Perlbrew Release 0.31

perlbrew 0.31 is a rather experimenting release with these major changes, please fully read this release note before upgrading.

NOTICE: Remove $PERLBREW_ROOT/Conf.pm if it's there, and re-run perlbrew mirror
perlbrew help system is changing. perlbrew help <command> now displays brief documentation for the command.
Add a global --root argument for all commands that can be used as a quick alternative to set PERLBREW_ROOT env var.
Avoid display paths to external/system perl in the output of perlbrew list
Replace Text::Levenshtein with a minimal implementation -- the standalone executable get to be smaller.

Renaming the Conf.pm file

If you ever used perlbrew mirror to choose mirror sites, you need to re-run perlbrew mirror after installing this release.

Better for scripting

There are demands to invoke perlberw commands from shell scripts, crontab or anywhere that is not an interactive shell. perlbrew has been improving to make it easier to run commands from a shell script. One of the biggest hassle is the requirement of PERLBREW_ROOT environment variable.

Almost all perlbrew commands now recognize a --root arg and treat its value as a path of perlberw root dir. For example, you can run these command to install perls into different locations:

/usr/local/bin/perlbrew --root /usr/perls install 5.14.2
/usr/local/bin/perlbrew --root /opt/perls install 5.14.2
/usr/local/bin/perlbrew --root /mnt/perls install 5.14.2

Full path to perlbrew is used in the example to denote that it is not invoking perlbrew bash function.

The perlbrew root dirs need to be a previously initialized directory, but you may do so with:

/usr/local/bin/perlbrew --root /usr/perls init
/usr/local/bin/perlbrew --root /opt/perls init
/usr/local/bin/perlbrew --root /mnt/perls init

In this case, it is not mandatory to follow the on-screen instruction to include the bashrc/cshrc in you shell at all.

A small caveat for the exec command with --root arg: put --root arg before the word exec like this:

/usr/local/bin/perlbrew --root /mnt/perls exec myprog.pl --arg value

Since it is expected that every words after exec are the actual command to run.

General rule of thumb: put --root arg right after perlbrew when you need to specify it.

However, if you need to invoke use or switch command from your shell script, it is still required to include the perlbrew bashrc file in your shell script. Without doing so, they spawn a sub-shell process, which is never a desired outcome.