Installing a custom version of Perl locally

Overview

You can install a custom version of Perl locally under your username over SSH — download the source from CPAN, then configure, make, and install it, and point your .bash_profile to the new version. The default Perl on Ubuntu 18 (Bionic) servers is 5.26.

How do I install a custom version of Perl?

1. Log into your server via SSH.

2. Visit https://www.cpan.org/src/ to download your version of Perl. Run the wget command to download the tar.gz file.

   [server]$ wget https://www.cpan.org/src/5.0/perl-5.18.4.tar.gz

3. Decompress this file.

   [server]$ tar zxf perl-5.18.4.tar.gz

4. Change into the new directory.

   [server]$ cd perl-5.18.4

5. Run the configure command for the directory you wish to install into. This example installs into a directory named /opt/perl under your username.

   [server]$ ./Configure -des -Dprefix=$HOME/opt/perl

6. Run make, make test, and finally make install.

   [server]$ make
   [server]$ make test
   [server]$ make install

7. Add code to your .bash_profile to find the local version.

   export PATH=$HOME/opt/perl/bin:$PATH

8. source the .bash_profile.

   [server]$ . ~/.bash_profile

9. Check to confirm the new version is being used.

   [server]$ perl -v
   This is perl 5, version 18, subversion 4 (v5.18.4) built for x86_64-linux

See also

• Perl overview

• Perl on Wikipedia

• SSH overview

• Connecting to the DreamHost API