taken from perlfaq8

The easiest way is to have a module also named CPAN do it for you by using the cpan command the comes with Perl. You can give it a list of modules to install:

$ cpan IO::Interactive Getopt::Whatever

If you prefer CPANPLUS, it's just as easy:

$ cpanp i IO::Interactive Getopt::Whatever
/code]

If you want to install a distribution from the current directory, you can tell [inlinecode]CPAN.pm[/inlinecode] to install [inlinecode].[/inlinecode] (the full stop):

[code]
$ cpan .

See the documentation for either of those commands to see what else you can do.

If you want to try to install a distribution by yourself, resolving all dependencies on your own, you follow one of two possible build paths.

For distributions that use Makefile.PL:

$ perl Makefile.PL $ make test install

For distributions that use Build.PL:

$ perl Build.PL $ ./Build test $ ./Build install

Some distributions may need to link to libraries or other third-party code and their build and installation sequences may be more complicated. Check any README or INSTALL files that you may find.