FreeBSD Setup: Install Perl
February 28, 2007
FreeBSD versions 5 and 6 no longer includes perl with the base system. That’s good and bad news for me, since I like the idea of a “stripped down” base system, but I do need perl for some of the software I’m planning on using.
It’s easy enough to install perl from the ports collection ((If you didn’t include the ports collection when you setup FreeBSD, get it now by running sysinstall and selecting ports from the Configure -> Distributions menu.)) though. Just run these commands:
cd /usr/ports/lang/perl5
make
make install
make clean
Keep in mind that this will install perl to /usr/local/bin/perl, rather than /usr/bin/perl as some scripts expect.