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Asked: 2026-05-12T06:52:31+00:00

It would help me to understand what module I have if I understood reasons

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It would help me to understand what module I have if I understood reasons modules ends up in the various directories under @INC

Under ActiveState on windows it is fairly clear

C:/Perl/lib
C:/Perl/site/lib

The first is core Perl stuff whilst the 2nd is stuff I have installed via PPM (have I got this right?)

However under Debian it seems a lot more compicated 

/etc/perl
/usr/local/lib/perl/5.8.4
/usr/local/share/perl/5.8.4
/usr/lib/perl5
/usr/share/perl5
/usr/lib/perl/5.8
/usr/share/perl/5.8
/usr/local/lib/site_perl

What is the reason for so many directories and what goes where.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Based on the files in these directories, and my knowledge of Perl, I would say they break down like this:

    • /etc/perl – Some Perl modules write out configuration files. Two examples of these are CPAN and the modules in the libnet distribution. Debian based machines store these config files here.
    • /usr/local/lib/perl/5.8.4 – This is where platform-specific files installed outside of the package system go.
    • /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.4 – This is where platform-independent files installed outside of the package system go.
    • /usr/lib/perl5 – This is where platform-specific files installed by the package system go.
    • /usr/share/perl5 – This is where platform-independent files installed by the package system go.
    • /usr/lib/perl/5.8 – These are the platform-specific files that are part of the core
    • /usr/share/perl/5.8 – These are the platform-independent files that are part of the core
    • /usr/local/lib/site_perl – This is where you can installed your own modules (if they do not have CPAN style installers, which they really should).
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