NAME Module::LocalLoad - create and use a local lib/ for globally installed modules SYNOPSIS my $module = 'Term::ANSIColor'; load($module) and printf("%s v%s loaded\n", $module $module->VERSION); DESCRIPTION You're debugging your code, and it's still failing even though you're doing everything right. You might have misinterpreted the documentation for some module you're using, or perhaps it's not doing what it says it should. Time to take a peek at the inner guts of said module. Change a few things, and see if your problem goes away. Changing code in a globally installed module is not such a great idea. Sometimes it's not even possible. This module will help you set up a temporary local lib/ for the modules that you are working on right now. See the "EXAMPLES" section. EXPORTS load( $package ) When load() is called with a valid, globally installed package name several things happen. First, we check if the environment variable "PERL_HACK_LIB" is defined and points to a directory that'll be our new lib/. If it isnt, we croak, announcing that it needs to be set. If the directory already contains a copy of the module, we go ahead and load it. We don't want our changes to be overwritten everytime we load the module. Otherwise, we copy the module, if existing in @INC, to "PERL_HACK_LIB", modify @INC so that "PERL_HACK_LIB" comes first, and loads it. EXAMPLES You want to muck around in the inner workings of the IO::File module. # load.pl use Module::LocalLoad; my $m = 'Term::ANSIColor'; (my $f = $m) =~ s{::}{/}g; $f .= '.pm'; load($m) and printf("%s v%s loaded - %s\n", $m, $m->VERSION, $INC{$f.}); This will produce something like: Term::ANSIColor v3.00 loaded - /tmp/Term/ANSIColor.pm Next up, go make some changes to /tmp/Term/ANSIColor.pm . Notice the version number reported from ->VERSION: vim /tmp/Term/ANSIColor.pm perl load.pl Term::ANSIColor v3.00_042 loaded - /tmp/Term/ANSIColor.pm ENVIRONMENT PERL_HACK_LIB Where the temporary lib should be set up. AUTHOR \ \ | / / \ \ - / \ | / (O O) ( < ) (-=-) Magnus Woldrich CPAN ID: WOLDRICH magnus@trapd00r.se http://japh.se CONTRIBUTORS None required yet. COPYRIGHT Copyright 2011 the Module::LocalLoad "AUTHOR" and "CONTRIBUTORS" as listed above. LICENSE This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.