Uninstall all perl modules installed by cpan

Question

Yesterday I wanted to test some software and in the documentation it said, to install I just needed to type

cpan -i Software

I never used

Answer 1

If you can't use cpan any more because there are incompatible modules in you path, you can remove all installed modules by hand. For example, I upgraded from Fedora 22 to Fedora 23 and the Perl version changed. All modules installed previously via cpanm into /usr/local/lib64/perl5 did not work any more and prevented me from using cpanm.

$ cpanm --uninstall Apache::DBI
Attempt to reload Scalar/Util.pm aborted.
Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl/File/Temp.pm line 18.
...

I could solve this by moving that directory:

$ mv /usr/local/lib64/perl5 /root/usr-local-lib64-perl5

The name of that directory may vary on your system.

Carefull: If a module installed files outside of that directory, for example system library files, these files will remain there.