Question

Is there anything equivalent or close in terms of functionality to Python’s virtualenv, but for Perl?

I’ve done some development in Python and a possibility of having non-system versions of modules installed in a separate environment without creating any mess is a huge advantage. Now I have to work on a new project in Perl, and I’m looking for something like virtualenv, but for Perl. Can you suggest any Perl equivalent or replacement for python’s virtualenv?

I’m trying to setup X different sets of non-system Perl packages for Y different applications to be deployed. Even worse, these applications may require different versions of the same package, so each of them may require to be installed in a separate module/library environment. You may want to do this manually for X < Y < 3. But you should not do this manually for 10 > Y > X.

Ideally what I’m looking should work like this:

perl virtualenv.pl my_environment
. my_environment/bin/activate
wget http://.../foo-0.1.tar.gz
tar -xzf foo-0.1.tar.gz ; cd foo-0.1
perl Makefile.pl
make install # <-- package foo-0.1 gets installed inside my_environment
perl -MCPAN -e 'install Bar' # <-- now package Bar with all its deps gets installed inside my_environment

Answer 1

There’s a tool called local::lib that wraps up all of the work for you, much like virtualenv. It will:

• Set up @INC in the process where it’s used.
• Set PERL5LIB and other such things for child processes.
• Set the right variables to convince CPAN, MakeMaker, Module::Build, etc. to install libraries and store configuration in a local directory.
• Set PATH so that installed binaries can be found.
• Print environment variables to stdout when used from the commandline so that you can put eval $(perl -Mlocal::lib)
  in your .profile and then mostly forget about it.