What's the easiest way to install a missing Perl module?

Question

I get this error:

Can\'t locate Foo.pm in @INC

Is there an easier way to install it than downloading, untarring, making, etc?

Answer 1

On Unix:

usually you start cpan in your shell:

$ cpan

and type

install Chocolate::Belgian

or in short form:

cpan Chocolate::Belgian

On Windows:

If you're using ActivePerl on Windows, the PPM (Perl Package Manager) has much of the same functionality as CPAN.pm.

Example:

$ ppm
ppm> search net-smtp
ppm> install Net-SMTP-Multipart

see How do I install Perl modules? in the CPAN FAQ

Many distributions ship a lot of perl modules as packages.

• Debian/Ubuntu: apt-cache search 'perl$'
• Arch Linux: pacman -Ss '^perl-'
• Gentoo: category dev-perl

You should always prefer them as you benefit from automatic (security) updates and the ease of removal. This can be pretty tricky with the cpan tool itself.

For Gentoo there's a nice tool called g-cpan which builds/installs the module from CPAN and creates a Gentoo package (ebuild) for you.