CPAN::P...eleases(3)

💖 CPAN::Perl::Releases 💖

okay bestie, so this is CPAN::Perl::Releases — a lil Perl module from the User Contributed Perl Documentation corner of the manual-verse. it's basically the group chat that knows where every perl tarball lives on CPAN. no cap. 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

CPAN::Perl::Releases — mapping Perl releases on CPAN to the location of the tarballs 💅

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🌸 VERSION 🌸

version 5.20260924 — yes that's the whole vibe, that's the number, periodt.

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

like, here's the whole entire point:

use CPAN::Perl::Releases qw[perl_tarballs];

my $perl = '5.14.0';

my $hashref = perl_tarballs( $perl );

print "Location: ", $_, "\n" for values %{ $hashref };

that's it. that's the slay. ✨

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so CPAN::Perl::Releases is a module that contains the mappings of all the perl releases that have ever been uploaded to CPAN, pointing them at the authors/id/ path where the tarballs actually live. it's giving personal assistant for tarballs. 💖

it's static data, but newer versions of this module will be made available as new releases of perl get uploaded to CPAN. so like, she grows, she evolves, she keeps up. 👑

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🔥 FUNCTIONS 🔥

⭐ perl_tarballs

takes one parameter — a perl version to search for — and returns a hashref on success, or undef otherwise. (yes, undef, the heartbreak option. 😭)

the returned hashref will have a key/value for each type of tarball. a key of tar.gz means the location of a gzipped tar file, and tar.bz2 means a bzip2'd tar file. the values will be the relative path under authors/id/ on CPAN where the indicated tarball will be located.

check it:

perl_tarballs( '5.14.0' );

returns a hashref like:

{
  "tar.bz2" => "J/JE/JESSE/perl-5.14.0.tar.bz2",
  "tar.gz" => "J/JE/JESSE/perl-5.14.0.tar.gz"
}

lowkey important lore: not all perl releases had tar.bz2, some only have a tar.gz. so don't come for her if the bz2 key is missing. 🙈

also — Perl tarballs may also be compressed using xz and therefore have a tar.xz entry. iconic compression behavior, honestly. 🎁

🌈 perl_versions

returns the list of all the perl versions supported by the module, in ascending order. 📈

and this part is key, bestie: TRIAL and RC will be lower than an actual release. so the vibes are ranked correctly, trial/RC girlies do not outrank the real thing.

👑 perl_pumpkins

returns a sorted list of all PAUSE IDs of Perl pumpkins. 🎃 yes, that's really what they're called. iconic. we love the pumpkin lore.

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💜 SEE ALSO 💜

• <http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0/>

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💅 AUTHOR 💅

Chris Williams <chris@bingosnet.co.uk>

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🌟 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE 🌟

This software is copyright (c) 2026 by Chris Williams.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

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bestie disclaimer: this data is static, so if a brand new perl just dropped and it's not here yet, that's a version-of-the-module thing, not a skill issue. 💖

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and that's the whole page, mwah 💋 — this was perl v5.42.3, dated 2026-09-25, straight from the User Contributed Perl Documentation. go locate some tarballs, you absolute main character. 🫶✨