How can my Perl script find its module in the same directory?

Question

I am curious why the simplistic solution

use File::Basename;
use lib dirname (__FILE__);
use SomeModuleLocatedInTheSameDirectoryAsThisPerlScriptOrModule;

did not come up. The FindBin module seems to have some issues if the file is not the main executable perl script, but simply a non-executable Perl module. At least that's how I interpret the comment in the documentation. Did not really test it.

To have any other path relative to the location of this Perl file, do something like

use File::Basename;
use lib dirname (__FILE__) . "/MyModules";

The simplest approach I found it to use FindBin module. Like this:

use FindBin;
use lib $FindBin::Bin;

Generally I prefer to have my scripts provided in such a way that programs are in whatever/bin, and libraries are in whatever/lib

In these situations I use a slightly more complicated approach:

use Cwd qw(abs_path);
use FindBin;
use lib abs_path("$FindBin::Bin/../lib");

The abs_path call is to make the @INC contain whatever/lib, and not whatever/bin/../lib - it's just a slight change, but makes reading error messages easier.

From perlfaq8, which answers "How do I add a directory to my include path (@INC) at runtime?". There are several other answers for questions around this issue too.

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How do I add a directory to my include path (@INC) at runtime?

Here are the suggested ways of modifying your include path, including environment variables, run-time switches, and in-code statements:

the PERLLIB environment variable

$ export PERLLIB=/path/to/my/dir
$ perl program.pl

the PERL5LIB environment variable

$ export PERL5LIB=/path/to/my/dir
$ perl program.pl

the perl -Idir command line flag

$ perl -I/path/to/my/dir program.pl

the use lib pragma:

use lib "$ENV{HOME}/myown_perllib";

The last is particularly useful because it knows about machine dependent architectures. The lib.pm pragmatic module was first included with the 5.002 release of Perl.

Besides the already stated solutions:

1. use FindBin / lib
2. Perl Faq 8 How do I add a directory to my include path (@INC) at runtime?

'The simplest approach' (™) that I use while dev/testing a module prior to deploying it (in /usr/local/lib/site_perl/ or elsewhere in @INC) is to modify @INC before loading the module as follows:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
# Modify @INC prior to module loading.
BEGIN { unshift @INC, '.'; }
use YourModuleInCWD;

(Add current working directory to @INC? - PerlMonks)

You can make perl look in any directory by using the -I flag. Here, -I stands for @INC which is the array of paths in which perl looks for modules. Using -I adds the given path to the @INC array for this execution.

eg:

perl -I lib bin/script.pl

where lib contains the modules I want to use.

I know that this works for perl 5. I am not at sure about other versions.

Take a look at Par::Packer. It creates an executable with all of the script's dependencies included. It makes distribution easy. You also could also provide your users a version of your module that can be installed on their systems. See Module::Starter for an easy way to build all of the files required to make a standard CPAN-style distribution.