How can I install a CPAN module into a local directory?

Question

I'm using a hosted Linux machine so I don't have permissions to write into the /usr/lib directory.

When I try to install a CPAN module by doing the usual:

perl Makefile.PL
make test
make install

That module is extracted to a blib/lib/ folder. I have kept use blib/lib/ModuleName but it still the compiler says module can not be found. I have tried copying the .pm file into local directory and kept require ModuleName but still it gives me some error.

How can I install a module into some other directory and use it?

Answer 1

local::lib will help you. It will convince "make install" (and "Build install") to install to a directory you can write to, and it will tell perl how to get at those modules.

In general, if you want to use a module that is in a blib/ directory, you want to say perl -Mblib ... where ... is how you would normally invoke your script.

Answer 2

I had a similar problem, where I couldn't even install local::lib

I created an installer that installed the module somewhere relative to the .pl files

The install goes like:

perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=./modulos
make
make install

Then, in the .pl file that requires the module, which is in ./

use lib qw(./modulos/share/perl/5.8.8/); # You may need to change this path
use module::name;

The rest of the files (makefile.pl, module.pm, etc) require no changes.

You can call the .pl file with just

perl file.pl

Answer 3

Other answers already on Stackoverflow:

• How do I install modules locally without root access...
• How can I use a new Perl module without install permissions?

From perlfaq8:

---

How do I keep my own module/library directory?

When you build modules, tell Perl where to install the modules.

For Makefile.PL-based distributions, use the INSTALL_BASE option when generating Makefiles:

perl Makefile.PL INSTALL_BASE=/mydir/perl

You can set this in your CPAN.pm configuration so modules automatically install in your private library directory when you use the CPAN.pm shell:

% cpan
cpan> o conf makepl_arg INSTALL_BASE=/mydir/perl
cpan> o conf commit

For Build.PL-based distributions, use the --install_base option:

perl Build.PL --install_base /mydir/perl

You can configure CPAN.pm to automatically use this option too:

% cpan
cpan> o conf mbuild_arg --install_base /mydir/perl
cpan> o conf commit