It's really simple. If you want to build you own perl for use on debian, simply make sure it has /usr/lib/perl5 in its @INC and it will then be able to see all debianized perl modules. Feel free to install modules from CPAN into /usr/local/lib/site_perl -- all debian perls will look there as well.
http://pandora.debian.org/~hertzog/perl-policy.txt is useful reading. > So obviously I'm having a communications problem explaining what I see > as an issue. If I could download all the source for Debian Perl > packages and >simply< reinstall them once Perl was upgraded then I > wouldn't see that as a problem. The point is that with Debian's perl setup, you don't have to reinstall the same module in 2 different places if you have 2 different version of perl on your system (unless it is a XS module). Anyone who wrote an XS module without MakeMaker would be certificably doing a Bad Thing, but Debian's perl policy ensures that debian-specific perl modules can be installed by plain old Makefiles into /usr/lib/perl5 and Just Work. -- see shy jo
