "use the module"...

my question is: are there any good practice to handle this situation? like a list to check or something else. thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Two Tools that can be helpful here are

• Carp::Always
• Devel::SimpleTrace

:

perl -MCarp::Always myscript.pl 

This will hopefully emit a more comprehensive backtrace of what lead to the problem.

Also important to note that

use Foo;

expands as

BEGIN { require Foo; Foo->import }

so its possibly an indication there is a syntax error in 'Foo' and it needs to be looked into.

Sometimes it is helpful to run a syntax-only check on 'Foo'

perl -c path/to/Foo.pm

Answer 2

Upgrade to a newer version of Perl. This bug was fixed nearly two years ago.