I'm an occasional Perl developer on Windows and Linux. I write or modify Perl scripts a few times a year when Perl is the right tool. With occasional use, I've never become a real Perl expert, but I succeed with the great help I receive in this forum.
Whenever I build or upgrade a machine, I get the latest Perl version. In 2020, I noticed Activestate was forcing logging in with an account before downloading. I did that, and didn't think much about it at the time. Later I need to add some modules, and discovered that PPM has been deprecated and removed.
That seems like a pretty big deal - like installing the latest Ubuntu and discovering apt-get has been eliminated. My understanding is Perl users are supposed to go back to Activestate and have them build a custom installer that bundles desired modules, and then re-install Perl with every change. That seems a step backwards. Is it a step toward controlling the user base, and eventually turning a free Perl into the "Perl of great price"?
What does the Perl community think about this, and what do you recommend? Am I misinterpreting the State Tool and how it works? Are you sticking with ActiveState, moving to Strawberry Perl, or something else?
I feel your pain. My solution was to use an older version that still had PPM and the MinGW compiler which lets
cpan
"just work".The latest I've heard from ActiveState is that they're bringing back PPM in a new form. We'll see.
Here are your options in my order of preference. I've been doing this almost 20 years.
Windows:
cpan
.cpan
. I think it's 5.26.Linux: