Perl Hack: perlbrew libs

The libs feature of perlbrew is one I don't see used very often. At least, not by the developers I currently work with and have worked with in the past.

Sometimes I want to run a piece of code against the core libraries and only the core libraries. Sometimes I wrap a script up with Carton and want to verify that a base install + Carton can run my script. And sometimes I just want a place to install anything and everything from CPAN, play with new versions' features, etc...

This is where the libs feature comes in handy.

I have three sets of perl 5.20.3 libs:

$ perlbrew list
  perl-5.20.3
  perl-5.20.3@carton
* perl-5.20.3@dev

99% of my time is spent on the "dev" lib, where I install anything I want. The "perl-5.20.3" is just a base installation of 5.20.3. And the "carton" lib is just a base 5.20.3 installation with only Carton installed. And if I ever break the "carton" or "dev" libs, they're easily recreated from the base installation.