Sometimes the package manager of our favorite Linux distribution does not have the Perl modules we need for a development project we are working on. In that case we have to resort to using CPAN which is analogous to Pip for Python modules.
perl -MCPAN -e shell cpan> install package-name
Now that process works very well and even prepends dependent modules. However this leads to one pesky problem. How do you know what modules have already been installed and their version?
Well a friend of mine pointed out this gem which is not readily documented on Google:
perl -MCPAN -e 'print CPAN::Shell->r '
This command will tell you what modules and version is installed on the system it is run on.
The other option of course, and I did this at the University of Minnesota, is to download the source Perl modules and make RPM packages. However I find using the CPAN shell to be more convenient.
