Current Perl documentation can be found at perldoc.perl.org.

Here is our local, out-dated (pre-5.6) version:

The easiest way is to have the CPAN module do it for you. This module comes with perl version 5.004 and later. To manually install the CPAN module, or any well-behaved CPAN module for that matter, follow these steps:

1. Unpack the source into a temporary area.

2.     perl Makefile.PL
   

3.     make
   

4.     make test
   

5.     make install
   

If your version of perl is compiled without dynamic loading, then you just need to replace step 3 (make) with make perl and you will get a new perl binary with your extension linked in.

See MakeMaker for more details on building extensions. See also the next question.