How do I develop cpan modules without installing them?

Question

I have taken the source checkout of two cpan modules : A and B.

Both the modules A and B are developer releases.

B has a dependency on A.

My question is how do I work on B without installing A.

(I already have an older version of A installed)

Answer 1

One way to do it is to use lib like this:

perl -Mlib=/some/dir/module/lib program.pl

Answer 2

If you want to have module A available sometimes, such as when you're working on module B, but not for your regular perl fun, you can look into local::lib, which is a simple way to install some modules to a user-specified directory. Then when you wish to work on module B simply add the directory where module A is installed to your PERL5LIB environment variable, and remove it when you do not need it. See documentation for local::lib: http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?local::lib