How can I install specialized environments for different Perl applications?

Question

Is there anything equivalent or close in terms of functionality to Python's virtualenv, but for Perl?

I've done some development in Python and a possibility of having non-system versions of modules installed in a separate environment without creating any mess is a huge advantage. Now I have to work on a new project in Perl, and I'm looking for something like virtualenv, but for Perl. Can you suggest any Perl equivalent or replacement for python's virtualenv?

I'm trying to setup X different sets of non-system Perl packages for Y different applications to be deployed. Even worse, these applications may require different versions of the same package, so each of them may require to be installed in a separate module/library environment. You may want to do this manually for X < Y < 3. But you should not do this manually for 10 > Y > X.

Ideally what I'm looking should work like this:

perl virtualenv.pl my_environment . my_environment/bin/activate wget http://.../foo-0.1.tar.gz tar -xzf foo-0.1.tar.gz ; cd foo-0.1 perl Makefile.pl make install # <-- package foo-0.1 gets installed inside my_environment perl -MCPAN -e 'install Bar' # <-- now package Bar with all its deps gets installed inside my_environment 

Answer 1

There's a tool called local::lib that wraps up all of the work for you, much like virtualenv. It will:

• Set up @INC in the process where it's used.
• Set PERL5LIB and other such things for child processes.
• Set the right variables to convince CPAN, MakeMaker, Module::Build, etc. to install libraries and store configuration in a local directory.
• Set PATH so that installed binaries can be found.
• Print environment variables to stdout when used from the commandline so that you can put eval $(perl -Mlocal::lib) in your .profile and then mostly forget about it.